If you’re interested, you can read or scan through my story with OCD. 

– Written August 2020 and free from OCD since

 

My First Experience(s) with OCD

 

From what I can remember, the first experience I had with OCD was when I was in India, around 11/12 years old, celebrating an Indian Festival (Holi) in a park within our apartment complex, with my family and friends. Beside the park was an open car park. I was walking from inside the car park to the park where my friends were, and as I walked past a pillar, I felt an urge to walk back and touch it. After doing this, I turned back around and resumed my walk to the park. As soon as I did so, I felt an urge to walk a bit longer to the park than I did before, but then, I had to turn around and touch the pillar again. Although distressing and I didn’t want to do this, I felt a strong urge pushing me to do it, so I did it. I ended up doing this 3 or 4 more times. Each time I did it, I extended the distance of walking from the pillar towards the park (thus a longer walk back to the pillar again). Although I still felt an urge to continue doing this, the only reason I stopped was because of the sheer embarrassment and risk of having someone see me do it.

This kind of experience continued to happen throughout my school years and, was sometimes noticed by my friends. However, they would see these (what I later learned were) ‘compulsions’, as comical quirks. For example, during secondary school years, me and my friends would often walk past a red post box on our way to our local town centre and, one day when walking past it I felt the need to gently kick it. As it took me a few seconds to rationalise and decide on whether or not to do it, when I finally gave in to the urge, I had to run back and kick it. At first, my friends were confused and laughed it off, but this rapidly developed into a habit and I had to repeat the exact same behaviour whenever I was out with my friends; whenever the thought popped up to kick the post box, I would have to wait until I was far away enough so that I could run back and gently kick it in the exact same way did the first time. After a few times, my friends thought I was doing this as a joke and attempted to ‘join in’ by doing it with me – which I used to my advantage, as it allowed me to do it with less embarrassment/shame.

My Life with OCD before Recovery

 

Over the years, OCD started taking up more of my mental space and symptoms gradually got worse and worse, but they became so integrated into my daily life that I started to see distressing compulsions as the norm. Although I can’t particularly remember the obsessions (primarily due to them being such a scattered yet integral part of my thinking habits), I remember the compulsions due to the pure exhaustion, distress and frustration that they caused me and, because of how significantly time-consuming they were. The majority of the compulsions during this period were physical, such as having to pray a number of times in arow (once up to 30 times) and aggressively blinking in an ordered manner, although I did have some covert, mental compulsions such as reversing thoughts (e.g. thinking that if I erased a thought, then it would not come true) and excessive rumination, all in an attempt to get rid of or neutralise these thoughts. However, although heavily distressing, the distress I experienced from OCD during these years was relatively miniscule compared to what was yet to come.

When I arrived at University, I can remember reasonably enjoying Freshers week, but due tote big change in lifestyle and being away from family, I felt more reactive to intrusive thoughts when they popped up. As I felt emotional towards missing home, the OCD latched on to that and intrusive thoughts began pouring in. These obsessions typically centred around people I cared about, whereby I would have extremely gory intrusive thoughts (such as imagining scenes from the “Saw” movies) about them. The obsessions and gory intrusive thoughts spiralled out of control to the point where I couldn’t even watch a mildly violent scene in a film without entering into a deep, long phase of rumination and compulsions. This was the period when my anxiety began peaking like never before. An unhealthy, unorganised lifestyle that often comes with the University life, which involved unhealthy eating, a nocturnal sleeping pattern and excessive drinking, fuelled the anxiety and therefore exacerbated my symptoms of OCD. In order to battle these obsessions, I was engaging in a series of mental rituals such as re-imagining scenarios whenever an intrusive(often gory) thought popped into my head – which I remember one time after a night out, I spent a solid 4 hours pacing up and down my room trying to complete – or mentally un-doing/reversing thoughts etc. These compulsions took up the majority of my time during the first few months of university.

My Journey through Recovery

 

Although I had been relatively aware of what OCD was (and understood it was more than the common misconception of just being ‘organised and clean’) through hearsay, I had never actually researched it as I was too afraid to face it or see it for what it actually was. However, as the obsessing and compulsions started to become such a big part of my life, I decided it was time to google my symptoms. This led to me finding out that the mental compulsions I was doing, such as re-inventing scenarios, magical thinking, reversing thoughts etc. were also OCD, whereas previously I thought OCD only referred to physical compulsions (things like checking, praying and aggressively blinking). I also came to learn that this type of OCD was called Pure O (which I also now realise that this term is meaningless, as OCD is the same regardless of how it is termed). What stood out the most during my research was the realisation that other people were going through the exact same thing that I was going through, just in a different form. An example of a recovered OCD sufferer was Jeremy Bennett, whom shared his exhausting journey with OCD, which gave me an intense feeling of sadness as I could somewhat empathise with what he was going through, while also having a sudden strong feeling of hope, as the story inspired me and provided me with insight that there was light at the end of the dark tunnel of OCD. After learning about his story, I began to educate myself on OCD and, watched a ton of videos on how it works, what compulsions are, types of obsessive thinking and methods on how to overcome OCD.

Due to the profound distress that OCD had caused me, I made a conscious oath to completely stop carrying out compulsions no matter how it made me feel. I accepted one thought (and resisted the urge to do a compulsion) and my anxiety skyrocketed. The next thought was worse and felt more real and, the anxiety got worse. After some time of resisting compulsions and embracing the anxiety, I had brain fog and experienced intense feelings of derealisation and depersonalisation where I felt that nothing around me was real. I withdrew myself from social interactions and stopped going to lectures and, as the anxiety was increasing, more intrusive thoughts came in, all making a compulsion increasingly tempting. My mind was telling me that if I didn’t do these compulsions such as reversing thoughts or reimagining scenarios, then they would likely come true. Nonetheless, from research I knew I had to take a leap of faith and not do a compulsion.

The most effective method I picked up during research and trial-and-error was taking an approach of learning to co-exist with the thoughts regardless of what they were and exposing myself to them by making them 10 times worse than they actually were . For example, if I saw on TV someone accidentally cut their nail (trigger), I may get an intrusive thought of my own nail ripping off and begin fighting the thought with compulsions such as reimagining it not happening. Instead of blocking out the thoughts or carrying out compulsions, I would instead let the thoughts rush in, and go along with what the OCD was saying; in this case, I would make the thoughts 10 times worse by exposing myself to the actual details of my nail ripping out, no matter how difficult and distressing this was. This was the approach I abided by – by addressing the intrusive thoughts in this manner, I slowly took the power away from them.

Over time, I developed a thinking pattern whereby I actually wanted more thoughts and anxiety. I knew that the more I didn’t react to the thoughts, the less they would affect me. I knew that the more I embraced the anxiety, the sooner it would disappear. This is exactly what happened. The more I began accepting the thoughts for what they were; just thoughts, the less they came. The more I embraced the anxiety, the less it affected me. In the beginning, this was hard and, I decided to use the anxiety as momentum to recover (the more I felt, the more I believed I was recovering and on the right path). Over time, I gained hope as thoughts which were once affecting me a great deal, no longer had the power to do so. I then used this newfound hope as momentum to recover. The bulk of this whole recovery process took me a few weeks, and within the space of a couple months, the OCD stopped affecting me and, to this day, surpassing and overcoming the battle OCD gave me during the first few months of University, has been one of my greatest achievements to date.

Relapse

 

Although I successfully recovered from OCD when I was 18, it began creeping up on me again when I was 23 and got into a relationship. This was due to the uncertain nature of relationships, coupled with the fact that being in a relationship itself was an entirely new experience for me. The uncertainties associated with navigating a relationship became anxiety-inducing and reignited my obsessive thinking patterns. What began with small, relatively frequent compulsions such as reinventing scenarios, eventually built up and resulted in me digging myself into a big hole again, constantly engaging with compulsions such as excessive rumination and reassurance seeking to the point where I would be constantly ruminating over conversations and mentally reassuring myself imaginative scenarios were not true. I was fortunate enough to have a supportive girlfriend who understood what I was going through and channelled a lot of time and energy into understanding what OCD was and what the best ways to be supportive of someone with OCD were, which gave me a good footing to overcome it again. However, although I tried to imitate the method I used to recover last time, initially I believed it was not suitable to this particular obsession. Due to the relatively uncertain nature of relationships, the anxiety that came along with the obsessions made it incredibly difficult to resist engaging in compulsions and the more compulsions I did, the more the thoughts came in.

Relapse Recovery

 

Again, I made the same mistake of being too late in committing (and understanding the need to commit) to an effective recovery method, as I only did so when my OCD reached severe heights. Around this time was when I chose to visit the doctor’s, just to see how severe my OCD was. I was provided with a phone number for a CBT specialist and was offered a prescription for some antidepressants, which I rejected. Instead, I decided to do heavy research (watched numerous videos) on Relationship OCD and invested a significant chunk of my time into recovery. One person I came across on YouTube who particularly aided my recovery during this relapse was Ali Greymond, an OCD specialist. I watched countless of her videos on ROCD and eventually began to recover. During this recovery stage, my girlfriend found an OCD community group on Facebook which I joined, where I saw people sharing their daily struggles with OCD. Due to the immense distress I was experiencing through ROCD and the empathy I felt for others suffering the same as I did, I decided to share my story on the page (of my previous recovery) to inspire others and give them strength to recover. I received quite a positive response from this, along with an influx of messages from people who saw my story, whom I shared tips with on recovery. For weeks I was in day-to-day communication with these OCD sufferers, some of whom I helped recover. While helping others, I also found it easier to help myself. Eventually, I began becoming aware of OCD’s tricks again and not so long after this, I recovered again.

Present

 

Since recovery, OCD has had little control over my life. Having suffered from a deep phase of OCD for a second time, I had a strong desire to end my mental suffering as a whole, which resulted in me pursuing a path of understanding the importance of the present moment and thought observation. During this journey I have generally become more present and increasingly conscious of my thought patterns. I have also come to understand that my obsessive/compulsive thinking patterns which were playing in the background of my mind on a day-to-day basis (no matter how miniscule) were what was playing an integral role in keeping my OCD alive and, were what was providing it with the momentum and subtlety to spiral out of control both of the times. Nonetheless, just through being aware of when these patterns pop up and by not engaging in these day-to-day urges, I have been able to break away from these thinking patterns and general obsessive behaviours. OCD Recovery taught me that changing how you react to not only intrusive thoughts but any thoughts/impulses that pop up in general, can spark huge change on how you live your life. Being more conscious of my thoughts has translated into me being more conscious of and monitoring more of my actions/behaviours. Inevitably, it has resulted in bad habits fading and healthy habits becoming easily adopted and, my lifestyle has changed significantly for the better.