#ocd stuff

"If you think hateful thoughts about yourself, and you're queer, that's queerphobic, and it's illegal to be queerphobic during pride month!"

How about we not make straight queers* feel guilty and paranoid about being "not queer enough" during pride month? (*Aspec straights, trans & gender diverse straights, intersex straights, lesbihets, turihets, m-specs straights, polyamorous hets, nonrose hets, etc, etc, etc?)

How about we not make people with internalized queerphobia feel guilty for intrusive thoughts?

How about we stop making a billion posts encouraging moral OCD during pride month?

I have looked into OCD multiple times over the years— which was why I was so convinced I didn’t have it. I didn’t hear the term “moral scrupulosity” until I was given my diagnosis. I didn’t know that my ceaseless, exhausting mental war over whether or not I’m a good person counted as intrusive. I didn’t know ripping yourself apart for things you could have done or could have said after every conversation, often to the point of tears, was not normal behavior.

Because I didn’t know these thoughts were intrusive, they were confirming themselves. I thought that making myself feel this way was right, as if it were divine punishment from a god I don’t believe in for the sin of being alive. That makes sense, I’d think. I am Bad and deserve to Suffer.

I figured everyone else felt this way too. I figured that they must handle it better than I can, which I counted as another moral failure on my part.

Finding out that no, most people aren’t fighting their own thoughts this hard every moment of every day, has changed my life. It’s still hard not to think that I deserve the suffering I put myself through, but I have an out now. Before, the only answer I had was of course I deserve it. Now, I can think deserve or not, this is a disorder in my brain that’s not meant to happen.

- 🐞