This is living: An Occupational Therapy Success Story

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Why can’t I just be normal? 

This is not a new question to high school freshmen. Just about everyone has said or done something, at some point, that dredged up feelings of embarrassment and alienation. For me, these feelings were a way of life. 

On the night of my first school dance, I silently asked this question for the millionth time — Why can’t I just fit in? Why can’t I be fun and carefree? — not because of something silly I’d said or done, but because of the way my body and mind were betraying me. As my adrenaline-drunk peers rode the pulsating waves of music inside the high school gym, I stood breathless and disoriented in a too-bright bathroom stall. My hands tapped in frantic patterns, but the compulsive rituals failed to calm me. Everything around me swirled and faded to black, as my overwhelmed brain blocked out any further memories from this night. 

This wasn’t my first panic attack, nor would it be my last. At fifteen years of age, I was already a year into treatment for severe psychiatric symptoms that had plagued me all my life (intensifying greatly upon adolescence). Instead of carefree mall visits with friends, my afternoons and weekends were spent visiting doctors who tried tirelessly to work out the source of my paranoia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and memory loss. I tried every method under the sun to find relief—from talk therapy to exposure-response prevention (ERP) therapy, to cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). Though I always worked hard at the program du jour, any positive effects ranged from short-lived to downright nonexistent. Psychotropic medications elicited a similar non-response, and they often came with unpleasant (sometimes even scary) side effects. 

During my sophomore year of college, I embarked on another round of ERP. Exposure and response prevention is considered the gold standard of treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder, but the process is mentally and emotionally grueling. Despite this, I was determined to give it my all. I’d reached the end of my rope: after years of fighting tooth and nail, this felt like my last hope for a chance at life not consumed by severe mental illness. 

I followed the program to the letter, and the first few months looked promising. However, any minor stressor in my life seemed to set me back to square one. By the fourth month with no lasting progress to show for my efforts, I was sinking slowly into despair. Nothing I did worked — so why was I even trying? 

One day during this period, I made an offhanded comment to my therapist (a devoted, caring, and observant clinician who had been with me since the beginning of my treatment) about being overwhelmed by the glaring fluorescent lights in a store. I’d been so overwhelmed, in fact, that I’d had to simply walk out without buying the item I’d been looking for. She paused, then said, “Hmm, let’s try something.” She proceeded to ask me a series of questions that seemed random and unconnected, yet incredibly specific to my experience. 

Yes, I do wear my socks inside out to avoid the seam. 

Yes, sounds can feel physically painful, even those that don’t seem to bother others. 

“Have you ever been evaluated by an occupational therapist?” she asked me. “Would you be willing to try?” 

I was at first confused by the question, since my shallow understanding of an occupational therapist’s role was limited to “the person who helps stroke victims learn to use their hands again” (a life-giving task, no doubt, but unrelated to my experience). But I was desperate and willing to try anything. 

“I suppose it couldn’t hurt to try.” 

That afternoon, I cold-called Jennifer DeMastrie, pediatric occupational therapist, and left a hopelessly awkward, unsteady voicemail asking if she could help me. She returned my call within minutes, and we scheduled an appointment. Two weeks later, I was on the floor of her office being evaluated. 

Ms. Jenn’s gentle, kind, demeanor put me instantly at ease. She addressed the list of sensory-related concerns that my therapist had encouraged me to prepare in advance, along with some information-gathering of her own. But despite the continued specificity of her initial questions, I remained skeptical. What does feeling suffocated by clothing have to do with the gaps in my memory? How can gagging when I apply sunscreen possibly be related to the OCD rituals that govern my life? 

“Okay, let’s do a test,” Ms. Jenn said. She told me to sit in the center of a spin board — an apparatus that resembled a human-scale lazy susan — and directed me to fix my eyes on a given point. Slowly, she began to turn the board. Within seconds, my body and mind were flooded with the panicked haze that I’d attributed for years to some disordered psychiatric mechanism. My skepticism was shattered. 

My recall of the next few moments is predictably foggy. Crystal clear, though, is the memory of the instant relief I experienced after Ms. Jenn used a physioball to apply deep pressure to my body as I lay on the floor, recovering. I was stunned. Not only had she induced and resolved altered “states of mind” using physical means, but she had done so with great attention and compassion. I’d had an abundance of excellent experiences with medical professionals, but never before had I felt so immediately understood. 

In under ten minutes, I’d gone from somewhat hesitant about occupational therapy to completely sold. 

“Let’s do this.” 

Over the next several visits, Ms. Jenn educated me on my unique sensory profile and gave me exercises to regulate my nervous system. While these exercises pushed me to do things out of my comfort zone (and often looked silly in the process), each one brought clear benefit. Progressing through the occupational therapy program taught me to tune in to my body’s needs and respond proactively, long before the crisis point. After less than three months, I felt stronger and more stable than I ever had. Ms. Jenn ensured I was equipped with any tools necessary to maintain this new balance, and she discharged me from her care. 

Ten weeks of occupational therapy provided me with deep, lasting relief that years of previous therapy and medications had failed to bring. The connection between my psychiatric and neurological experiences finally made sense: when my nervous system was regulated, my brain no longer had to fight for survival using disorderly weapons. 

At the time of writing, it has been six months since I finished formal OT treatment. My life today would be unrecognizable to my past self. For the first time in my life, I no longer plan my day around avoiding “triggering” situations. I am discovering my sense of style, as my outfits are no longer limited to a small handful of items my body can tolerate. Hours of the day previously spent engaging in compulsive rituals are now freed up for spending time doing things that make life worthwhile. Next week, I will celebrate five months free of all psychiatric medications— all while still enjoying near-total remission of the symptoms that placed me on the drugs in the first place. My role as the “mental patient” is finished; now, I can focus on roles of my choosing: university student, physical therapy technician, daughter, sister, musician, volunteer, friend. 

I also attended my first concert last Saturday. The energy in the theater was incredible—novel, yet somehow familiar. As my voice got lost in the sea of cheering fans, I realized what the strobe lights and throbbing bass brought to mind: the high school dance, all those years ago. I momentarily stopped singing to just breathe it all in, looking from my smiling friends, up to the stage, down to the cute crochet top that would have suffocated me mere months before. What would have once been a sensory nightmare was now a lovely, memorable night out with friends. 

This is it. This is normalcy. This is living.