I guess I kind of just use this account for PSAs now, and this has been on my mind a lot lately.
I figured out that I have OCD a few years ago, and recently I’ve seen a lot of bad advice around dealing with intrusive thoughts and obsessions.
There’s that post that goes around occasionally about “taking pictures of your oven knobs before you leave” or other things I’ve seen that say to “make a weird face when you lock your door.” THESE ARE COMPULSIONS. If you have/suspect you have OCD or you often struggle with things like that, please do not follow this advice. Instead, try to accept your intrusive thoughts and move on, not argue with them. Over time, they will get easier and easier to deal with. Ruminating, stressing, or arguing with them just makes them worse in the long run.
If you think you might have OCD and want to seek a specialist, the IOCDF’s home page has a lot of resources under the “find help” tab, including a locator.
I’m going to put the rest under a read-more because I’m going to talk a bit more in depth about intrusive thoughts and compulsions. This mostly because good OCD info is so sparse on line, and I’ve spent many hours compulsively researching OCD lmao.
Content warning:
discussion of unreality/doubting one’s own perception
discussion of specific compulsions
I’m not going to push this point too hard or shame anyone who doesn’t want to follow it, because OCD doesn’t really just go away. It’s a constant struggle. I give in to compulsions regularly, even though I am medicated and have seen a specialist to learn actual coping skills. It’s hard to resist sometimes and you don’t always have the energy, the awareness, or the power to ignore them. You do what you have to do to get through your day. The main difference is that the right medication and the right therapist make it easier to stay out of the spiral and to leave a spiral when you’re in one. They still happen. You still kind of have to play everything by ear.
Similarly, it is super fucking hard to get help or even get diagnosed. No regular therapist actually knows what the fuck it looks like, and specialists are few and far between and often don’t take insurance. It’s not fair or easy or necessarily productive to try and do exposure response prevention on yourself. Your “good coping skills” can even turn into an obsession or compulsion, where you’re constantly worried about what is an intrusive thought and what is not, or if you’re responding to them properly.
What I want to do is try to give at least some useful advice to people who are struggling with intrusive thoughts.
The best way to respond to them is not at all. This is especially true with OCD, because the response to them is sort of the root of this disorder. Sometimes, it’s recommended that with depression or anxiety you challenge your thoughts. In OCD, it’s the opposite. Challenging them can so easily lead you down a compulsion spiral. (More about that cycle from a professional.)
Compulsions can be entirely mental, but I’ll use a common behavioral one to look at how engaging with compulsions can go:
You start by taking a picture of the your stove knobs to make sure they’re all off. That works for a few hours or days, but then you start wondering if the knob is ever-so-slightly in the “on” position. You wonder if the picture proves they’re off enough. You forget to take the picture at all, and have to go back in to check anyways. You check your phone a few times before leaving to ensure that the picture is still there. You take several pictures because you can’t tell if you actually took any at all. You start to wonder if you can even trust what you see before your very eyes. What if you’re just imagining that the knobs are set to off? What if you’re just imagining the whole picture to begin with? The picture allows you to engage with your checking compulsion throughout the day, strengthening the connection between the intrusive thought and the urgency to do something about it. That means it gets worse. That means you find new ways to doubt your perception or your memory or whatever.
It can eventually get really bad. It’s hard and awful to try and deal with this on your own, but sometimes you have to.
It’s so shit. It’s so fucking shit how long many people suffer with mental illness without even knowing what’s going on. I didn’t know that my constant, overwhelming guilt over almost everything I’d ever thought or said or done or maybe did and couldn’t remember was the result of a disorder. It was so freeing to realize there was actually something that might help me, and I could learn to just live with myself and my weird ass thoughts that don’t necessarily mean anything at all. It’s so shit that OCD-awareness is so low among therapists. I was never going to get diagnosed until I found an OCD SPECIALIST (bold, italicized, all caps. Don’t trust people on psychology today who just put OCD in the list of what they treat.) and went over the Y-BOCS with her. It’s all so shit that several therapists I came to with textbook examples of OCD either ignored me or didn’t have the tools to help. I told one of them I “didn’t feel connected to reality” and he kind just went 🤷.
I just want everyone who is in that/a similar situation to at least have this information available to them.
If you want to learn more, these blogs from Sheppard Pratt were the best discussion of OCD I found online that really described what I was going through. They’re written by licensed therapists, several (all?) of whom live with OCD. They’re very healing to read if this is something you’re struggling with, or something you think you might be struggling with, and great in general if you want to learn more about OCD.
Whatever’s going on, OCD or not, have some grace with yourself. Take a few minutes today and do something kind for yourself, even just think one nice thing about yourself. You’re doing the best you can.
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I see your "Dream yelling at Desire because 'how dare you make me have feelings for Hob!!'" and raise you "Dream yelling at Desire because 'how dare you make Hob have feelings for me!!'" because it's the only logical explanation for why Hob would claim to want someone like Dream
[ cat screaming crying . jpg ]
Dream storms into Desire’s realm, steps thudding on the uneven floor, rage propelling him forward. He cannot remember ever feeling such anger, such betrayal towards his sibling, not even when he had learned they were behind his imprisonment.
Desire’s games have always gone too far, but this is beyond trying to teach him a lesson, this is beyond what Dream can reconcile, this is simply cruelty.
“YOU,” he thunders, the air shaking around him as he stalks up to where Desire is lying casually on a chaise lounge as if they haven’t just ripped Dream’s one comfort in this life out from under him. “How dare you.”
“Brother, dear,” drawls Desire, popping a grape into their mouth with not a care in the world, “it is rude to simply fly in without even knocking on the door. You wouldn’t like it if I did it to you.”
Blind with fury, Dream grabs them by the throat and hauls them to their feet. Desire lets out a choked gasp, genuinely startled by his vitriol. Their pulse trips under Dream’s thumb.
Desire cannot be killed through something as simple as strangulation, but it truly is tempting to try. “What,” Dream snarls, grip tightening, “what have you done to Hob Gadling?”
Desire blinks at him, torn from their alarm by confusion. “Whomst? Listen, I know you know everybody’s name and their kinkiest fantasy but I honestly can’t be bothered with the details, you’re going to have to fill me in.”
The rage in Dream’s core only flares hotter. “Enough of this charade, you know exactly what you’ve done.”
“No, seriously, I have no idea what you’re—”
Dream whirls away, leaving his sibling staggering in the wake of his grasp. “Was it not enough?” he demands, staring sightlessly into the gleaming red curves of Desire’s realm. “Was the vortex not enough? Was a century of imprisonment not enough for you?” His voice cracks halfway through, and it’s mortifying. “Truly, your hatred of me is untempered by even the slightest compassion.”
Desire’s voice is quizzical when they next speak. “I am starting to wish I was behind whatever this is that seems to have pierced you straight through the heart. I’m afraid my own arrows have missed that organ thus far.”
“Hob Gadling,” Dream insists, but Desire’s seemingly-genuine confusion has him wavering. It’s not like them not to revel in their own victory, and oh, this has been a victory, Dream feels laid lower than even a century in a cage had managed. “You are manipulating him.”
“Once again, I don’t know who that is. But he’s clearly excellent ammunition so I’m certainly going to find out once you leave.”
Dream flexes his hands at his sides, summoning his control. If Desire truly was not behind this, then he’s already made a mistake in coming here. Best not to offer anything else.
Being in Desire’s realm makes this stoicism difficult. The very space brings emotions to the surface, drags feelings up from his stomach that he’s tried so very hard to tamp down. He tastes blood at the back of his throat, his stomach churns, his skin prickles with sweat.
Desire stalks up behind him, sensing all of this. “Now I am curious,” they murmur, dragging a finger up his shoulder, over the collar of his coat and along the back of his neck. “Now I must know what’s go you so riled up.”
“You think you have earned such things?” Dream says through gritted teeth. His heart is pounding hard and uneven such that it physically hurts in his chest, the weight of the Threshold bearing down.
“No need to earn, you can hide nothing from me here.” Desire circles around him to his front, dragging their finger along his collarbone until it lands right at the base of his throat. They look at him from under their lashes, all smug satisfaction. “You are all tangled up in the realm of Desire, aren’t you?”
Dream moves to storm off, but Desire blocks him, nails pressing into his skin.
“Nah-ah, no running away. Let your little sibling help you, hm? As you may know, I am rather wise in matters of the heart.”
The look on Desire’s face is craftiness, glee, not charity or wisdom.
“I neither need nor wish for your assistance,” says Dream, voice hard. “On this, or any other matter.”
“But there is a matter.” Desire leans in and speaks right in his ear. “I can smell the heartsickness on you, Dream.”
There is nothing Dream can say in response to this. Any denial would only be read as falsehood, for Desire does not lie – of late, Dream feels sick with wanting in Hob’s presence, hunger so sharp it turns over into nausea, much like the first time Hob had pushed him to eat after his captivity. How cruel, then, to have his pain eased, his desires sated by a reciprocation that cannot possibly be truly felt.
There is nothing to say, so Dream doesn’t speak. Silence, of course, is its own answer.
“You know, if there’s one thing I have always admired about you, big brother, it’s your willingness to destroy yourself for the sake of passion,” Desire continues. “You’d think that’d be my sort of thing. Who’ve you lost yourself on this time? Demigod? Demon? Dryad? Vampire?”
Dream glares at them, but does not speak.
Desire’s face absolutely lights up as they realize. “Oh. My. God. Is he human? Dreeaaammmmm, my my, maybe your little time out did change you, after all.”
Dream turns away, refusing to give them the satisfaction of confirming. Though he knows this reaction is also a confirmation.
Desire claps their hands. “Oh! I’m so proud of myself. Look at this! Look at the softness of your heart. Look how I can bruise it.”
Dream’s heart, indeed, gives a painful thump. “Should you dare to touch him, even the old laws will not protect you.”
Desire sighs, flopping back onto a couch, legs crossed, head propped in their hand. “Why bother? You’ll destroy it yourself, and that’ll be much more fun.”
I hate you, Dream thinks, like a petulant child. He hates, also, how any argument with Desire makes him feel that way, feelings crowding at the surface of his skin, throat tightening, mind spinning in a chaotic churn. His muscles clench so hard he thinks they might have snapped, were he human, then he forces himself back into a semblance of ease.
There is no extracting himself from this situation with any dignity.
“Interfere with my affairs again,” he warns darkly, “and I will destroy you.”
Then he storms out of the Threshold.
“Love you too!” Desire calls after him, a grin in their voice. “Good luck with your human!”
--
When he’d found Hob at the New Inn, thirty-three years after he’d meant to arrive, Dream had not known how he might be received. Friendship extended once may not be extended again after so brutal a rejection, and so prolonged an absence, no matter that the latter offense was not within his control.
Being met with a smile, then, and an easy acceptance of his apology, like Hob had already forgiven him long before Dream had stepped through the door, had been a revelation. Something had settled in him that he had not known was knocked askew. Could there, truly, be one thing in his life that was allowed to be easy? Where Dream’s missteps were not met with scorn or vitriol or world-shaking consequences, but with grace and the chance to try again?
It seemed improbable, but still Dream had grabbed for it with cold, shaking fingers. Had held that unlikely flame between his palms. Had watched as it grew, hotter and brighter with each smile Hob sent his way, with each gentle brush of fingers as he pressed cups of tea into Dream’s hands, with the hug Hob finally managed to wind him into, once Dream had told him of the true reason for his absence in 1989.
Hob’s grace, Hob’s generosity in inviting someone, something like him into his home, into his life… Dream did not quite know how to hold it, so unlikely it was. He tried, though, oh he tried. And he swore he would not mess it up, not like he had when Hob had first offered his friendship.
He has now, quite royally, messed it up.
He very much doubts Hob will be so generous this time.
He finds Hob where he left him, sitting on the couch in his flat, a book in his hand. He doesn’t seem to be concentrating on it; his thoughts feel scattered in ragged, disturbed daydreams.
He doesn’t even startle when Dream materializes next to him. Though he knows it can be startling to humans, Dream has not been able to break himself of just appearing where he needs to – traversing the long way from point to point is not how he works. But aside from the occasional, teasing, I have a door, you know, Hob never truly complains about these disturbances to his day.
Dream means to offer him an apology. To say, I should not have walked out when you said that you loved me. To say, I am supposed to be better, I am trying to be better.
Instead, just as Hob looks up, the words that trip out of Dream’s mouth, pushed by the flurry of Desire’s realm still pounding within him, are, “Did you speak truly, Hob Gadling?”
Which is a ridiculous question. Dream does not think he has ever heard Hob speak a lie. Still, Dream must have the answer.
Hob’s expression shifts through several incarnations, none of which Dream feels capable of reading. Finally, it settles on the same soft, exasperated understanding Dream remembers being presented with when he’d said, I know thirty years is truly quite late, at their reunion, before he’d told Hob why he was late.
Grace, then. He is to be offered grace, again.
His emotions are still so close to the surface that he has to physically swallow down what he feels about that.
“Of course, I did,” Hob says, and there’s a hint of nerves in it, but he pushes through, he always does. “I wouldn’t lie to you about that.”
His gaze is genuine, open, and no, Desire had not lied – Hob’s feelings are no manipulation of theirs. And while it is tempting to search for other answers, spells or illusions or any number of other causes, Dream knows, deep down, that he will come up empty.
Hob’s feelings are true, are his truth, confounding though that is.
Dream no longer feels capable of holding any of this in his hands.
Instead, he kisses him.
It’s like he is pulled forward by a force outside his own body. He goes to Hob like he had gone to the sugar in the tea Hob had made him, that night at the inn when Dream had first realized how long it had truly been since he’d eaten; he goes to him like he had gone back to the Dreaming after being freed, returning home breathless, lost, changed.
Hob catches him against his mouth, hands cradling Dream’s face. His grip is solid and warm, and he kisses Dream like he looks at him like he speaks to him, with a care Dream hardly knows how to accept. He leans into it anyway, he leans in.
“I wasn’t fishing for a kiss when I said that, you know,” Hob says when they part, still lingering close enough that Dream can feel his heat, his breath. “I meant it in more of— well, that way, for certain, but really, any way you wanted to take it.”
“Any way,” Dream repeats, not sure he comprehends Hob’s meaning.
“Yeah, you—” Hob cuts himself off, letting out a breath, thinking. His hands slide from Dream’s face down to his shoulders, and he holds him there. “I. You just. I want you to know that you’re loved. Not demanding anything of it. Just telling you. Take it however serves you best.”
Dream stares at him, his whole being tripped and restarted at a new rhythm, and Hob gives him a sad smile.
“It’s too big to hold,” he says, and taps his chest. “In here. And besides, I wanted you to have it.”
Dream had had it. Only he hadn’t quite known what he had. The sunshine of Hob’s smiles, sustaining him, a bridge between distant points of light.
Finally, he manages to say, “I felt it. You have been my succor. My… only.”
Hob has captured him more effectively than Burgess’s snare, but this capture is not a prison. It hurts, oh, it aches, but it never wounds.
Hob smiles at him again. There’s still something pained in the creases around his eyes. “I know.”
He’s still touching Dream. His hands run over him, up his neck, over his throat, along his collarbone, and—
catch, on the collar of his shirt, above his heart.
“What happened?”
His voice is tight, now, worried, and— yes. There are bruises on Dream’s chest, crawling up over his breastbone. He had felt them form, and hadn’t stopped them.
Hob’s expression darkens further the longer he looks; he drags the collar of Dream’s shirt down, trying to see how far the damage spreads. “You’ve got bruises all over you. Dream, what happened?”
What happened is Dream stood in the Threshold and his heart beat so hard it drummed right through to the surface of his skin. What happened is it hurt so badly his form shifted to give reason for the pain.
“Desire,” he says, and he does not mean his sibling.
Hob doesn’t seem to understand, but he smoothes a hand over Dream’s heart as if to wipe the bruises away. Dream could will his body to return to its original, unharmed state, but he does not. He lets the blood stay pooled beneath his skin.
Hob sighs, tugging Dream’s coat tighter around him, shielding him from further injury. “Come here, you. You strange creature.”
He pulls Dream in, though he does not have to pull hard. Dream tucks his face into Hob’s neck, reveling in the warm scent of him, woodsmoke from the fireplace down in the inn where they’ve now spent many a long evening, basking in the heat of the flames. Hob’s arms go around him.
Absolution. Dream does not think this is a gift that has ever been granted to him.
“I would also love you,” he says. “If you would accept it.”
“If I would accept it?” Hob repeats. “Darling, your love is a privilege.”
Dream’s heart, in all its bruises and blood, finds rhythm again, and he thinks, though he certainly doesn’t pull away from Hob to check, that his skin clears up partway, too.
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