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A lot of my work as a teacher was managing not only my own nervous system but helping to coregulate a room full of teenagers.
It was actually a strength of mine, I believe, but it weighed heavily on me.
If that was my only job—if I could have worked on social-emotional well-being and success strategies all day long with my students—I might have been less burned out. But being a teacher entails so much more than that.
There were lesson plans, professional development, district goals, assessments, the political landscape, homework, chaperoning, breaking up fights, soothing tears, talking through drama, teaching and reteaching…and then suddenly this strange new virus was making its way around the world?
It was a lot.
Here I was, 13 years since the onset of severe obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), 10 years since my official diagnosis, and eight years since beginning cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and racking up wins—now living in a postpandemic era. At its worse, we were carrying hand sanitizer, wiping off our groceries, and forgoing handshakes without question. But as others moved on from the moment, I became solidly stuck in these rituals.
Prior to the pandemic, I was rarely home. I worked in a building with 800 people, and traveled with my son to show choir and dance competitions. I hung out at bars and restaurants with friends and played music. I went to the movies. I attended workshops. I frequented places with people breathing and singing and laughing and hugging.
But now, a big part of me just wanted to stay home forever. It didn’t matter how lonely or depressed I got. It didn’t matter how bored I was. It didn’t matter how frustrated my family was. I just couldn’t see how it would be worth the risk. I wanted to avoid going out into the world at all costs.
But that, of course, while fun to think about on the surface, was actually really lonely and sad underneath it all. It would mean that OCD had won and I’d be alone.
Ultimately, I had to ask myself: Should safety and cleanliness be the driving force behind my decisions?
As I continued to slowly adapt to life outside the confines of my bubble, things inside me spiraled downward. I could barely leave my house, except for absolutely necessary events for my kids. Even at home, the anxiety and panic overwhelmed me at times, leaving me feeling worthless, irritable, and probably not that much fun to be around most days. I could no longer reasonably request that my family stay home, stay masked, and not live their lives. Every sniffle, sneeze, or cough still sounded an alarm in my head. Moreover, because I couldn’t control the outside world, I dipped back into habits that feigned control over my inner world.
How could I keep the germs at bay? Don’t touch; wash. Don’t ingest; wash. Don’t go; wash. And out in the world? Mask, keep my distance, sanitize. Wash, wash, wash.
Simultaneously, I tumbled back down the rabbit hole of food avoidance because of fear of contamination, and was skirting around dangerous territory with my eating. The weight started coming off, and the headaches rebounded. This time around, though, I knew I had to maintain enough calories, so I tried to find substitutions for foods quickly being taken off my safe-to-eat list. I knew I needed to have enough sustenance even if there was little variety.
The challenges didn’t stop there.
It started as just a quick flash in my mind: I’d envision the skin atop my head splitting down the middle and slowly slipping off my skull, just like you’d see in a cartoon. It was like a human suit of sorts, the top layer of myself, sliding down either side of my face and flopping onto my shoulders. It wasn’t really scary. I didn’t see a skeleton of myself in my mind but rather another face that was still my own.
When the image of unzipping my skin repeated a few more times, I wondered if it was metaphorical. But the message was potent and clear: It was time to shed this layer. It was time to focus on becoming the next version of myself, to become the one who doesn’t allow fear to call the shots anymore, to become the one who deepens her connections, steps out of her comfort zone, and shows up in leadership in a fundamentally new way.
It was time to shed the skin of fear and truly create a life I loved.
I began with curiosity: How many layers of this fear that I wear are my own? Where do these thick rows of panic in my brain begin? What is the purpose of this suffering? How can I lessen its hold?
I wondered how much of the fear I carried was the result of ancestral trauma. If those changes in how a gene is expressed can also then be inherited by future generations, then it made sense to me that I’d be more prone to anxiety and the desire to seek feelings of safety because it was buried in my genetic coding.
The further inward I looked, the more I understood that what I also struggled with was who I would be without fear. And the questions followed:
What if this fear wasn’t even mine?
What if the layers I continued to peel off revealed a me I did not know or understand?
What if it hurt to unbury the truth of who I am? What was that truth?
What if other people don’t like who I become?
What if, what if, what if…
What if I wanted to become someone who did things she desired to do regardless of fear? How could I begin to not only understand but also believe that the comfort and familiarity of fear weren’t serving me any longer? Fear may have been all I’d ever known, but it didn’t have to be the only thing I was.
And so these questions shifted from the risks to the benefits:
What if becoming the truth of who I am allows me to connect deeper with every soul I meet?
What if becoming the truth of who I am allows others to do the same?
What if without fear dictating all my actions, I am able to live with more joy, more love, more laughter, and more creativity?
This shift in perspective from the negative what ifs to the positive ones helped me get unstuck. The only other questions left were these:
How do I get there?
How do I begin to believe that the version of who I dream to become has worth or value?
How do I get the support I need to move through the debilitating present moment and step bravely into my future self?
The answer, of course, came back to willingness. I had to be willing to take the risk, do the work, use the tools, and get the support I needed so that I could step more fully into the next best version of myself.
Central to the experience of OCD, anxiety, panic, and phobias is often doing whatever it takes to avoid the things that trigger panic attacks in the first place. The problem for me was that the list of things that often triggered panic attacks grew so expansive, I realized that instead of creating a beautiful safe bubble to exist in, I had just spent the last two years rebuilding the bars of a prison I’d already escaped from once before.
I had to notice that panic sensations were not only survivable but also changeable. I also had to understand that what I feared most was the feeling of fear rather than the possibility of whatever I was afraid of happening—actually happening.
I locked that new thought into a mantra that I could return to: Panic sensations are not dangerous. This helped me not latch on to the thoughts that something horrible was happening inside my body. It helped me allow the feelings to occur, move through me, and dissipate. This mantra helped me increase my ability to do daily tasks with far more ease. My perception of what I was able and willing to do shifted.
Was I unafraid? No, but I was willing—and I was brave.
Layer by layer, like the skin of a molted snake, I shed parts of myself in order to grow. Renewal is part of our evolution. My first name, Renee, actually means reborn, and I used to believe that meant I’d have to continually change my outer world in order to create a new life for myself: the new job, the new relationship, the new house. What I now understand is that it takes deep inner work to create lasting, fulfilling outer change.
It’s natural to notice constriction during times of change; resistance comes up to preserve the status quo. To be better, though, we have to do better.
When it comes to OCD and anxiety, there isn’t necessarily a cure, but there is better. When we show up willing to look through the lens of curiosity and brave enough to surrender to the fear, we can continue to take action toward creating a better life for ourselves, not just in spite of our diagnoses but often because of them.
~
This is an excerpt from Every Day, I’m Brave: Cultivating Resilience to Gain Freedom from Fear (Wonderwell Press, August 8, 2025) by Renee Zukin.
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