Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). How do I describe it? To be honest, I haven't got a clue! I don't know what everyone else goes through, but this is my experience of it.
The way my mind sees the world is that everything is unclean and dirty. Some things are worse than others but everything is dirty to some extent. But it's not only dirt and germs that get my OCD going, it can be pretty much anything.
It's really hard to describe, but basically I've got all these routines that I *have* to carry out if something happens and if I can't carry them out for whatever reason then I get really anxious about it and it gets to the point where I have no choice but to get away from the situation and carry out my routine otherwise something will go horribly wrong or something will happen to the people I love etc etc.
One of my biggest OCD things is handwashing. When my OCD was at it's worst I'd wash my hands in really cold water up to 36 times in an hour, every hour!! The way my mind works with the handwashing is that everything around me is dirty and anything that I come into contact with has dirt and germs on it and if I don't get rid of those germs then I'll die and I have to wash my hands in really cold water so that I could freeze the germs and they would die and by freezing the germs off my hands they won't be able to infect me so I won't die. If I touch something then the germs from that gets transferred to my hands and I have to get rid of them straight away. Some things I can cope with touching without getting too anxious but with other things, just the thought of touching them sends me into a panic attack.
Another of my big OCD things is making lists. You may have noticed on the pages through this site that I've got lists all over the place... no matter what I'm doing I always have to make a list and if I don't, that makes me really anxious too.
Some people may think I'm weird reading through this, but to me it's my life and it's what I've had to learn to live with. I'd much rather live with having to go through all my routines than to live in a constant state of anxiety and feeling that something bad is going to happen to me and/or the people I live with.
This page has barely touched the surface of what living with OCD is really like but it's just so unbelievably hard to explain what it feels like to live with it. Like with all the other things I go through, I wouldn't wish OCD on anyone - it's a horrible, horrible thing to have to live with and the routines are a nightmare!
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