I only recognise now symptoms in myself from when I was younger.
It was only when I was around 14 or 15 that I started to recognise, oh actually maybe
those things I did when I was seven or eight, were symptoms of OCD. Maybe they
were the early signs of OCD. So I do have quite strong memories of being
around seven or eight years old and having to do certain rituals
around the house to make myself feel better. So the first one that I really
remember was whenever the microwave was on in the kitchen, I had to do a certain
jumping ritual, and tapping chairs in a certain order and get back to the
microwave before it finished. And there wasn't necessarily a thought or a
fear behind that, but there was just this feeling of like, not rightness.
You know like, if I don't do this, I just feel really uncomfortable and once I've done
it once, it kind of just became a thing that I had to do every time or else I
would feel just something wasn't right inside me. And these rituals kind of
progressed and progressed and got more and more, and at the time, it wasn't
necessarily that they were causing me huge amounts of anxiety but it just
really didn't feel right if I didn't do them. And that would later obviously
progress into something which became, ok if I don't do this I'm gonna feel
really anxious and I feel like something awful is gonna happen.
It's not like a voice, it's not like you're hearing something, but it is kind
of like yourself just going, what if. So you know, we all get intrusive thoughts.
Everybody has strange random thoughts, hundreds of times a day but, for
someone with OCD, that thought will get stuck and it won't go away.
And you'll worry about the meaning of it. So, you know, everybody might get a thought like,
oh if I kick one leg, I should kick the other leg or else something bad's going to
happen and it just kind of comes in your head and goes back out. Whereas for me,
that thought got stuck and it kind of played on my mind. And it was like
ok, but what if I caused a car crash, what if someone dies and I could
have saved it by doing this tiny little ritual. And that 'what if', that
doubt, kind of fuels those behaviours and you're like ok well I may as well just
do these rituals because it takes me a few minutes and then that person is safe, and
even though I know that's absolutely ridiculous because I can't control the
world, that just makes me feel better and it's just worth doing.
When you have these behaviours that you feel are abnormal or a little bit strange or
a bit embarrassing, you can become very, very good at hiding them and OCD is
often nicknamed the secret illness for that specific reason. I became very good
at hiding things and if anyone ever picked up on it and was like, why have
you done that, I'd be like, oh you know, it's just a little habit.
You know kids have idiosyncrasies, like all children have habits and I wasn't
necessarily displaying any signs of anxiety or distress. I was an
incredibly happy child, you know all of my school reports and stuff say how
happy I was and I think outwardly, that's how it would seem.
I think when I was that young, I was really happy and so there was no cause for concern for my parents.
I remember one time I developed an obsessive twitch and an obsessive cough and
which, you know, I would just do all the time. I remember a girl in my dance
class picking up on it and saying to my sister 'why does your sister do that,
she's a bit weird'. And I was like ok people have noticed so I have to do it
in private, so I would go to the bathroom to do this obsessive cough or this
twitching behaviour. So I recognised that these things weren't normal but I didn't
necessarily think they were a problem. I just thought, you know, maybe everybody does these things
but they're just good at hiding them, so I became really good at hiding them.
As I got older, the rituals did become more time-consuming, the anxiety became stronger. If I didn't do the rituals,
the anxiety became stronger and the intrusive thoughts became more frequent,
the obsessions became more frequent and that's what we know happens with OCD.
You know the more you give into it, and the more you feed that intrusive
thought by doing a ritual, the stronger that they will become. And they did start
to morph, so I would say around 15 and 16 they did start to turn into,
kind of like, compulsive washing, cleaning, sort of contamination related
behaviours. But I still very much had this thing about safety, about keeping people
safe, about stopping bad things from happening whether it was a fallout at
school or someone dying. The things that I did I felt like they kept people
safe.
A lot of people with OCD will say that they feel responsible for the world.
I felt like I was responsible for everything and even though that's so
silly and I knew that wasn't the case, like I know that I can't control bad things
from happening, but I
really felt that responsibility on my shoulders and I think pretty much
everyone with OCD will tell you that it feels like you're looking after
the world, basically by what you're doing.
I don't really remember, sort of, officially being diagnosed. It's not like you're kind of handed a piece of paper
or someone says, oh I think you've got OCD. Essentially I went to see a child
psychologist because my dad died when I just turned 16 and I went
for counselling and for grief. I think it was during those counselling sessions
that actually he picked up that there's something more going on here,
it's not just that she's grieving. Because I became very hard and
I wouldn't cry and I'd be very much like 'na everything's fine' and I think my mum,
at the time, was like ok this isn't typical behaviour for somebody who's just
lost their dad, who's going through their GCSE's. So, you know, you should go and see
somebody and the child psychologist picked up that, ok I don't think you're
in the right place here, I don't think counselling is really what you need and I
think he sent me back to my doctor.
It turned for the worst when my dad died.
I don't think it was because of that, like consciously I don't think it was because of that,
subconsciously I think there must be something in my head that thought, you
didn't do enough to save him or you didn't do enough rituals or, you
know, something like that. Because I could see the hospital where he
was from my bedroom window and, when he was in hospital, I used to do a lot of
rituals around keeping him safe or you know all these kissing behaviours and
like strange behaviours to kind of try and keep him safe.
And I think subconsciously my OCD must have latched on to that because it did
once I turned 16. You know once he did pass away, things did seem to get sort of
progressively worse and maybe it was the stress of the situation, or me not
handling it particularly well, but things did start to go downhill from then,
but I wasn't willing to accept help.
I remember being put on a waiting list and waiting for a very long time and things
got a lot worse in that time. I think it was 18 months from being discharged from
the child psychologist, to getting, what was then, cognitive behavioural therapy
in my doctor's surgery. But I was never given a clear, this
is what OCD is, these are the tools you can use. Like at that time I don't
remember ever having anything like that.
With cognitive behavioural therapy for OCD, there is an element that's called
"Exposure and Response Prevention" or ERP and it's essentially exposing yourself
to the things that you're scared of and not reacting or learning to react
differently. So say, for example, I was scared of touching a remote because I
thought it was contaminated and x, y, and z would happen, you would be encouraged to
hold that in your hand and to not do the compulsive behaviour, so not do the
washing ritual or whatever that ritual might be. So if I had an intrusive
thought about someone dying in a car crash, you would be encouraged to not do
the ritual that would make that thought go away
and instead you might be encouraged to do something like 'I hope they die in a
car crash' or say something which would really bring on your anxiety. And that's
incredibly hard to do, like that's the hardest thing in the world. If you think
that your actions are going to cause something bad to happen, to do the
absolute opposite of that, it's incredibly difficult and I just don't
think I was willing to engage in it at that time.
I moved away from home and I was living in student halls and that's where OCD really
started to take over my life at that point.
It had taken over my life before but it hadn't stopped me from doing anything. I
was still able to kind of go out and do what I wanted to do. When I got to
university, everything kind of just crashed. You know, I had a great time and
I loved it in parts but it was also the worst years of my life in terms of how my OCD
was and how it made me feel.
Changing my clothes four or five times a day. I was washing my bedsheets every day. I was doing three or four loads of washing a
day. I was in the shower for hours. I was using a couple of packs of baby
wipes a day. I could use a bar of soap in one shower. I could use a bottle of
shower gel easily within one shower. I was just
getting through so much stuff. I was throwing clothes away because I thought
they were too dirty for the washing machine and these were things that
you know, I don't know, I'd sat on a bus seat and then my entire outfit
would go in the bin because I would just think that bus seat was so dirty it would
smell so bad that I can't possibly put these clothes in the wash with anything
else. It just became completely all-consuming.
I developed what I know now is a very, very common OCD compulsion which is reassurance
seeking. So people I was living with at the time and one particular friend I was
living with at the time became my absolute safety blanket and I pretty
much couldn't do anything without him giving me reassurance and that's a
compulsive behaviour because I was asking constantly, does this smell, is this clean,
is this dirty or should I do this? He was helping me to shower, you know all of
these sorts of things that I just couldn't do without his help and,
although at the time to that person it seems like they're doing the best
possible thing because they're relieving your anxiety, all it was doing was making
me become absolutely 100% reliant on him and I just no longer trusted my own
judgement. But it did get to the point where I was really suicidal and I
was really depressed and I kind of wasn't bothered anymore. I got
to the point of being like, I'm not really living it anyway, so it's not
really worth living. And I remember having this horrible thought,
which now I feel really embarrassed about, but I remember thinking, I will
have any other illness in the world apart from this. Like just give me any
illness that I can cope with, anything. Like make me homeless, make me, you know,
whatever because I just can't cope with OCD anymore. And that's a really awful
thing to be thinking because obviously I'm fortunate in a way. You know lots of
ways I'm very fortunate.
The turning point for me was seeing the impact that it had on other people.
I'd kind of given up on myself completely but my friend at the time, he
was looking after me basically said, I'm going to drop out of Uni, quit my job to
look after you because I can't do all of these three things, it's too
much. And you know every time he left the house I was like threatening with my life and,
you know, all sorts of things because I needed help so much. Seeing the
impact that that had, seeing the impact it had on my mum at home, because she
felt helpless because she wasn't around, she couldn't help. So she became
really unwell with feeling depressed and things as well and I think,
seeing that impact on other people, kind of made me think ok, well I don't want
help myself but maybe I could get some help for other people. I don't
want to ruin their lives, so maybe I'll go and get some help for other people and
that's when I self referred to the first lot of therapy that I actually
properly engaged in myself. We just worked on loads and loads of exposure
tasks. I had to go home and I had to just constantly do therapy, keep a record of
the therapy that I was doing, monitor how my anxiety went up and down. And what you
start to learn in CBT is that you do these things which are so incredibly
anxiety provoking and they feel like the worst thing in the world but your
anxiety does come down on its own eventually, like you don't need the
compulsive behaviour and, as bad as it feels when you're doing this exposure
task, your anxiety will come down. And when you start to see that happening,
like when you start to see the success with that, you're like ok maybe I don't
need the compulsive behaviour and the more successes you get, the more it
fuels you on to be like, I can do more, like I can push myself harder.
And I was so determined when I went to see her, that yeah, it just worked
and it worked really well. I think if I had spoken to somebody who'd had CBT
when I was younger, who could have told me, this works, then I would have put in a
lot more effort. I think the problem for me was that when I first went for
therapy, I didn't know anybody with OCD. I didn't know anyone who'd done CBT. I
didn't know what the success was of it and I was being told by a
psychologist, you know, this will work. But that's not what you need to hear when
you're a 16, 17 year old. I needed to hear it from someone who was
my own age. Who could come in and say, this works, it's gonna be really
hard, it's gonna be really, really difficult but go for it because it's so
worth it. I think if I'd have heard that, I would have been able to better engage
with therapy and I didn't have that. There's a lot more resources out there
now for younger people, which is great, but there still needs to be a lot more
because people need to know that it does work. It's not easy, you don't want
someone telling you that, yeah it's really easy therapy and you'll go in and
it'll be absolutely fine. I want someone to tell me it's hard but it's so worth
it. No matter how hard therapy is, it's a lot easier than living with OCD,
so it's worth doing. The graph for getting better from OCD is very much
like this and it's not gonna be easy and it's not going to be a smooth kind
of journey. And that can be really difficult to accept and be like
ok but why isn't there a quick fix. There isn't a quick fix, you know it's a
really complicated illness, it's a really horrible thing to live with, but I think
it's just making people aware that there are a lot of options. There is a lot of
therapy. Finding the right therapy can be
difficult but there are charities and places that can help with that and there
is a lot of support available for yourself and for your friends, family and
loved ones. So I think it's just knowing where to look for that and just asking
for that help and being ok to ask for that help.