"Toc Toc: Confronting Obsessive Compulsive Disorders"

"Toc Toc" is a movie that tells the story of six characters with different obsessive-compulsive disorder problems who come together due to a malfunction in the appointment system and are confronted with their disorders. OCD is a disorder characterized by repetitive thoughts and impulses (obsessions) and an irresistible need to engage in repetitive behavior or mental actions (compulsions). The person tries to ignore, suppress, and neutralize these thoughts, impulses, and images. Obsessions and compulsions take up the person's time and cause great distress, disrupting their daily functioning.

CHARACTERS: BLANCA: Blanca is a 35-year-old laboratory technician. She has an intense level of cleaning compulsions. She is afraid of contracting various illnesses, viruses, and infections from every object and person she touches. In the film, when other characters touch her, she experiences great discomfort and exhibits a behavior of washing her hands in the bathroom for minutes. Blanca's social functioning has been disrupted due to her fear of catching germs and her compulsions. In fact, Blanca summarizes her situation in the movie with the sentence, "I isolated myself from everything, sometimes cleaning takes so much time that I don't have time to live."

OTTO: Otto, who lives with his mother, is a character with symmetry and order obsessions. He has an obsession with not stepping on lines, which makes his movements seem strange and damages his social relationships. Otto has the Organizing - Ordering subtype of OCD, and he feels compelled to place objects in a certain order. When asked why, he says he feels more comfortable doing so, rather than providing a logical explanation. This situation is different from an ordinary person's sense of order, as slight displacement of an object from its place causes great discomfort, and the person feels the urgent need to correct it.

FEDERICO: Federico is a 60-year-old single man who has had Tourette syndrome since he was 11 years old. Tourette syndrome includes many different motor and vocal tics. In the film, our character has a tic that includes obscene words and gestures. This is called Coprolalia. Individuals with Coprolalia repeat, involuntarily, body movements and loudly utter obscene words that can be socially disturbing. People with this syndrome, like Federico, experience a significant decrease in their quality of life. As we see in Federico's case, people with this syndrome find it very difficult to socialize and establish relationships with others.

EMILIO: Emilio is a taxi driver who suffers from counting compulsions (arithmomania) and hoarding and saving compulsions. Individuals with counting compulsions cannot resist counting and keeping track of things around them to cope with their obsessions. In the film, Emilio, who has counting compulsions, shows signs of counting objects (stair steps), doing mathematical calculations, and counting words. Another compulsion that Emilio has is hoarding and saving, where individuals with this compulsion collect and accumulate things that others consider insignificant and have difficulty throwing them away, even experiencing great anxiety when attempting to dispose of them, believing that they will need them one day. Emilio's compulsions have disrupted his quality of life and damaged his interpersonal relationships, leading to divorce from his wife.

LILI: Lili is a fitness instructor who is a single woman. After her father's death, Lili developed echolalia and palilalia. Individuals with echolalia repeat sounds made by someone else, while those with palilalia repeat the speaker's words with varying degrees of repetition. If Lili does not repeat these phrases, she is afraid that something bad will happen to her. In other words, she neutralizes the thought of something bad happening by expressing it in her behavior (word/sentence repetition).

ANA MARIA: Ana Maria is a housewife with various checking compulsions. She has specific routines to follow before leaving the house, such as checking if the stove is on, if the windows are open, or if the faucets are turned off. She also performs certain religious ritualistic practices, including praying and touching the statue of Jesus before leaving the house. Ana Maria's fundamental belief is that if she doesn't check things before leaving the house, she may face various disasters. She neutralizes this idea with her checking behavior, thinking that the same thing that she hears about in bad scenarios can happen to her. For example, she believes that not making the sign of the cross when hearing bad words or curses can make her a sinner.

These six characters, who have different subtypes of obsessive-compulsive disorder, start discussing their diagnoses when they realize that the doctor won't be coming. At this point, they start trying some methods to decrease their problematic behaviors. Supporting each other, they use a technique called "exposure therapy" in psychology and try to spend time without performing their compulsions. At the end of the movie, they realize that their mutual support and the exposure therapy they have applied have resulted in some improvement in their compulsions, even for a short time.