I remember walking home one autumn evening when I was eleven years old, holding my mother’s hand as tears welled up in her eyes. Though I did not have the best emotional intelligence at the time, I had guessed from a very young age that the role of the sympathetic ear would not be taken up by my older brothers or by my father in such a traditional, patriarchal, South Asian household. So, I rested my head on her arm as we walked the rest of the journey home. That was the evening she told me she had been diagnosed with major depressive disorder (MDD) and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).
I was aware, even as a child, that I was limited in how I could help her, but that didn’t stop me from trying. Of course, this awareness of my limitations at the time also didn’t stop me from feeling an immense sense of guilt over not being able to do more, even if it was beyond my control. I watched it manifest within my childhood: I’d familiarised myself with medicines lying around in cabinets; I’d accidentally come across journal pages with accounts of her obsessive thoughts regarding extreme religious purity, violence, and sex; I had heard countless arguments between my parents, ended by my father berating her and calling her crazy though she was not. I certainly wasn’t going to speak to my mother in the way my father did. It was my job to listen to her experiences, learn, and let her know she had support networks to reach out to.
For those unfamiliar with OCD, it typically comprises two aspects: obsessions which may cause distress as they manifest into unwanted feelings, thoughts and doubts which are extremely difficult to let go of; and compulsions. Compulsions are subsequent actions one takes in order to reduce the distress, whether physically, within the mental interior or verbally. The disorder is cyclical, meaning that, while acting on a compulsion may help to bring relief, the compulsion is also more likely to be mentally reinforced and the thought more likely to resurface once more. OCD has the ability to disrupt day-to-day life, particularly with respect to activities and relationships with others, and the common accompanying feelings of shame and disgust may damage an OCD sufferer’s self-esteem.
In the case of my mother, she found a coping mechanism in maintaining an idea of purity, whether that was in a literal sense of cleaning or the sense of spiritual purity – ‘cleaning herself’ when her thoughts were ‘unholy’. She over-cleaned and prayed excessively, which were not bad things in themselves, but it was saddening to realise that the cleaning and praying were fuelled by a conviction that she was a terrible, impious, disgusting person for having intrusive thoughts.
It is that moral scrupulosity alongside her reliance on private prayer and mental rituals that made it so hard to spot for me, which is perhaps why she did not get diagnosed herself until she was 40. Internet forums are quick to call this kind of OCD “Pure-O”, in which compulsions occur solely within the mental interior and thus can go unnoticed. Though the subtype is not clinically recognised and often is misconceived as solely obsessive thoughts with no compulsions on the part of the sufferer, many who tend not to have physical outward compulsions – such as my mother – find it useful.
I only really started to reflect and realise the nuances of my mother’s OCD years later once I was in therapy myself, and began to understand my own experiences with mental health. As of now, I am diagnosed with complex post-traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD), and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). I tend to maintain a degree of flexibility when it comes to my mental health; I don’t know if these diagnoses are set in stone, or misdiagnoses, or if there are more to come. But, pattern-recognition helps to understand my mental health better when I look at the experiences of my mother, or other friends with OCD, or articles online, and set them against my own experiences. I have had culturally taboo, sexual thoughts plague my mind, and I have frozen in front of people, too scared to speak out about them. I know it also affects others who witness me freeze up and watch as they do not know how to alleviate my suffering. But, the thoughts are just that – thoughts. They do not define me as a person.
I wish I had told my mother more that she was never a bad person when I was younger. Her thoughts did not, and would never, make her a bad person: why should she be blamed for something she cannot control? She tried her best, and continues to try her best to heal. She made sacrifices for me and my older brothers and for that, I am immensely grateful. I gained a strange kind of empathy growing up as the only daughter in a family with deep-rooted generational trauma and a long history of severe mental health issues. Even if I did not grow up with the easiest childhood myself, I love her, and the fact that she has OCD will never make her unlovable.
Recommended Resources for OCD Awareness Week