OCD.
For some people, those letters describe a struggle.
But somewhere along the way, they can become something much bigger.
A judgment.
Something is wrong with me.
My mind isn’t normal.
Other people don’t struggle like this.
I’m mentally ill.
I’m damaged.
I’m less capable.
I’m less worthy.
And eventually, without anyone ever formally saying it, three letters that describe something a person struggles with can begin to describe how that person sees himself.
That may be one of OCD’s most overlooked injuries.
Not simply what it can do to your life.
What it can do to your opinion of yourself.
And that is the only thing I want to talk about here.
This is not an article about diagnosing OCD.
It is not an article about treating OCD.
It is not an article about which therapy, medication, or technique someone should use.
Those are important subjects, and they deserve their own serious discussion.
I want to discuss one question that can get lost beneath all of them:
Why should having OCD make you think any less of yourself?
Three Letters Became a Verdict
There is an enormous difference between saying:
“I have OCD.”
and saying:
“There is something wrong with me.”
The first describes something you deal with.
The second describes what you believe you are.
How did we get from one sentence to the other?
Suppose someone tells you:
“I have diabetes.”
Would you think:
What a lesser human being.
Suppose someone needs glasses.
Would you think:
Apparently this person isn’t as worthy as someone with perfect eyesight.
Suppose someone’s back causes him terrible pain.
Would you conclude:
His spine has a problem, therefore the person has less value.
It sounds absurd.
And yet when the difficulty involves the mind, we can suddenly change the rules.
We don’t say:
“My mind struggles with something.”
We say:
“There is something wrong with me.”
We turn a struggle into an identity.
We turn a diagnosis into a definition.
And then we allow that definition to start negotiating our self-worth.
Let Me Tell You About a Mind
There was once a man whose behavior could be extraordinarily unusual.
Nikola Tesla had intense rituals and peculiar compulsive behaviors.
Historical accounts describe his fixation on the number three.
He reportedly counted steps.
He performed activities in multiples of three.
He had intense concerns about cleanliness and germs.
He developed elaborate routines that governed parts of his daily life.
If you could have entered Tesla’s private world and observed only those behaviors, perhaps you could have produced quite a list of things that seemed wrong.
But imagine stopping there.
Imagine looking at that mind and concluding:
“Defective.”
That same mind helped transform electrical engineering.
That same mind helped develop the alternating-current system that became foundational to modern electrical power.
That same mind conceived inventions and possibilities other people could barely imagine.
A mind whose struggles might have looked strange from the outside also helped change the way the world was powered.
Think about the absurdity of reducing that mind to its difficulties.
You could have described Tesla’s struggles accurately and still completely misunderstood Tesla.
And that is the point.
Your Struggle Is a Terrible Measuring Instrument
I am not saying everyone with OCD is Tesla.
Of course not.
Most people without OCD aren’t Tesla either.
You should not need to reinvent electrical power to earn the right to respect yourself.
Tesla matters here for a different reason.
He demonstrates, dramatically, how ridiculous it can be to measure the value of an entire mind by the part of that mind that struggles.
And yet we do exactly that to ourselves.
A person can be a loving father.
A gifted teacher.
A brilliant accountant.
A compassionate friend.
A successful entrepreneur.
A wonderful spouse.
A creative thinker.
A person whom other people depend upon.
A person who has spent decades helping others.
And still look in the mirror and think:
But I have OCD.
As though those three letters somehow cancel everything that came before them.
They don’t.
Your struggle is not qualified to measure your worth.
Imagine Describing Yourself the Way You Describe Someone Else
Suppose you met someone extraordinary.
He was kind.
Dependable.
Intelligent.
Funny.
Generous.
He showed up when people needed him.
He had built a beautiful family.
He had accomplished things he was proud of.
He had made mistakes, like everyone else.
And then he told you:
“I have OCD.”
Would everything you had just learned about him disappear?
Would his kindness suddenly count less?
Would his intelligence diminish?
Would his children’s love for him become less meaningful?
Would his accomplishments shrink?
Would his generosity somehow become fake?
Would you suddenly announce:
“Forget everything else. Now I know what you really are.”
Of course not.
You would simply have learned one more thing about him.
So why, when the person is you, does that one thing sometimes get permission to swallow everything else?
You Are Making One Fact Carry the Weight of an Entire Identity
This isn’t unique to OCD.
Human beings are remarkably capable of taking one difficult fact and allowing it to become the headline of their entire existence.
I failed.
becomes:
I am a failure.
My marriage ended.
becomes:
There must be something wrong with me.
I struggle with anxiety.
becomes:
I’m weak.
And:
I have OCD.
can become:
“I am somehow defective.”
But a fact about you is not necessarily the definition of you.
You can have a weakness without being weak.
You can have a failure without being a failure.
You can have a disorder without being a disordered human being.
You can struggle with your mind without your mind losing its worth.
A person is always larger than the thing he struggles with.
The Question I Want You to Answer
So I want you to try something.
Not an OCD exercise.
A self-worth exercise.
Take a piece of paper.
At the top, write:
“I have OCD.”
Underneath it, write:
“What exactly do I believe this says about me?”
Don’t give the respectable answer.
Write the private one.
Maybe:
I’m not normal.
I’m weak.
I’m damaged.
I’m less intelligent.
People would respect me less if they knew.
I’ll never accomplish what other people accomplish.
Something about me is fundamentally wrong.
Now look at each statement separately.
And ask:
Where is the evidence that OCD proves this?
Not that OCD exists.
Not that OCD can cause difficulty.
Not that you sometimes struggle.
Those may all be true.
Where is the evidence that your struggle establishes your worth?
Where is the equation?
Where is the calculation?
Where is the rule saying that someone whose mind struggles in one particular way deserves less respect than someone whose mind struggles in another?
You may discover something startling.
The diagnosis never said those things about you.
You did.
Now Write the Rest of the Page
Underneath “I have OCD,” write everything else that is true about you.
I am a father.
I am a mother.
I am a husband.
I am a wife.
I am a friend.
I am a teacher.
I am a student.
I am a builder.
I am a professional.
I am creative.
I am loyal.
I make people laugh.
I care deeply.
I have survived difficult things.
I have helped people.
I have talents.
I have dreams.
I have people who love me.
I have something left to contribute.
Keep going.
And then look at the page.
OCD is still there.
I am not asking you to erase it.
I am asking you to put it back in its proper size.
It is one fact on a very large page.
Why did you let it become the title?
You Don’t Have to Become Tesla
And here we need to return to Tesla one final time.
It would be easy to misunderstand the point.
The message is not:
“Don’t worry about having OCD. Maybe you’re secretly a genius.”
No.
Your worth does not depend on genius either.
You don’t have to invent anything.
You don’t have to build a billion-dollar company.
You don’t have to become famous.
You don’t have to prove that your mind is extraordinary before you’re permitted to stop being ashamed of it.
The person living an ordinary life with OCD deserves precisely the same fundamental dignity as the person who changes the world with it.
Tesla simply makes the error easier to see.
If we had reduced Tesla to his struggles, we would have missed an extraordinary mind.
What might you be missing when you reduce yourself to yours?
Stop Apologizing for the Mind You Carry
Maybe your mind is not effortless.
Maybe there are people who seem to move through certain parts of life more easily than you do.
Fine.
There are almost certainly parts of life you move through more easily than someone else.
Human beings were never issued identical minds.
Some minds race.
Some worry.
Some forget.
Some become distracted.
Some become depressed.
Some struggle to focus.
Some obsess.
Some are extraordinarily creative.
Some are analytical.
Some are emotionally sensitive.
Some can do things effortlessly that another person has to fight to accomplish.
None of this creates a ranking of human worth.
Difficulty is not inferiority.
Read that again.
Difficulty is not inferiority.
Something being harder for you does not make you less than the person for whom it is easy.
Put the Three Letters Back Where They Belong
OCD may deserve treatment.
It may deserve attention.
It may require enormous work.
It may affect parts of your life in ways other people cannot see.
But it does not deserve the authority you may have given it.
It does not get to decide whether you are intelligent.
It does not get to decide whether you are lovable.
It does not get to decide whether you are capable.
It does not get to decide whether you can accomplish something extraordinary.
It does not get to decide whether people should respect you.
And above all:
OCD does not get to decide what you are worth.
Those three letters may describe something your mind struggles with.
Let them describe that.
Nothing more.
Do the work you need to do.
Get whatever help you need.
But while you are working on OCD, refuse to give OCD one more thing it was never entitled to take:
your respect for yourself.
Nikola Tesla’s mind had profound struggles.
That same mind helped light the world.
Your mind may never light a city.
It doesn’t have to.
Maybe it will raise a child.
Build a business.
Comfort a friend.
Teach someone.
Create something beautiful.
Solve a problem.
Love another human being.
Or simply live an ordinary, decent, meaningful life.
That is enough.
So if three letters have somehow become the headline of how you see yourself, put them back where they belong.
Not above your name.
Not in place of your identity.
Not beside a number measuring your worth.
Just as one fact among thousands of facts that make up a human life.
You may have OCD.
But OCD does not have you.
And it certainly does not have the authority to tell you what you are worth.
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