#myocd

The inspiration 

oh jeeeez,

My story with OCD began a very long time ago and I first started showing major symptoms when I was around 11 or 12. At that time, I mainly suffered from health OCD (always worrying about life-threatening health problems to the point where I experienced physical pains - I was constantly convinced my appendix was about to burst), I also dealt with intrusive thoughts about harming myself or others as well as unwanted intrusive sexual thoughts. When it came to compulsions, I mainly engaged in them to prevent bad thoughts from coming true (I worried a lot that my loved ones or I would die if I didn’t perform them). At this time, my main compulsion was knocking on wood but some of them were pretty random such as me thinking I could only step on certain stairs / floor tiles or else bad things would happen. For the looongest time, I didn’t know what was going on with me and it was hard and scary and isolating but eventually, my therapist figured out what was going on with me and I received a diagnosis / got better over time and was SYMPTOM-FREE until May of 2018 (the end of my sophomore year of college).

This relapse (idk what else to call it??) came back purely obsessive, so I have absolutely no physical compulsions but for the past year or so my head hasn’t shut the fuck up. I’ve dealt with:

Real Event OCD, Sexuality OCD, POCD and Relationship OCD.

They are all HELL in different ways. Most of my compulsions are mental and involve confessing, seeking reassurance and rumination but I’ve (kind of) got a handle on the first two.

In terms of coping…I suck at it lol. I’m sad a lot and I get really frustrated about having OCD in the first place bUuUuT I kind of cope through accepting what I can’t change, learning all I can about the disorder, taking my medication and trying to regularly see a therapist, being relatively open about it and trying to *LET MY THOUGHTS FLOW WITHOUT ARGUING WITH THEM OR TRYING TO DISPROVE THEM*!! 

I think I only say the latter because of how the term OCD is being used in mainstream media. At the same time I feel like mainstream media has made the term synonymous with carachteristics that I don’t feel (at least outwards) fit with me.

For as long as I can remember anxiety has been a part of my life. From when I was really little and couldn't sleep because I couldn’t stop thinking about death to an instinctive fear of hurting inanimate objects, bouts of paranoia and  frequent panic attacks.

Over the years my OCD has taken many different forms and I have seen countless psychologist and tried a bit about everything. Currently I am not undergoing treatment and as of late I feel myself being on a bit of a downward spiral.

Today some of my daily struggles include: intrusive thoughts that mainly focus on accidents,  disasters,  sex and sexuality and body focused repetitive behavior. (These are mainly what I allow myself to acknowledge)

For the longest time I thought that I didn’t have any obsessions, which made me identify as Pure-O ( which I still do, but mostly because my obsessions aren’t that obvious and not because I don’t think I have any.)

Not being able to identify my obsessions has been a struggle in itself but it has also made me doubt my diagnosis, am I really OCD?  Am I really OCD is something I ask myself at least once a week and I have spent countless hours online researching, reading about how OCD presents itself in different ways trying to identify myself with how other people feel and think (basically seeking confirmation to affirm that I really am OCD).