One year with OCD

In October 2024, I was officially diagnosted with OCD–Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. To give you a brief idea of how it feels, imagine that you are unsure about something in particular (anything), and you have a constant doubt about it, you are constantly unsure if that thing is as you think it is–or could be.

You ask your parents, your friends, other people you trust, for their input–and yet, no answer ever satisfies you. The doubt keeps you paralyzed in place and you cannot get it out of your head for sure. You are heavily distressed and anxious and you don’t seem like you will find that one answer, that one and only true answer that can finally put you at ease.

And until you finally find it, the anxiety won’t go away.

A party of One

I cannot speak for every person that suffers from OCD, but can only share my own experience with it. And for months, I struggled like that. Some intrussive thought would come in, and I would get heavily fixated on it and try to find an answer. It was a common occurrence to look for reassurance on Reddit, or through constant Google searches, or scrolling through many youtube videos, and asking ChatGPT (and an implementation of it named AskAquinas) or DeepSeek multiple times a day.

It was just never enough. No matter how much I searched and thought–it was impossible to feel satisfied. Eventually I would get obsessed with another thought or topic, and that previous obsession would seemingly get lost in the void. Although some very specific topics would remain in the back of my head to “investigate later on”.

Back in July 2024, I started to get psychological treatment (psychotherapy). But it wasn’t until October that those obnoxious and seemingly perpetual thoughts would barrage me over and over. Until I just couldn’t make any progress and my therapist told me to speak with a pyschiatrist–I just could not function properly on my own anymore. I hardly ate food. I stood up until late searching and researching. Guilt and Anxiety felt eternal.

In fact, twice that month I had to ask my superior at work to take the day off just because I could not start my job, the anxiety was so high that I could not function and had to stay in bed all the day.

For those who know something about OCD, you may be wondering, perchance if it is okay to ask me (it is), “What is your topic?”. So, the answer for all of those who asked and did not ask is: Religious OCD. Also known as Scrupulosity.

Loosing my mind, loosing my sight

Ever since I was a child, I’ve been Catholic. And was also educated in a Catholic School for the entirety of my school days. It was through the process of Confirmation that I would really practice my faith, however. And would even become a Cathechist for nearly 2 years, I think.

But when it was time for me to prepare to take the entry exams for university, I decided to dedicate full-time to studying–which resulted in me not frequenting the church anymore.

Eventually, I suppose after some months, even after I already made it through and passed the entry exams, I was already away from what I thought was an integral part of my life.

I wanted to share a bit more of background so you can more or less understand where do I come from.

So, 8 years or so passed, and throughout that time… I basically broke. My values changed, my morals and ethics were in a weird place, my way of speaking became really crude and unrefined–to not say, vulgar. And I derailed and derailed into degeneracy. Made mistake after mistake.

Eventually, after some events that I will not talk about, I ended up on therapy (out of my own volition). One day after some sessions passed already, I felt so incredibly guilty for specifically one big mistake of mine. So I called, and asked if I could go that day. That’s when during that session, my therapist asked me if I was a believer; I said yes. She suggested to me to go down the road and confess my sins at the Church… and so I did.

And that marked the day I returned back to practicing my faith–and this time, do not get off the road again.

September was pretty fine. Landed a job on the field I wanted, got to work remotely which is convenient, I was putting my all into this job and thinking about what I would do as an artist in the future. A bit more of context here: I quit all my old socials in August, a month prior.

Things were going fine. I was practicing my faith more consistently and would visit the Church on Sundays, as I have to. My family had my back. It seemed like, I was starting to put my life in order.

And then October came in. Thanks to this new job, I was presented formally with ChatGPT, and was fascinated by it. One day I was scrolling through my music library and I realized–I am using a pirated piece of software. And for someone that is trying to get back in order and reshape their morals, I quit immediately and got myself Youtube Premium not so long after.

However… this is where things went south. I started to search on the internet: “Is piracy a sin?”. This ONE question would open the Pandora’s Box to a plethora of other questions. The theological war on reddit and youtube is insanely hostile–one person says something, then IMMEDIATELY another one proposes a counterargument. Then you would have posts contradicting each other. People using big words seemingly out of context. Content Creators on youtube trying to explain really intrincate and more complex theological concepts into very short videos only causing more confusion.

The Information Overload was so extreme that I got obsessed over the idea of “Is this a sin?”. I would doubt constantly of my actions and my thoughts. Would get paralized. And since I am a person that is way too curious by nature, I keep asking around. Eventually, this would turn into me obsessively asking ChatPGT (and later, DeepSeek) or flavors of it like AskAquinas or MagisteriumAI, all the doubts I had. I would debate with it, argue with it, fight with it, desperately trying to convince it of my arguments and why LLMs are wrong on their take–but it was all futile. I was convinced of most if not every AI-generated response.

I stopped thinking. I stopped having critical thinking.

I became perpetually afraid.

And eventualy–I crashed.

The shackles around my neck

With the constant anxiety driven by the endless barrage of intrusive thoughts, my life quality declined to the point some things on my life started to be shaped around some ritualistic behaviours. Second, triple guessing my day to day decisions was… for a lack of words, annoying. It is still annoying when it happens, but we will get there later.

At some point, whenever an intrusive thought came in, knocking the door full force, the surge of anxiety felt like shackles squeezing my neck really, really thight. The mental warfare was already a lot to deal with, and adding physical pain as well on top… yeah, not the most pleasant experience possible.

So far I have mentioned the OCD situation… but that is not all the tale. To not go more in depth than I already had so far, the summary is that I am also dealing with an addiction/vice (which has gotten reduced inmensely, getting into that last mile), and other issues related to my mental health (issues with guilt, issues with my self-steem, etc).

When things converged, the sensation on my chest and specially around my neck became really unbearable at times. Ya know, it was really though to deal with both mind and body at the same time.

Sometimes it gets annoying enough that I just concede and stop doing whatever activity I am doing on my free time, and go to lay down on bed to rest.

So… is that it? Was this post just me lore-dumping my whole adventure for the past year? I mean, it is exactly like that–but this is not the end of the story.

Keep moving forward

At some point throughout July-August 2025, it finally clicked: I was not handling my condition properly. To borrow one thing my therapist mentioned, I clinged into my diagnostic. What does that mean? What I understood is that, I got fixated on my condition so much that it made me focus on “having OCD” and really play into the role of the sick person. Whenever something related to my OCD came up, which was a constant every day, I felt sick and reminded myself constantly that “right, I suffer from OCD, poor me”, to put it in words. This may not be the best description I could give right now, but more or less is the idea, me thinks.

So! Once I came to that realization, there was only one response: change my focus and apply everything I have learned through one year of psychotherapy, and be relentless about it.

From the many techniques I learned through this journey, one in particular has became my go-to and by far my favorite. Let me tell you about it.

During one sesion not so long ago, my therapist told me to imagine a jar, and the intrusive thoughts would be wandering around, and the idea was to grab them and put them inside the jar. Well, when we did the excercise, I imagined the thoughts as strips of paper, and then would put them inside the jar. Then, I imagined myself going to a trash bin to unload the gargabe into it.

Well, time passed and whenever I realized that “I did not empty the jar”, I would feel anxious and kinda guilty, for more weird that it sounds. So, I came up with this brilliant idea: the jar would now be a vase that would vacuum the thoughts (still represented by strips of paper), and then dispense of it like a shredder. And the cherry on top would be that this would happen through big lips, like if it were an old cartoon character. When the job was done, “Boss”, as I call them, would give me a thumbs up (also in cartoon fashion. Imagine a big hands doing a thumbs up).

This whacky and silly cartoon-like character I came up with has been the bread-and-butter of my arsenal of techniques for OCD. And I am really glad that it has been useful like you have no idea.

On top of it, the decision of stopping paying attention to the opinion of people on the internet has been the real turning point in my recovery journey. Adding more and more voices, each one conflicting and fighting with another, just added more and more anxiety. It was really the worst decision I could make.

Letting go of constant search and research was the best decision ever.

Closing words

This post has been quite lenghty, and is the first time in a reaaaaaaaally long time since I have writen a personal blog. Even thought I have gone through the maze of many wrong decisions more than the good outcome, I do want to make it clear: I am doing better as of today.

My mood has increased. My sleep schedule has been seriously improven. I have started to draw again after a long hiatus–although my consistency is still a work in progress.

My journey through recovery from OCD is not done yet. I am not yet in that last mile, and there is for sure still a path to go through until… well I do not know. But I am ready to take onto the challenge.

I give inmense thanks to God for helping me through this journey. On every step. Every single day. Thank you, God, for my family, for the amazing friends, my therapist and psychiatrist, the priest at the local parish, and many other lovely individuals that have been there rooting for me.

Thank you to you, reader, for making it to this part. You are amazing, and I wish you the best for your life.

–Kiseki.