Graphic Novel Review: Puzzled – A Memoir about Growing Up with OCD
Author: Pan Cooke
Format: Paperback
Pages: 224
Publish Date: April 2024
Publisher: Rocky Pond Books (imprint of Penguin Random House)
Catalog ID: ISBN: 978-0593615621
Where to buy: https://bookshop.org/lists/recently-reviewed-on-graphicmedicine-org
Author website: https://www.instagram.com/thefakepan/?hl=en
Review
by Soph Myers-Kelley
Puzzled, by Pan Cooke, is the perfect introduction to OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) for a middle schooler who knows someone with the condition or is experiencing it themselves. In this graphic memoir, Cooke shares the story of when he first started noticing his own symptoms of OCD (though he didn’t know what to call it yet) and the multiple ways it showed up in his pre-teen and teenage life. Using the imagery of an unsolved jigsaw puzzle and puzzle pieces, Cooke shows how wrong life can feel for him until he completes a ritual the right way, be it praying “Hail Mary’s” enough times, doing his meticulous and lengthy nighttime routine, or counting calories/restricting meals. As a child, Cooke doesn’t know why he feels compelled to behave in this way and assumes he might be possessed by the devil or be “crazy.”
While Cooke writes about what might be seen as scary topics to young readers, the book itself keeps the topics digestible for young readers who want to better understand OCD. Cooke shows several ways that his OCD plays out in his childhood and how it made his life harder; making it difficult to reach out and maintain friendships, enjoy school experiences, eat, attend religious events, and sleep. Our narrator/protagonist shares his fears that he knows are unrealistic, like, what if he wrote a terribly mean comment in a classmates get well card; or a raunchy photo ends up in his assignment that he turns in and he gets in trouble (when he only heard a rumor that a classmate got caught with such pictures and he didn’t have any himself!); or what if he swears in the middle of church? While these fears have little to no basis in logic and he knows this; due to his OCD he still feels an intense fear that these may come true and is compelled to prevent them from happening. His life feels as if he is at war with his thoughts, and before he understands what he might have and how to get help, the thoughts regularly control his actions through ritual and routine. This is an incredibly stressful situation for a young boy. He largely kept his feelings to himself, once trying to reach out to a friend but being misunderstood. His isolation made his feelings and symptoms much worse.
Luckily, Pan’s story is an uplifting one. Now a high schooler, one way his OCD manifested was through a fear of having life-threatening, terminal health conditions. While looking up some new physical health concerns he has, he decides to google the question “Why am I obsessed?”. It didn’t take long for him to find information about OCD, and while he didn’t immediately seek out help from a doctor, he was eventually (almost ten years after his first symptoms started, now a late teen) able to get OCD-specific therapy treatment. With the support of a kind professional, Cooke models for the reader what kind of therapy is most used to help treat OCD (cognitive behavioral therapy) and how he lives largely free of his ruminations and routines now that he’s an adult.
Cooke has created a time machine with his book and is reaching out to his younger childhood self. He is telling that young boy, “It’s okay, it’s not your fault, you are not your thoughts and your feelings. There is a way through this, and you can get help”. He especially hopes that this book helps young readers in any way that it can. If you have a child in your life with OCD, or a child who has a friend or family member with OCD, this book could help them better understand what it’s like and feel less alone! I would recommend.
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Soph Myers-Kelley is a medical librarian, herbalist, and activist living in North Carolina. They can be contacted at https://www.smyerskelley.com/ and followed at https://www.instagram.com/thesofakingofficial/
Originally posted on graphicmedicine.org here: https://www.graphicmedicine.org/comic-reviews/puzzled-a-memoir-about-growing-up-with-ocd-2/