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Who are you? Before you answer, let me say:
You are not your name — that’s just a sound.
You are not your job — that’s just something you do.
You are not your familial role — that just describes a relationship.
You are not your OCD.
It’s OK to get great meaning from your relationship as a brother, a mother, a grandparent … and it’s wonderful to be good at your job and to enjoy it. And, it’s convenient to have the label of a name.
You would still be you if your relationships shifted and even ended.
You would not cease to exist if you lost or changed your job.
That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
And OCD is a mental illness. You predate your OCD, by an eternity. You are part of the living universe. Your OCD is like your clothes; when you outgrow it, you are still you.
In fact, you can be more fully your self — your true self — without the encumbrance of obsessive compulsive disorder. It may sound funny that I am implying that at some level you are afraid to let the OCD go. After all, it’s annoying as hell and you are reading blog posts on how to rid yourself of it. But it could be that OCD has been such a seemingly defining characteristic of your nature…
