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Keywords: Ocd

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    An unlikely friendship: The letters of Wendy Beckett and Robert Ellsberg

    • Philip Harvey
    • 02 December 2022
    3 Comments

    Wendy Beckett and Orbis Books publisher Robert Ellsberg exchanged letters on a near daily basis during the last three years of Sister Wendy’s life. What began as a correspondence on saints evolved into a joyful and intimate exchange about the nature of love, suffering and the need for daily grace.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    No joke: OCD is not a punchline

    • Anonymous
    • 15 October 2020
    7 Comments

    ‘You’ve got a bit OCD about all this handwashing, haven’t you?’ People say things like this all the time, to mock others’ habits and the routines they follow a little too closely. Usually, it’s not meant to be offensive. Just harmless teasing. But when I hear someone say something like this, it hurts. Because I actually have OCD.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Breaking the till

    • Isabella Fels
    • 05 September 2014
    5 Comments

    As I go down Chapel Street, I feel like I am running a million miles an hour trying to look a million dollars. In the past my mother and my father have had to intervene to stop me letting loose. They have both rescued me from keeping totally unsuitable clothes by showing a letter to the shops by my psychiatrist, stating that I have an 'obsessional preoccupation' with spending money and please can the items be refunded.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Confessions of an overeater

    • Isabella Fels
    • 09 April 2014
    9 Comments

    I am a wicked creature of the night. The more I munch in sinful silence the more I feel I am trespassing with the dead. Food did my head in even before I took tablets for my head. I turn into a beast with a huge midnight feast as I go wild with chocolate, cake and ice-cream. The pounds come on like thunder with all my eating blunders. I have come a long way from my bulimic teens, but I still am obsessed, and think I will always be.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Certified at 35

    • Isabella Fels
    • 26 February 2014
    19 Comments

    I felt less than five, little more than three. They dragged me kicking and screaming, raging into the psychiatric ward. I felt like an accident waiting to happen, a bomb about to explode. I shrank the more I talked to my shrink. I could no longer pretend I was fine. I could no longer shine. How I wished I could shrug off my illness. But it held me tight.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Declaring war on the r-word

    • Moira Byrne Garton
    • 24 January 2013
    19 Comments

    I have heard colleagues refer to decisions as 'retarded', personalities as 'on the [autism] spectrum', and behaviour as 'OCD'. I hoped my silence would express my disapproval. Far from mere 'political correctness', seeking to eliminate such terms from discourse is a natural extension of a respectful and inclusive society. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Blessed are the messmakers

    • Michael Mullins
    • 31 March 2008
    3 Comments

    Unchecked acquisition and possession of material objects can destroy lives and relationships. Hoarders point to a deeply ingrained pathology in which each of us is starting to value things more than people.

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