OCD Attaches to What We Love Most

OCD was not me being careful. It was fear disguised as responsibility. It made me feel responsible for things no human being could ever fully control. In my darkest hours, it made love feel like a relentless pursuit of keeping those I love safe.

OCD didn’t roar into my life like a tidal wave looking to sweep up everything in its path. It entered quietly, in the dark of night and it attacked something I took for granted. Something that gave me freedom. Something I valued.

On an ordinary Tuesday night in late 2020, I was driving along a familiar road. A route I had taken hundreds of times previously. And then without warning, it happened. A man. Clearly intoxicated. Stumbled straight out in front of my car.

I slammed on the brakes. The car screeched to a violent stop. At the last second, the man noticed me and leapt out of the way. I missed him by centimetres.

When my car stopped, I stared at him, waiting for some acknowledgement of what had just almost happened. He didn't turn around. Didn't say a word. He just kept walking.

A month or so later I was driving through a different part of the city. My attention waned for just a moment as something caught my eye. And in that moment, I felt a bump beneath my tyre.

It scared the life out of me. I kept driving for about a kilometre. But I couldn't shake it. I made an excuse to turn back. Saying I wanted to check a shop out we had just driven by.

As we passed the spot, I locked onto the landmark I remembered, a pedestrian refuge island, and saw it: a massive pothole, right in line with where my tyre would have hit. Relief flooded through me.

It happened again a few days later. A bump on the way home from coffee. Immediately, I felt a wave of unease. I glanced in the mirror. Nothing. But my mind raced. This time, it didn’t stop. My heart raced, I started to sweat, it was all too much. I made an excuse to go out again as soon as I got home and drove back to check. Two potholes, side by side, near a median strip. Relief.

But something had shifted. These weren't just potholes anymore. They were evidence. Proof that my worst fears hadn't come true. And with each one I found; I was quietly teaching my brain that it needed to see the evidence in order to feel safe.

When the anxiety became too much. I reached for the dashcam. What started as occasional spot-checking quickly became full-drive reviews. Then entire drives watched back from start to finish. Then arriving at destinations early, sometimes more than half an hour early, just so I could sit in the car around the corner and watch the footage before going in. I parked a block or two away so no one I knew would see me.

Drive. Doubt. Review. Relief. Repeat.

A moment of temporary calm, built on a lie.

Over time, driving became easier again. I learnt to live with uncertainty. It pushed me. It challenged me. But slowly, things moved in the right direction.

The OCD didn’t disappear though. It just looked for a new way in. And it found one eventually. Just not where I would have imagined.

Archie had been our rock. He sat beside us through the hardest days of our lives. He was and always will be our first baby. He lit up our world when everything was dark and gave us a purpose outside our own suffering to get up in the morning and face each day.

In 2024, six months after Willow was born, we did what we did most mornings. We took Archie to the park. His happy place. Somewhere that brought us peace and solitude during our darkest days after losing Mia.

Archie loved the park. He would chase his ball. Time after time. Helicopter tail. Happy stomps. Tongue out. Until one Tuesday in July, when he collapsed.

The look in his eyes as he stumbled from the park back to our house was a look I'll never forget. His eyes pleaded with me, “Dad. Help me.”

I raced him to the vet. It was put down as exercise induced collapse. He was tested for everything. His heart. His brain. Blood tests. Scans. He even wore a halter monitor for 24 hours. Still nothing more was found.

Yet, I couldn’t shake the fear. I stopped taking him to the park or on long walks. Hot days were a no go. The vet had given Archie the all clear. Nobody had given me one.

My life was starting to unravel. I lived every day in fear, trying desperately to avoid another bout of devastation. But it was only a matter of time.

Willow was six months old. She was everything to us. After losing our first daughter and then being so close to devastation with Archie, I knew I needed to protect my loved ones fiercely.

One night after walking out of the bathroom I caught myself. I realised as I opened the baby gate to walk out it was the fifth time I had been in there in the past hour. Something wasn’t right.

I began to wash my hands excessively. It started small. A first wash followed by a second, then a third. Before I knew it, I was washing my hands for up to five minutes at a time. I was petrified of Willow getting sick.

The hyper-responsibility I felt for her and her health was overwhelming. Everything I touched felt dirty and germ-ridden. I was paranoid that if I didn’t wash my hands like a doctor preparing for surgery each and every time, she could end up sick, or even worse.

Toys, books, pens, food, my phone, you name it, if I touched it, I felt the need to wash. Archie's raw chicken, which I had prepared every night without a second thought, became something I couldn't bring myself to touch at all.

It all became too much. I told my therapist everything. The one who I had initially started seeing because of the fear of driving. I told her I was now living a life paralysed by fear and anxiety. 

I broke down when I explained to her the weight of all that I had been carrying every day. How my whole life had been upended by the paranoia and fear. It was debilitating. It was strangling me and starting to affect my family. My marriage. And my relationships with Willow and Archie.

Then, in one sentence, it had a name.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. OCD.

My therapist explained that OCD attaches to what we love most. First it was my car. My freedom. Something I absolutely loved. It attacked that. Then it came for Archie. The little man who sat beside us through the worst days of our life. Then finally it came for Willow. OCD found each of them because I loved them all so deeply that love disguised itself as a relentless pursuit of keeping them safe.

My life felt like a whack-a-mole game. On the board was everyone I loved and everything I valued in life and each time I got on top of one of them and knocked them back into the board, another popped up.

The reason OCD found what it did through those I love was tied back to what I had already lost – Mia. Losing a baby reshapes how you see the world. You start to see everything as a threat. You begin to question the little things more, in the pursuit for certainty and control.

I couldn’t control losing Mia. As hard as that was to accept, it was out of my hands. But what I thought I could control with certainty was everyone around me being safe. The prevention of any further tragedy. And every little misstep felt like a warning shot. Grip tighter. Hold them closer. Be more vigilant.

The reality of mental health battles is that they don't go away overnight. Mine didn't. It took weeks, months and it's still taking time. But I put my hand up anyway, even when I didn't fully believe things could get better. Even when saying "I'm not okay. I need help" felt like admitting defeat.

Right now, I'm in the recovery phase. Finding my feet again in a world filled with uncertainty and doubt. And I'm learning that that is okay too. It doesn't mean my love has weakened. It means I'm willing to lead with love first, without the overwhelming fear riding alongside it. Allowing Willow to live a full, happy life. Allowing Archie to run in the park the way he always did. And giving Jord the space to be the mother she was born to be, without carrying the weight of what I struggled for so long to face.

If you're sitting with something heavy right now, I'm not going to tell you it's easy. I'm going to tell you I understand why you haven't said anything yet. But there is a way through. And it starts with one honest conversation.

My life is defined now by the gratitude, the love and the happiness I intend to live with, just as I promised Mia I would, the day I kissed her goodbye for the last time.

---

 Matthew Wright is a Firefighter, bereaved father, mental health advocate, speaker and author of the upcoming memoir ‘A Father's Love’. He shares his story to ensure no father navigating loss and grief has to do so in silence. Follow along at @_afatherslove on Instagram.