Ridiculous form of OCD

[Guest Student22UK]

I've been a sufferer of OCD since the age of 11-12. I'm not sure what triggered it off, but I have an incling it may have something to do with being away from home for the first time on a school trip. The sudden realisation of what it felt like being away from home for a week panicked me immediately upon arriving back home. Since then, I've gone through a number of OCD phases, which include me needing to complete particular tasks before I can carry on what I was doing. From what I have read, a lot of people seem to suffer from cleanliness OCD, but from where I'm standing, I can see I "fit" into the intrusive thoughts category. These have been from more serious events that include bad things happening to family members (incidentally where I felt it all began... realising from a young age how life would be without family), ranging to the ridiculous where I find myself stuck in a trance, having to complete a task as silly as tapping both sides of the entrance to a room, and if I happen to touch one side before, I'll have to start again. All of this to simply clear my mind, and 'allow' myself to continue with my activities. Now, this has been a hindrance on my life ever since around the age of 15-16, where my OCD really kicked off. Since then, it has fluxed in it's intensity on my daily routines. However, since joining University at the age of 18, it struck at its highest levels once again. Up until this point I had found myself limiting these odd occurrences to roughly once or twice a week. Perhaps leaving home once again triggered the onset of aggressive OCD, I'm not really sure. What I do know is, is that it has affected me more than ever before. It has affected my relationships with family members and I fear it will affect my relationship with friends too. It has gotten to the point where I will snap at anybody who seemingly interrupts with one of my strange "mind-clearing" rituals. They have no idea why I'm acting so oddly, however a few family members are indeed aware of my OCD nature. I'm worried that it will only worsen, and I'll become so dependent on these daily rituals that I will not be able to get on with anything. The worst it has got was when I was applying for industrial placement jobs as part of my university course. I had arrived at the final stages of a particular hiring process which I had pointed out as my ideal job, as early as a year before applying. I was eventually told I had arrived as close as second-place for the role. At this point I was devastated. I had contemplated throwing in the towel altogether, and not only in the hunt for a job, but also my university course altogether. Explaining my disappointment to nearly everyone I came into contact with, I feel I couldn't possibly explain how badly it affected me. The accumulated time I have spent in the 18 months, since that phone call, must be in the tens of hours. I'm not sure if this was a deadly combination of depression and OCD, but the sudden rejection triggered a downward-spiral of thoughts that kept me from waking up to go to university for around 3-4 weeks (which ultimately affected my grades for that semester), as well as consuming 90% of my daily thought processes. To this day, I have yet to get over this, despite convincing myself that it was a measly job. However, it seems to have burnt itself into my mind and still triggers my OCD, and the associated rituals that I must call upon to clear my head. Ideally, I would like to know if anyone has had a similar form of OCD, and whether there is anything I can do to prevent this horrible routine from destroying my life even further. Many thanks in advance.

[Guest Sisyphus]

Hey man,

Welcome to my world.

I've been dealing with burned in stuff from years ago too. And even though I've reationalised through why it's no longer appropriate to think about any of this stuff, sure enough it just keeps on coming. It's the old conditioned response, Pavlov's dog thing.

I too can get quite angry with people if I'm interrupted too much while trying to work through my ####. And I feel like the world's biggest ####(swearing really needs to be enabled on this site to convey these things effecticely!) when this happens, especially if it's someone I care about. But at the time it's like I'm spinning plates while trying to build a house of cards and everything hinges on it, and some inconsiderate so and so with no appeciation of the difficulty of the task or how close I am to achieving it comes a long and clumsily makes a noise osr blurts something totally unnecessary out and BAM thank you very much indeed, right back at square one, but now with a tired, spent brain. And that's why I get angry. And at the same time as being angry and frustrated, I see the insane man spending the majority of his life boxing shadows that aren't there, while everyone else gets on with their lives, and time slips by, and I see how foolish and unreasonable it all is, and I hate myself for being this way.

So that's kind of how it feels for me.

Like a lot of folks here I'm trying to work on it - I read Brain Lock - quite a challenge as OCD has taken reading from me - but I got through it. Definitely worth a read for educational purposes at least, and *maybe* for applying the self-directed therapy it suggests, though it seems rare people can get better from this alone. CBT (possibly with meds) seems to be the common thread for people getting better, but that's no guarantee either - some here have tried all of that and more and they still suffer with OCD. I dropped out of my first round of CBT due to a personality clash and I just didn't feel like it was working for me, but I've signed up for a second round. In the meantime I try hard to apply some of the stuff out of Brain Lock to stop myself performing compulsions. Very hit and miss. Somje successes, some compulsions stull very potent.

I'm about to do my ifrst meditation since last December as I believe there's hope that can help. I never mean to stop in December but it just got away from me. But I promised someone earlier I'd meditate tonight so gonna do it right after this for 15 minutes.

Anyway I know how UNBELIEVABLY potent this thing is and how tough it is for family and freinds to really believe or understand it, so you have my full sympathies. On the brightside, I was 41 before I realised my weird behaviour was OCD so time is on your side as the old Stones song goes.

All the best,

David.

[Guest Hannah_7]

Hello! You're OCD sounds similar to mine! If I walk through a door way or something while thinking something incorrectly I have to do it again until it feels 'right'! I'm going through a particularly difficult spell at the moment which I'm desperately trying to get through but it's tough!!! I've really opened up to my parents this week but even so it's tough... It's hard trying to explain something like this to anyone without sounding like a crazy person!! I had cbt a few years ago and I've just signed up to have it again as it really helped... And being on medication too... Hope you feel better... You're definitely not on your own...