Urizen

Obsessive-compulsive disorder is—thanks to television and TikTok—widely misunderstood. It isn’t about being a neat freak, or forcing others to do things exactly as you’d wish. OCD hinges on the devastating, unanswerable but, to a sufferer, perennially available and hopelessly engrossing, question “What if?” Psychologist Jonathan Grayson explains:

The core of OCD is trying to get rid of uncertainty in our lives in an attempt to be 100 percent certain. Everyone, sufferer and non-sufferer alike, knows what certainty feels like. There are numerous aspects of our lives for which we take this feeling for granted: My car is in the driveway; I am sitting on a sofa at this moment, reading a book; the sun will rise tomorrow. However, while all of us feel certain about many things, the truth is that the absolute certainty we feel is an illusion. An event may be probable or improbable, but neither is an absolute. The inability to feel or be certain is reasonable.