OCD – Attempt 1

Please note this may be triggering.

According to the NHS, “Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) is a mental health condition where a person has obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviours.”

This is my first attempt at a brief explanation of my experience with OCD – please bear with me as it’s a tricky thing to talk about at the best of times! 

OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) is a term that people often use as a throw-away term for being a tidy person or whatever… It’s a term that seems to have been so often misused that people have somewhat forgotten the true meaning of the illness, thus making it a little difficult for sufferers to truly explain what they mean, or how they are feeling.

There are so many different symptoms and experiences people have with OCD that I can barely begin to explain in this post, but over time it’s something I hope to shed more light on. In order to make this brief I’ll quickly go over OCD in a nutshell and my experience of it.

From my own experience an obsession appears in the form of a mental image/urge which if often unpleasant or alarming. This thought then continues to crop up again, and again, and again… Or several different thoughts can all be playing on the mind at once. In an urge to try and shake it off then comes the compulsions.

Compulsions refer to repetitive behaviour or a repetitive train of thought that the mind can feel compelled to take part in against it’s own will, otherwise something awful will happen, or something awful will come true, despite evidence and belief in the opposite. It can massively affect self-confidence and esteem to the point of depression and other illnesses.

Like I said, I’m not going to go into massive detail about the shit that is OCD just yet, but here goes my current jumbled struggle and why I decided to create a blog about this. Basically I have had OCD in it’s many forms over the past 9 years or so, maybe longer but it’s difficult to pinpoint. I’ve had thoughts about germs that have caused me to wash my hands to the point where they were cracked and sore. I’ve had thoughts that if I didn’t touch a burning hot radiator or tap an object ‘until my mind felt right’ someone could die and I would be the reason or cause. I’ve had thoughts that if I didn’t repeat a pen stroke it meant the worst would come – my English teacher was particularly confused by the random extra pen squiggles across my homework. I blamed it on my cat.

These are an example of outward OCD rituals that, for the most part, go unnoticed (thankfully). Yet there are inward rituals that take place in my head almost 24/7 as well. For example, if I don’t think of a certain image in the ‘right’ way for me, my brain goes into a mental state of anxiety related delusions. It’s exhausting and I’m pretty fed up of my weakening attempts to hide my struggles and anxiety. I thought writing might help as I know so many online posts have helped me, like when I’ve felt like hiding in a duvet for an eternity. So I really hope that if you’re reading this and you’re in a similar situation, that I can help. Alternatively, I hope my blog also gives any (interested) none sufferers a bit of insight on the sheer hell of it all.