When Did It Stop Being Fun?

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been extremely easily influenced. I’d prefer to say “inspired,” because that sounds more mature. But the truth is, I just love a bandwagon.

If everyone’s watching a TV show, I’m sat there watching it too, primed for the conversations. If everyone’s obsessed with a book, I’m straight on Amazon without even reading the plot. I’ve been influenced to smoke, to vape, and, when I was much younger and very irresponsible, to enjoy myself a bit too much with whatever was on offer because other people were. I even did the bloody London Marathon, the biggest bandwagon of them all! The only thing I haven’t been (literally) influenced by is that Dubai chocolate on TikTok.

Most of it (except the marathon, smoking, vaping, and other substances of course) is harmless enough. So I’ll be frank, the real issue with my impressionable mind is how it teams up with my OCD and creates exhausting chaos in my brain.

For years I didn’t address it, because I truly believed that if I told someone about it, they’d start doing these things too and their life would be affected.

When the fun stopped.

My thing is superstitions, and at first (hence the title), they were fun. It all started because someone, so harmlessly one day, mentioned they touch something green and say “Green never seen” when a magpie appears, to ward off the bad luck they supposedly bring. I thought, that’s nice, and decided to do it too.

Then one day I thought, three’s a lucky number, I should do that three times. The same thing happened with post vans (yes, the Royal Mail kind) and the Buddha next to our front door. They’re all now embedded in my brain as compulsions that must be repeated three times.

Earlier this year, I found myself thinking life would be easier if, instead of doing all that, I could do something else instead, like just salute a magpie, rather than scramble to find something green and repeat that sentence three times.

One day I said that to a friend, and saying it out loud made me realise how far from okay that was. And that’s what led me to start therapy, again.

The diagnosis that made sense.

I was diagnosed with OCD at the end of 2019. Back then, it was my obsession with illness and infection that we worked on. All was going well, and then COVID hit.

I did feel a bit smug that I already carried hand gel in every bag, but it was unfortunate that we never got to tackle the reason for the compulsion. Because suddenly, hand gel and hygiene weren’t obsessive anymore, they were necessary.

This time, I knew I had to dig deeper.

It turns out I suffer from something called “Hyper-Responsibility,” the belief that you have more (or any) control over situations than you actually do. The reason I do all the OCD things is because I believe something bad will happen if I don’t.

The words “something bad” might sound vague or harmless, but to me they’re loud and powerful. It means there’s no limit to the awfulness that could happen if I don’t follow these rituals.

It can almost sound like a God complex, because why do I feel I’m so important that I can stop bad things from happening? The thing is, I don’t feel that way at all. The truth is that the seconds (or sometimes minutes) between seeing a magpie and touching something green are horrendous in my head. The spiral starts quickly, a small fear of a bad day turns into a fear of an accident that might take the life of someone I love.

And seriously, if I love you, at some point you’ve been in a spiral in my mind.

The messy middle.

Realising and exploring the hyper-responsibility has been interesting, enlightening, and at times exhausting. But just knowing why your brain works the way it does doesn’t fix it.

The bridge between struggle and survival is hard to build. It’s uncomfortable, disappointing, and tiring, but one thing it hasn’t been is embarrassing. And that’s the power of a great therapist, being able to be open, vulnerable, and honest.

It may not seem like the end of the world to act on a superstition, not walking under ladders, or touching wood when you need a bit of luck, but it’s the need behind it that’s the problem. For me, anyway.

I don’t want to spend my life battling thoughts that tell me terrible things will happen if I don’t do something. And I know my husband would be thrilled if I stopped standing by the front door every morning, rubbing the belly of the Buddha three times and repeating the same mantra three times.

For a start, I’m always late, so it’s really not ideal to hold up our day any longer.

Where I’m at now.

There are many reasons for posting this, one being that writing is my comfort and my release. But maybe someone will read this and realise they, too, are being held hostage by their own thoughts, and that it’s time to reach out.

I no longer fear that other people will “catch” my compulsions, because I know it’s not catching. It’s deep-rooted, and my rituals are a tangible representation of my inner issues, issues I’m finally working through.

For the first time in years, I have hope that things can get better. I don’t need to carry the burden of making sure everyone and everything is okay. Life will just happen, that’s the way it is.

But it’s also a one-time thing. You don’t get a second chance. And we all deserve to live peacefully in our own heads, that’s something I can actually make a difference in, for myself.