#ocdblog

Hi! 

I have always been a very anxious person and for me the the obsessions and compulsions started at the same time (as far as I can remember). One thing that comes to mind is that obsessions aren’t always concrete thoughts. Sometimes they are just a feeling that if you don’t do something in a certain way it’s bad. Of course I can’t say if that is the case for you but you may recognize it? 

(UPDATE: diagnosed with OCD, amongst other things, and treated with therapy and medication)

Hello, this is my new blog (it is a side account so sadly I cannot do things such as follow you back) but it is a place for me to vent about my OCD, post about it and hopefully educate about it, and for other people to vent and/or ask for advice so please feel free to drop me a message if you ever feel like it!!

I have struggled with OCD for a majority of my life. When I was younger I had an obsession with numbers and things always had to be in sets of these numbers. These numbers were 4 8 16 and 32s (basically multiples of four or eight). For example at primary school in assembly I would always have to clap as 12345678 12345678 and practically everything I did had to be this way. If I was walking and I had reached my destination but hadn’t reached my last 8 sets of steps I would continue to walk on the spot until I had. Chewing and drinking also had to be this way. Though I was not sure why I did this I knew I had to, and if in any case I could not do this I felt extreme anxiety and disgust however this wasn’t understandable for me due to my young age. As I grew older I developed another obsession while that died down a little. I would need to balance up everything that happened to my left side with my right side. If someone taps my left shoulder I have to do the same to my right however if it was my right shoulder being tapped that would be ok. I have to always star walking with my right foot and if the ground changes colour or what the path is made of changed my right foot goes on the new part first; right always goes first. This was not a big problem at first however as I grew older my compulsions grew and now pretty much everything has to be this way. It is very distressing for me for example when I have an injury on my left side and I have to replicate it on my right. It is also distressing for others for when something isn’t right I need them to correct it, an example of this is when I was in a boxing class with a friend she kicked my left side accidentally and I kept making her kick me on my right side until it felt correct.

If something happens to my left side the urge to balance this up on my right side is very strong. I experience extreme anxiety and this has sometimes resulted in panic/anxiety attacks. It is not always certain what my fear is but that is what makes it worse, I know something bad will happen but I don’t know what it is. Will my parents die? Am I going to die? Will the building set on fire? Is the world going to end?

I also suffer from symptoms of other types of OCD and OCD in general such as constantly checking things over and also fear of being a pedophile despite there being no attraction or evidence to back this up. This is also quite distressing and is a big part of my life.

Now at the age I am the right side obsession is a very big problem for me and I am falling back into my bad habits I had as a child with the sets of numbers. My compulsions are distressing, time consuming and just exhausting. Having to do things in counts of 4s 8s 16s and 32s has also started to take more time up out of my life and I feel like I am trapped, like I have been deprived of my life due to how heavily controlled by my OCD it is and always has been.

I have not been diagnosed with OCD however I have spoken to professionals about it, and although they are not allowed to diagnose me as that is not what I saw them for, they agreed with my opinion (of having OCD) as many others have, and they gave me booklets on dealing with OCD and anxiety. I have also done a lot of research for many years on OCD and am educated on what OCD is and what the symptoms are and how it is diagnosed. I am not receiving therapy currently as it was thought that my obsessive thoughts and long history of anxiety problems along with other things may be a result of me having Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism. I am currently in the process of being diagnosed with that and things like therapy are still being arranged, however this could take some time as waiting lists are long.