Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is a well known and very common mental health disorder that affects 1 in 100 adults (over 1 million people in the UK alone) and for my American friends, it is 2-3 million in your country! So, if you are suffering with OCD and think you are alone in the matter, you are far from it. Many people have the symptoms but suffer silently. A lot of people don't even realise that their thoughts are in fact OCD related. This mental health blog post will concentrate on some of the severe symptoms of OCD and what to look out for when trying to identify it.
What exactly is OCD?
You might think OCD is 'obsessive cleaning disorder' but you would be mistaken. Foe decades now, people have confused this condition as being nothing more than 'someone who just cleans too much and places all of their tins perfectly' or 'someone who gets annoyed when they see pictures on a wall that aren't straight' but it is a lot more complicated than that. The 'C' stands for 'compulsive' and sometimes, people with OCD feel that cleaning is a compulsion and a way to cope so they excessively clean. That is where the assumption comes from that it is nothing more than a cleaning disorder. In reality, a compulsion is not just cleaning it can be anything. Someone with OCD can become ‘obsessed’ with thoughts, ideas, doubts and feel that they have to conform to that obsession to avoid ‘something bad happening’ or to ‘keep them safe’ so to speak. Some people with OCD don’t even have to have an obsession as such, but they may suffer with intrusive and unwanted thoughts instead.
These thoughts have been said to include things like harming another human for no reason, obsessing over thoughts that may intimidate you such as thinking of yourself dying over and over or a nightmare you had weeks ago. OCD has also been known to play on your fears and make you think of scary scenarios that play on your mind constantly. This can be the fear of losing control of yourself and your own actions or worrying that you will harm other people even when you have never been violent before. It is very important to remember that people with OCD do not want to do the things they think about, but they are thoughts that do not go easily and they never want to be acted on. When you get an annoying song stuck in your mind, do you really want it there? To be on repeat all day, annoying you at work and getting on your nerves even when you try to think of or do something else? Imagine that daily but much worse than just annoying tunes in your head.
Your darkest fears, a distressing scene from a film, a terrifying flashback from your own life, a time in your life that everyone has forgiven you for but you cannot forget. It can be anything or everything but you become obsessed with those thoughts as they never leave you. Something that also comes with OCD is anxiety. It makes you anxious about everything. You may even worry that you are going ‘crazy’ because you cannot control your own thoughts. If you would like more information on what OCD is, please look online.
Living with OCD
Something that most people have to deal with daily with OCD is order. Keeping things in order helps us to organise things in our minds and our lives. For example, I like daily to do lists to keep my day running smoothly. I have to book things sometimes weeks in advance and hate things being sprung on me at the last minute as I love to plan. You could say I am the opposite of spontaneous. Some with OCD have to do a ritual before leaving the house just to feel safe such as turning the light switch on and off 10 times. This is something I have never suffered with but that is okay. We all experience different symptoms of each disorder, and your OCD will be different to my version of OCD. But sharing experiences and talking things through DOES help people. Knowing you aren’t strange for having certain thoughts and experiences does help some people through their struggles.
Living with OCD is like being trapped inside a dark room. On one wall, you have detailed moving pictures of your traumatic memories, one per frame all playing on loop. The other wall you have a trillion sticky notes with severe doubts about your life on each one. You are forced to read them all daily. On the third wall you have intrusive thoughts and ‘what if’ scenarios. They are written like long lists plastered all over the wall. They consist of the bad what if’s of every bad thing that could happen to you in your life. There are also long lists of intrusive thoughts that you have no idea where they come from. Thoughts of you being killed, killing someone else, being assaulted, losing a loved one, you name it, it’s on the long list. On the final fourth wall, you have messy handwriting covering the whole wall. This is your ‘to do list’. It consists of a million things you NEED to get done but never seem to have the time for. They are things you become obsessed about daily and get very irritated when you don't have the time to do them. But still, you keep adding to the list. Some days you get lucky and cross things off but each time you cross one thing off, 5 more get added. All 4 walls of this dark lonely room keep getting more and more content and you get more overwhelmed. But the clock is still ticking and you are trying to keep your head above water. They are just the MAIN symptoms of OCD but that is exactly how it feels. All four of those walls are filled with different things from intrusive thoughts to obsessions to organisation to doubts. All of which you can never escape.
I will end this blog post here. I believe I have given you enough to think about and my imagery above may help you to understand it a little more. But I want more interaction from my readers if possible. In the comments below, write down how YOU would describe living with OCD. I will try my best to interact with most of your comments and reply to people. Also, let me know on social media or on here how this blog post has helped you. Please spread the word as always, this could really help someone! And remember, you are never alone. I am always available to help you or someone you love and only we can change the world and make mental health more recognised! Thank you so much once again for reading right until the end. (I will know who has read the end as they will leave a comment!)