It’s funny that people often associate OCD with being tidy. I was never a neat person until I recovered from OCD. Being messy was one of my compulsions.

Anxiety disorders are all about trying to cope with, check on, or control uncertainty. But sometimes the ways we try to do those are complex and have a lot to do with the meanings and judgments we’ve learned to attach to things.

For instance, being messy helped me control my social anxieties. It was a great excuse–I don’t have anyone to invite over so why bother cleaning? And it was a great barrier–I can’t invite anybody over because my house is embarrassingly messy. I was always trying to control where, when, and how any social interaction happened. Making things messy was just another way I tried to create barriers in my life.

I also just didn’t have time for cleaning. Compulsions took up so much time in my life and seemed so necessary that cleaning just wasn’t at all a concern. I had a world to try to control!

One of the awesome bonuses of recovery is that I have so much more time. And one of the things I can now do in that time is clean. So I’m much neater now that I don’t have OCD than I was when I did.

When you’re examining what you or others do, look at context and motivation. When we react to anxiety in an attempt to cope with, check on, or control uncertainty, regardless of the superficial elements of that reaction, the end result will always be short-term relief at the long-term expense of our health.

- Mark