"Well," I said, pausing to take a sip of my beer. "I guess I'd have to say I'm part Vulcan."
This one-liner instantly cracked up the charming guy sitting across from me. I was waiting on some friends at a bar and noticed his Kirk vs. Picard shirt. I've been working on Star Trek: The Next Generation for months now and instantly struck up a conversation with the guy. We were chatting about how we would spend our time on the holodecks and the flaws of TNG storytelling. He admitted that he felt a strange affinity for Captain Kirk, mainly because of his unbridled passions. I was a little skeptical and said that I felt I had the most in common with Vulcans. I think he thought I was joking, but his girlfriend arrived and my friends waved me down from the doorway and we part ways before I have a chance to explain.
The truth is the deeper I get into Star Trek the more I feel I have in common with Doctor Spock and Ambassador Sarek than I do with Kirk or Picard. When expressing emotion towards people I care about, I tend to do it in very specific ways. I need things to be perfect. I dislike when people try to manipulate me emotionally. People with unbridled passions make me wildly uncomfortable.
Yet, more than anything, I love and am obsessed by the logical functions of the human brain. I'm deeply proud of my ability to think through problems rationally. As a student, I adored logic puzzles. In college and graduate school, my favorite colleagues were those with well-constructed, rational arguments. Even when I disagreed with their premise, I had a great deal of respect when their arguments were internally consistent. I love the rush that comes when I understand something for the first time. I love games that challenge my mind: crosswords, Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, or puzzles. When my brain finds the logical conclusion to a problem I feel an unmatched sense of elation.
Of course, there are those times when my brain fails to use the faculties with which I was gifted. Say, when a guy I really like asks for my opinion on something or a friend denigrates a book I adore. In those situations, my rational brain short-circuits. These responses are limited to a few specific circumstances and once I take some deep breaths I manage to fall back on my intellect and provide or deconstruct an argument piece by piece. It's rare for me to confront a problem I can't think my way out of.
Or at least, that's been the case until recently.
Five years ago if you would have told me that I would eventually find myself seated in front of a psychologist slowly spilling my guts or watching Star Trek, I would have called you crazy.
It turns out that I'm the crazy one.
"So, Kelly," I find the shrink's professorial air and yellow legal pad oddly calming. "What brings you here today?"
"I haven't used an iron without supervision in five years."
"Oh?"
"And I can't stop checking my stove to see if it's off." I pause. "And I can't straighten my hair. I mean, I am capable of straightening it, but I won't unless there's someone to make sure the straightener is unplugged."
We spend the next twenty or so minutes talking about my weird behaviors, behaviors I have been secretly living with for over ten years now, behaviors I have gone to great lengths to conceal from friends and family because I know there's something slightly off about them. I tell her about how when I'm upset I count to one hundred by twos or fives on the fingers of my right hand, always my right hand, and I get really angry if someone interrupts me and I can't finish. I confess to having to take pictures of my stove top before I leave the house for the weekend so I can make sure it's off even from a distance. I tell her about how in graduate school there were nights when I couldn't get to sleep because I kept getting up to check to make sure the door was locked, even when the rational side of my brain knew it was locked because I had already checked it fifteen times. I tell her about how delaying any of these actions causes a physical anxiety response in me. My heart-rate quickens. I have a hard time breathing. My muscles get so tense I feel like I'm being physically threatened.
Saying all of these things out loud and to someone I just met is an experience so weird it defies explanation. It's intimate and scary and the only time I've ever felt like it was the last time I went to see a priest for confession and started crying in the confessional. Thankfully, I'm nowhere near tears here, but when I'm finished I feel as drained and on edge as if I just ran a half-marathon. I have to clench my fists together both to keep my hands from shaking and to keep from counting to one hundred.
"Well," my doctor says, "you have obsessive-compulsive disorder."
That particular diagnosis isn't entirely unexpected. After all, I'm not an idiot. I knew these behaviors were . . . unusual. But when I thought of OCD, I thought of people who are germ-phobic, who have to carry around hand sanitizer in their purses and have to have their houses in perfect order. My house always looks like a bomb full of paper and books exploded in it and while I'm a regular hand-washer, I've been known to go a few days without bathing while I'm camping. Because those were my perceptions of OCD, I always assumed that I was borderline, that I had some OCD tendencies but I'd be able to use to rational side of my brain to shut them down. Hearing the diagnosis simultaneously produced an "Oh Thank God!" feeling and an "Oh shit, what am I going to do now?" kind of dread.
The elation is pretty self-explanatory. When mental illness has a name, it also has treatment options. Suddenly, staring me in the face was the possibility of a life where I could leave the house without taking a picture of the stove. Where I could iron my clothes the night before I went to work instead of spending a week steaming them out in the bathroom when I take a shower. I had never even bothered to envision a future where these small rituals weren't a part of my daily life, when checking and rechecking, counting and worrying weren't going to eat up hours of my time.
The dread has been growing since I left the psychologist's office. What scares me most is the knowledge that I am broken. Some small thing has gone awry in my brain and has caused these behaviors. Worse than it being broken, it's something I can't fix on my own. My brain can't think its way out of this problem and that's something that has never happened to me before. It's an overwhelming realization and a terrifying one. I've spent years relying on my brain to answer abstract questions about God and my soul, to think through the origins of the universe, to navigate me through complex interpersonal relationships. Now I'm faced with the reality that the equipment I've used to find those solutions is malfunctioning and all of those answers may be incorrect. I'm shocked by how openly emotional I've become, how easy it has been to admit my fears and concerns to the people around me, to ask for help while my mind is churning.
What I've found most surprising about this diagnosis and the ensuing doubt it has created in me is that my logical side, my Vulcan side, keeps leading me back to the emotional. It's as if the logical side of me realizes that it can't fix this problem, that it's emotional difficulty and I need help and that's all right. For the first time in many years, it's ok to admit that I'm an emotional, irrational, certifiably-a-little-bit-crazy human and not a cold-blooded thinking machine.
It seems I have more in common with Captain Kirk than I ever thought.
This one-liner instantly cracked up the charming guy sitting across from me. I was waiting on some friends at a bar and noticed his Kirk vs. Picard shirt. I've been working on Star Trek: The Next Generation for months now and instantly struck up a conversation with the guy. We were chatting about how we would spend our time on the holodecks and the flaws of TNG storytelling. He admitted that he felt a strange affinity for Captain Kirk, mainly because of his unbridled passions. I was a little skeptical and said that I felt I had the most in common with Vulcans. I think he thought I was joking, but his girlfriend arrived and my friends waved me down from the doorway and we part ways before I have a chance to explain.
The truth is the deeper I get into Star Trek the more I feel I have in common with Doctor Spock and Ambassador Sarek than I do with Kirk or Picard. When expressing emotion towards people I care about, I tend to do it in very specific ways. I need things to be perfect. I dislike when people try to manipulate me emotionally. People with unbridled passions make me wildly uncomfortable.
Yet, more than anything, I love and am obsessed by the logical functions of the human brain. I'm deeply proud of my ability to think through problems rationally. As a student, I adored logic puzzles. In college and graduate school, my favorite colleagues were those with well-constructed, rational arguments. Even when I disagreed with their premise, I had a great deal of respect when their arguments were internally consistent. I love the rush that comes when I understand something for the first time. I love games that challenge my mind: crosswords, Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, or puzzles. When my brain finds the logical conclusion to a problem I feel an unmatched sense of elation.
Of course, there are those times when my brain fails to use the faculties with which I was gifted. Say, when a guy I really like asks for my opinion on something or a friend denigrates a book I adore. In those situations, my rational brain short-circuits. These responses are limited to a few specific circumstances and once I take some deep breaths I manage to fall back on my intellect and provide or deconstruct an argument piece by piece. It's rare for me to confront a problem I can't think my way out of.
Or at least, that's been the case until recently.
Five years ago if you would have told me that I would eventually find myself seated in front of a psychologist slowly spilling my guts or watching Star Trek, I would have called you crazy.
It turns out that I'm the crazy one.
"So, Kelly," I find the shrink's professorial air and yellow legal pad oddly calming. "What brings you here today?"
"I haven't used an iron without supervision in five years."
"Oh?"
"And I can't stop checking my stove to see if it's off." I pause. "And I can't straighten my hair. I mean, I am capable of straightening it, but I won't unless there's someone to make sure the straightener is unplugged."
We spend the next twenty or so minutes talking about my weird behaviors, behaviors I have been secretly living with for over ten years now, behaviors I have gone to great lengths to conceal from friends and family because I know there's something slightly off about them. I tell her about how when I'm upset I count to one hundred by twos or fives on the fingers of my right hand, always my right hand, and I get really angry if someone interrupts me and I can't finish. I confess to having to take pictures of my stove top before I leave the house for the weekend so I can make sure it's off even from a distance. I tell her about how in graduate school there were nights when I couldn't get to sleep because I kept getting up to check to make sure the door was locked, even when the rational side of my brain knew it was locked because I had already checked it fifteen times. I tell her about how delaying any of these actions causes a physical anxiety response in me. My heart-rate quickens. I have a hard time breathing. My muscles get so tense I feel like I'm being physically threatened.
Saying all of these things out loud and to someone I just met is an experience so weird it defies explanation. It's intimate and scary and the only time I've ever felt like it was the last time I went to see a priest for confession and started crying in the confessional. Thankfully, I'm nowhere near tears here, but when I'm finished I feel as drained and on edge as if I just ran a half-marathon. I have to clench my fists together both to keep my hands from shaking and to keep from counting to one hundred.
"Well," my doctor says, "you have obsessive-compulsive disorder."
That particular diagnosis isn't entirely unexpected. After all, I'm not an idiot. I knew these behaviors were . . . unusual. But when I thought of OCD, I thought of people who are germ-phobic, who have to carry around hand sanitizer in their purses and have to have their houses in perfect order. My house always looks like a bomb full of paper and books exploded in it and while I'm a regular hand-washer, I've been known to go a few days without bathing while I'm camping. Because those were my perceptions of OCD, I always assumed that I was borderline, that I had some OCD tendencies but I'd be able to use to rational side of my brain to shut them down. Hearing the diagnosis simultaneously produced an "Oh Thank God!" feeling and an "Oh shit, what am I going to do now?" kind of dread.
The elation is pretty self-explanatory. When mental illness has a name, it also has treatment options. Suddenly, staring me in the face was the possibility of a life where I could leave the house without taking a picture of the stove. Where I could iron my clothes the night before I went to work instead of spending a week steaming them out in the bathroom when I take a shower. I had never even bothered to envision a future where these small rituals weren't a part of my daily life, when checking and rechecking, counting and worrying weren't going to eat up hours of my time.
The dread has been growing since I left the psychologist's office. What scares me most is the knowledge that I am broken. Some small thing has gone awry in my brain and has caused these behaviors. Worse than it being broken, it's something I can't fix on my own. My brain can't think its way out of this problem and that's something that has never happened to me before. It's an overwhelming realization and a terrifying one. I've spent years relying on my brain to answer abstract questions about God and my soul, to think through the origins of the universe, to navigate me through complex interpersonal relationships. Now I'm faced with the reality that the equipment I've used to find those solutions is malfunctioning and all of those answers may be incorrect. I'm shocked by how openly emotional I've become, how easy it has been to admit my fears and concerns to the people around me, to ask for help while my mind is churning.
What I've found most surprising about this diagnosis and the ensuing doubt it has created in me is that my logical side, my Vulcan side, keeps leading me back to the emotional. It's as if the logical side of me realizes that it can't fix this problem, that it's emotional difficulty and I need help and that's all right. For the first time in many years, it's ok to admit that I'm an emotional, irrational, certifiably-a-little-bit-crazy human and not a cold-blooded thinking machine.
It seems I have more in common with Captain Kirk than I ever thought.
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