◉≋ OCD, Apologies, and the Body’s Unresolved Signal

"One of the hardest things about living with OCD is that people think apologies automatically resolve harm. But OCD is not simply overthinking. Sometimes it is the nervous system becoming trapped inside unresolved signal while the world expects your body to move on before it has fully processed rupture."

◉≋ I KNOW TINGS

I Know Tings explores neurodivergence, OCD, autism, embodiment, plant medicine, regulation, memory, and the many ways the body communicates before language arrives. These essays trace signals that are often dismissed, pathologized, or misunderstood, asking what becomes possible when we learn to listen to the body’s own ways of knowing.

◉≋ OCD, Apologies, and the Body’s Unresolved Signal

Sometimes the apology isn’t about what happened. Sometimes it’s the body trying to resolve a signal that never finished transmitting. OCD can turn uncertainty into weather, sending the same thought back through the system again and again in search of relief. The question is not whether the signal is real. The question is whether it still belongs to the present.

One of the hardest things about living with OCD is that people think apologies automatically resolve harm.

Especially when you are fat.

Especially when you are dark-skinned.

Especially when people have spent your entire life projecting strength onto your body while ignoring the actual architecture of your mind.

People are often very comfortable causing harm to me.

Pulling me into confusion.

Projection.

Misreadings.

Emotional chaos they created themselves.

But the moment they apologize, there is this expectation that I should instantly soften.

Instantly reset.

Instantly become emotionally accessible again.

And that is not how my brain works.

OCD is not simply “overthinking.” 

It is not just being organized. 

It is not perfectionism. 

It is not wanting things clean.

OCD can feel like the nervous system becoming trapped inside unresolved signal.

An apology may emotionally resolve something very quickly for another person.

Especially for people whose brains move rapidly between moments, conversations, and emotional states.

But OCD can do almost the opposite.

Where some minds shift away from conflict quickly, OCD can glue attention onto a rupture and refuse to let go. Especially if the situation triggered shame, uncertainty, blame, hyper-responsibility, confusion, injustice, or false accusation.

And when the thing my brain is stuck on is something I did not actually do? 

It can become even harder to metabolize.

Because my mind keeps trying to solve something that never should have been attached to me in the first place.

People hear “I’m sorry” and think the loop should close automatically.

But if my brain cannot understand: 

why you chose to involve me, 

why I became the target, 

why the rupture happened, 

or why your emotional chaos became my responsibility to process, 

then the signal keeps firing.

The body keeps checking. 

Replaying. 

Reviewing. 

Trying to restore safety and coherence.

And after spending most of my life undiagnosed, that process became deeply wired into my nervous system.

People do not understand what happens to a brain forced to manually process decades of harm without language, support, or neurological framing.

Especially when you come from families where rupture repeats endlessly. 

Where accountability never fully lands. 

Where harm cycles through generations while everyone pretends the performance of “moving on” is the same thing as repair.

Some of us learned very early that our nervous systems would never receive full resolution. 

So the brain keeps searching for it. 

Keeps checking for it. 

Keeps trying to make the story make sense.

And being Black inside that? 

Being fat inside that? 

Makes it even more complicated.

Because people project endurance onto us. 

They project resilience onto us. 

They project emotional labor onto us.

People expect us to absorb impact gracefully. 

To forgive quickly. 

To regulate everyone else while actively dysregulating ourselves.

And when we cannot? 

We become “too sensitive.” 

“Difficult.” 

“Holding grudges.” 

“Negative.” 

“Stuck.”

Meanwhile the body is still trying to metabolize years of unresolved rupture.

So no. 

I do not care very much about quick apologies. 

And I care even less about forced forgiveness performances.

Because accountability is not speed. 

Repair is not speed. 

Understanding is not speed.

And OCD does not disappear simply because someone else emotionally moved on before my nervous system had the ability to.

◉≋ OCD, Apologies, and the Body’s Unresolved Signal