Learning to Live with OCD at USC
By Noah Etoka
Like the freshman fifteen, there are a few things you can expect to happen during the start of your college career. At the beginning, I thought that secondhand stories and research about college life had prepared me for it all. I knew I would miss my home and my old friends. I could count having conflicts with my roommates and struggling with balancing work and fun. But during my second semester at USC, one thing I hadn’t planned to encounter snuck up on me— an OCD diagnosis.
Challenging the Stigma
Receiving any kind of diagnosis isn’t easy. Getting one in the first year of college, when you’re still settling into the rhythm of things, makes it even harder. So even after the appointment with my psychiatrist at Keck Medicine, I was in denial. I felt a lot of stigma and shame about having the disorder. In my mind, there was no way I had it. Yes, I showed classic traits and met all the criteria for contamination OCD, but still, no way. To this day I still struggle with accepting my diagnosis, even though I’ve made a lot of progress with it.
The fact is nothing about me changed except for my self-awareness. The diagnosis was just a label that helped me explain some of my habits. Now that I understood them, I could work on correcting them to improve my life. But that meant I’d just have another thing to focus on. It would affect my whole way of living, and my entire life was supposed to revolve around school, at least for now. So began a journey projected to continue past my graduation day. With this disorder, however, it’s important to stay grounded in the present. These are some areas that I’ve learned how to deal with over time but have proven to be difficult in direct relation to my OCD.
Housing, Roommates, and Relationships
One of the hardest things about adjusting to life at USC was relearning how to interact with other people. This was specifically about people who I would live with and share space with for long periods of time, like roommates. In many ways, my diagnosis made this harder.
At the start of your college career, it’s unlikely that you'll have the luxury of living alone or with family. Instead, you’ll find yourself faced with a different living situation with total strangers. For the average student, this experience is uncomfortable but can be a chance to form some newly beneficial relationships. For someone like me, there were additional barriers that got in the way of this process.
My biggest regret with my OCD is that I let it get in the way of these relationships. Suddenly resentment over arbitrary rules mattered more than communication. Cleanliness became more important to me than quality time. These things occupied my mind more than they should, which is the criteria for any disorder. I spent a disproportionate amount of time controlling my environment instead of adjusting to it. That made it hard to become immersed in what I actually wanted to, my school life. The housing experience isn’t easy, but OCD made it even harder to bear.
What helped was communicating my needs and compromising. Every rule can’t be followed, but there are ways to work around them for the comfort of everybody. If people know what you are dealing with, they’re likely to be more understanding of your behavior and more willing to accommodate you.
Adjusting to the Environment
USC has a beautiful campus and I wanted to enjoy it to my best ability. However, the same old buildings that captivated everyone’s attention were a source of distress. With contamination OCD, all I could think about was how ancient the buildings were and how that meant decades of people had touched the same surfaces I had. It seemed silly, but it was easy to become obsessed with cleaning, even past the place I lived.
For example, it was hard to sit in classrooms and focus while people sniffled and cleared their throats. You don’t realize how many little moments throughout each day can be a struggle for people with OCD. Sharing a water bottle could spiral into a visualization of every catastrophe ever known to man. Finding a clean enough seat to study in at Leavey becomes an endless task, requiring more time than actually doing any work. These were recurring thoughts even before my diagnosis, but with education and therapy, I was able to mitigate the stress that they were causing me.
Getting Help
Although the journey has been a long one, I am grateful for the help I’ve received as a result of my diagnosis. Getting diagnosed in college has been tough, as it’s been such an important time developmentally. However, the things I’ve learned so far have been a part of what I expected to get out of USC- the skills to make it in the world. Obsessive compulsive disorder is not easy to deal with, but my time at USC has been improved by knowing and understanding more about this facet of myself.
I may sound like a broken record, but if there’s nothing else you get from this article, I need you to understand this: living with OCD or any condition can be difficult, so you should take all the help you can get. Whether that’s in the form of assistance from family & friends, academic accommodations, support groups, or treatment, you should explore all your options and accept whatever works best for you. You shouldn’t have to go through this struggle alone, especially because statistically there are other people who have gone through the same thing. Ask for help, be receptive, and willing to learn. It’ll make all the difference when it comes to acclimating to life at USC.
