I was reading Nics note at the top of this section just now so I thought it might be helpful if I talked a bit about my experiences.
I have always been sensitive and intense. When I was at primary school, I lost a good friend due to illness and I also had a fear of picking up germs so I would try to avoid using the school toilets.
My earliest memory of OCD is from my teens. I can remember that if I had to go out, I would check everything around the house...switches, locks etc. However, I can remember I had trouble resisting checking so that in the end I became a nervous wreck in a total sweat! I just couldn't stop checking locks over and over again because I feared leaving something unlocked or switched on and getting the blame from my parents even though they told me not to worry. I knew I would "feel bad" and "guilty" if anything went wrong because of me.
At some point during the checking, I developed intrusive thoughts which would often be associated with illness and one of the thoughts would be the image of my lost friend. I was terrified of the illness he suffered from.
I can also remember that I would vomit when watching programmes about illnesses. Illnesses became a huge phobia for me.
I would also count to "safe numbers" during my checking but if someone or something interrupted me, I would have to start again but I always had the problem of intrusive thoughts to fight off too.
When I got a car, the checking just got worse and when I started work, as soon as I came home I would be washing my hands constantly until they went white with soap.
From there, I found if I made a mistake when writing, I'd have to re-write the whole page and letters had to be written "exactly" without touching lines.
When reading books, I couldn;t close the book before reading a "safe" word. When switching the TV or radio on/off, I had to hear a "safe" word. When placing objects, they had to be placed exactly without thinking an "unsafe" thought such as of illness. I couldn't touch black bags without having to wash my hands or cross roads behind black cars because I associated black with funerals. When I heard that a friend at work maybe ill, I destroyed all the books he gave me for fear of catching it off the pages he had held. When I washed, I would have to wash a "safe" number of times.
OCD really affcted me in every area you could think of where it involved doing or placing something but no one realised, not even myself, that I was suffering with OCD.
I was prescribed Seroxat but it made me feel really ill with pins and needles etc. It made my anxiety worse!
I decided the best approach was to help myself so I learned how to combat my OCD.
The things that have helped me are...
Reduce the amount amount of stress in your life. The more stress you're under, the more intense you "think" and so the more difficult OCD symptoms are to resist.
Make sure you get enough sleep. When you're tired, you feel more anxious so intrusive thoughts tend to surface more.
Learn how to keep relaxed.
When you get intrusive thoughts, don't tense up. Let them go by not trying to resist them. Try to treat them as just thoughts created by a "bored mind" that no one can see or feel but you. They are Just thoughts.
When you check things, check once and once only. The more you check, the more tense and anxious you become so the more difficult it becomes to stop.
If certain words frighten you, write those words down constantly on a piece of paper until you become plain bored of writing and reading them. What you're doing is de-sensitising yourself to those words so that when you later hear, read or think them, they've lost their OCD power over you.
Make a list of all the things that are OCD affected and list them in order of difficulty. Tackle the easiest on your list by resisting any repeating until it's no longer a problem, and then move up your list to the more difficult ones. You'll find that with each one achieved, the more difficult ones become easier to resist.
Lastly, avoid planning because you then don't allow yourself time to "think" and tense up. Do things on the spur of the moment when you feel up to it. If you don't, leave them until you feel more relaxed and if you can't stop repeating, go back to it later.
I found the only way to stop myself was by not allowing my compulsions to control me and I found that once I resisted repeating one chore, the others became much easier to cope with because I'd proved to myself nothing bad would happen if I didn't repeat.
One point to remember is that what we're really doing is trying to stop anxious feelings by repeating a ritual to find immediate relief. The problem then though is that when we next attempt something, the anxious feelings shoot straight back up because we're still afraid of those thoughts.
What you Will find is that if you resist repaeting a ritual, you Will feel very anxious for a time But these anxious feelings Will Gradually subside until the compulsion to repeat has evaporated.
An example I can give is tieing my laces. I used to get intrusive thoughts or hear words from people around that frightened me so I would have to undo and re-tie them. However, once I resisted the compulsion, my anxiety gradually eased on its own and so the next time I came to tie them I was no longer afraid of any frightening thoughts or words i might hear because I knew it was safe to resist.
That's a very brief post about the way OCD affected me but I hope it's of some help.
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