With People Like Me, You’re Preoccupied With That Thought For A Month / Gabe, Artist

I’ve always had anxiety, I think, growing up. A tremendous amount of anxiety. But about 10 years ago, 11 years ago, it manifested itself in this very strange way, where it would repeat. I started having repetitive thoughts that wouldn’t go away and certain words or phrases would just repeat in my head over and over again, like people’s names, disturbing things, just very strange obsessions would happen, but they were just… Or mundane things, just random things would enter my mind and they wouldn’t leave and so for about a year this happened, where it was every day, the same word every day or a phrase or an image would pop into my mind and it would just repeat itself. It was something that was nagging you over and over again. And I didn’t know what it was, and I was freaked out about it and went to a therapist and they did a bunch of cognitive tests on me and stuff like that.

And they diagnosed it as a form of OCD, but a thought-based OCD. So sometimes you hear about OCD as a thing, people turn lights on and off, or they’re worried about things in this repetitive way, where they cycle things. And so that’s what it was for me. But it wasn’t like a light switch. It was a word that would get caught in my head. So imagine saying the word, “Orange,” to yourself every minute of every day, and it’s just getting cycled over and over and over again, and you don’t know why. And like you’re reading a book and every five seconds it’s like, “Orange, orange, orange, orange.” And it just keeps going. So it’s very strange. And I did some research on it and apparently, it is a thing that a lot of people have, is this kind of cyclical, they call it circular thought OCD.

And so that’s been something that I’ve been dealing with, but it’s totally a brain chemistry issue more than anything else. And it’s an imbalance of serotonin and all sorts of stuff that then causes your brain to go into this hyperloop area that just repeats itself over and over again. The first couple of years that it was happening, it was difficult to function, but nobody knows this is going on. You’ve known me this whole time and nobody knows. It also manifests itself sometimes in physical things but I’m very good at hiding that and I remember once someone at work was like, “What are you doing? What is that you’re doing with your hand?” And I was like, “Oh, nothing.” So there are other things that come out, but I’m very good at hiding it.

And then I just did a bunch of therapy and eventually had medication that helps out with it. But that seems to help it a lot. But the way I can describe it is, imagine you’re waiting for the subway or something and you have a thought, I could fall into this train right now, or I could jump in front of this train right now, or something like that. And you might be like, “That’s a crazy thought.” And it goes away and you don’t think about it for the rest of the day. With people like me that have this thing, you’re preoccupied with that thought for a month. Then every minute of that month was like, “Do I want to jump in front of the train? Do I want to? What would happen if I fell in front of the train?” And it’s just looping that thought. So it’s like something in my brain can’t let go of these thoughts that we all have. We all have a river of thoughts that are coming through our minds all the time, but mine will grasp onto something silly or something not silly, and it will just loop it over and over again like an audio recording that’s just being looped.

When I teach, it doesn’t happen either, which is interesting. I think if I’m in super high-stress situations or somewhat high stress, where I have to be on display or perform something, it can’t happen while I do that, which is really good. But that’s why I tend to do things where I don’t have a lot of down time. The worst time for me is when I’m on an airplane because I don’t have anything else to do and I’m stuck in a seat and like at a concert or something, then it’s just constantly going.