Woman shares the extraordinary cost of living with OCD
Kalista Dwyer’s life has been ravaged by her obsessive compulsive disorder - both emotionally and financially.
The 22-year-old has shared an insight to her OCD by telling her followers on TikTok how much she spends to cater to the demands of her illness.
While walking through a Target in the US, Kalista says she has experienced the disorder to such an extreme degree that it has left her with crushing debt, while treatment has set her back almost $60,000 in one year alone.
“OCD has devastated me financially. It’s what I spend most of my paychecks on, it’s left me without savings and, in the past, a job,” she revealed.
A particularly pricey element of her condition comes with the unavoidable compulsion to buy clothes in accordance with her frequently changing “safe” colours.
“I’m constantly changing my safe colour, therefore I have to replace any clothes that are not that colour,” she explained.
She is also forced to replace any clothing that she has had a bad experience or “intrusive thought” while wearing them.
Kalista’s OCD has also given her the false belief that if she sees something on sale in a shop that there is “something wrong with it”, making her always buy products at full price.
Her household purchases often outnumber that of a typical home, given her compulsion to maintain certain quantities of things at any given time.
Another huge expense she faces is with food, as she is constantly under the belief that her food has expired and gone rotten, causing her to “spend upwards of $700 a month on groceries.”
Kalista’s extensive list of expenses has drained her bank account, as she admits “I should have more money than I do.”
She says her spending to appease her compulsions is an additional stress on top of the already complicated medical system in the US.
“So yeah, being mentall ill is really f***ing expensive and it furthers the conversation on why mental health care is a privilege in America.”
Image credits: TikTok @kalistadwyer