Washington Commanders’ kicker Zane Gonzalez became a meme when Sunday Night Football insisted on focusing on him fixing his shoes and hair before lining up for the game-winning kick in the NFL Wild Card Playoffs.
In an astounding lack of awareness by the broadcast team, they referred to Gonzalez’s actions as “fidgeting.” NBC’s Twitter account highlighted it, while others called them “tics.” The truth is that Gonzalez is open about having Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), and it’s worthwhile to discuss what that is, and importantly what it is not.
What is Obsessive Compulsive Disorder?
OCD is very common, with over 200,000 cases diagnosed annually in the United States. Onset of symptoms commonly happens at childhood, or can present themselves during hormonal changes in puberty — it’s also possible to see an onset in adulthood, though this is less common.
At its heart, OCD is marked by two distinct elements: Obsessions, and compulsions. The obsessive element is uncontrollable recurring feelings that something bad will happen, which causes tremendous stress and anxiety. The only way to lessen these feelings in someone with untreated OCD is fulfilling attached compulsions to the thoughts, which can range in severity. These compulsions are conscious actions (unlike tics) designed to suppress the feelings or dread or anxiety that come from the compulsions, which in turn snowball. The more compulsions are fulfilled, the greater power the obsessions have.
For example, someone might have a crippling concern about leaving their oven on, with the obsession being that their house could burn down. So the paired compulsion is to check and ensure the oven is off, but with OCD this can manifest itself as checking the oven is off 20 or 30 times, sometimes branching into additional compulsions like exiting and re-entering a room.
This is compounded, as a person with OCD often has multiple obsessive/compulsive chains. This can make the relatively simple act of leaving the house or using the restroom into a multi-stage routine of obsessions and compulsions that use up time, essentially making the individual captive to their obsessions.
“It affected me a lot more as a young kid. It’s just little thoughts, little funny habits that I do. I’ve done a lot of research on it. Specifically, sometimes I rinse my hands before kicks, and I was kind of curious about that. But that’s one of the most common things that people with OCD do. It instantly makes you just feel relieved. I don’t know why, if it’s just a placebo effect. It’s not something I love having. But it just is what it is, and I’ve learned to deal with it.”
What Gonzalez describes as “relief” is the heart of why people with OCD undertake their compulsions. They often feel uneasy or anxious until they are able to fulfill a compulsion. Treatment for OCD ranges in medication management, typically paired with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), and exposure/response therapy.
What isn’t Obsessive Compulsive Disorder?
The most common and incorrect presentation of OCD in media is conflating the disorder with being a “neat freak” or a “germaphobe.” This was particularly damaging in the 2002 TV series Monk, in which the main character Adrian Monk was terrified of germs and used it to comedic effect.
In more recent years the term “OCD” has become parlance for people saying they’re organized, neat, or particular — which is deeply offensive to those who have the disorder. A 2009 study found that obsessions about contamination and compulsions over cleaning were actually present in a small number of diagnosed individuals.
Only 1% of people in the study had a contamination obsession, with only 2% having a contamination/washing pairing. This is compared to 16% of studied individuals being worried about causing harm to others, with the compulsion of checking on something.
There is no single catch-all to the disorder. Obsessions and compulsions can be fairly broad, or deeply personal — and undiagnosed individuals often describe feeling trapped by their compulsions.
Zan Gonzalez’s OCD doesn’t define him
As Gonzalez told the Charlotte Observer, it’s a disorder he has learned to deal with — but not something he loves having. Nobody with OCD enjoys having the disorder, which is why minimizing compulsions as “funny” is hurtful. Fixing hair multiple times or adjusting socks over and over again might seem peculiar to someone on the outside, but it’s a physical manifestation of a tremendous amount of anxiety or stress triggering OCD compulsions.
We can celebrate Gonzalez’s kick, ending the Commanders’ playoff drought, and everything that went into that moment without making it all about the lead-up to the kick. Gonzalez is a kicker who has OCD, not the “OCD Kicker,” as he’s been described by some.
It’s a good reminder for all of us that often times something that seems weird or bizarre has a much deeper story behind it, and we’d be better off to take a beat and see if there’s something more than meets the eye.
