Many are understandably frustrated with how disability affects their life. How we cope with and understand ourselves in connection to the systems around us is a lifelong journey. While I cannot speak for others, my personal journey has been one of accepting the superpower of my own neurodivergence. In honor of October mental health awareness, I want to share my journey with OCD and give hope to those navigating the intersection of mental health and neurodiversity.
The Monster’s Origin Story
My earliest childhood memories are of OCD. I remember sitting in my car seat kicking my feet until I felt that they were even on both sides. I remember my parents laughing at my “pinball walk” avoiding stepping on every crack or hitting every sacred place in an essential routine only my brain could see. When I got to school, my OCD had a lot of similarities to what we now recognize as ADHD and Autism. I was easily distracted by uneven textures and a constant list of routines that had to be maintained to feel “okay.” Meltdowns when things were “unfair” or unresolved were common.
Unfortunately, how we talked about mental health and neurodivergence was stigmatizing when I was a child. Those who had an identified learning difference were sent to a separate room in my school and had lower expectations. I felt this internal drive to mask anything different about my thoughts. When people asked why I walked the way I did, why I touched the things I touched, why I washed my hands so much, I always responded, “I don’t know,” or “I’m just playing.” Yet, underneath, the OCD monster was ugly and stealing joy in my otherwise happy childhood.
Climbing the Mountain
Middle school was a low point in my journey. It’s why I’m a middle school teacher today and why I love working with middle grade students. In addition to the normal awkwardness and bullies, my executive functioning suffered greatly. When you spend the last five minutes of each class thinking about how much you need to wash your hands, five minutes of changing time washing your hands and doing your brain-sanctioned rituals it’s no wonder that books and folders were thrown into lockers and homework was never written down.
My hands have gone through years of nightly casts and petroleum jelly to cure the canyons that ran from my fingernails to my elbows. I have spent hours in my room cycling through clothes until I felt “even” with the textures and patterns on both sides of my body and sobbing over the injustice of it all.
Reaching the Peak
When I got to high school and college, my disability morphed into terror of accidental cheating by not doing all the assigned reading. While friends could thrive not doing the reading, especially for their “easy” classes, I couldn’t. From high school to undergraduate to masters to doctorate I have done 100% of the reading. I couldn’t sleep at night unless I read all of Plato’s Apology, or Renaissance Italian Opera, or statistics, or child psychology. If I tried to skip, my brain itched until I got up and read. I wasn’t a fast reader, and I felt stupid because I had to work six times as hard as everyone around me.
The thing about obsessively reading everything when my classmates increasingly were skimming and skipping is I became a better reader. The more I read, the more knowledgeable I was and had more I built from background knowledge. Anything you practice gets easier. In my third year of my undergraduate studies, something clicked. Suddenly the constant stream of assignments became easy. I could keep up and push ahead instead of just treading water.
Appreciating the Superpower
OCD is a part of every cell of who I am. While the monster has made me miserable, it has also made me smart and resilient. I still struggle with sleep and don’t step on cracks in the sidewalk, but I now love my spicy brain and all of the challenges and benefits it gives me. It’s been a long climb to get here, and I’ve gotten a lot of help, but the view is better now.
I can now appreciate that I am knowledgeable on a wide range of topics because I did all the reading. This obsession has allowed me to make connections across disciplines that others cannot. It makes it easy for me to see the context behind a published paper and evaluate its biases because I usually know random facts that are adjacent to the topic in all directions.
My specific expertise is systems thinking and I think it takes a neurodivergent brain to thrive in this discipline. I can immediately tell if something is unfair, or if a system is unbalanced. It feels itchy and wrong until I find the source of the problem. My brain loves sorting, and the tedious work of qualitative data analysis is something I crave that most people dread.
Helping others Find their Superpower
Whether OCD, autism, ADHD, dyslexia, or some other variety of neuro-spicy, I see the same journeys in my students. I see freshmen in college with autism producing master’s level research analysis on topics that are in their niche. I see students with ADHD qualitative coding faster than I ever could. I see students with dyslexia asking the questions that no one else thought of.
I understand that being different is a huge pain. Fortunately, in many cases, these things that are so annoying in one setting can be a huge asset that only you can bring to the table if you find the right avenue. Do not get discouraged in the face of discomfort. Keep climbing the mountain, facing the monster, and loving yourself for exactly who you are.
Want help finding your neurodivergent superpower? Contact us at Bass Educational Services to see how we can help you on your journey