FIVE OCD STORIES AND FOUR ADVOCATES WHO ARE CHANGING MEDIA REPRESENTATION SURROUNDING THE DISORDER

ans of “Friends” might recognize this deep cut. In season 4, episode 13 (The One With Phoebe’s Uterus), one of Ross’s coworkers introduces himself by saying, “I have to turn a light switch on and off 17 times before I leave the room or else my family will die.” This was used as a punch line. A punchline, when Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) can really manifest this way.

OCD has been trivilized and made fun of in popular media for years. What many people don’t understand is that OCD is a debilitating disorder that can severely inhibit a person’s life.

The International OCD Foundation defines it as a mental health disorder that occurs when a person gets caught in a cycle of obsessions and compulsions. Obsessions are unwanted intrusive thoughts and compulsions are behaviors the person engages in to try to relieve the anxiety of the obsessions. In order to get actually diagnosed with OCD, those obsessions and compulsions have to take up at least one hour of the day, cause intense distress, and keep a person from doing activities they value.

I was diagnosed with OCD in second grade. My journey started in kindergarten after my teacher noticed some abnormal behaviors. After many visits to the doctor, brain scans, and a trip to a therapist, I still wasn’t diagnosed. In fact, the counselor thought I was doing it all to get attention. She said I had behavioral problems and was manipulative.

I remember my symptoms being really bad throughout elementary school. There are home videos of me breathing into hats and scarves because I was afraid to breathe on others. I thought that if I breathed on them, they’d get sick and die. I’d come home every day from school and tell my parents everything that worried me.

I was afraid all the time. Afraid that I’d accidentally start a fire if I rubbed pencils together. Afraid to touch my pet guinea pig for fear of making him sick. Afraid that negative thoughts towards someone would hurt them. Afraid to swallow while looking at someone who was sick because that would make me or someone I loved sick. If I did swallow while looking at someone who was sick, I’d have to cancel it out by swallowing while looking at someone who wasn’t. I was afraid of phone calls, damaged library books, and praying the wrong way in church.

Eventually this all became too much and I told my mom that I didn’t want to be here anymore. Luckily, my parents were able to take me to a specialist in second grade. Finally, I was diagnosed. In therapy, I learned how to understand the disorder, how to cope with it, and how to challenge it. I got better after a year of working with my therapist.

I continue to struggle with OCD to this day, but unlike I did when I was a child. My OCD manifests itself almost completely mentally. I have a lot of intrusive thoughts. Everytime I hit a bump when I’m driving, a part of my brain tells me I hit someone.

Sometimes that thought is so strong, I have to look into my review mirror to check.

After some social interactions, I feel guilty. Not because I did anything wrong, but because I feared I had too much fun or said too many things. I analyze, obsess, and feel yucky.

I felt very isolated by my OCD. It was never something talked about, except as a joke or to describe someone who liked to keep their pencils straight on their desk. Through social media and the recent mental health movement, OCD is finally starting to get some media representation.

These OCD advocates are doing their part to make a difference through mediums ranging from podcasts to music, social media to merch campaigns.

A Musician

Texas native Bethany Becker is currently working on a song about OCD for people affected by the disorder. “Victorious” acts as an inspiration and comfort for people fighting through the disorder. She recently showcased the song at the October OCD Walk in Austin, Texas, after telling her story to a crowd. That was the first time she spoke publicly about her diagnosis.

Her journey with OCD started when she was six years old.

“I remember standing there in my little church dress, crying in the bathroom because my mom touched toilet paper, then touched something else and that something else touched me… And then all of a sudden, I was contaminated. I did not want to go to church. I had to take a bath. I was freaking out because I had to take a bath,” Becker says.

This is her first memory of OCD. She began showing symptoms at six but wasn’t officially diagnosed until she was 23. Her symptoms fluctuated throughout her life.

A later diagnosis is not uncommon. According to the International OCD Foundation, it typically takes an average of 14 to 17 years for a person to get a diagnosis. This is because some people try to hide their symptoms, there has historically been low public awareness of OCD, and difficulty finding a therapist to treat OCD effectively.

Becker started seeking a diagnosis after reading an OCD advocate’s post on social media. She noticed she had many of the hallmark symptoms. It took Becker many different therapists and specialists before she received her official diagnosis. But when she finally did, she knew she had to do something.

“Ever since I finally got my diagnosis and finally got the help I needed, I really wanted to do something,” Becker says. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do but I think that God’s given me a gift with music and songwriting.”

Like Becker, Elise Petronzio started getting symptoms of OCD as a child.

“When I was younger, it was a lot of rituals. But then as I got older the more my brain was able to think abstractly, the more abstract OCD became. So then I started having a lot of intrusive thoughts,” Petronzio says.

After her diagnosis, Petronzio realized she wanted to focus on advocating for OCD because she would have benefited from knowing others who had it. In March of 2020, Petronzio began making TikToks about OCD. Shortly after that, she started an online shop selling merchandise advocating for OCD awareness.

“The main reason was just to help empower people in their recoveries from OCD,” Petronzio says. “But as a byproduct of that, it becomes a shop that validates people with OCD and also educates about what OCD is actually like.”

In her store, you can find a variety of OCD related merchandise ranging from t-shirts to stickers, and even a pink elephant stuffed animal.

“If someone says, you can think about anything except a pink elephant, then a pink elephant is going to be the first thing that you’re thinking about,” Petronzio says. “A lot of times with OCD, people try not to think about what they’re obsessing about. And they think about it more, because they’re fighting it.”

A TikTok Creator

Jenna Clute, a TikTok video creator, uses her platform to advocate for OCD awareness and education. Clute became friends with Petronzio over TikTok since they were both creating educational videos.

“She’s one of the first people I actually met,” Clute says. “And she did actually help. I own a lot of her OCD merch. And she also introduced me to the NOCD app, which has a lot of therapy resources.”

Diagnosed at 17, Clute has dealt with symptoms for most of her life. It started with an extreme fear of germs and excessive handwashing. Then it shifted into a fear that something bad would happen to her family if she didn’t do things a certain way. As she got older, she experienced Sexual Orientation OCD — constantly questioning her sexuality — and Pedophilia OCD — the fear of having harmful or sexual thoughts about children.

It can feel almost impossible to share these kinds of taboo OCD thoughts and behaviors with someone, even a therapist. It’s not uncommon to experience many OCD variations and themes that change throughout one’s life.

“Over time, each theme transitioned,” Clute says. “And once some got better, others would get worse, and it fluctuates.”

A Therapist and Podcaster

OCD can sound like… What if I lose control? What if I’m in denial about my sexuality? What if I’m not 100 percent lucid and do something bad?

Like many others, Kelley Franke started getting OCD symptoms when she was young, but wasn’t diagnosed until she was 30 years old.

Her OCD started with severe separation anxiety and body-focused repetitive behaviors like picking her nails. As she got older, it developed into more existential OCD. After the traumatic loss of her boyfriend, she developed harmful obsessions and was convinced that she was the cause of his death, and a dangerous person.

“It’s interesting, when you’re in it, you think, okay, something’s kind of off, like this isn’t right. But you also at the same time feel like it’s so real. And you believe it so much,” Franke says.

Today she is in recovery mode. She still has intrusive thoughts and compulsions but is better at being able to cope with them.

Franke is currently active as an OCD and mental health advocate. Not only is she a licensed family and marriage therapist, but she also has a successful OCD Instagram page with nearly 20,000 followers.

“Initially, my social media started as an exposure [therapy] for myself,” Franke says.

She also struggled with perfectionism — spending hours creating just one post. Her OCD therapist addressed both of these struggles by having Franke post information about OCD regularly. While doing this exercise, Franke started to get a positive reaction from her audience.

“People were having such a great response to it,” Franke says. “I think of it as like my philanthropy work… this is free information that I spend a lot of time on giving back. And I feel good, because I wish I had had that information so many years ago. It would have really changed the game.”

During the pandemic, Franke began hosting a podcast with her friend. They both enjoyed talking about OCD and the research surrounding it. What started as just a fun thing to do during lockdown transformed into an important platform.

AN INSIDE LOOK INTO THE AMERICAN FOOD SYSTEM THAT LEAVES MANY WITHOUT FOOD ON THE TABLE.

ubrey Alvarez doesn’t work a normal nine to five. Some days she’s glued to Zoom, talking about food insecurity with partners across Central Iowa. Others, she’s driving a bright green truck, also referred to as Barry, rescuing food from Trader Joe’s and other local convenience stores in the Des Moines area.

“This job, originally when I took it, the title was local food coordinator,” she says. “I really didn’t know what that meant.”

She does now. It means Alvarez is a lifeline, though she’s no longer a local food coordinator. She’s the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Eat Greater Des Moines, a nonprofit that focuses on increasing access to quality food. In 2021 alone, Alvarez was a part of rescuing over 2,125,228 pounds of food and products. Where does this food go? The answer is simple: anyone who needs it.

The term food insecurity isn’t as complicated as it sounds. It is being without reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food. And it’s more common than you think.

Alvarez has been working with partners to combat food insecurity since 2013. She has celebrated a lot of wins, but has also seen the problem remain. Over 2 million pounds of food rescued is a big number. You’d think this would solve the hunger crisis. But, it hasn’t. In fact, hunger has not only remained but continues to grow.

The Problem

Here’s the truth: our food system is not designed to benefit everyone. “A lot of people who are food insecure—it has nothing to do with any short sort of character flaw,” Alvarez says. “It’s the ecosystem, the broken food system.”

She’s not wrong. In 2019, the food insecurity rate was the lowest it had been in over 20 years. But then a pandemic hit. The percentage of individuals who lived in a food insecure household spiked from 11 percent to 14 percent. That’s 45 million people.

And that number makes sense. Restaurants closed. Farmers weren’t needed. Milk was dumped. Crops went unpicked. Prices spiked. Food banks temporarily closed. And people were left hungry. The cracks in the American food system were exposed because of Covid. Food that would have normally been bound for restaurants couldn’t be quickly repacked and rerouted to grocery stories or food pantries. A lot of it went to waste.

Eventually, food assistance programs arose. Stimulant checks were mailed out. Supply food chains sort out— mostly. And the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits increased, helping lowincome people buy the food they needed. There were also child tax credit payments that went directly to lower-income families, allowing them to cover all their expenses. For the first time in a long time, people were talking about making a change in food insecurity. And fewer people were hungry.

Fast forward two years and things have changed for the worse. Those extra SNAP benefits are gone. So are the child tax credits payments. here is less focus on filling up food pantries. And thanks to record inflation, prices everywhere are high. An average SNAP benefit is around $150 a month. The price of avocados has risen 40 percent in the past year. Eggs are now $3 a dozen. Meat has shot up. Milk has too. A hundred and fifty bucks can run out in seconds.

Now, the lines to food banks have multiplied. Food pantries are often overtaxed. And there are still a lot of hurdles to getting food. . In food deserts, pantries are often inaccessible to populations. For houseless folks, they might not have the proper documentation that food pantries require to receive food. And here are limits to the amount of food people can get and how often that food can be accessed.

We can all agree that everyone deserves food. But unfortunately, there are rules in food banks and pantries that constitute who deserves food over others.

Other Solutions

That is why other solutions are needed. Melissa Spiesman, Chief Operating Officer at the nonprofit Food Rescue US, dedicates her time to ensuring there are options for hungry people.

The model is simple. They use a web-based app that allows volunteers to rescue fresh perishables and deliver them to organizations that serve hungry people. They aim to rescue perishables, including produce, dairy products, meat, and premade meals, to not only feed people but fuel those people as well.

“With Food Rescue US, would-be-wasted food can be used to fight hunger rather than ending up in landfills and contributing to climate change,” Spiesman says.

A common misconception about rescued food is that it is considered used or old. However, food waste includes myriad things.

“Food waste includes excess food at grocery stores, imperfect produce at farms, unused food at large-scale events, and premade meals with approaching sell-by dates,” Spiesman says.

Unfortunately, that excess food that ends up in landfills and decomposes releases carbon dioxide and methane, both of which contribute to climate change. According to Project Drawdown, the food we waste is responsible for roughly 6% of global emissions. Put another way, 130 billion meals and nearly 40 percent of all food in America is wasted. 130 billion.

It’s because of companies like Food Rescue US that this number is decreasing – slowly to say the least. Other organizations like Eat Greater Des Moines and Sweet Tooth Community Fridge have thought of innovative solutions to minimizing food waste in their communities.

Monika Owscarski, the founder of Sweet Tooth Farm and Sweet Tooth Community Fridge, has had a front-row seat in watching her community come together to help people access food.

“Since starting the first community fridge in Iowa (as far as we can tell), I have had a large perspective shift,” Owscarski says. “You don’t have to fit into any criteria to use community fridges. They are for us all. You just need to be hungry.”

And that is exactly the motto that Sweet Tooth Community Fridge lives by. Food is available 24/7, 365 days a year. For anyone and everyone. There’s no surveillance that monitors how much people take.

Owscarski bases her work on the belief that there shouldn’t be policing of people who are hungry. Sweet Tooth Community Fridge works with Eat Greater Des Moines on filling the fridge. Although they have fresh groceries filling the fridge many times throughout the week, the fridge can be empty within ten minutes of food being delivered.

“I think that just accentuates how much people are struggling. How much need there is, Owscarski says. “People just need resources. There is no fluffy language to it. We don’t need another analysis. We don’t need another focus group. People just need money and food. It’s not rocket science.”

Making An Impact

There are a lot of stigmas surrounding those who are food insecure. People are lazy, people don’t know how to budget, and people are making bad choices. There is so much shame surrounding the problem. Alvarez felt that shame herself.

Aubrey Alvarez was 21 when she bought her first house. Two months later, she was laid off. She resorted to eating ramen noodles – or simply didn’t eat.

“I didn’t ask for help,” Alvarez says. “I thought food pantries were for those who were worse off than me. As it was, I was trying to make 20 dollars last for a week. If I was able to get some groceries or food, it would have been so helpful. There was a lot of internalized shame that came with being food insecure.”

Soon after, Alvarez realized that it wasn’t a character flaw that resulted in people being food insecure. She realized that the food system is messed up. That shift opened her eyes to the impact that she could make on her community, and further introduced the founding of Eat Greater Des Moines.

Alvarez urges people to challenge their own biases on why people are food insecure. Checking yourself can be an important step in being a part of the solution.

“If you didn’t have anything right now and you needed to get help with food today, where would you go? See what’s available in your community. There is an assumption that anytime you need help, you can get it. But that’s not true.”

Are there gaps? Are there things that could be better? Ask your grocer what happens with the extra food. Really think about where the gaps are in your own community and how you can make a difference. After all, one person making a difference is better than nobody caring at all.