Color-coding your closet. Not liking when your room is messy. Keeping a detailed, organized planner. All of these are personal preferences that I have heard used to defend the speaker’s characterization of themselves as “soooooo OCD.” 

Every time I hear someone describe themselves this way, attributing a normal, possibly even healthy behavior to a debilitating disease like OCD, I cringe internally. Statements like these show a complete and total lack of understanding about the realities of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

I was diagnosed with OCD my senior year of high school. It had nothing to do with me being hyper-organized, which my laundry-strewn floor and trash-filled car could easily tell you. It didn’t have anything to do with hand-washing or a fear of a germs, though this is a common subset of OCD. 

My problem was that I had constant intrusive, horrifying thoughts which caused anxiety so intense that I stopped eating and sleeping. I could barely focus on school or hang out with my closest friends. I contemplated suicide nearly every day. My mind played horror movies in my head involving me and my loved ones every hour of every day. I could do nothing to quiet them or escape from them. My reality was a psychological hellscape. 

Once I received my diagnosis and was able to start the right forms of therapy and medication, things improved. It took many long hours, uncomfortable therapy sessions and thousands of dollars from my parents to get there, but I did. After months of waking up in complete terror because I knew the thoughts were coming to ruin my day, I started to be able to manage them. To not be so afraid of them. To not let them control my emotions and my life. 

So when people flippantly describe their need for organization as them being OCD, it’s incredibly frustrating. First, you can’t “be” OCD. It’s not an adjective; it’s a disease. Second, they have no idea the toll that disease took on me and my family, no idea that I fight every single day to remain healthy.

Of course, I know that these statements do not usually come from malicious intent, but rather from sheer ignorance. OCD isn’t an especially common mental illness and almost all media depictions of it focus only on the hand-washing/germ iteration, though there are so many others. Additionally, many people with OCD, including myself, do not have many observable compulsions, so unless I told you about my intrusive thoughts, you would never know what I was experiencing. 

Because of this ignorance, it’s incredibly important to educate ourselves and others on the reality of mental illness. OCD isn’t the only mental illness that is often misconstrued. People frequently describe themselves and others as “bipolar” or “schizo” without having knowledge of the actual symptoms and repercussions of these diseases.

So learn about the difficulties of mental illness. Understand that OCD and bipolar disorder are not personality traits that make you quirky or different. They are diseases, and they deserve to be treated with the same respect and sensitivity in conversations that we use when discussing chronic physical conditions. 

So please, continue organizing and color-coding to your heart’s content. Just realize that you’re not doing so obsessively or compulsively, and have some empathy for those of us that actually know what its like by removing OCD as an adjective from your vocabulary. 

Marissa Cornelius is a senior majoring in secondary education. She is the Opinions Editor of the Crimson White.