WHY I'M NO LONGER DISCUSSING MY OCD

So, in case you didn't know I suffer with a myriad of mental illnesses. I have general anxiety disorder (GAD), obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and I can have bouts of depression and honestly - it sucks. I hate feeling the way I feel, but I'm in therapy for it and getting better so most of the time, I can manage it. However, recently I have been diagnosed with OCD (not exactly a shock when I was cleaning everything within a 4 mile radius) and it shook me a little bit. 

I wasn't surprised, but there's something about getting a diagnosis that impacts you. When I came back from my therapists I told my mother and she took it in her stride. As with most things, my mother is nothing but accepting, and she often doesn't need me to explain things for her to understand where I'm coming from. 

But then there is the issue of my father. Not saying that he isn't tolerant but he is one of those types that locks up his emotions forever and feels that that is an exemplary way of dealing with things. When, in truth, it's not. And because of his aversion to expressing his emotions, I feel he sometimes looks at me - a millennial with a passion for social justice, a raging feminist who is constantly telling him he can't say those things anymore and is in therapy and shares her emotions all over the internet - as a little bit of a weirdo. 

Which usually I'm not bothered about. Every generation has its differences, I remember my grandad (born in 1918) who wouldn't use a hair dryer because he didn't trust that "new fangled thing". I get it, things move on and change and sometimes it's hard to keep up. But I can't help but feel like we're constantly butting heads, because what he thinks the world is like and what I think the world is like are sometimes poles apart. And it creates arguments - loud arguments. Arguments that end with my crying and screaming at him and him shouting about how I'm sensitive. Which isn't a lie, I am sensitive, but it's not a bad thing, and he makes me feel like it is. Again, a misogynistic generational divide. I'm sure he wasn't actually trying to be sexist but the idea that being a girl being sensitive is a bad thing? That was taught by the patriarchy plain and simple. 

And as I'm growing up and realising that my father isn't perfect this is happening more and more. 

A lot of the time with my dad, I'm explaining things. Why he should eat less meat, why he should stop voting tory, why he should stop comparing mental illnesses to trivial things. I feel like his teacher. And this is happening more and more - the younger generation seem to have become educators. I was listening to my 14 year old sister explain Brexit to my mother the other day. Seriously?! Not saying my sister shouldn't have a grasp of world politics but shouldn't my mum be able to research for herself? Why is it that we're now acting as educators? 

And it seems that the only way the 'snowflake' generation can get our point across is not by hard evidence, facts or statistics. It's by sharing our own experiences. Every morning on Good Morning Britain (a programme I will not watch due to that turd of a man) Piers Morgan seems to be ripping into a millennial because he's outraged that he can't say the n word, or because now he can't sexually harass women or now he has to stop using plastic bags. And who does GMB get in for Piers Morgan to interview? An expert on global warming, someone who has spent years studying the planet? No! They'll bring along someone who maybe wrote a blog post on how they're not using plastic straws, or maybe they've become vegan or they happened to have mentioned the planet in some way online. And all Piers does is personally attack them. He'll have found an Instagram picture of them from 2010 where they had a Starbucks in a plastic cup and demonise them for it. 

Why does this happen? 

Why are we regularly teaching people older than us stuff they should already know?

The reason that I've come to relate this back to mental illness is that it happens to me. Granted on a much smaller scale but it happens nonetheless. It seems to me unless I've outright told my father that he can't say something, he makes no endeavour to change. The world moves on, and you need to keep up with it. My nan was born in 1932, when it was perfectly legal to be racist, homophobic and a downright bigot. Have my mother and uncle spent their life explaining that she has to change her views? No, because - amazingly - she's worked that out herself. 

Something my father said to me last night lead me to the magic conclusion of no longer discussing my OCD. He really upset me by trivialising my OCD, and it wasn't until I stormed off, probably in a completely nuts direction because I was crying so hard I couldn't see, that he knew he said something wrong. And I'm tired of being so unbelievably hurt by his actions, I'm tired of being used like an alarm. Almost as if I go off then he realises he's crossed a line. 

It's not just my father who acts like this, a lot of his generation (baby boomers) are so stuck in their ways. They truly think they are right. And on one hand I do have that little bit of spark in me to change the world, to change attitudes and to make society a better place. But it's exhausting. Every time my OCD, or anybodies mental illness is brought up, more often than not its negative. 

And on the other hand, I don't feel like it's my job to set the record straight. I know in order to change the stigma of mental illnesses we need to talk about them, and I do, extensively. But I seemed to have missed the memo where my personal struggle with OCD is up for discussion. And that might be because it's not. 

Millennials have a tough job, our planet is slowly being killed, a mad man is in charge of the United States and my country is leaving the EU before I've actually managed to directly reap any benefits from it. I'm sad, angry, frustrated and upset all in one. I'm trying to do my best to help society, to educate and to call things out where I can but I didn't sign up for that. 

I sometimes find it difficult that within this modern age of technology, where endless streams of knowledge is at your fingertips, that people find it so hard to be a good person. To not offend marginalised groups, to know where the line is. Why have they become so lazy that other people have to call them out for their ignorance?

So I've decided that I'm no longer discussing my OCD. My struggle will no longer be picked apart by people who think I'm overreacting. Instead I will urge people to do their own research, to educate themselves, and stop using other people as an alarm. Because its wrong, it's lazy and it's 2018. Time to take control of your own thoughts and use Google for a change.