Because We Are Bad

OCD and a Girl Lost in Thought

By: Lily Bailey

Narrated by: Lily Bailey

Written with the indelible power of Girl, Interrupted, Brain on Fire, and Reasons to Stay Alive, a lyrical, poignant memoir by a young woman about her childhood battle with debilitating obsessive compulsive disorder, and her hard-won journey to recovery.

By the age of thirteen, Lily Bailey was convinced she was bad. She had killed someone with a thought, spread untold disease, and ogled the bodies of other children. Only by performing an exhausting series of secret routines could she make up for what she’d done. But no matter how intricate or repetitive, no act of penance was ever enough.

Beautifully written and astonishingly intimate, Because We Are Bad recounts a childhood consumed by obsessive compulsive disorder. As a child, Bailey created a second personality inside herself—""I"" became ""we""—to help manifest compulsions that drove every minute of every day of her young life. Now she writes about the forces beneath her skin, and how they ordered, organized, and urged her forward. Lily charts her journey, from checking on her younger sister dozens of times a night, to ""normalizing"" herself at school among new friends as she grew older, and finally to her young adult years, learning—indeed, breaking through—to make a way for herself in a big, wide world that refuses to stay in check.

Charming and raw, harrowing and redemptive, Because We Are Bad is an illuminating and uplifting look into the mind and soul of an extraordinary young woman, and a startling portrait of OCD that allows us to see and understand this condition as never before.

Thank you x Infinity

I didn't know how much I needed to hear your story. It meant everything to me. I feel let of the hook in so many ways. Thank you for sharing your journey with the world.

Essential Read for OCD Relief & Understanding

Lily Bailey's experience is unique enough in the varied presentations of OCD to stand on its own. I think it's a seminal read for sufferers of covert obsessions and compulsions, or what is commonly referred to as "Pure OCD." Labelling aside, many people with OCD find that their symptoms are less obvious to those around them than the examples we often see in movies and on TV. Usually there is some kind of physical manifestation at some point or another, but often the disease can feel more mental, or ruminative. As it often traps its sufferers within their own minds, it can also tend to warp one's sense of identity into a twisted shape, and I believe Lily's story will help heal anyone who feels this kind of "identity OCD" presentation manifesting.

I also think friends and family of people with OCD could stand to gain a lot of perspective from a book such as this. It may be easier for some with the illness to introduce people to their struggles with this book as well.

I really love Lily's writing style. There is something desperate and dreamy in these words. Poetry sprinkles throughout the prose in a delicate, deliberate way, and may create pause in the listener as they take certain phrases in with their eyes closed, nodding and smiling. There are also times when the writing, as well as Bailey's humbling performance, brought me to tears. My experience of OCD is not unlike Ms. Bailey's in some ways. While Lily is not a professional voice actor, or narrator, her insights and experience come through in her voice more strongly felt than they otherwise could. There is also an interesting cultural element to this memoir, and a question to boot: What are the effects of posh British climate on a youth with OCD, and what if that youth were born common, only later to clamber to a higher class in life? What kind of complexes might that create? One could write a whole thesis on something like this.

In closing, Because We Are Bad is one of my favorite books, and probably my favorite book about OCD of all time. Definitely give it a listen.

Helped me so much with my OCD

I was at the end of my wits before listening to this book. Felt so alone and was ready to just end it all. The experiences shared in this book echoed in me but also helped me gain some incredible self help tips, and for the first time in years, optimism within my own self (alongside therapy). I hated myself to no end before reading this, and felt undeserving of anything, but after this book I regained some hope in myself and the world around me. Thank you so much!!

Heartbreakingly validating

This is an incredibly well written book! As someone with OCD it was so validating to hear Lily’s story. I felt like I was in her head and that she was in mine. I’m not sure how impactful this story would be for someone who does not struggle with OCD, but it gives such an important perspective into a commonly misunderstood illness. I cried multiple times for lily and my younger (and present) self.

Heartbreaking, Validating, Wonderful

Over 20 years ago, as a teenager, was diagnosed with OCD. At the time, I really wasn't quite sure it was accurate. I avoided sidewalk cracks and counted sometimes. I thought that was all there was to it. Years later, having discovered other diagnoses and having been treated for them, I realized something still didn't make sense. On a whim, I decided to listen to this book.

And it was me. Every silly fear of death and disease and accusation and being an awful person magnified exponentially. How fear of germs starts just with being told "you can't see them; they're everywhere" and blows up. The fear of accidental contact or looking at others for too long or in the wrong way or in the wrong context. Fears of doing things to harm someone that we'd never do. Obsessional reviewing of our interactions to try to neutralize them, organize them, make them go away. Fear that we really are awful for thinking the way we do, and can't tell anyone. Vivid, obsessional projections of the future that can completely obscure the present.

I have never felt so understood in my life. Thank you, Lily. Your work helped me finally take my largely internal compulsions seriously and bring them up to my current therapist. Others with OCD will find this book validating; I hope others who don't understand will read it, too, and find it illuminating. It is powerful and important.