Opinion | OCD isn’t what you think it is, and TV is to blame

“I’m so OCD.”

“I know right, I love cleaning.”

As someone with obsessive-compulsive disorder, I’ve heard it mentioned in casual conversation more times than I can count — usually by people who don’t understand what OCD actually is. People throw these phrases around like it’s a fun quirk, as though it will make them more relatable. Misrepresentations of mental illnesses are all over the media and OCD is no different.

OCD is characterized by both obsessions and compulsions, where people typically experience involuntary thoughts and feel that the only way to resolve these horrible intrusions is with patterns and actions they create. People with OCD know what they’re doing is illogical, but they can’t take any chances. It isn’t quirky, and it definitely isn’t fun.

Though I’ve struggled with OCD my whole life, I only received a formal diagnosis about a year ago. Part of the reason it took so long was that I didn’t fully understand OCD, and that’s because I never saw it represented anywhere — or, rather, I never saw it represented accurately anywhere. I thought it was just about being neat and clean and freaking out if things aren’t in their place, and although this can definitely be part of it, it’s not everything. I’ve never been especially tidy — my room is always a mess — and this idea of what OCD is made me feel like I couldn’t have it.

I think of television characters who have done more to hurt people’s understanding of OCD than help it. Monica Geller from “Friends” is a great example. Monica is competitive and controlling, and people love to use her as an example of OCD representation on TV because of her love of cleaning and her need for everything to be exactly the way she wants it. But this isn’t OCD. People who have the disorder don’t necessarily love to clean — it’s something they might feel they have to do, an impulse they have to fulfill or else something bad will happen.

In “Friends,” we don’t see impulse in Monica’s actions. There’s no sense of doom if Monica doesn’t clean — she even enjoys cleaning. Monica more likely suffers from obsessive-compulsive personality disorder rather than OCD. OCPD is a condition that causes people to have specific ways of doing things and an obsession with perfectionism. But it’s because Monica is misconstrued as having OCD that people associate this anxiety disorder with cleaning and arranging things.

Another example is Emma Pillsbury from “Glee.” Ms. Pillsbury is the guidance counselor at William McKinley High School and she suffers from OCD and mysophobia, a fear of germs. This combination means her OCD manifests as meticulously cleaning over and over again, never truly convinced that everything is clean enough. Ms. Pillsbury feels compelled to clean and is uncomfortable with things that are dirty or arranged differently than how she prefers them, which I think is part of where we get the idea of people with OCD being “neat freaks.” 

But just like with Monica, there’s no sense of doom when Ms. Pillsbury cleans. She sits in the teacher’s lounge, polishing her grapes, seemingly unbothered. Though she does later start medication to help with her urges, the lack of intrusive thoughts makes it hard for Ms. Pillsbury to be someone people with OCD can relate to. In addition, “Glee” seems to blend OCD and mysophobia together, even though they don’t always overlap.

Something I find interesting is how real people are affected by the way “Glee” portrayed OCD. Jayma Mays, the actress who plays Emma Pillsbury, said in an interview that she thinks she has OCD because she arranged her spice rack once and liked to organize things as a kid. That’s not to say that Mays doesn’t have OCD — because she might — but it’s harmful to imply that organizing things means you have something that real people struggle with.

Although “Glee” and “Friends” misrepresented OCD, I watched season two episode eight of “Girls,” titled “It’s Back,” recently and realized it was the best depiction of OCD I’ve ever seen. Lena Dunham’s character, Hannah Horvath, struggled with OCD in high school and started taking medication to deal with it. But, adult life becomes difficult and the stress of her daily life causes her symptoms to return. Hannah’s parents soon realize she’s struggling, and the conversation they have about going back to therapy and starting medication again reminded me of the way my parents talked to me — the concern they felt for me and my refusal to acknowledge anything was wrong.

Hannah’s obsessed with the number eight — she walks down the street and feels the urge to turn her head eight times, she opens and closes her apartment door eight times and when she bumps into a stranger accidentally at a restaurant, she bumps into him seven more times. Maybe it’s too obvious, but I love that it’s the eighth episode of the season.

One of the most important aspects of this episode is that it shows the ugliness of OCD. Hannah gives herself a terrible haircut, then curls up in her bed, unable to move. Hannah even ends up in the emergency room after popping her eardrum with a Q-Tip, a scene that’s admittedly hard to watch. “It’s Back” also shows how, if left untreated, OCD can be really dangerous.

Dunham struggles with OCD in real life. And say what you will about Dunham and “Girls,” but I’ve never before seen such an accurate depiction of what living with OCD is really like — save for when Adam Driver’s character runs shirtless through the streets of New York City in the season finale in order to comfort Hannah in the midst of an OCD episode.

My point is, I sat there on my couch and my jaw dropped. I had never felt like a TV show addressed me so personally before, as though the producers of “Girls” were watching me as I grew up and slowly came to terms with the fact that I have a serious mental disorder. 

These scenes reminded me of walking home from middle school and feeling the need to step on every single sidewalk square, of touching each doorknob in my house with alternating hands multiple times, or else.

While I turned light switches on and off with numbers in my head, convinced something terrible would happen to my family if I counted wrong or didn’t fulfill my pattern correctly, television characters with OCD were talking about how much they love cleaning. While I was repeating mantras over and over again to protect my loved ones from unknown catastrophe, convinced my words were the only things standing in the way between us and tragedy, people I know in real life were using OCD to describe their need for an organized desk.

If I had seen “Girls” 10 years ago, I would have saved myself so much trouble — but it’s not exactly suitable for children. I mean, I acknowledge that “Friends,” “Glee” and “Girls” are very, very different shows. Certain themes aren’t appropriate for younger audiences, but there’s definitely a way to incorporate the less-than-perfect aspects of life without all the adult themes.

I’d hate to think of someone right now who won’t figure out they have OCD or a similar disorder for another few years, all because the only time they see it depicted is in characters different from them. I think that a lot of people — myself included — could benefit from having an accurate representation of mental illness on TV.

Juliana Morello writes about whatever’s on her mind. Follow her on Instagram @juliana.morello or write to her at jcm160@pitt.edu