- Some of my compulsions manifest
as an intrusive taboo thought that I can't escape.
The only way to alleviate that,
or to clear it from my head,
is to maybe wash my hands,
it's to sanitize my phone,
it's to spit out the bad thought, literally.
[bouncy music]
Hi, my name is Maia Kinney-Petrucha,
and I live with obsessive compulsive disorder, or OCD.
I'm gonna tell you a little bit
about how it affects my day to day life.
From being at home to city living, school,
career, relationships,
OCD impacts every experience I have.
OCD is a chronic mental health condition
categorized by recurring uncontrollable thoughts
and behaviors, and it manifests
in these deep-rooted contamination fears,
as well as the taboo intrusive thoughts
that come along with it.
At home, my OCD manifests in a variety of ways,
mostly decontamination rituals.
I have certain places in the house
that are deemed contaminated,
that's where things like my phone case for outside
have to go, or the shoes that we wear outside.
When I wake up in the morning,
I immediately have to start engaging with these routines,
and I wouldn't call it a morning routine,
any kind of routine that has nothing to do with my OCD,
I easily forget,
so I will never miss a step of a decontamination ritual,
but I will easily forego things
like remembering to eat breakfast.
When I wake up in the morning,
I immediately have to make my bed,
and it has to remain made until I get in it.
If I don't do it,
I am worried that germs will get inside the bed.
I also have clothes for different parts of the apartment,
I have to immediately take my PJs off
before interacting with the rest of the apartment.
Brush my teeth, wash my face,
those are things that I just can't do anything else
until I've gotten done,
and I'll look up, and it'll be 1:00 PM.
My nighttime routine is a little bit more rigorous.
When I come back in, I have a step-by-step process
to rid myself of all the germs.
Shoes come off,
they cannot walk anywhere in the apartment,
if I've touched them, I have to go wash my hands,
I have to turn on the sink, kind of with my elbow,
because my hands are coming in dirty.
Wash them, I take my phone out of my purse,
I rest it on a very particular place,
and I wash my hands again.
So I have two phone cases, one for outside, one inside.
Then I decontaminate my phone,
I gently rest my now clean phone on the new phone case,
and then I wash my hands one more time
and put it fully into my inside phone case.
When I get into my room,
I have to take my clothes off first thing.
I hop right in the shower, get clean,
and then I can sort of start to relax from the day,
and sometimes this takes anywhere from one to two hours.
So is that accompanying feeling of my chest being tight,
if anything gets in the way, I feel it viscerally,
there's a little bit of a lurch in my stomach, in my chest.
I don't go full-blown panic attack, usually,
because I know that there's gonna be things
that I can't control sometimes,
and that's just three years of therapy
that I've been able to be okay
with hindrances to my process.
For me, OCD is a very physical thing.
I feel like a toxic waste victim, sometimes,
just emanating contamination,
it's something that is in my skin,
and it's not always a conscious thought.
Things like washing my hands,
doing certain ticks and compulsions,
they're just there constantly,
I have to take time out of whatever I'm doing.
And they're quick compulsions, often,
if I just need to wash my hands,
if I need to spit, if I need to flick,
but they are things that I automatically am drawn to doing.
When I was a kid,
my fears were very different than they are now.
I would be afraid to go near bugs
because I had heard this story
about someone turning into an ant
and then getting stepped on,
and I thought, well, what if that happens to me?
I think that's the manifestation
of pretty much all of my fears.
We have this incredible capacity to imagine things
that are completely irrational and could never happen,
but at the same time, you never know,
and that's what OCD is, it's that voice going,
"Are you sure this can't happen?
Are you sure you can't turn into a bug?
Are you sure you can't transform into another person,
and so that you'll never see your family again?"
That was a big fear of mine.
I'm always writing things down,
and it used to be a compulsion for me
that I'd have to write little tick marks on my hand
whenever I locked the door,
just to remind myself that, yes, you locked the door
But then I'd get even more over-thinky about it,
but you were lying to yourself and you didn't lock the door.
So, I stopped doing that.
I really was able to work through that with my therapist.
I think the thing that helps me calm down the most
is probably just writing,
just free writing at my desk.
Playing music really helps,
I will play piano or pull out an old song, or something,
and definitely playing video games. [laughs]
Yeah, very cozy games like farming,
and simple life things that are helpful.
[bouncy music]
I live in New York city,
and the city and I have always had
a love-hate relationship.
There are areas that are particularly dirty, or germy,
being in a very densely populated place is not so fun
for the OCD part of me.
When I'm walking down the street,
things like dog poop, dirt, grime,
falling air conditioners, they're all at the top of my head.
If I go past a pigeon or a bunch of pigeon poop,
I have to put the mask on,
because I'm afraid of inhaling
brain-eating mites, for example.
Scents are a really big trigger for me,
I work in Times Square, which is an incredible challenge,
but even in the most densely populated place,
the center of the universe,
I can still find moments of peace,
because I've learned to look for them,
I've had to look for them in order to cope.
This one time I was standing on a subway platform,
I dropped my phone onto the disgusting ground,
and I had this moment
where I really just wanted to throw out my phone entirely,
that's how afraid I was of the contamination.
I live in Washington Heights,
right next to the George Washington Bridge,
but I also like knowing
that I have an easy escape route from the city.
In my experience, OCD manifests in these thoughts of death,
which can really lead to some serious despair,
and being able to get away to nature is incredibly helpful.
But there's things about nature
that I have issues with as well,
deer ticks,
poison ivy was one of my first extremely big fears as a kid.
I was always afraid that it had gotten onto everything,
the little oils that can give you a rash,
and that's sort of when I started learning
how to wash everything,
and getting it into my head
that contamination could be transferred
to everything I touch.
With my OCD, smell actually plays a very big role,
I think oftentimes it's overlooked
how much of the senses are impacted by OCD,
because we tend to associate it with the behaviors,
with things like organization and perfectionism,
but really, it impacts the way that we perceive the world.
It's the smell of trash as I'm walking by them,
it makes me feel like I am inhaling
some sort of contamination.
Aroma therapy really helps,
so if I know I'm gonna be walking
down a particularly smelly alley,
or if I'm heading to Times Square,
I put on a certain scent, like lavender is really calming.
I recently decided to go to grad school
to pursue a master's in neuroscience,
and as someone with OCD,
school has provided its own set of challenges.
It's made me both an underachiever and an overachiever
at the same time.
I will go to do an assignment,
and I will get caught up overthinking
about how I might sound stupid,
or whether or not I'm doing it right.
Eventually, I just turn in whatever I've written.
In my version of OCD, perfectionism is my compulsion.
When I was little, I would erase
and rewrite things several times,
which would take me hours
to complete any simple homework assignment,
sometimes I wouldn't even get it done at all.
One of the things with OCD
is it makes it incredibly hard to trust yourself,
trust your memory, like checking locks,
checking that you've turned off the stove,
trust that your body's gonna do what it's gonna do,
and trust that you know how to do
things that maybe you've done before.
Being back in school, I suddenly I'm surrounded
by people who have been doing neuroscience
for a very long time.
I've worked in theater for the past five years,
so I felt very much less than.
So when I get an email from my professor,
when a test comes back,
I started getting extreme physical reactions,
as if you're being chased by a lion,
only the lion is an email from your professor.
I will literally set a timer on my phone for five minutes
to just sit by myself and breathe.
Usually, by the end of those five minutes,
I am in a place where I'm ready to look at that email,
or I'm ready to look at my grade,
or I'm ready to go back to an assignment.
So I went back to study neuroscience,
specifically so I could learn more about my brain
and my condition.
It's been exciting
to figure out these new theories about OCD,
and relate that back to what I'm learning about the brain,
and what I know about myself and my experience.
It takes what feels like incredibly personal
and isolating experience and makes it tangible.
It makes it easier for me to understand what's going wrong,
and thusly, how I can maybe cope better in the future.
My career has been a work in progress.
I think the biggest way that OCD affects me when I'm working
is my constant need to succeed.
Prior to going back to school,
I was working in the entertainment industry,
primarily teaching theater workshops and training.
Theater, for me, just makes sense,
when I'm teaching or when I'm performing,
I can put on a whole new persona
of someone who is not absolutely terrified of everything.
I'm typically embarrassed
about my compulsions, having to do them in public,
so I often will bottle them down.
I'll also forego basic needs, like eating,
during a seven-hour shift,
because I'm worried my stomach might hurt,
or it'll seem unprofessional.
I've had to work really hard to overcome that,
how to listen to my body, and to trust it,
and to take care of it while I'm working.
When the pandemic hit,
my life was kind of thrown into chaos.
I had a lot of changes
that led me down the path of going back to school.
I discovered TikTok, as so many did,
I began educating people about what OCD is,
trying to destigmatize it,
that it's a mental illness,
and a lot of the stereotypes and misconceptions
that people have are not always correct.
Sharing my experience has been incredible,
and terrifying and beautiful,
the reason that I wanted to go back to school
to study neuroscience.
My dream, ultimately, is to combine
my love of theater and storytelling with neuroscience,
with this passion for education
and learning about the brain.
I started thinking in terms of scripts, now, sometimes,
which is also an interesting coping mechanism for my OCD,
I often, when I'm very overwhelmed, will write out dialogues
between my rational and irrational self
to sort of play out what my fears might look like
in a theatrical setting.
And usually, my rational side wins,
which helps dilute any forecoming panic attack.
I'm still an active performer,
I have a show coming up that I have already lost sleep over,
where my OCD really manifests
mostly in the anticipation anxiety,
where I can just foresee every possible thing going wrong.
It's exciting to have the chance to perform,
especially in a show that's going to be talking
about my personal experiences with OCD.
The thing with OCD is it just takes those fears
and latches onto you like burs,
you can't get rid of that thought, that fear,
that someone isn't going to like you.
You're stuck in this thought loop and you can't escape.
It's definitely about my personal worth in that scenario.
I've always had kind of a difficult relationship
with acting, I love it,
but it's kind of showing off my fears.
And pretending to be someone else has always been,
both my coping mechanism,
but also stems from one of my worst fears
of transforming into someone who is not me,
a fear of losing myself. [soft instrumental rap music]
When you have OCD, there's always gonna be that voice,
that extra critic, that saying, this is terrible,
and then taking it even a step further,
if no one likes this,
you're never gonna make a career in this,
you're going to never get married,
never reproduce, like, die, essentially.
Kind of all fears do lead to death, in a sense.
My parents would always tell me stories
about historical figures that had OCD,
so that I would feel like I should never let it impede
any kind of career dreams that I might have.
OCD definitely plays a big role in how I form relationships.
Because I was diagnosed at such a young age,
my family had to learn pretty early on,
how to both cope with my OCD
and how to create a support system for me.
They're my lifeline,
because a huge part of my OCD is seeking reassurance.
My parents used to do that for me a lot as a kid,
I would say, you know, "I think I have appendicitis,"
and I would need to hear them say,
"You don't have appendicitis"
before I could move on with my day.
And they realized that that was a compulsion,
and that by humoring my OCD, it was actually feeding it.
They started to find new language to talk to me with,
they would instead ask me questions
until I got to a point where I could train myself
to learn that I was safe.
I live with my sister now, which has been amazing,
because she is one of my best friends,
someone that I can talk to when I need support,
but also saying, "Maia, I am not your therapist."
And I'm really glad that they've been able
to set those boundaries with me.
My sister and I see each other every day,
she also has her boyfriend,
I love them both so much,
we like to do everything together,
they're so understanding of me.
We, for the most part,
we'll hang out here and watch TV,
and play video games together and cook.
When we do go out, I prefer going out with them,
it's difficult for me to leave the apartment.
My dear friends who know about my OCD,
they are very accommodating.
It's incredible that my friends try to understand
what I'm going through.
One of the shows I'm working on
is with one of my best friends from college,
who also has OCD.
It was really amazing to meet someone who also had OCD
that had different ways that it affected her life.
Dating has always been incredibly hard for me.
OCD really impacts intimacy. [sober music]
I have a fear of people touching me,
I let it happen, because I enjoy being close to people,
but it comes with its own set of ramifications,
I often will not get close to people that I really like,
because I'm afraid both of getting physically close
and I'm afraid of getting emotionally close.
I'm never the first person to reach out,
I don't put in the effort, socially, a lot of the time,
because it exhausts too much energy,
and I'm afraid of rejection.
On TikTok, I have connected with a lot of people
who are also suffering from OCD.
It's incredible, because I always felt so isolated.
As a kid, I felt like there was
this special like superpower that I had, almost,
my ability to see contamination,
my weird brain training me
against the forces of evil or whatever.
But learning that other people also feel that way
made me realize that I don't have to go at it alone.
It almost dilutes the power of my OCD.
It's important to talk about mental health,
because the more conversations I have about my OCD,
the less power I feel like my OCD has over me.
I hope that people watching this video are inspired
to learn more about OCD.
For those of you that do have OCD,
I hope that someday you are able
to share your story as well,
and that this gives you the confidence
to learn more about your own brain,
and to recognize that you're absolutely not alone.
[inspiring music]