Inspiring Stories of a Relationship With a Person With OCD
The following is a sample, with brief commentary, of a period in my life when I loved an “OCDer,” who was subsequently diagnosed with a terminal illness that killed him in six months. In my latest book, The Yellow Star that Wasn’t https://chofstadter.com/the-yellow-star-that-wasn-t-scandinavia-miami-and-me/ I write about his obsessions with the Jews during the Holocaust, and how I began to adjust my behavior to his increasingly bizarre behavior. It wasn’t until long after he was gone that I realized that one of his gifts to me was my commitment to learn about Scandinavian Jewry during WW2. Also, among the lessons I learned is that where I could see the humor and beauty in my circumstances, I was comforted and energized.
Bitten by a Squirrel. OCD and the Grim Reaper. Miami-Dade County Health Department Healthy Stories (2011)
A Leap of Words
(The Ruby Collection; tales2inspire.com). When your beloved is dying you want to do everything in your power to maintain the same routines that have comforted him throughout his years as an obsessive-compulsive. But when you and he come from two different religious traditions – one secularly Jewish and the other Protestant – a new ritual involving bedtime prayers creates a moral dilemma. This is a story about how it’s possible for someone who never liked change to find solace in the soothing rhythm of words he can’t even understand. For a man who thrived on rigid routines it became increasingly important at the end of his life for me to nurture his habits while gently suggesting a comforting change.
When life became unbearable with an OCD’er I discovered my own obsession with golf. My story in Golf Digest, I Found My Obsession
