The One Thing I Can’t Unpack — My OCD
While the internet is full of travel bloggers, it’s rare to come across another site discussing both mental wellness and travel. So when I discovered Meggie Tran of Mindful Meggie I was excited to discover we had similar passions. Meggie is a Vietnamese American traveler and mental health blogger. She shares funny and inspiring travel stories as well as resources to help those with mental illnesses travel. Today I am excited to have her share about her experience with OCD while traveling.
One of the things I love about Mindful Meggie is that she incorporates her playful spirit into the images on her blog by including animated captions. I asked Meggie to include some of them in today’s guest post and hope you enjoy them as much as me.
Travel provides no escape from my chronic obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). I had to learn this the hard way.
As a teenager, I had unwanted, repetitive thoughts that pressured me in many areas of my life. For example, if I was in the kitchen, my brain told me, “Hey, Meggie, you are standing near the kitchen stove. What if you accidentally flipped it on and left it there? You could be responsible for burning down your house!” Although I never switched it on, my brain wanted me to worry about it. So, I would walk over to the stove and scan with my eyes repeatedly, back and forth, across all the switches, ensuring they were off. No matter how many times I checked, my OCD was never convinced that they were off. I only walked away from the stove out of exhaustion and pounding anxiety.
In a state of denial, I dismissed these worrisome, cyclical thoughts as nothing more than weird teenage phases; so my mental issues went undiagnosed for several years. Nobody knew about my mental suffering because I hid my strange, ritual behaviors and never told anyone.
And whenever I traveled, the OCD thoughts would follow and continue to cause me anxiety about exaggerated and illogical fears.
During a father-daughter road trip in British Columbia and Alberta, the 18-year-old me became convinced that I needed to seek professional help. My thoughts started telling me, “Meggie, what if you wrote bad words on the interior roof of your rental car? When you return the rental car, the staff will notice them and alert the authorities. You wouldn’t want to be arrested abroad and have your records ruined for life! So, you’d better start looking up and checking the roof, ensuring that it’s free of bad words.” Even though I would never do something like this, my OCD wanted me to be absolutely certain of it! While my dad drove the car, I was in the passenger seat, leaning back and glancing up. The more time I spent doing this, the more anxious and unsure I felt. My logical brain knew that the roof didn’t have any bad words scribbled on it, but my OCD overrode it by sending waves of anxiety and fear.
My strange thoughts and overwhelming anxiety distracted me from Western Canada’s towering mountain ranges and dense forests during the scenic drive. I was upset my brain could do that to me in one of the most magnificent places on earth.
To top it off, a new friend I made in Canada noticed my ritual behaviors. At a restaurant, after I paid for our meal, I was placing my wallet in my backpack when my OCD said to me, “You’d better make sure it’s in there. You may have accidentally dropped it and left it behind in the restaurant. You’d lose all your cash!” I only zipped up my backpack after staring at the wallet inside it for a few seconds. My friend was confused, saying to me, “Um… you okay…?”
That moment made me realize that there was no point in hiding my mental struggles any longer. If someone noticed my strange behaviors, then my immense efforts to hide were for nothing. After I came home, I sought a psychiatrist who diagnosed me with the most severe level of OCD. Soon I started attending an OCD support group where I could talk about my struggles and empathize with others who had the same mental illness. Also, I visited a therapist who taught me therapeutic techniques that could help me cope with my OCD.
After about a month of visits with my therapist, I had lots of practice coping with OCD under my belt. When an OCD thought popped up, I learned to recognize it as OCD, and then move on with real life instead of taking the thought seriously and performing time-wasting rituals. Following therapy, I could travel more freely and maximize my enjoyment since I finally knew how to take care of my imperfect mental health.
One of the first trips following my therapy was at Lake Pleasant, Arizona, for my community college’s weekend retreat. All students, American and international, worked together on leadership-learning activities related to cultural competency. I was thrilled to witness the rewards of my hard work dealing with my OCD. Because it couldn’t bully me around anymore, I could invest my time and attention establishing dear friendships, participating in the projects at hand, and admiring the expanse of water in the middle of the desert.
Although I’ve learned to care for my mental health, all of my mental health problems have not just gone away. There is no cure, no quick fix, for chronic mental health problems, like my OCD. I have to continue investing time, energy, practice, and patience to deal with my imperfect mental health while making the most of my life — and my travels.
While it can be difficult and tiring carrying mental baggage everywhere I go, it is rewarding to see that I haven’t let my OCD and other mental health issues stop me from traveling.
I have to accept that it will be with me for life, wherever I go — travel is no mental health cure. I can never unpack my OCD and leave it at home, but I have the freedom to pack along my therapeutic techniques and my unshakeable travel spirit.
If you’d like to learn more about how to travel with OCD, check out Meggie’s Ultimate Guide To Traveling with OCD.
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