Organized Chaos - Volume 6
How I Got Where I Am Despite OCD
by Rob, Doctoral Candidate
I am in my fourth years as a doctoral candidate in psychology. I would like to give you a brief history of how I arrived at this place in my life. As an undergraduate, I studied finance and found it interesting. Besides I was a fraternity man who had a good time partying, played sports and socialized with girls. I graduated with high honors but was unclear about what I was going to do next. What made this worse was there were no more parties sports and very limited socializing.
My OCD took a turn for the worst. I hit rock bottom. I began to drink and smoke, just to subdue the anxiety and the obsessions generated from OCD. At this point, I had a degree, but what lie in my future was a complete mystery. AlthoughI was offered jobs, I was not functioning well enough to take any of them.
My only hope was to stop my bad habits. I embarked upon the greatest journey ever, my journey to recovery. There was no more feeling sorry for myself or running away from my problems. I started exposure and ritual prevention therapy (ERP) again and found a topnotch pharmacologist.
I also found a part-time job to occupy my time. I was hired at CVS stocking shelves and working the cash register. My OCD was so bad that I was constantly obsessing. The constant obsessing kept me from being bored with the mundane tasks I was doing.
I would like to fast-forward eight months to the point that I made a successful recovery. After the ERP and some adjustment with medication, I was ready for the real world filled with everyday trials and tribulations. I opened up my own café. It did reasonably well. However, something was missing in my life. I felt a need to be more productive everyday. I wanted a career where I could make a difference. The idea of becoming a psychologist excited me.
Although, I had only taken one introductory psychology class, I was determined to pursue my goal. Most people believed that it wasn't a practical dream. They were a little right. I still needed to take the GRE's, the Psychology GRE's, a number of prerequisite classes and fill out a lengthy application in a three-month period.
After battling OCD, I was up for the challenge. I completed everything and submitted my application. About two months later, I had an interview and was accepted into the Psy.D. program. I found taking graduate classes like moving from minor league baseball to the pros. The professors were throwing assignments at the students like 90 m.p.h. fastballs. After a period of adjustment, everything seemed to fall into place. Don't get me wrong. It was difficult, but after overcoming OCD, I had the confidence that I could do it.
One of the hardest tasks was working with my classmates on psychology assignments without them knowing that I had OCD and bipolar disorder. I didn't want sympathy from the professors or my classmates. Even today, I keep this personal information to myself.
How is graduate school for a person with OCD? I would say that it is a challenge. People with OCD are very special and resilient individuals who are capable of accomplishing any goals that they set their minds to. OCD interfered with my school work in that I worried about whether I had unintentionally plagiarized someone's work. These obsessions and the compulsions stuck in my head a long time. In my third year, I finally handed in an imperfect paper that I told myself was plagiarized. And, as I anxiously waited to get it back, I had ruminations of terrible things happening. However, on the day I got the paper back, this imperfect paper had a big, fat "A" on the top of it.
My advice for people with OCD who want to go to graduate school is to just go ahead and do it.
