My OCD Story

12 Mar

Written By Emily

When my OCD first arrived, it tricked me into believing that it was my friend. It told me that if I did certain things then I didn’t need to worry about the anxious thoughts which had been ruling my head since early 2015. Finally, I thought, this was a way to control my panic attacks.

At the start it went something like this:
Anxiety: You are going to have a panic attack and embarrass yourself if you go there.
OCD: Listen, if you tap all your books 10 times and then again 10 times then you won’t have a panic attack.
I listened. And it helped.

This way of thinking soon latched onto all of my anxiety. Worried about my Mum having a car crash? No need to worry, outline the window with your finger ten times and she won’t have a car crash.

At the start, this wasn’t much of a problem. It helped a bit. The obvious external signs of my anxiety reduced. My panic attacks lessened. I felt comforted and safe that OCD (I didn’t have a name for it then) would make sure I did what I needed to stop my worries coming true.

Once my fears around contamination took over, it became more obvious. My hands would bleed constantly. They hurt all the time. I remember sitting in a history lesson and my teacher coming over with a box of tissues because I was getting blood all over my work as I wrote. Fear of contamination consumed my brain. I washed my hands constantly. I showered immediately upon returning home. I got changed multiple times a day. I did rituals to make sure that my family or I wouldn’t get ill. I was late to lessons because I washed my hands in-between. I couldn’t write in class because I got blood over my work.

Slowly but surely OCD began to take over my life. It went from me being in control to OCD being in control of me. It dictated my every move. It consumed 98% of my thoughts. It told me what I could and couldn’t do. I became helpless.

I stayed up for hours each night and spent all my free time writing in a book everything about virtually all the possible illnesses I or my family could get, how to prevent these, what to do if we got them, signs and symptoms etc. I did the same for things like being kidnapped or burgled. I took this book everywhere with me. Even at lunch and break times I would go into the library to research and add to my book.

While OCD became all-consuming, it also became darker. It started telling me that I needed to harm myself to stop bad things happening to my family or friends. I began experiencing thoughts about harming others and I had to carry out particular rituals to make sure I didn’t.

OCD made me feel like I was contaminated. It made me feel like I was a bad person. It made me feel like I didn’t deserve anything good.

These feelings became so deeply entrenched in my view of myself and the world that I am still working at untangling them now.

Six months after my OCD arrived I went into the office of someone who supported me at school and I told her everything. I was distraught. I knew I needed help. I was self-harming daily and my OCD was out of control. My mum was called into school. I remember that person saying to me, “Emily, this isn’t just anxiety. This is OCD. We’re going to get you help.” At the time I didn’t know what OCD was. But knowing there was a name to what I was experiencing was hugely reassuring.

Unfortunately, the only message which seemed to get passed on was about the self-harm which I had been struggling with alone for over a year by this stage. My OCD was left out of the conversations. I was referred to CAMHS, who after 11 months of being on a waiting list, referred me to Step 2. Step 2 is the bottom tier of CAMHS. It’s early intervention. For me that meant 6 sessions going through a CBT workbook with someone who I felt invalidated everything I said with “But don’t you think all your friends feel like that?”. It was too late anyway for early intervention. I was consumed by my illness. I finished the 6 sessions and that was it.

My OCD did improve, the more exposures that I did. But it was when I became suicidal that my OCD improved the most. I didn’t care anymore. I didn’t care about what happened to me. I gave in to the internal fighting in my brain between OCD and me. I gave up and no longer cared.

This eventually resulted in me being sectioned in September 2017 and struggling with my mental health in other ways, but that is a different story. My OCD stayed, but it got quieter. I did exposure work in inpatient and with community CAMHS and it improved massively.

Last year I wrote this:

When I think back to 2016, I remember pain. Physical pain because my hands would bleed and burn constantly from washing them. Internal pain from the loudness in my head. I don’t remember joy. Every photo from that time is tainted because I know what was going on in my head. I also remember it taking up every moment of my day. I remember one afternoon walking around my village tapping each lamp-post ten times, putting on hand gel and then moving to the next lamp-post. Things like this happened every day. I was consumed by my OCD.
Thankfully that is no longer the case. My OCD consumed 98% of my thoughts at one stage, and now I would say that on the average day it consumes 5%. I live my life and OCD rarely gets in my way. I enjoy things. I am a student mental health nurse.

Unfortunately, my struggles with OCD have fluctuated over the past year, and I think I’ve come to the realisation that it will never completely leave me. It came into my life when I was 13 as a way to protect me, and it’s stuck. I have to work every day at recovery. Over the past year I’ve had two main episodes with OCD which have been consuming. I have always experienced an element of religious OCD, but last September time it got very bad. I knew that I was going to Hell. Images of Hell would flash across my mind non-stop throughout the day. I was distressed because I felt like I couldn’t one hundred percent convince myself that God exists and I can’t one hundred percent believe everything that I need to believe to stop me going to Hell. I spent six hours a day listening to podcasts by religious leaders, reading the Bible, and searching up other people’s experiences. I was so distressed that I would die and be tormented in a fiery pit for all eternity that I felt miserable all the time. I’ve only been able to navigate my way through this by learning that other people have experienced religious OCD/moral scrupulosity too, using evidence to back up my fears (which can be a compulsion in itself) and trying to sit with the anxiety of the unknown. It’s not been easy, and this does still take over my brain occasionally.

I also learned that some of the things I was struggling with were due to my OCD. For example, constantly seeking reassurance, from Google, people in my life or even myself. Constantly checking with myself that I felt a particular way about something or someone. Constantly apologising to stop people think that I was a bad person. At times this took up a lot of brain space.

I know that OCD may never leave me completely. I know that there will be times in my life when it will consume it. I also know there will be days when I barely even notice it. I know that being open and honest with people who love me about my thoughts and compulsions helps to eradicate my shame and give OCD less power over me.

I know that I am stronger than my OCD.