Kalista Dwyer spends thousands of dollars a month at the hands of her OCD that controls how she dresses, eats, works, and socialises.
Aside from the gruelling emotional toll of an illness like obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), the condition can place immense pressure on an individual’s finances.
Kalista Dwyer at just 22 years old 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 pay checks on, it’s left me without savings and, in the past, a job,” the young US woman revealed in a TikTok video.
A particularly pricey element of Ms Dwyer’s condition was the unreasonable but unavoidable compulsion to buy clothing 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 was also immediately repulsed by clothing items if they reminded her of a bad experience, or if she had negative, intrusive thoughts while wearing them.
“Let’s say I’m wearing a shirt, and while I’m wearing it something unpleasant happens. I’ll forever think it’s bad luck,” Ms Dwyer said.
Her OCD had also given her the false belief that all items on sale had something wrong with them, meaning she could only ever buy products at their full price.
The fear was not exclusive to clothing however, with Ms Dwyer feeling a need to buy pre-portioned packs of cleaning bleach because “I don’t trust myself to correctly measure it out”.
Buying the packs were usually at least 50 per cent more expensive she said, with the purchases also dependent on what mood she was in.
“I’m always switching between if non-toxic products are better for you, or actually cleaning products are better for you,” she said.
Her purchases outnumbered a household’s typical needs too, given her compulsion to maintain certain quantities of products in her home at any given time.
Another huge expense she had to face was food, which she regularly spent close to $1000 a month on.
“We all know that I constantly think my food is expired,” she said.
The extensive list of expenses has completely drained Ms Dwyer’s bank account, with the young woman admitting, “I should have more money than I do”.
“But my OCD has a different plan, and has put me in debt before,” she said.
“In 2019, my OCD treatment alone cost $40,000 (A$56,000).”
She said it was an additional stress on top of what was already a complicated mental illness.
“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.”
Ms Dwyer’s OCD also affects her ability to perform her job as an influencer, with issues like feeling the need to delete perfectly acceptable clips due because she was having a bad thought at the time of filming them.
She also feels “triggered” by certain digital sounds, and has a compulsion to touch her ear frequently while recording a voice note out of fear she will lose her hearing if she doesn’t.
Additionally, each video she produces on her computer’s program needs to be exported four times, instead of the usual one, before she will feel comfortable using it anywhere.
Ms Dwyer has however come a long way in the last few years, having been previously all but entirely immobilised by her OCD to a point she was terrified of food, cleaners, alcohol, music, and TV.
“It got to a point where I couldn’t even blink, walk or look at something without compulsing,” she said.
At one stage, she even called police on herself because she believed she was “crazy”.
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