OCD obsessive compulsive disorder and sociopath story

A Life Lived Ridiculously is the story of one girl with obsessive compulsive disorder, and what happened when her parents, desperate to find her a husband, inadvertently set her up with a sociopath...

Maxine’s brain is stuck. Everything around her feels wrong and the only way to fix it is to check, double-check, rearrange and count everything. What Maxine can’t fix though is her parents’ constant nagging over the absence of a Jewish husband. A humiliation that is further compounded when her younger brother runs off with Miss Perfect.

Then she meets Sam, a smooth-talking charmer with the weight of the world on his shoulders, and enough terminal diseases to wipe out a small village. Maxine decides that Sam is her salvation, never mind that his life is more depressing than a Greek tragedy, and others are urging her to get away from him. The problem is that Sam has Maxine under his spell. Will Maxine escape from Sam before it’s too late... ?

This is the story of how Maxine deals with life in the real world, fending off a sociopath, dealing with her family who is always on hand with imaginative ways to criticize her, concocting outrageous schemes with her friend Tina, all in a bid to conquer her OCD and deal with the pain of losing her brother to Miss Perfect.

And when all else fails, Maxine will tell you that nothing quite compares to flattening someone with your car…


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Author Bio

Dr Annabelle R Charbit grew up in London, UK, and has been writing since 2006, when her comedy play, Sound Advice, was performed by CP Theatre Productions in London, UK.

In 2007, she was published in The London Paper and in the British Neuroscience Association’s Summer Bulletin. In 2010 she wrote for TheFrisky.com, an online women's magazine who commissioned her after noticing her humorous blog, Crazy in a Crazy World.

Dr Charbit holds a PhD in Neuroscience from University College London and has been working at UCSF in San Francisco.

Her inspiration behind A Life Lived Ridiculously stemmed from her research work as a neuroscientist.

To quote, "I wanted to write a story from the point of view of someone with distorted thinking. As a neuroscientist, I am interested in mental illness, and especially obsessive compulsive disorder. I have OCD myself, so had no trouble making the character, Maxine, suffer, and horribly so. There are too many people still suffering in silence from symptoms of OCD that are not written in all the text books nor publicized in shocking television documentaries. Believe it or not, many sufferers of OCD are not obsessed by hygiene, checking the oven or hoarding. These are the OCD sufferers who suffer in embarrassed silence.

Talking about OCD can be hard enough, because words often fall short of illustrating the true depth of pain and anxiety experienced by the sufferer. To quote from A Life Lived Ridiculously,

'As I listened to the words pour from my mouth, I could have thumped myself in the face. Not because the words evoked emotions, rather I was disappointed by the extent to which the words trivialized the mental anguish associated with these decorating dilemmas. It was like suffering from a broken leg but only having the vocabulary to describe a scraped knee. Words just didn’t do justice to the pain. How do you tell a stranger that you don’t like the shape of your lampshade and at the same time expect them to understand that you are describing a pain that inhabits you fully, inserts itself between your cells like cement and wears your skin like a coat? I just sounded like I was whining.'

My aim is to use Maxine and her excruciatingly embarrassing, non-textbook symptoms to give these people a voice.

Sociopaths are fascinating, because they are everywhere (4% of the population). Whether a spouse, partner, colleague, relative or friend, most people (whether they know it or not) have a sociopath in their life. I had one in my life and found him fascinating. The way they can look you right in the eye and lie. The fact that they are capable of anything because they are not limited by the same moral boundaries as the rest of us. Even when they talk, they have this incredible ability to monologue incessantly whilst actually revealing nothing. I wanted specifically to capture this trait in my sociopath’s voice.

What is particularly interesting about mixing the OCD sufferer with the sociopath is combing a person who feels constant mental pain with one who feels almost nothing at all."

A Life Lived Ridiculously is Dr. Charbit's first novel.