My Experience with OCD

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is a mental disorder, in which the sufferer has thoughts that if he or she doesn't do something repetitively, then something bad may happen. For instance, if a person with OCD is obsessed with germs, they may wash their hands over and over again beyond the times a normal person would wash their hands.

People with OCD can get thoughts in their head that consume them and make them do things out of the ordinary because they listen to those thoughts. Most of the time, they are trying to prevent something bad from happening.

I started out with OCD as a very young child. I remember walking down the street and stepping over the cracks in the pavement. The thoughts that were intruding my mind were that if my foot touched one of the cracks, then something really bad is going to happen to my family while they are sleeping. So, I avoided all of the cracks in the pavement. If, my foot happened to touch a crack by accident, I would obsess about what might happen now because I touched the crack in the pavement. This brought me a lot of worry and stress, especially for a young child.

Some people with OCD have to check things repeatedly, such as the stove or a lock on the door. They are afraid that they didn't lock the door or shut off the stove and have to keep checking it over and over to make sure that they actually did do those things.

I used to check my parents stove every time we would go out as a family. I remember going in and out of the kitchen and checking the stove, roughly about ten times. When I would get in the car, some of my thoughts were about the stove and whether it was really off or not, even though I checked it ten times.

Car rides were not fun. I used to have to look at every street sign as we drove by. A letter would pop into my head, for example, the H. That meant that there had to be a letter H in the next street sign we pass or else something bad will happen, such as we might get in an accident or the car will break down. If there was no letter H in the next street sign, I would get nervous and panicky, that something bad would happen.

Some things I did around the house were pretty odd. I used to try to hide it from people. I would have to tap on a certain object, say a table or a light switch a certain number of times or else if I didn't, I was sure that something really terrible was going to happen to me or my family.

As the years went on, my OCD got worse. In high school, I would have to arrange my books a certain way on my desk, or I would fear that something bad would happen to me. I had to hold my pen a certain way, write a certain way and wash my hands in the bathroom a certain way. It was pure mental mind torture.

Getting help for OCD was not something I pursued, only because I was way too embarrassed to tell anyone about it. I thought that the things I did were pretty odd and I didn't want anyone judging me for it. So, I silently suffered for years, trying to do these things over and over and make sure that no one noticed.

I had OCD pretty much up until my mid twenties. Twenty some years of OCD was enough for me though! I was tired of the constant intruding thoughts, tired of the tapping, checking, repeating and doing things a certain way all because I feared that something bad would happen.

I had to realize that bad things could happen to me, whether or not I tapped, checked or repeated. Bad things happened to me a lot in life that I have had to deal with, even when I did do what my thoughts told me to do. I decided one day, that I had enough. I completely stopped, cold turkey. The thoughts kept coming in my head, telling me to do something over and over again. I ignored it. I let it go. I didn't do what the thoughts told me to do.

Instead, I stopped myself from doing those repetitive behaviors. Of course, after doing them for so long, I would automatically be inclined to do something, like tap on a light switch, out of habit. But as soon as I realized what I was doing, I stopped myself and said to myself, that no matter what things I do, bad things can happen and I will just deal with it if it does.

In the meantime, I didn't want to continue the constant behaviors that my thoughts were telling me to act out. It was adding way too much unneeded stress to my life. So I even remember saying out loud "Go ahead, make me do something, I'm not doing it and I'll just have to suffer the consequences." Well, my family was okay that night, nothing bad happened to them.

I stopped searching for letters in street signs and nothing bad happened to any of us in the car. I stopped writing a certain way and stopped checking the stove, and still nothing bad happened because of it. The good thing is I stopped it and still have not gone back to it. I refused to let my OCD run my life. I want to control my own life and that means being free of OCD.

This may not be typical of most people's experiences with OCD. It is advisable to seek help. However, I'm sure if you or someone you know, suffers with OCD, you might have suffered some the same symptoms as I have. There may have been something in this article that you are familiar with seeing or doing yourself. Try to get or find help, before it consumes your life or the life of someone you care about.