The Kindness of Curly-Haired Glasses Man

Self-compassion lessons from a stranger

His words caught and his eyes glistened. The chatter of voices echoed around us, but I swear I could hear his muted gulp as he swallowed back tears, triggering an achy lump in my own throat. He stared at the speckled conference room floor for a good 5, 10, 15 seconds before he turned to me:

“My heart hurts for that girl,” he said, and his eyes shot downward again.  

I fiddled my pen, started to doodle on my notepad. Hushed by his emotion. Moved by the tenderness of the moment.

I had just shared my earliest OCD symptoms with this stranger. A man with curly hair, glasses, and OCD. I didn’t even catch his name. We found ourselves row mates in the sharing portion of one of the workshops for people with lived experience with OCD at the International OCD Foundation Conference in San Francisco last weekend.

I had told him how, at 3 or 4, I rotated my stuffed animals every night to make sure their position relative to my bed was fair, so that none of them felt left out.

“That is so sweet,” he added, and I recoiled.

SWEET?

I must not have explained it right. I stupidly wasted time rotating my stuffed animals (inanimate objects!) and entrenched myself in a lifelong OCD cycle. What is sweet about that?

When I was a kid, I was anything but sweet (or so my inner narrative goes). Little Aly was rigid and manipulative and shy and inflexible and a-know-it-all (just ask my siblings). Not SWEET.

And in regard to the fairness scheme, I didn’t execute the rotation schedule perfectly. Sometimes I forgot. Sometimes I didn’t even WANT to do it. Sometimes I didn’t rotate them ON PURPOSE. Sometimes I let my blatant favoritism win out over what was fair.

And then I’d stew in self-loathing. Even at four I berated myself for my weakness. How could I really care about the animals and their feelings if I only stuck to the system when it was convenient?

Little Aly. Okay, I was adorable and sweet. And how sad that I was bombarded with such mean thoughts.

I felt a wave of recrimination crash over me.

And then a moment of recognition, of clarity.

OCD does it again.

Can I believe Curly-Haired Glasses Man—a fellow OCD sufferer and seemingly very kind soul—over my unrelenting OCD thoughts, which I know to be harsh, demeaning, and unhelpful?

What if little Aly was sweet and struggling? What if I’m sweet and struggling now?

Can I view my desire for fairness, integrity, and consistency in my decision making as a sweet thing, a good thing, a beautiful core part of Aly that OCD has exploited?

OCD continues to twist my desire to do good and be good. I often feel embarrassed that I want to be sure I made the right decisions, to be above reproach, that I care about the minutiae of my moments and agonize over tiny decisions that other people seem to make effortlessly.

One component of self-compassion is choosing self-kindness over self-judgment.

At the conference, I attended 14 workshops, support groups, and presentations. I took 18 pages of notes and met my OCD therapist and advocate heroes.

This moment of kindness with Curly-Haired Glasses Man is what I want to remember.

In the midst of my OCD and my own self-judgment, he offered a tender, warmhearted response. He did not dismiss my pain; this was evident by his outpouring of emotion. He understood that I was suffering—had suffered—and responded with generosity.

He offered me a model for self-compassion. A visual, visceral memory.

Tears pricked in the corner of my eyes, and I looked up from my doodling.

“Thank you,” I replied. And I let myself feel both sweet and seen.