Eddie Murphy has opened up about his journey with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), detailing how he went from not understanding the disorder to learning how to navigate it.
He shared it in the new Netflix documentary
Murphy, 64, opened up about his experience with OCD in his new Netflix documentary Being Eddie.
The disorder can feature a pattern of obsessive unwanted thoughts and fears that lead to repetitive behaviors, known as compulsions, which often come with discomfort.
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Murphy traces the disorder back to his childhood
The Shrek star said he can trace the obsessive behaviors back to his childhood explaining, “I didn’t know what it was.”
“I would go and check the stove in the kitchen and make sure all the gas was off in the kitchen.”
He’d stay there and repeatedly check the stove
“And I’d lay down for about, you know, five minutes, and I would get back up and go back in the kitchen and look at the stove again and check all the gas, and then I’d go back in the bed and lay there for about five, 10 minutes and then get back up and go look at it,” Murphy recalled.
Even his family didn’t understand it
“I’d just say, ‘That’s just some weird s*** that I do,” Murphy said, explaining that the pattern would last for about an hour and he’d feel the need to do it every night.
“My mother, nobody knew this was going on,” he recalled.
That was until he heard of OCD
It wasn’t until he heard about it on TV that Murphy realized there was something more to his repetitive behaviors.
“One day I was watching the news and they did something on OCD,” he said, “and it was like, ‘Oh, that’s what I—I be doing s*** like that.’ I was like, ‘Oh, mental illness?’”
He tried to stop doing it
Learning that his behaviors could fall under mental illness, Murphy tried to make himself stop the compulsions.
“I made myself stop doing it,” he said. “I was like, ‘I’m not doing it no more. I thought I was weird. I ain’t know I had some mental illness. F*** that. I ain’t have no mental illness. Mental illness, my a**.’ And I forced myself to stop doing it.”
But he couldn’t get rid of it completely
The actor admitted that trying to make himself quit the compulsions wasn’t completely effective in his adulthood.
“I check the gas every night, still,” he shared. “But every now and then, I’ll check it twice, and say ‘No, motherf***er, you ain’t starting that s*** again. Take your ass to bed.”
Murphy thinks OCD might have helped him
Despite the challenges, Murphy reckons his OCD might have helped his career as a comedian as it was accompanied with attention to detail.
“Sense of humor is ultimately an acute sense of proportion,” Murphy explained. “The funny person notices stuff first.”
Murphy has learned to accept himself for who he is, saying, “I love myself. Always loved myself. That’s the most important thing.”
