I didn't know I had a mental illness.

For years, I struggled with OCD- a 24/7 hell that dominated my life- without even knowing what OCD was.

Of course, I had a conception of obsessive-compulsive disorder, just like we all do. But that was so radically different from my experience that I could never have identified it except by pure luck (I stumbled upon a personal story similar to my own and only then began some heavy research). The widespread notion of the disorder ruled it out as a possibility, effectively preventing me from easily discovering the problem.

Besides blocking its true meaning from a young person longing for an answer, this inaccurate and limited idea of OCD also breeds instant misunderstanding when I bring up the subject. If I tell someone I have OCD, they assume they understand, when in reality, what they imagine is literally just wrong. But they are unlikely to learn more because they believe they know.

Every time you make an Obsessive ______ Disorder joke about something you enjoy or say you're "so OCD" because you like your space clean or organized, everyone around you becomes more and more sure that they "get" what the disorder is. They don't.

I'm not here to discuss OCD, though. My purpose here is to address the damaging effects of words. When we normalize terms in the wrong contexts, we hurt people. We spread misunderstanding. Worse yet, we spread what people think is understanding.

Words are far more than mere definitions. They always come with ideas and values and associations. This is a beautiful part of the language. It is also a dangerous one.

If you don't mind me pulling in a bit more extreme case, I'd like to mention that we also create harm by failing to use certain words. For example, when we fail to identify violent white Christian extremists as terrorists, we promote xenophobia. When we don't refer to problematic comments or behaviors as, for example, homophobic, because the word is so strong, we reduce the happenings to less, perhaps, than their effects truly merited.

We know that words are powerful. Some need to be used in more cases, others in fewer, others in radically different ones. But our word choices are not minor. These cases combine to promote systemic issues, legitimize bad action, and create misunderstanding. What you say matters.