Why I Stopped Trying to Fix My OCD. An essay by Felipe Núñez.

I have lived with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) since I was fifteen.

At the beginning, I assumed it had to do with thoughts. Intrusive thoughts, irrational ideas, repetitions. The solution seemed obvious: fix the thoughts. It didn’t work. An action is completed, but the sense of completion doesn’t register. Over the years, I tried different approaches. Medication, meditation, exposure. Some things helped for a while. None of them changed the structure.

My thoughts were never really the problem. Most of the time, nothing is wrong. The door is closed. The stove is off. The message is sent. You remembered doing it. You know it is done. And still, something remains open. Not as an idea, but as a sensation. A small tension that doesn’t go away. It doesn’t argue. It doesn’t explain itself. It just stays. The next step is automatic. You check again. Or adjust something. Or repeat an action that already ended. It doesn’t solve anything. It only gives the tension somewhere to go. It comes back. At some point, I stopped trying to fix it. The shift happened in the body. A thought appears: this isn’t finished. Normally, that thought becomes an action. A second check. A small correction. A movement that gives the thought a body. I started removing that step. If something is done, it is done once. No adjustment. No “just in case.” No second version. I don’t try to convince myself. I don’t try to feel certain. I just don’t act. Dishes remain unwashed. Tasks remain slightly incomplete. Handwashing is done once. No more. The discomfort stays. But something else changes. The loop loses precision.

There is also another loop. While you repeat an action, there is a voice that comments on it. It says it’s irrational. It says you should stop. But it doesn’t stop anything. So I stopped reacting to that as well. No reaction outside. No reaction inside. The action ends, and nothing follows. That’s where the system starts to weaken. Not because the thought disappears, but because it no longer produces an action. Zwangsstörung is often described as a need for order or cleanliness. That never felt accurate to me. You can organize something in many ways. Alphabetically. By color. By size. By time. There is always another way. The problem is not that something is wrong. It’s that something never feels finished. So the only place to interrupt it is not in the thought, but in what comes after. There are still limits. Some things are checked once. Safety matters. Work matters. But once is enough. Everything else stays as it is.

I don’t try to eliminate uncertainty. I allow it to exist. But I don’t give it a body.