Let me tell you what it feels like to run a wildly-chaotic startup with OCD.
I’ve never publicly spoken about this.
I was diagnosed with OCD in 2012–while I was in 2-years of therapy after my divorce.
I was looking to finally get my own health insurance during the Great Recession and had been denied by Anthem because I had ‘pre-existing conditions’. Thankfully, with the Marketplace anyone can get insurance, but back then you could be denied insurance, mostly because you actually needed insurance.
I was just beginning my own business full time and had enough clients to now start thinking about getting back on insurance.
When I got the letter that I was denied, it stated that because I had OCD I could not get insurance.
I panicked for 3 reasons:
I didn’t know that I had OCD- my therapist actually told me that he thought I MUST know since it was so wildly pronounced
I felt so much shame. Who would want to be with me knowing I had this illness? People so casually throw around, “You’re so OCD,” or “I’m so OCD,” but they don’t mean it in the actual clinical sense. THOSE people are severely troubled. The ones with ACTUAL OCD. The ones who are now me.
I needed health insurance. And now I’d be denied?!
I called my doctor and somehow he wrote the insurance company a note and I got health insurance and I NEVER spoke or thought about this again.
Until last week.
As I write this, we’re in the middle of the Covid pandemic.
I’ve been forced to stay home (something I actually love and always wished I’d had more of).
I have therapy through TalkSpace and I also have a Life Coach.
Both are helping me understand myself more.
Here’s what I approached them with in January / early February:
I have a fear of finances
I got shamed online at the beginning of this year and it still haunts me
I never feel like I can get anything I want to done
I think about other people way too much
I’m having trouble sleeping
I just feel awful- like in my body
I have WILD anxiety that just won’t stop
My skin is always breaking out
What I THOUGHT was going on with me:
I’m bad at money because I have some deep shame around it
Something is wrong with me and I deserve to get shamed online because of it
I’m terrible at sticking to a schedule
I care too much about what people think about me
I don’t stick to a schedule so I don’t sleep well
I’m eating too much sugar and not working out enough
I’m too self-conscious
My diet must be affecting my skin
Here’s what has happened since I took a break from Cleveland Flea + also have to stay at home:
I sought out therapy and a coach for my personal life
I decided to sleep in here and there
I stopped caring about everyone- it’s obvious that I won’t be able to please the majority anyway
I stopped wearing makeup
I stopped touching my face
My skin looks a lot better
I stopped drinking a lot and it’s not even hard
I stopped eating loads of sugar and it’s not even hard
I do so many at-home creative projects
I spend time cooking
I began organizing every aspect of my life
I get a lot done
I follow my calendar when I want
I built 2 new businesses that I LOVE
I have about 1 million new amazing thoughts on Cleveland Flea and the future of this industry
I drink a lot of water
I’ve lost 2 lbs and I’m not really trying
I experience peace much of the time
WHY?
Because I finally decided to care for my body. And my mind. And in my case my body and mind have OCD.
All of the things that were symptoms of my OCD were because I had set my life up to feel like the absolute worst experience for someone like me.
Chaos.
A million things to think about all the time.
Constant interruptions.
People DEMANDING you listen to them all the time.
A wildly complicated business with thousands of different types of people who believe that you should know all of them like the back of your hand or you don’t care about them.
So, the skin, the extra weight, the constant caring about what others would say to me or how they’d be mad at me, the extra drinking and snacking they were all survival tactics for someone like me.
Here’s what it feels like for me (someone with OCD) to have ZERO CONTROL over my surroundings:
like someone is stabbing me in the middle of my body (the center of my anxiety)
like all is actually hopeless
like at any minute a bomb will go off inside of you and you will not be able to manage it
being in CONSTANT fight or flight, even at night, and especially at night when you’re laying in bed
like your heart is beating out of your chest at all times
like your actual brain is on fire
like there is an electrical current running through your veins at all times and you cannot unplug
hyper-vigilance (constantly understanding the domino effect of EVERY word, EVERY action in EVERY way)
like nails on the chalkboard all the time
constant hyperventilation
THAT is what nearly every day felt like of running Cleveland Flea.
Someone like me, who is un-treated and unmedicated should NOT be working in an environment like that.
I knew this but I also just thought that I should try harder. If I could solve my calendar or my weight or my skin or my money that I would feel fine.
So just self-medicated so I could survive:
constant snacking helped my body shift into a different sensation (for a minute)
drinking helped me calm down at night or when I needed to be around people to act normal
watching movies distracted me and helped me focus and calm down momentarily
sabotaging my calendar felt like small moments of self-care because concentration was SO GD HARD also I knew that if I got too attached to my schedule and all the normal interruptions came my way to tear me away from a task that was half-finished I couldn’t emotionally handle that. So I just half-finished everything already instead of it being a surprise to me.
Constantly predicting the problems that would come my way helped me emotionally deal with them- surprise is so overwhelming to my interior life so I just got used to all the negativity rather than even thinking that maybe so much of it shouldn’t be coming my way anyway.
I hid this from everyone because I didn’t want them to leave me or use it against me.
Here’s what I had to do to ACTUALLY being to solve this:
Get on anxiety meds
Talk to a therapist frequently
Talk to a Life Coach who studies atypical brains and trauma
Tune into my body and listen to it, no matter the consequences in my life (hello online shaming)
Do things that I personally enjoy that bring me happiness
Give myself space to use my brain in the way it actually works versus changing how it works to fit the worlds’ expectations of me, which meant pausing Cleveland Flea so I could figure it out
Advocate for my own well-being instead of always focusing on others
Practicing not caring about what others think as a strategy to prevent disruptions to my life
Letting people say whatever they want about me and letting it be ok (damn that’s hard)
Learning more about OCD and releasing my shame around it (part of that is telling my story)
Having time to pause has helped me choose myself instead of try to change myself. I’ve had to get comfortable with disappointing many people instead of disappointing myself and my body.
I have a level of peace I have NEVER experienced. And at first, I panicked that it would vanish. I actually nearly had a panic attack.
One of the thoughts I’ve been working through with my Life Coach is:
“You will never have what you want.”
And I thought that was related to a deep belief that I wasn’t worthy. But what I’ve really discovered is that it’s my brain’s way of making sure my heart doesn’t get too hurt. It knows that life is hard for my brain and my brain gets in the way of the happiness of my heart a lot. I struggle with focus. I’ve lived my life in such instability since I was about 10 years old. The fight for survival didn’t leave much open space that my brain needs to understand and tackle stuff that might take others less time.
My brain needs to think about them in a certain way. My brain needs more open space than I’ve ever had. My brain has had to create tricks to help me navigate the world.
Because it had no idea that anyone could help us.
Now?
I dive into finances without shame and fear.
The lurking presence that I always feared wasn’t shame all along. It was disappointment. It was crushing disappointment and the following anxiety that my brain knew my body would feel if it couldn’t tackle something in entirety. If I couldn’t make just that one thing a priority. It was scared to start anything it was unclear about how long it would take and if it couldn’t secure zero interruptions it just told me a little white lie to keep me away from the task:
“You won’t be able to have the things you want, so just let someone else do this.”
So, a protective thought brought on by coping mechanisms of my OCD turned into a belief that whatever I wanted could not come true:
money
a body I love
style
a clean house
an organized life
a family
love
the car I wanted
It felt like I had to steal whatever I wanted, versus make it come true.
Pausing to understand my body changed everything for me.
All I had to do was brave public humiliation to get there.
Now EVERYTHING seems possible.