OCD: How it affects your mental health and relationships

With growing consciousness and awareness around mental health, discussions on how it affects a person’s day-to-day life are becoming less and less stigmatized. OCD is one such mental disorder that makes a person restricted by its symptoms and severity. How OCD in a person affects their mental health and the relationships around them is what we are going to look at today. But first, let’s understand what OCD is.

What is OCD?

OCD or obsessive-compulsive disorder is a mental health disorder that can affect people of any age group. People with this disorder develop obsessive tendencies and recurring, compulsive thoughts that make them obsessed with performing a task or ritual when triggered. When they are not able to perform that task, it makes them anxious. OCD often makes people develop an urge to keep things neat and organized fashion.

Symptoms of OCD

The symptoms of OCD can be both obsessive and compulsive at the same time. They include:

• Fear of getting contaminated by germs

• Recurring unwanted ideas

• Impulses that are aggressive in nature

• Irrational fear of harm

• Constantly checking something

• Constantly cleaning the same time over and over again

• Washing your hands all the time

• Constantly arranging things with or without knowing how you want them to look

How OCD affects mental health

Like all mental conditions, OCD does not have any physical symptoms and only affects the mind. OCD might lead to a number of short-term and long-term mental health issues in a person. In the short term, OCD does not let a person contribute to society, they have difficulty in maintaining interpersonal relationships, like friendship or romantic relationships, they face trouble at school or their workplaces. In the long term, a person with OCD might suffer from depression, anxiety, panic attacks, as well as a tendency to develop substance abuse.

OCD also leads to developing perfectionism, wherein the person suffering from it will not only want to make things around them perfect all the time but they are driven by the compulsive obsession that they have to be perfect as well.

Sometimes, OCD can also lead to causing self-harm. Developing a self-harming ritual, like pulling your own hair or picking at your skin until you bleed are some of the ways how OCD affects your state of being.

How OCD affects relationships

Since OCD is so crippling, it affects a person’s relationships, often for both parties concerned. Be it romantic relationships, or other personal and professional dynamics, OCD makes it difficult for a person to maintain any.

Romantic partners

People with OCD often actively choose not to get involved in intimate, romantic relationships. Those who are involved in one, often find themselves in fear and doubt and constantly insecure about their partners. Since romantic relationships are so intense, a person with OCD tends to make their relationship the center of their world, where they are constantly worried about menial things like where their partner is, who they are with, and so on.

Physical closeness also becomes an issue in these relationships, since the person has a fear of contamination and germs. This restricts the sexual aspects of such relationships.

Family and friends

People with OCD often develop patterns of being loners, since they can’t be around other people. It stems from their low self-esteem, embarrassment, shame, and insecurity. This also gets difficult for the people on the other side of the spectrum to try and maintain a close relationship with them.

Co-workers

People dealing with OCD often end up having strained relationships with people at work, including superiors. Dealing with OCD impacts a person’s timing, productivity at work and performance. Sometimes, it leads to avoiding certain people or tasks as it might trigger their OCD, leading to anxiety. They will also constantly worry about what their co-workers think of them.

In conclusion, the world is a difficult place for people living with OCD. The best way to go about it is to seek professional help for OCD treatment. Your medical professional will prescribe OCD medication, based on how severe your symptoms are.