Incertus

My name is John and I have OCD, It’s taken me quite a while to
admit to it. 35 years. Phew. I have had anxiety on and off throughout
my life but OCD in in the latter part of my life. It’s triggered by
stress so if I get really run down then out comes the OCD dragon.

There is a history of sexual abuse in my family. My sister was
sexually abused by my Grandad and another sister was sexually
assaulted. From the trauma of this I have to deal with a lot of sexual
obsessions relating to abuse or anything to do with sex. As a gay man
this is very distressing and takes a lot of energy to let go of some
of the thoughts that come up. I know they are false but they
feel so real when it’s bad.

Some things that happen are when I’m walking past women I will look
at their breasts and think what if I reached up to them. Then I
will wonder why I’m even looking at breasts when I’m a gay man!

I might have a word stuck in my head like women genitals or a song.
My compulsion is too figure the thought out so I will go back over
time and try and figure out why I’m thinking such a disgusting
obscene thought.

I’ve just recently found out OCD brains are a little different to
regular ones. I’ve ordered a book from my local bookshop called
“Brain Lock” by Jeffery Schwartz which I think will help me.

My therapist puts it this way. Having these thoughts proves what a
beautiful and loving individual I am as I am so appalled by them,
especially when they relate to people I love. It proves I’m overly
responsible and kind. These thoughts are so in contrast with my own
personal values.

What’s happened with me is that love and sex have become confused
and mixed up. If I think how much I love someone dearly, sex might
come into the thought. Very distressing as you can imagine but
that’s what sexual abuse can do in a family.

My Mother and sister had/ has bad OCD so it’s definitely a gene
thing to a degree. I”m just so relieved that people talk about it
now especially sexual obsessions as to admit to them is quite painful
but the start of healing.

Some other obsessions I have had are:

Thinking I could abuse baby’s or my sisters.
Linking flower smells to sex.
Women in skirts.
Knives or pointed items. Thinking they are phallic like. (I was
involved in a knife point hold up at a hotel I worked at in my
20’s)
Feeling strange at parks with kids there. Wondering if mothers are
thinking what’s that man doing there on his own.
Hot water. Thinking I might scald someone with my cup of tea.
Bad religious thoughts.
Bodily fluids, urine and faeces mixed up in thoughts and related to
food.

I used medication when I had a bad episode when I was 30 for three
months and then went off it gradually and decided to go it alone just
with my own brain. I had to learn to relax, walking, yoga, guided
meditation time out to myself. Anything that made me feel calmer
helped long term.

This is just a small part of my story. Thanks to all the other
stories here. They have helped me to realise it’s not just me and
that was the biggest relief. I have OCD and that’s ok. Life goes on.
Good luck to you all. We are family all my OCD brothers, sisters
and me.

Recently I was diagnosed with OCD after a solid year of battling
extremely distracting and aggressive, violent, gory thoughts about
the death of myself and my loved ones, in some cases I would think
about myself hurting them. I loved to think about falling down the
stairs, jumping off a bridge, falling or impaling objects, and my
personal favorite, car accidents.

Eventually I could no longer drive because I became fearful that all
these thoughts about car accidents would cause it to actually happen.
I went into a state of depression and believed that these thoughts
were actually suicidal thoughts. I had no one to talk to about this
because I started thinking that perhaps I was suicidal because why
else would I think of dying this much?

Eventually I decided to tell my Dr and she referred me to a therapist
who I am still seeing. My therapist and I uncovered my history of OCD
and dated it back to when I was 11 and believed I was possessed by
the devil. Today I am relieved to know that I was not going through
a state of psychosis or schizophrenia then. Anytime I had a second
to think I was telling the devil I wouldn’t sell him my soul. For
months this was happening to me, and I’d even dreamt about the devil
(dreams which I still have today). Now I know it was my obsessive
thoughts.

The obsessive thoughts are the majority of my OCD but they are
dramatic enough to leave me feeling powerless and out of control all
the time (though people say I am a control freak). I have a tendancy
towards symmetry in my body (ie: finger tapping, kicking, scratching
on both sides of my body to make it feel ‘even’).

Now I recognize other things I do because of my OCD (usually
religious obsessions… I was raised a hardcore Catholic). For
example, making the sign of the cross when I get into my car to bless
my drive, flipping over shoes (when I was younger my mother told me
that shoes that were facing the ground meant I was stepping on God
instead of the devil… to this day I think something bad will
happen), not stepping on cracks, counting stairs, etc.

As you can see a good amount of my obsessive thoughts and some
compulsions are religious in nature.

The worst part of having OCD is hearing people say they think they
have it. This part really hurts me because they don’t understand the
real anguish that came from my obsessive thoughts. It isn’t fun for
me to spend 10 minutes thinking about stabbing my mother and which
knives would be most effective. These thoughts happen several times a
day and cause me a great deal of anxiety.

I am still in weekly therapy and recently began medication with
Zoloft.

I’m grateful for this website and wish you all the best.

BPS RESEARCH DIGEST: Is a vivid imagination at the heart of OCD?
Is a vivid imagination at the heart of OCD?

Considering that obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) is characterised by a fear that “bad things” will happen if certain rituals are not performed, it’s surprising that so little is known about the role of imagination in the condition.

I, for one, certainly have a vivid imagination. I have lived through the outcomes of my , “what if’s”, thousands of times - in painful detail. In my mind. My imagination is so vivid and the horrors it puts me through so intense (and “real”) that the few times my fears have come about it was no big deal. Kind of, “Been there, done that”, sort of experience.

It is an interesting line of research that I hope they pursue.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Linked To Brain Activity
The scientists have discovered that people with OCD and their close family members show under-activation of brain areas responsible for stopping habitual behaviour. This is the first time that scientists have associated functional changes in the brain with familial risk for the disorder.

Interesting. It could lead to earlier diagnosis-like before it gets really bad. That would be a good thing. A very good thing.

This is a really decent article on OCD.

Are you crazy enough to succeed? - Behavior- msnbc.com

The medical director at the center, Michael Jenike, M.D., is both a maverick and a pioneer in the OCD community. He founded this facility, the first of its kind, to help sufferers of what he considers the most agonizing of psychiatric disorders.

“I had a 17-year-old who had kidney cancer that was going to kill him in 5 or 6 months. He also had a bad case of OCD. He said he’d rather get rid of his OCD and live only 6 months, than get rid of the cancer and live with the OCD. That’s when it first hit me: This is some serious stuff.”

The people seeking treatment at OCDI do not have the minstrel-show version of the disorder acted out by Tony Shalhoub in Monk or Jack Nicholson in As Good as It Gets. The institute’s residents are seriously impaired.

One of the things I likes about it was the point made about how people too casually use the term OCD (one of my pet peeves).

My favorite quote from the article is “I lived in an Escher print”. Heh. Been there. Uh, well still am, in fact.

Go read it.