The Other Side of the Couch

     I studied Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder along with other Anxiety Disorders in college as a psychology major, and I even did a whole lot of research on OCD before and after my diagnosis. I read case study after case study on Primarily Obsessional Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, too because there isn't an extensive amount of research on that subtype of OCD as of early 2017. I had all this knowledge in my brain about OCD, Anxiety, along with how they worked and how to treat them. I had even grown up seeing mental health conditions first hand because I had one parent with an anxiety disorder and one parent with Bipolar Disorder.
     In other words, I thought I knew enough about Anxiety Disorders and mental health in general to understand them. I thought I had enough information so that I could deal with mental health, so that I would know if I ever started to experience a problem and what to do about it. I thought I knew enough and had studied enough so that I would recognize Anxiety in whatever form I encountered it and I would be able to show it who was the boss of my mind without the aid of medications or a therapist. I thought I would be the one in the therapist's chair if I ever dealt with the mental health field, helping someone on the couch. I thought I knew enough about Anxiety and mental health and treatment so that I would be safe, so that I would never be on the client/patient side of the relationship.
     I got served up a heaping helping of truth when I started experiencing severe Pure OCD and Panic Disorder. Living with my mental health condition is nothing (NOTHING!) like what I thought I knew it was during all my studying. My home life, my education, my research, none of that prepared me for dealing with my diagnosis and finding myself on the other side of the couch than I intended. I was just as lost, terrified, and confused as if I had no educational background in psychology, and it was a hard realization for me when knowledge didn't save me from getting so lost in OCD and Panic Disorder. (I often still say to my therapist, "I thought I'd be on the other side of the couch where you are in this scenario." To which she replies, "What do you think is wrong with your side of the couch?")
     My point is that no matter what you know about mental health conditions, what you've seen in friends and family, it's nothing like when you find yourself on the client/patient side of the couch. Objectively, I know the symptoms of Anxiety Disorders and other mental health conditions, and I can recognize them when other people exhibit those symptoms. When I'm anxious and in the OCD spiral, every thought that I recognize in someone else as an OCD symptom is not an OCD symptom to me. Every breath that gets stuck in my lungs, every intrusive thought that shoots around my mind like a pinball feels so real and so true and so terrifying that I can't see past the fear and anxiety to recognize that it's all a symptom of my mental health condition. I can't be my own therapist and my own client at the same time.
     I read all the time that this is common thinking among people that have never had to deal with a mental health condition. Those people tend to not understand, and they think that people with mental health conditions can recognize their own symptoms because they can objectively recognize them. Then they think the other person could talk their way down from a panic or out of a spiral, because they believe they would be able to do that if they were in their shoes (because mental health conditions are often irrational and people are good at spotting irrational thinking in other people and sometimes in themselves). While we, the people with the mental health conditions, feel like they just don't understand because they've never been there.
     Prior to dealing first-hand with my own mental health condition, I thought the same way. I didn't understand how a person with OCD or some other Anxiety Disorder couldn't recognize their own irrational thinking and then take steps to counter that anxiety. It seemed like a simple thing to do, and I didn't understand why it would take 2 years to treat OCD once someone recognized the problem.
     Then I found myself on the other side of the couch, going to sessions, crying my eyes out because even though I recognized that my fear of, say, losing control while I was alone and putting my hand on a red-hot stovetop burner on purpose to harm myself, was irrational, I couldn't be sure that it wasn't something I would actually do. I know that was irrational, but I also didn't REALLY know that while it was happening. I couldn't even see that it was just my OCD cranked up to full volume, even though if I could have been objective, I would have realized that.
     I quickly understood that I really didn't have any idea about mental health conditions, even though I thought I knew so much. I understood then that personally dealing with a brain that is unwell is not the same as objectively seeing an unwell brain and learning about it. I realized that learning all about something didn't necessarily prepare me to experience it.
     I'll end with this: Finding yourself or someone you care about on  the client/patient side of the couch is never an easy journey. Everything you think you might have known about mental health conditions and/or treatments ends up being only the tip of a very large, very jagged iceberg. You may be so sure that you understand it all before you hit the client side of the couch, but I can assure you that, unless you are a trained mental health professional with counseling experience, you only have a vague idea. It's a great idea and it's helpful to learn all you can about any mental health condition, but also keep in mind that objectively knowing information about a condition is NEVER the same as experiencing the condition.