Triggered

     I've experienced a few triggering events over the end of last week and the beginning of this week. I've experienced triggering things before, but a couple of these events were different because the events that stand out were intentional. I've never had to deal with someone, or in this case, a couple of people intentionally triggering the intrusive thoughts then the anxiety and guilt that accompanies those thoughts.
     In the first case I was talking about some of the things I had been working through in therapy. Jokes were made about it, and the person laughed. In the second case, I was teased about the anxiety I felt about ordering food over the phone, and then encouraged to give in to my OCD and call to check that they had taken my order down correctly. The result of both of these incidents was that I was lost in an OCD spiral of rumination, anxiety, guilt, and tears for four days. (The triggering events occurred within 48 hours, and they sort of built on each other.)
     For both of these triggering events I responded the same way. I asked the person to stop. I told them they were messing with my anxiety. Neither of them stopped whatever they were doing that was triggering for me. Both of the people that triggered me just sort of laughed it off and then continued the jokes and teasing.
      I sometimes read posts on Tumblr tagged under mental health, specifically those tagged under anxiety and OCD. These posts cover everything from daily struggles, symptoms, poetry, rants, educational topics like comorbid conditions, and then quite a few posts also talked about friends and other people triggering the poster's anxiety and intrusive thoughts and compulsive behavior. I always wondered how someone's friends could intentionally trigger another friend's horrible intrusive thoughts and compulsive behavior. 
     This pointed to a problem that I hadn't been very aware of up to this point. A lot of people still don't take mental health conditions seriously. Neither person took me seriously when I told them they were messing with my anxiety until the tears started to flow. I shouldn't have had to cry and get so anxious that I felt a panic attack looming for someone to believe that I was having trouble as a result of a diagnosed condition.
     I've seen things popping up on my Facebook occasionally mentioning invisible illnesses and the idea that other people that don't suffer from them really don't take those types of conditions as seriously as other illnesses, and I've seen things like this on Pinterest mental health advocacy boards. I just never had any experience with this sort of thing.
      I'll end with this: Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (and any other mental health condition) might not be an illness that you can see written all over someone's body or face, but that doesn't mean they aren't serious conditions. It isn't funny to treat these conditions like silly quirks or funny personality characteristics that you can make jokes out of. If you know someone dealing with a mental health condition the best thing you can do is believe them and take their condition seriously.