The latest show I’ve been binge-watching is Girls, a show that follows the experiences of a group of four girls in their early 20s. Lena Dunham plays the primary character, Hannah, someone who quite often gets on my nerves, but still remains endearing and relatable.
The latest episode I watched was at a time where Hannah was at an ultimate low, she had just broken up with her ex boyfriend and awkwardly ran into him, she felt as if her friends were abandoning her and work was becoming too much. Hannah started feeling lonely and unhinged. This is when she starts noticing her OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) tendencies flaring up. She’s a hypochondriac and starts googling things like ‘at what age does your body start melting down?’ but her biggest ‘tick’ is counting, more specifically, counting in eights. She accidentally shoulders someone in a restaurant but feels compelled to bump into them seven more times. She looks over each shoulder eight times to make sure noone is behind her. We later find out that she’s had OCD since she was little.
Having OCD (albeit mildly) I related to Hannah and this episode hugely and love how awkwardly intrusive but real Lena Dunham expresses herself and her issues through her show. She has OCD in real life and wanted a way to express it on her show without the ‘Hollywood lense’ taking away meaning. My ticks are similar, but different to Hannah. Numbers play a huge role in my life – I’ve always felt that there were ‘comfortable’ and ‘safe’ numbers compared to ‘unsafe’ or ‘dangerous’ numbers. Yes I know, this makes no sense, but hindsight is a bitch. Safety is another tick of mine – always making sure hair irons are off, car doors are locked and ovens are off. But checking once isn’t enough, I have to check it multiple times before I believe it is off. I also have a weird ‘thing’ about symmetry, making sure things are done and placed in order, in even’s. Whether it’s walking in even numbers, anally organizing my belongings or keeping things in balance, I could go on about the crazy train but not for now.
For those who don’t know about or have OCD this may seem completely obscure to you, I may seem batshit crazy, and although I feel it, I think it’s more common than people would like to admit. I think that OCD and other mental illnesses have always had a negative stigma attached to them – people frown upon those who have mental illnesses, thinking that they’re lesser people or that they can’t cope with emotional or stressful situations. People like Lena Dunham and shows like Girls gives something like OCD and mental illnesses a much needed platform.
We see Hannah going through different stages, beginning with denial when her old symptoms start popping up. She talks herself into thinking it’s normal and that it’s no big deal. She also attempts to hide her symptoms from her family and friends but of course it gets worse and her parents eventually taken her to see a psychologist who puts her back on medication. In the next episode we see she’s doing much better and talks to her psychologist about how she’s doing where she has a revelation,
“My own limitation is my own mind. Like, I hold the keys to the prison that is my mind”.
I liked this quote so much that I paused the show and had to immediately write it down. It works for every aspect of someone’s life, not just someone who has OCD. So often we get caught up in our own minds and let our minds play tricks on us. We think these tricky thoughts so much that we start believing they are truths. We get caught up in our thoughts that sometimes we can’t separate fiction from reality. These lines start to blur. But as Lena or ‘Hannah’ says, our own limitation is in our own mind and we hold the keys to our minds. It’s up to us to figure out truth from lies our brain tells us, it’s up to us how we see the world and what we take from it. We can either get sucked up by negative thoughts or compulsive behaviour, or we can decide not to; decide to be positive and take everything we want from life. I realise that it’s much easier said than done and it’s something I try (not always succeeding) to do. Ok this post has turned a bit holistic-y but the quote really struck a chord for me xx