Just Checking: Scenes from the Life of an Obsessive-Compulsive

I use this book when I teach my Psy101 course (phobias, OCD and hypochondriasis- I read a few blurbs to illustrate to the class these topics). I always have at least 2 students a semester buy this book because they find her story so interesting. I recommend this for anyone who teachs psychology!

This is absolutely one of the sharpest, smartest, most honest pieces of writing that I have ever read. Emily Colas is extraordinarily talented and I will eagerly look forward to her next endevour. I am convinced that Colas could tackle any topic with only stellar results. She has the heart of an angel and the wit and style of a superstar. Congatulations, Emily!

Emily's dry humor allows the reader to finish this appalling and heartrending account of OCD without getting too depressed over the author's bizarre behavior. One is left simply amazed that her husband stuck around for as long as he did. Even Emily's picture on the book jacket transmits a sense that profound psychological distress lies just underneath her quite comely exterior. The reader can only hope the author has been permitted, through therapy, a more serene existence.

With the help of medication Emily Colas has managed to sit down and knock out a book that takes you inside the head of an obsessive compulsive. It's not cute, it's not quirky, it's not charmingly eccentric or any of the other adjectives common TV portrayals of this illness would lead you to believe. It is a living hell that confines Colas to her house and severes her links from society with extreme fear and a mind bent on extrapolating threat from every detail of life. Spots on the sidewalk? Must be disease carrying blood. But through shoes? Well, they soles of them are worn thin in some places...Dinner date with an attractive guy presents a dilemma: switch your poisoned plate fo his while he's in the kitch fetching salt? But then you might get fingered for his murder. Eat it yourself and die? And Colas ends up marrying this guy, who ends up being part of a household where rituals include buying six toothbrushes for colas and then helping her inspect the outer and inner wrapping for air-tightness. Tasting her food at restaurants to be sure there are no ground up hypodermic needles in there...naturally, in spite of "in sickness and in health" it gets to be too much. So Colas hides her fears from her husband for awhile, successfully, until she gives it away one day when she nears the TV to change the volume just as the character starts to vomit blood, and Colas can't contain her terror that the TV screen character may have exposed her to some disease...Cola's writes with candor and lack of self pity. She dispassionately flays the mind of an OCD, and she does so in a spare, no-frills style that includes everything you need to know and no more. It's riveting and horrifying at the same time, and Colas has done a great service towards the understanding of mental illness.

Emily Colas is an amazing writer. I loved JUST CHECKING and read it in one sitting. Colas reminds me of David Sedaris--her humor is biting, her perceptions keen, and the events she recounts are eminently memorable. This isn't a book only for obsessive-compulsives--it's for everyone who recognizes that type of behavior in themselves. From AS GOOD AS IT GETS to Howard Stern, to our own personal obsessions about gas leaks or catching a disease from a public phone, this book is about a topic to which we can all relate.