When I go to the supermarket now - a place I've always considered a disgusting petri dish of sorts - my behaviour hasn't altered to that of pre-corona. Photo / Getty Images
When I go to the supermarket now - a place I've always considered a disgusting petri dish of sorts - my behaviour hasn't altered to that of pre-corona. Photo / Getty Images
The coronavirus lockdown has left Lee Suckling a man alone. Here's how he's faring in week two of living in total isolation.
I might be one of the only people in this country who can say that my personal hygiene practices haven't changed under the Covid-19 lockdown.
Many have jokedthat we're all going to come out of this pandemic "a little bit OCD". Through overzealous handwashing and disinfecting of every surface around us, this era of contagion has forever changed the way we think about germs and transmission.
For me, however, the globe's new relationship with a fear of diseases is something I know all-too-well. As I wrote in last week's Man Alone column on mental health, I used to have obsessive compulsive disorder myself.
Washing your hands 40-50 times a day? I've been there – I spent the better part of 2015 with raw, dry and cracked fingers from over-scrubbing. Got pervasive worry when you touch something, and then can't get to a soapy sink or to hand sanitiser within a minute? I've been there too. The feeling of dread I used to get after shaking someone's hand then accidentally touching my face could cause me to feel so overwhelmed, I wanted to scream and quite literally scrub my skin off.
Exclaiming I "used to have OCD" in the past tense is a bit misleading. Having OCD is a bit like being an addict: it's something you always are. It's in your DNA. It will lay dormant after treatment, but there's always the possibility of "falling back off the wagon" as it were. Inasmuch, perhaps I can say I'm a "recovered" OCD patient.
Curiously, I thought the one thing that would force me back into my self-destructive, obsessive cleaning rituals (and subsequent devastating fear if they weren't followed) would be the outbreak of a pandemic like this. A global fear of a disease lying on every surface, without any clear scientific data on how it moved from person to person and place to place.
I can happily say this hasn't happened. I haven't regressed into a state of mental illness. I feel so "fine" I've even thought about contacting my former therapists to tell them how well their treatment had worked.
Instead of heightening my anxiety towards viruses and bacteria and causing me to go overboard on my personal hygiene, my levels of self-care and awareness of germs have remained the same.
I wash my hands no more than before Covid-19. Yes, I do it every time I walk through the door from being outside, use the bathroom, or touch surfaces that others will have. But now everyone else is doing that too: instead of me reaching sky-high levels of mad hygiene, the rest of the population has simply come up to my level.
One of the things you learn during treatment for OCD is to sit with the discomfort of germs being all around you. A key exercise for me early on was to touch my dog, and then sit for 30 minutes with so-called "dirty hands" before I was allowed to wash them.
In the early days, this was excruciating. As time went by I learned how much discomfort one can manage, and then suddenly it becomes entirely manageable and I just stopped caring.
When I go to the supermarket now – a place I've always considered a disgusting petri dish of sorts – my behaviour hasn't altered to that of pre-corona. I walk around the aisles with my naked hands on the trolley – slightly uncomfortable – but I can handle it. I touch food products, freezer door handles, and the buttons on an EFTPOS machine. While I can't wait until the moment I can wash my hands when I get home, I don't completely freak out about that 10- or 15-minute period where the dirt from others' hands has to sit on mine.
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In fact, knowing everybody else now follows my same high level of personal hygiene habits has made this entire pandemic experience strangely pleasing. Going forward, all shops, public transport, gyms, and everything else communal will be cleaner than ever. The way we all think about personal hygiene and cleanliness has forever changed for the better, in my eyes.
One of the takeaway realisations from OCD treatment is to understand that viruses, germs, bacteria, dirt, and disease are all around us all the time, but that doesn't mean they WILL infect you.
The human body has an extremely capable and magnificent immune system ready to fight outside infection. This is why I, personally, have no fear of Covid-19 for my own health. The only reason I'm adhering to this draconian lockdown is to protect others without such good immune systems.
When this is all over, I hope we as a society don't all become "a little bit OCD". Yes, germs are scary; we all feel that now. However, with adequate – but not obsessive – preventative personal measures taken, we should come out of this lockdown knowing the outside world isn't something we need to be afraid of.
