I’ve struggled with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) since I was a child and never have I ever scrubbed my hands until they became raw. I’m disorganized, messy and thanks to me, the apartment I share with my wife looks like it got hit by a nuclear bomb until she decides we need to clean up. I’m not afraid of shaking hands with strangers and I’ll gladly share my food with friends.

Lots of you may be confused now. Maybe you’re thinking, “Well, if you can do all of those things, I don’t understand how you have OCD.” Sometimes that reaction irks me but, most times, I can sympathize because misconceptions are everywhere and nobody seems to want to talk about mental illness even though it affects millions.

That said, I don’t blame you if you thought OCD was all about hand washing and organization. I will, however, go absolutely crazy if you say you’re “so OCD” about something when you have no idea what it’s actually like to live with such a serious disorder. I know that it’s “just a phrase” and that words are “only words,” but humor me and take a minute to read about what having OCD is really like:

I was around 6 or 7 when I first started showing signs of having OCD. For me, it manifested as a ritual in which I’d check under my bed and in my closet before I fell asleep. For a lot of kids, that’s normal. It became abnormal, though, when I started checking under the bed, inside the closet and flipping my light switch on and off about seven different times before I could call it a night. At the time, nobody in my family really knew about my habit, so the behavior wasn’t addressed until it grew worse and, as a result, more visible.

I don’t remember how old I was but I remember being in elementary school when I woke up with a very obvious bald patch on my head. I had made a habit of pulling my hair out when I felt nervous and ended up overdoing it one night while I was trying to fall asleep. My mother didn’t see it until the next morning and when she did, she freaked.

It’s understandable now, but when you’re a kid and your parent seems visibly shaken by something, you get shaken up, too. I burst into tears and my mom asked me why I had done “that” to myself as she tried to style my hair in a way that would hide the spot.

That day, I showed up to school with a super 80s looking high ponytail and told anyone who asked that I had burned myself with a hair curler. I can’t be sure if the teachers suspected otherwise but none of them questioned it and for that, I was thankful. It wasn’t until I was around 15 that I found out the hair pulling actually had a name—it’s called Trichotillomania and it’s a disorder that often accompanies OCD.

A few years after bald patch incident, the ritualizing got really out of control. I became unable to get dressed in the morning unless it was completely silent and I had to check the tags on my clothes and turn around a certain number of times before I could actually put any of them on. I’m sure you can imagine how difficult that is when you’re home with your mother, who’s getting ready to leave for work and two other siblings that constantly fight. In other words, it was impossible.

Around that time, mornings in my house were a total nightmare and my inability to complete simple, everyday tasks really set me off. I would go from 0 to 60 if anyone disrupted my rituals and then I’d have to start over. Because of that, my frustration manifested into screaming, swearing and hitting. Emotionally, I was all over the place; I felt frustrated, angry, upset and unhinged. I couldn’t control my feelings and I was overwhelmed with anxiety whenever I had to go back to square one which is something that happened often. Keep in mind, I was only about 12 at the time and my parents really didn’t know how to handle me.

By 13, I had developed obsessions with both body hair and contamination. It took me about an hour and a half to get ready for school in the morning and, if I hadn’t completed my rituals by the time my grandfather showed up at the house, I’d sneak disposable razors into my backpack and finish shaving my arms in the backseat of his car. Sometimes my siblings would call me out on it and I’d use the excuse that I forgot to put my razor away because I was in such a rush. It’s not like they didn’t already know I had behavioral problems but it was still embarrassing for me to talk about.

The next year, when I was 14, I agreed to see a psychiatrist and was officially diagnosed with both OCD and depression. Although I had always known there was something different about me, I was relieved to learn that it finally had a name. It didn’t make my life any easier but it did make me feel like I was a little less alone. If my disorder had a name, that meant it had been seen before and, if it had been seen before, that meant someone else was dealing with it too.

Shortly after that, I began taking antidepressants and started seeing a psychologist every week. Those weekly sessions didn’t last very long though, because eventually, I felt like my therapist was judging me and I put up a fight until my parents agreed to let me stop going. This happened on more than one occasion and became a pretty common cycle. I’d want to see a therapist, I’d go for a few months, and then, out of the blue, I’d decide to stop going. Throughout the years, I’ve seen at least three.

Over the course of high school, my rituals took up more and more time. I was late probably at least 100 times, and that’s not an exaggeration. Freshman and sophomore year weren’t so bad because my parents drove me to school, but once I had my own car, I would allow my rituals to take up as much time as necessary.

My junior and senior years were the worst. I’d show up an hour or two after class started and awkwardly disrupt the lesson as I took my seat. I spent almost every afternoon in detention and, had I attended a public school as opposed to a private one, I don’t think I’d have been able to graduate due to the number of tardies I had accumulated.

In 2013, a year after my high school graduation, I attempted to take control of my OCD by voluntarily participating in a three month, residential OCD treatment program at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts. There, I attended several general and symptom-specific groups per day and completed about four hours’ worth of Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) therapy. During those ERP sessions, I was exposed to all the things that triggered me and my anxiety, and was then prevented from calming myself down by ritualizing.

For someone who hasn’t experienced OCD, this may sound like a walk in the park, but it was truly hellish. I broke down into tears on numerous occasions and I often felt like I was going to have a full-blown panic attack. It’s hard to explain the feeling to someone who doesn’t know what it’s like, but I can say that I felt overwhelmed with anxiety and my mind was bombarded with repetitive, negative thoughts. Although I knew they were irrational, the physical and emotional discomfort they caused was very, very real.

For example, during my ERP sessions, my behavioral therapist would touch my clothes in order to “contaminate” them and (s)he would make me write out scripts revolving around the violent intrusive thoughts I was having, such as hurting a family member or pet. And because my OCD heavily affected my morning routine, I was forced to take timed showers. Normally, it took me a good 45 minutes to shower. When participating in the treatment program, I was given 10.

I left the OCD treatment program after spending three long months there. I was considered a “success” but, because there is no cure for OCD, in order to keep that up I would have to continue doing ERP on my own. I found it too difficult to force myself to do so when out in the “real world” and not in a hospital setting so, as a result, I gradually reverted to my old ways. It’s not a “feel-good” ending, but it’s the truth.

I’m 21 now and I still struggle with OCD every day, and I know I’ll have to for the rest of my life. I admit that I do ritualize often and I don’t currently participate in any type of ERP treatment, but I’ve learned to live with my disorder up to a certain extent. While treatment will always be the best option for someone who’s struggling with OCD, right now, it doesn’t stop me from doing the things I want to do, so I’ve chosen to pursue higher education and writing as opposed to more residential treatment.

Like me, other people struggling with OCD may not necessarily “look” the part. There’s no real way to identify us just by looking and because of that, you should choose your words wisely. You’re not “so OCD” because you hate dog-eared book pages and you’re not “OCD about” x, y or z. I hope that, after reading this, you’ll understand that OCD is a very serious disorder and it has the potential to be completely debilitating.

So whether an individual’s OCD manifests as contamination, checking, intrusive thoughts, hoarding or scrupulosity, you should always treat them with both patience and compassion. There’s no need for you to become an OCD expert if you know someone who’s struggling with the disorder, but simply being supportive can make a huge difference to them. All I can really ask of you is that you be respectful and try not to trivialize the experience, even if you don’t fully understand it.

And for the love of God, throw out that “Obsessive Christmas Disorder” sweater.