Q&A on OCD: SHANNON SHY

“OCD is a serious and often debilitating mental health disorder that affects people of all ages and walks of life, and occurs when a person gets caught in a cycle of obsessions and compulsions,” according to the International OCD Foundation.

Shannon Shy is a retired marine who suffered from severe OCD during his active duty. He has written four books, created online recovery courses and provides support in OCD recovery, worldwide according to his website. 

I had the pleasure of speaking to Shy when interviewing him about OCD Mid-Atlantic’s One Million Steps for OCD Walk. This is a segment of our conversation in Q&A form.

Q: What excites you the most about speaking at events?

A: There’s a lot of different reasons, but near the top of my list, there are two reasons. One is I think it’s really important to just advocate to people who suffer and their family members that there is hope. It is possible to get better…The other one I think is stigma reduction. One of the primary reasons people don’t get help is because they don’t want the stigma attached with having a mental disorder, and so they just try to endure and battle it on their own. You know, OCD gets a lot of public attention in the wrong ways. You’ll hear it all the time on social media and sometimes even in sitcoms where people will say, “Well I’m just so OCD” or “I’m OCD.” They’re just trying to say they like things neat or in order…I want people to say we can talk about it, you can talk about it, you need to be diagnosed and you need to go into recovery. 

Q: Would you say the biggest conception of OCD is the casual use of the acronym?

A: Yes, and because of that it kind of ignores or glosses over the truly debilitating nature of the disorder. A lot of people, they don’t want people to know they have OCD because they don’t want to be ridiculed. Everything that they do is someone looking at you and saying “That’s just your OCD.” It gets old, it’s embarrassing, and so I think public education about the disorder and maybe most importantly the fact that there is treatment for it. I tell people all the time my diagnosis was the most important piece of information that I got because it explained everything. 

Q: When did you decide you wanted to write a book?

A: Interestingly enough, in 1999 I was going through one of those Key to Success kind of workshops and one of the exercises they had us do was to write down the things you are going to accomplish in your life. One of the things I wrote down is ‘I will write a book.’ Had no idea what it would be about and I didn’t publish a book until 2009. I thought I could write a book, I didn’t know it would be about OCD then. You won’t have to force yourself.

Living with OCD can become unbearable and exhausting. There are resources available for anyone struggling with the disorder. Mental health is important and nothing to be ashamed of, so seek out these resources. A great place to start is the IOCDF: https://iocdf.org/ocd-finding-help/living-with-ocd/

• interview
• mental health
• ocd
• Q&A
• self care