An App for OCD

You would have to be locked behind bars and in solitary confinement to have not heard about or seen the latest television commercial for the iPhone. “If you don’t have an iPhone,” the advertisement frankly admonishes…It then goes on to chide that you don’t have a music store so you can’t download music. You can’t pay for your coffee. You can’t easily purchase an airline ticket (and will hence probably never travel). Or, as my daughter Kate just called from her iPhone to tell me, you can’t overcome OCD.

When we view the ad during every TV break, I jokingly lift my fingers to make the “Loser” sign across my forehead indicating the underlying message—you are one unless you have one. My husband adds his tease to the long list of what you’re missing, “You’ll never have sex again!” But Kate has uncovered her very own App, one for which Apple should earn the Nobel Prize.

Kate was diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder some years ago. Like with many such conditions, medication tempers the nagging symptoms but does not entirely remove the underlying anxiety. Even under the cloud of Zoloft, her brain still actively spins and ruminates—for her most especially when it comes to making sure the door is, in fact, locked and the coffee maker actually turned off. She cannot sleep at night without checking doors and windows a dozen times. She finds it difficult to leave the house for fear the toaster isn’t really unplugged. When using the remote control to set her car alarm it sounds like The Roadrunner taunting Wily Coyote. Beep beep! Beep beep! Beep beep! Beep beep! When she lived at home her brother bellowed out the window after she’d pulled into the driveway and beeped like a trash truck backing up, “It’s locked, already!”

Recently she heard about a friend whose wife suffers from the never-ending nightmare. Her smart solution has become to toss the hair dryer and the iron into the back seat of her car. Throughout the day she can look at them so her brain connects that all is well—and disconnected. Kate considered this strategy and thought it rather brilliant. Trouble is, she would need to add her sizable espresso machine, built-in oven, and four-slice toaster to that list. What to do about that pesky front door? She’d tried getting counseling, reading self-help books, and watching the Reality TV program “Obsessed,” but to no avail. The other day the answer struck her from cyberspace: iPhone to the rescue!

“Mom! I take a picture of the door lock in the “lock” position. I snap a photo of the toaster with its cord dangling over the counter. A shot of the blow dryer lying in the middle of the bed, the stove burner knobs in the off position, and I am good to go!” She can look at the pictures later to reassure herself that she’s living a life unplugged. “I can even e-mail them to you!” No thanks.

Whereas most consumers have an iPhone so they can access all the foo-foo features while their self-esteem elevates because they are so trendy, what does that really get them aside from faster-paced and uber-connected lifestyles? Kate is the one who has uncovered the practical use for tripped-out technology, the App that measurably improves her everyday existence.

Her self-confidence has soared as she contemplates going off Zoloft so that she can become pregnant without it coursing through her bloodstream.

“Do you keep checking the pictures?” I sheepishly ask, as I imagine my grandchild wailing in his crib while his mother flicks through a household appliance album of images on her phone. Her response is reassuring.

“That’s the best part. Because I know I have the photos, I never have to look at them!”

I won’t tell her to check that her phone is in her purse.