There’s no ‘good’ OCD – I should know, it’s caused me much misery

Awedding venue in Wales has been forced to apologise after advertising for staff who are “slightly OCD”. By “slightly OCD”, Fairyhill, near Swansea, presumably meant perfectionists who are highly organised and dislike germs – I assume they weren’t actively looking for employees with a mental illness so debilitating that they sometimes find themselves unable to leave the house, though fair play to them if that was the case.

I know, I know. It seems so po-faced to get upset about an innocent advert placed by a sweet little country house hotel that has breathtaking views of the Gower Peninsula. Should Fairyhill be flamed for doing something that many people do umpteen times a day, in conversations up and down the country? Haven’t we all used “OCD” as shorthand for being a bit, you know, anal?

But seriously. How many times have you heard someone describe themselves as being “a little bit OCD” when referring to, say, their sock drawer? (It’s always the sock drawer.) The problem, of course, is that by classing OCD as some sort of positive personality trait, we immediately undermine the estimated 1.2 per cent of the population for whom obsessive compulsive disorder is a serious illness. For those people – myself included – there is nothing positive about a condition that at best makes you wash your hands until they crack and bleed, and at worst makes you think you are a serial-killing paedophile.

Do you know why some people with OCD are obsessively clean? Because the very thought of germs makes them frightened for their lives. Do you know why some people with OCD like order? Because a voice in their head has told them that if they don’t place that pile of papers in line with that pile of books, their family will die.

OCD is described as a non-psychotic mental illness, but it is the closest I have ever come to having a seriously impaired relationship with reality. I often describe it as your brain refusing to acknowledge what your eyes can see – be it that your hands are clean, that the oven is off or that that lump in the road is a speed bump and not a body.

OCD takes many different forms, one of the most common being Pure O – though this is rarely talked about, because it involves intrusive thoughts about sex and violence. We have all, for example, had fleeting thoughts about what our boss might look like naked or what might happen if we accidentally dropped our friend’s baby on its head. But most of us rightfully dismiss these thoughts as the random workings of the brain. Not someone with Pure O. They will be so distressed by the thoughts that they will obsess over them to the point that they start to become convinced that they are their thoughts. Then there is Responsibility OCD, which sees sufferers worry irrationally about the wellbeing of people close to them. For a long time, I had to say a phrase again and again for fear that if I didn’t, my brother would die.

Tidy and organised people do not have OCD, any more than multitaskers have schizophrenia. As my husband often jokes, surveying the mess on my dressing table: “I wish you had the good type of OCD.”

As anyone who has suffered from obsessive compulsive disorder knows, there are no good types – just the ones that cause people many years of misery and suffering. The sooner we realise that, the closer we come to ending that suffering.