Just pull yourself together!

One of the many hard things about having OCD is that a lot of people just don’t get it! Over the years I have learnt to accept this as trying to get others to understand just made everything so much worse. “Don’t be ridiculous” they say, “that’s not logical” or “come on you are being irrational” And with that my friends I give you OCD!

It may well seem ridiculous to others as their brain just doesn’t work the same way as someone with OCD. It is illogical to those people that do not suffer from OCD and yes it will seem as though we are behaving irrationally. To the loved one of sufferers it can be extremely difficult to deal with as they can’t do anything to fix it, they can’t understand why their loved one is behaving in this way.

The one thing that people that care for OCD sufferers will do is to try and help make it better and ease the anxiety by giving reassurance that everything is ok and maybe do their checks for them for example. This sadly is not helpful to the sufferer as the makes that OCD Monster grow bigger and stronger. Seeking reassurance from someone will temporarily help but next time that reassurance won’t work and the sufferer will seek further, stronger reassurance and the monster grows and the cycle continues.

One of my biggest Compulsions was hand washing. I did this because I feared germs and contamination. I started when I was a child by always pulling my jumper sleeves over my hands to avoid touching anything and I would even wear a jumper in the height of summer, so I had my sleeves to protect me. There came a point where this action no longer gave me relief from my anxiety and thought around germs and contamination, so I began ritually washing my hands twice after I had touch anything I believed to be dangerous. My OCD monster was gaining power and I would also start trying to explain to my mum what I had touched or thought I had touched and ask her “would it be ok?”.(Seeking reassurance)

Sometimes this helped and sometimes it would lead to an argument as my mum couldn’t understand what I was worrying about. Then each time I washed my hands I had to do it four times in a row, the monster was growing! The never-ending cycle got progressively worse, my hands were dry, cracked and bleeding from the constant washing but I could not stop. I had to keep myself and everyone else safe. If I got interrupted during my hand-washing ritual I would have to begin again. At this point my mood was not good, I was anxious pretty much all the time and was on heighten alert for danger. I was getting through 500ml of hand wash every 3 days! Other rituals and compulsions started as the monster was growing fast but I will tell you about them another time.

When I was in therapy for OCD, I had to learn techniques to quieten down the life sucking OCD monster. I had to learn to not react and carry out the compulsion whilst my anxiety was at it highest but to wait and then be able to limit the number of times I washed my hands in one go. Sound simple enough but let me tell you it was so hard fighting against the monster I felt as though I was fighting against my self. Sometimes I failed and would give in to the compulsion but with support and determination the times I failed got less and the OCD Monster started to shrink.

Don’t think if you fail at beating the Monster today you won’t be able to beat it tomorrow!  I did and so will you.