OCD Has Nearly Destroyed My Life
In the last year I’ve not been entirely honest online. The truth is, OCD has nearly destroyed my life.
In April 2025, after weeks of not sleeping properly, my OCD triggered psychotic symptoms and I was sectioned. I was told I was experiencing psychotic beliefs, persecutory beliefs of delusional intensity and depressive symptoms triggered by OCD. There are weeks of this time that I do not remember, and that is scary. This was only weeks after my book Girl Unmasked was released in paperback, and I felt like such a fraud. I had been well for 6 years, until now.
After a 6 week admission, I was discharged to basically zero community support, despite being told repeatedly that I needed psychology input. I returned to work and tried so hard to cope. I fell deep into an eating disorder after OCD food refusal triggered starvation syndrome, which was later diagnosed as anorexia. I struggled to access private help due to my BMI being too low but was stuck on an NHS waitlist for ED psychology, whilst the community team remained absent.
I discharged myself from ED services and started working with a brilliant private clinical psychologist. Despite losing my grandmother and a 4.5 year relationship breakup, I weight restored in January, but as I did, OCD got bad again and we hadn’t been able to work on that yet…triggering another OCD crisis. This time round I’ve been blessed with some incredible professionals who tried to keep me out of hospital but unfortunately couldn’t.
There have been times this past year I have felt so misunderstood as an autistic person with ADHD. Times I have felt so angry at the system and how hard it is to access psychology, at how medication is relied upon, at the lack of communication between services, at a lack of understanding of how autism, ADHD, trauma and OCD interlink and the absence of the right care. At how coercion and the system itself causes more trauma that I will have to heal from.
But this time round, I’ve been discharged to proper support. I’ve seen the power in the difference that one or two professionals who care and understand can make, and I am eternally grateful for these people. I am scared about what the future holds for me and how I will get there, but I am trying to trust the people around me, whereas last year I didn’t have those people.
I want to get back to the version of me from before all this happened, I just don’t quite know how to yet.
I should be on holiday with my friends this weekend, but instead I’m attending a day unit because OCD has taken over my life in the last year. I don’t know why I’m choosing to share this now, only that I’m tired of being silent. That I know healing and recovery happens when people share and people talk. That I don’t know what the future holds for me, and I want the support of this community who I am indebted to for being by my side for the past six or seven years in discovering that. That I am angry - that if I’d have got the right support last year, this year I might not be missing out again on everything I missed out on last year. I am angry that OCD exists, I am scared that psychotic symptoms will take over my life again, I am angry that severe mental illness is still so stigmatised and people are made to feel such shame.
I haven’t been totally honest online this past year - because it’s hard working within services, and trying to maintain a level of privacy for yourself. But healing happens out loud, I truly believe. And I am a writer at heart and I need to start writing about these things. I don’t know if there’ll be silence for a while longer, or if I’ll start to share things, but thank you for being here anyway. 💕
Everything I wrote in Girl Unmasked still stands. It was all true at the time that I wrote it and I remind myself of things I have written at times. We have to believe there is hope, for all of us. 🤍
GIRL UNMASKED (The Sunday Times Bestseller) is available to order from Amazon and all major bookstores as a hardback, paperback, audiobook and ebook. linktr.ee/itsemilykaty
If you would like to support my blog on a one-off or monthly basis, you can here: https://buymeacoffee.com/itsemilykaty