Do I have an OCD?

[Guest sunny1234]

Hi Guys.

Right then... where to start. Over the past several years (definitely since around 2006), I have been worrying unnecessarily about anything and everything. As the years have gone by, its gotten worse and worse and my worries have become more and more vivid in their nature. I feel the need to sometimes do certain rituals, with the belief that it will stop bad things from happening, and I usually get bad intrusive thoughts which I need to stamp out. I usually do these rituals to overcome these bad thoughts, even though the ritual and thought are not logically linked at all. Many times, I do a silent prayer to try to overcome these bad thoughts and prevent these bad things from happening. I'm not very religious, but I do believe in God. However, I find myself incessantly praying to God to stamp out every bad thought in my head, which I have called "negative voices".

Other than these negative voices, I find myself worrying about day to day life to the extent that its now taking up most of my day (in terms of mental concentration), and gets in the way of work and social activities. Its hard to give a full list of examples, because theres generally a new worry every day or every other day. Its probably best if I give you some relatively recent examples (in chronological order, newest first);

1) I was stuck in standstill traffic, and a bicycle cycled across the road in front of me. I now worry that he scraped the front of my car, even though I've checked it 3 or 4 times and there are no marks whatsoever (other than regular stone-chips from the road, etc.)

2) I had sent a condolence message to a grieving friend of mine, about her friend who had passed away. The message was "seen" and not replied to, and I'm now worrying that I said it all wrong and that she now hates me forever.

3) I'm always worried if a door has been locked or not, be it a car door or a house door. I would try to pull the handle several times until I'm satisfied that its definitely locked. I would then sometimes walk away, and walk back to it and try again. Even though I know its locked, it would sometimes still remain in the back of my mind for a while.

Theres more to my worries than what I've said above, but I hope you guys get the general idea.

Now the big question is, do I have OCD, or are these just general, normal worries?

Thanks,

Sunny

[Guest Sisyphus]

Hey Sunny,

I don't want to talk in absolutes but yes I am confident you have OCD mate. I can say that because what you've described is very similar to alot of the OCD I experience - I will lock and unlock that damn car repeatedly until I'm happy(which I never am actually) and I think the neighbours must think Im bananas cos the lights flash when you lock and unlock it. And I'm always checking the house doors are locked - usually takes about 3 goes on the door handle and a hefty push to make sure before I'm happy. I think I've nearly broken the back door through doing this. I also over-analyse stuff I've written or said to people. I can over-analyse conflict situations too until it's like I'm fighting the other person and myself. This is the worst aspect of my OCD because I have a pretty fierce sense of right/wrong and don't like being pushed around. So as you can imagine it's led to a lot of fun over the years.

Oh and I struggle with comprehension of writing sometimes, and have to re-read and re-read and I struggle if I have to remember numbers, even if momentarily. So if I'm, say comparing some 5 digit numbers between a spreadsheet and something else, on a bad day I'll be re-checking each number multiple times, or possibly re-checking the whole sheet multiple times.

Like you, there's more, but the main content of my OCD is just too bizarre to really describe but I guess it falls under the conflict heading in kind of tangental and distant way.

I'd been to the doctors before with this and was mis-diagnosed with clinical depression at least twice and dosed up on pills.

I knew I'd got a big problem in recent years when work/home life just became unmanagable and I was struggling really hard to hold it all together. But whenever I searched nothing matched. It was only by chance I matched it to OCD in the end when I stumbled on a video someone had made on the www. So I'd been living with this thing one wayor another for at least 25 years until then. Major bummer man! Major bummer.

I hope you ffind these forums useful,

David.

[Guest sunny1234]

Hi David

Thanks for your reply, I'm glad that I've somewhat correctly diagnosed my problem first time then! I haven't spoken to my doctor about this at all yet, as I wasn't sure if it was OCD or not. It sounds as if it is.

Is my sort of OCD treatable via medication? Or... How is it treated?

Sunny

[Guest Sisyphus]

Hi David

Thanks for your reply, I'm glad that I've somewhat correctly diagnosed my problem first time then! I haven't spoken to my doctor about this at all yet, as I wasn't sure if it was OCD or not. It sounds as if it is.

Is my sort of OCD treatable via medication? Or... How is it treated?

Sunny

Sunny,

Well done if you've caught it early then.

Well I'm still fairly new to OCD myself and I'm far from better, but here's what I know:

In answer you your question, I'm afraid there is no medication available at present to directly treat OCD. However SSRIs(sometimes combined with anti-psychotics) have been observed to reduce anxiety in people with OCD - OK so this is a generalisation and there are some exceptions where it doesn't work or makes anxiety worse.

So based on this generalisation, the current recommended treatment for OCD is CBT(cognitive behavioural therapy) combined with medication(SSRIs and possibly anti-psychotics). But some people choose not to take medication for whatever reason and just do the CBT. There seems to be 2 camps among OCD sufferers on the isssue of medication as you may see in some of the threads on the forum. Some say they helped, others not. Some say they should only be a temporary measure, others say that's not relevant to their OCD and they need to stay on them permanently. What's clear is that everyone's OCD is slightly or dramatically different in terms of content and severity.

To my knowledge, CBT educates you about how OCD works, and employes tricks to gradually wean you off performing your compulsions as this is the only known way of reducing OCD symptoms. The idea is that OCD triggers(obsessions) are all false signals which don't reflect reality, and that reality remains 100% unaffected whether you perform your compulsions or not. So the obsessions are all just false alarms, and the compulsions are a complete waste of time. So *somehow* force yourself to stop performing the compulsions until such a time your brain chemistry changes to atrophy the neural pathways associated with OCD and to rewire itself to work without OCD. I know that all probably sounds a little hokey, but this has been observed to work - a lot apparently. But it's obviously tough to start and keep up. A book called Brain Lock describes all of this in quite a bit of details so I'd go ahead and order yourself a copy of that if you can. The reason the CBT approach works is to do with a phenomenon called neuro-plasticity where the brain is contantly reinforcing or weakening neural pathways depending on what you think about - hence why trying to think your way out of OCD only makes the OCD more potent.

I hope that's a good enough introductory explanation but any questions, fire away.

Oh and your doctor should book you an appointment with a CPN(I think the acronym has changed maybe?) who will do an assessment and ask for examples of your OCD and, as long as he agrees it's OCD, will send you for a course of CBT and possibly put you on medication if you are in agreement. Be warned a lot of us are finding the waiting list for CBT can be maybe 3 to 6 months. I think it depends on area.

OK - to be continued.

David.