How OCD made me think I hated thrifting

and the lessons I learned in treatment about the real me.

THIS ONE IS A VULNERABLE ONE, FOLKS.

Quick note/disclaimer: I am NOT a therapist. This post is about my own experience, and is not therapeutic in nature at all. If you are struggling with your mental health, please reach out to a professional!

I feel like it’s really important for me to go a bit deeper than talking about style/clothes/thrifting on here by acknowledging how big of a deal it is for me to actually get here - to a place where I can walk into a thrift store like it’s nothing and have the best time ever.

So let’s talk about my mental health journey and how it relates to thrifting.

I was diagnosed with OCD when I was 21 (a decade ago…time flies). Not to take a really trip down memory lane, but I had been really sick that year with an infectious disease (that’s a story for another day) and was seeing a psychiatrist to help me through that difficult time. It was the first time I’d ever done a formal DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health Disorders) assessment and I answered the questions honestly, thinking I’d probably get diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) because other therapists had alluded to that. I was pretty surprised when my therapist confidently diagnosed me with OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), and like many university students probably are, I was like “okay, you’re probably just wrong, moving along”. I wasn’t ready to accept my diagnosis or the work it would take to overcome it.

And then I….”forgot” about it for about six years, all the while living with excruciating obsessions and compulsive behaviours. These ranged in topic and theme (OCD comes in many forms, and I am lucky enough to have quite a few of them). One of those behaviours was avoiding thrift stores because my OCD made me feel like they were contaminated (both physically and emotionally). I would be terrified at the idea of even entering one because I felt like they were too dirty for me to handle, and that all the clothes had come from deceased individuals - which made me feel like perhaps if I wore their old clothes, that would mean I was closer to dying.

Fears within OCD aren’t always logical - OCD thoughts sometimes have some element of magical thinking associated with them, which doesn’t always make sense to the people around the sufferer. And to make it harder, the sufferer often can’t recognize their thoughts as being caused by the disorder. They feel so real. It takes a lot of work to resist the compulsions that OCD makes you think you have to do. Resisting compulsions is the way out because you train your brain that you can handle the intrusive thoughts and feelings it throws out. I wasn’t able to do that yet, at that point.

I didn’t seek out real treatment until I was in the worst distress I’d ever been in mentally, a handful of years later. I had gotten lucky. By then, I had seen some Instagram posts (the best use of social media I’ve ever seen to date) by some amazing OCD Advocates (who I will link at the end of this post) who changed my life. In their profiles, I saw my own experience in glaring reality which sent me crash landing back to Earth and straight into the office of a highly qualified OCD specialist who provided me the gold standard treatment for the disorder, Exposure and Response Prevention Therapy (ERP). It saved my life.

Suddenly, the world seemed bigger. OCD can make your universe so small because it takes so many things away from you and you might not even realize that until you’re in recovery. It’s been four years since I’ve been considered recovered - if I was assessed now, I wouldn’t qualify for the diagnosis anymore because the severity of my symptoms don’t fit the criteria.

Don’t get me wrong - I’ll always have OCD. But what I don’t let it do is control my life anymore. The real beauty of recovery is that I get to learn who I am, without living my life driven by fear. It means I can go where I want to, follow my values more closely (like shopping secondhand, almost always!), and explore the world around me without restricting myself. I’m able to take risks (reasonable risks, of course), if it means I get to be the most myself I can be.

All this to say, I’m so incredibly grateful to be able to focus on a side hustle largely driven by secondhand and thrifted clothing. I never would have been able to do this prior to my OCD treatment, and it’s brought me so much joy.

Because it’s possible there are other people out there struggling with OCD, or know someone who is, I want to share some resources here that have helped me along my journey:

International OCD Foundation

Made of Millions

Jenna Overbaugh

Sending you all love!

Values first, always,

Andie