OCD Recovery

Jane shares five tips for succeeding in OCD recovery as a student. 

- Jane May Morrison 

For those of us who experience Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, our university experience can quickly start to feel downright nightmarish! However, there’s good reason to be hopeful about OCD recovery. Campus understanding of mental ill-health is improving, media depictions of OCD are raising awareness (see: Channel 4’s brilliant 'Pure'), student health services (though busy) are better-informed on OCD, and every student can access resources like OCDAction’s 'OCD at University'.

Speaking as an (ancient, decrepit, 30-year-old) postgraduate, the changes to student mental health services over just the last decade have been huge. Things have improved! If you’re experiencing OCD symptoms, your chances of getting correctly diagnosed and directed to treatments such as ERP (Exposure Response Prevention) therapy are better now than ever. There is a range of treatments for OCD but I found ERP was a treatment that really helped me. It’s often considered a subtype of CBT (Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy). It can be done alongside GP-prescribed medication. ERP trains you to gradually confront your obsessive fears, without doing your usual mental or physical compulsions. In the long term, it can re-wire the brain (for real: it’s literally visible on a brain scanner). This can drastically reduce the intensity, believability and frequency of obsessive thoughts.

If your student mental health services don’t offer ERP, and you can’t find or afford a private therapist, you can still try self-directed ERP. However, it’s best to do this with guidance from an expert workbook (e.g. David Veale and Rob Willson’s 'Overcoming OCD') or a specially-designed app like nOCD.

Here’s 5 tips for succeeding in OCD recovery as a student:

1) Ask for support at your college/university’s Disability Services. Although mental healthcare varies between institutions, you’ll never know what is available at yours if you don’t ask. As a diagnosed case of OCD is a recognized disability, your university should make reasonable adjustments for it (e.g. extra time on essays or exams, an Independent Learning Plan, the ability to leave seminars early etc).

2) Do the regular homework your therapist sets (even if you don’t want to!).

3) Go easy on yourself during the initial period of recovery. It’s emotionally draining to push through high anxiety without your usual reassurances. Keep busy, but don’t volunteer for too many stressful extracurricular commitments; relaxed events that you can come and go from are better. Practice self-care. Keep your mindset strong with recovery-focused podcasts like ‘The OCD Stories’.

4) Be selective about who you share with. Though OCD awareness is improving, flatmates and friends may still not fully understand the debilitating nature of it, nor fully acknowledge your amazing mental strength in fighting it off. They might think it’s just a harmless quirk, or crack hurtful jokes about how they’re ‘soooo OCD!’ themselves. They can even unwittingly trigger OCD anxieties with throwaway comments about your obsession topic. They’re not malicious – just misinformed. But there are good alternatives: OCD communities online, helpline support, university mental health groups, and many off-campus UK support groups.

5) Try to make lifestyle choices that help recovery, not hinder it. The newest evidence suggests brain inflammation as a factor in mental illness, and binge-drinking, insomnia and junk food are unlikely to help. Many people with OCD report symptom flare-ups after heavy drinking. Nobody’s saying you can’t occasionally have a few pints, but if you DO decide the temporary buzz of getting hammered isn’t worth the OCD panic attack tomorrow, it’s 100% ok. You do you!

You can find more OCD information, advice and experiences here 

Jane May Morrison is backcombed eco-goth, studying for a Human Geography PhD in the wonders of low-carbon energy/heat, at the University of Exeter. She also writes feminist fiction. Late-diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder and OCD, she'd like to help make life a wee bit easier for others with these conditions. Find her on Twitter @JaneMayMorrison.

Why my MA will be my new beginning

In this blog, Alice talks about how even though her undergraduate experience wasn't the best, she's determined to have a more positive time studying for her Master's degree. 

University wasn’t the place for me. I’m not saying it was bad. I’m just saying it wasn’t good. I didn’t care about the Mexican Revolution, religious symbolism in the work of J. L. Borges, or the exploration of the self and form in twentieth-century France. Likewise, I did not care about the difference between the pronunciation of “vu” and “vous”, “pero”, and “perro”.  I did not care about getting an F in a relatively unimportant presentation. I did not care that my tutor declared my essay on feminism to be “decidedly mediocre”.

Instead, I cared about evenings in pubs, walks in the park and sessions at the gym. I cared about staying up all night watching films and reading books not on the syllabus. I cared about cycling from a bar to my friend’s house at 1am on a Monday morning. I cared about going to gigs, visiting photography exhibitions, and rummaging through Spitalfields market on a Sunday.

When it came to studying, I tried, but only sort of. Half an hour before class was due to start I would open my workbook and frantically scribble something down. In the evenings, I would read novels of my own choosing before embarking on (and then later abandoning) the set texts. As for the presentations, I would usually just miss those classes and carry the fail. Invariably, I would turn up to every class utterly unprepared, having no idea about what was about to be discussed, and caring very little.

At the end of my three-year degree (which took me five years to complete), I received a transcript of my results, telling me that I had received one fail, two thirds, 2:2s, 2:1s, and firsts – all of which averaged out into the most meaningless 2:1 the uni must have ever given.

What the transcript didn’t say was that, during my studies, I had experienced debilitating depression, unrelenting OCD, one terrible coming out, one terrible relationship, one terrible break up, and the onset of Tourette’s syndrome.

OK, maybe university was bad.

This year, though, I have a place on UEA’s Creative Writing MA, and I’m determined to go back to my studies.

But if my undergraduate was so tumultuous, why am I doing this?

The answer is simple: university is, for me, unfinished business. I need to go back: get consistently OK grades, stay on an even keel for the duration of the course, keep my depression and OCD at bay. There’s not much I can do about the Tourette’s, given that it’s both chronic and incurable.

It’s going to be hard. I have the stereotypical swearing kind of Tourette’s. I will be yelling out “fuck” in lectures. I will find it hard to concentrate. I will inevitably be a distraction to myself and others.

But, unlike my BA in French and Spanish, this course has been a dream for a long time. I will spend a whole twelve months doing what I love: reading and writing. Reading helped me through depressive episodes before, and getting my writing published since leaving university has given me a much-needed self-esteem boost.

And if mental illness has taught me anything, it’s to do what you love, and do it a lot.

So that’s what I’m going to do. I’m determined to go back, and I’m going to smash it.

Alice Franklin is a writer who happens to have Tourette's, OCD and autism. She writes at a leisurely pace, runs at a leisurely pace, and hammocks at a leisurely pace. Previously, her work has appeared in two Spanish short story anthologies, the online magazine Liars' League, and the Financial Times.