“Compulsions are repetitive behaviors a person feels the urge to do, often in response to an obsession.”
(National Institute of Mental Health)
OCD makes you lose control over your life.
Ever since I can remember, I spent most of my time doing compulsions. I would follow strong urges to do things that I didn’t want to do that took up hours of my day. I had to stay up late at night to do compulsions and squeeze in time even to do them at school. I basically had no social life outside of my classes and extracurriculars by the time I was in high school. I never had people over and would stay in my room for hours in the evening claiming I was doing ‘homework’ when I was really compulsing. I would get agitated when my family interrupted me from doing my compulsions because I’d have to start over, but they thought it was agitation from losing focus on my reading. At that time, I both knew that my life was an out-of-control mess, but I also genuinely believed in my heart that this was the way things had to be. I thought that my obsessions were normal, and a sign that there was a moral failing in me.
When I moved to a college across the country, things reached a dire level. With no one to check in on me, I would stay up until five or six in the morning doing compulsions. I barely reached out to my parents, and even though my sister was at college with me, she lived in a separate room and didn’t get to see the extent of my actions. I ended up intentionally putting myself in a very dangerous situation with someone online that later progressed into stalking. From then on, I developed CPTSD and severe depression. I told my parents about the stalking in a dire moment on a school break, and they were left extremely confused about how this could have happened to me: someone who was shy, reserved, and very intuitive about personal safety. I couldn’t figure out how to explain to them that I did it on purpose without having language about OCD.
With the depression picking up, my life became even more out of control. I felt like something horrible was going to happen to me every day. I started self-harming and had extreme suicidality. Finally, my parents figured out that I had OCD– not from anything I’d said, but from noticing my hoarding problems. They brought me back home after the semester was over, two years into my college journey, and put me into intense treatment.
I was told I couldn’t go back to school the next semester. My parents were helping me pay, so it wasn’t really optional. At first, I was very upset. I had a strict mapped-out plan for my life, and this was a huge interruption to the four years of college chapter of it. To make things worse, OCD is treated through exposure therapy– doing and engaging with things that would encourage compulsions without doing the compulsions to relieve them. The OCD treatment felt like torture. I also started doing other forms of therapy, such as a DBT class, where I would take breaks during the class to self-harm in the bathroom. I remember being extremely agitated for most of my first year of treatment. I felt like other people were telling me what to do and saying I had to do things I hated in order to get better. I cried through a lot of the early therapy sessions.
Even if you don’t know the ins and outs of everyone’s lives, you know that everyone here has struggled, and getting support from Community Members means that much more because of it.
It wasn’t until almost a year into treatment that I had a breakthrough. I was with my parents, walking through a college campus in Colorado. We were going to see a Mammoths game, and while I was walking around the campus at night, I suddenly realized the rigidity of my thinking. It was the most random things that I saw that night, like a poster for a celebration of the Chinese New Year, that broke through my thought patterns. Up until then, I had been determined to go back to my old school and restart my old path. At that moment, however, I had a breakthrough and realized that I could change whatever I wanted. I didn’t have to follow the plan I had set for myself in high school when I was unwell – go to the same liberal arts college and study the same things.
I ended up transferring to a school in Colorado. It was a commuter campus with students across all ages. It ended up taking me a semester longer to graduate, and I’d had to take a year off for my recovery, but I felt more accepted there to follow a different, less rigid life plan.
When the idea of Karis was first brought up to me by my care team, I had a lot of pushback because it felt like I was being pressured into something I wasn’t ready for again. I reluctantly applied, was put on a long waitlist, finally got a call that I was accepted several months later, and let it go right to voicemail. I felt like the decision wasn’t my own, and I wanted to make my own choice about living independently. I was experiencing intense physical issues as well as continuing mental health problems and didn’t feel stable enough without having my parents to rely on.
A few more months passed, and it was December of 2023. I received another call from Dalia when I was having a tougher night, and answered it. She said there was another open spot at Karis, and they would still take me if I wanted to come. I’d spent the last few months thinking about it more, and I told her yes.
My time at Karis hasn’t been totally worry–free. There was a huge life event that happened within my first few weeks of moving in that was totally out of my control and made me worry I wouldn’t be able to settle in. Thankfully, even though I barely knew anyone, the Community quickly accepted me and showed they were willing to look out for me. At Karis, you know that you aren’t struggling alone. Even if you don’t know the ins and outs of everyone’s lives, you know that everyone here has struggled, and getting support from Community Members means that much more because of it.
Even now, so many months after moving in, there are still so many things I can’t control. I’ve had difficulties with work and with my health. Some days I find it hard to even make it outside. But no matter what, I know the Community is here for me. I’m very glad I made the decision to move to Karis. I know I have a lot of growth left to do in my next year here, and I’m very excited to see what I can do next!
Samantha S., Community Member
Drawing by Samantha S.