The first genuine OCD experience that I can remember happened to me when I was about 6 years old. It happened one morning when I was walking to school and daydreaming. For some reason the topic of God was on my mind (my family was devoutly christian); I was thinking about how we always said we loved God in Sunday school. All of a sudden a thought popped in my head, like a little voice daring me to say the words “I hate God”. So I thought the words in my head, “I hate God”. I immediately became anxious because I knew that I didn’t hate God, the words had just popped into my head without my control. I tried to just shake it off, but the words just kept coming: “I hate God”, I hate God”. I started to get really anxious as I was thinking, “Stop it! Why am I saying that? I love God!” So I forced myself to say in my head “No, I love God”, but it didn’t help. The words just kept coming and coming and coming, “I hate God”, “I hate God”. I was fighting back the tears because I was really scared that God could hear me. When I got to school I was really shaken from what had happened. I tried to forget it, but for the rest of the day it was stuck like a splinter in the corner of my mind. When I got home I ran to my mother and tried to explain to her what had happened. I was in tears I was so upset. I tried to explain to her that I couldn’t stop saying “I hate God” and was trying to counteract it by saying “I love God”. I can still see the perplexed look on her face as she regarded me. I could tell that she knew I was in pain but had no idea why. She told me that it was alright and that I shouldn’t worry about it. She comforted me by saying “I know you love God, it’s okay”. Even though I was only 6 years old, I had a feeling that I was being placated (obviously not in a way I could articulate then, but in retrospect, I think I knew). That’s where my self-esteem took a down-turn as I became increasingly aware of how different I was.

I wasn’t diagnosed with OCD until 16 years later in my senior year in college. I’d like to think that if I’d been diagnosed earlier those 16 years in between wouldn’t have been fraught with such agony. How can you raise a child to be a healthy, well-adjusted individual when his/her mind is broken (and neither you nor the child is aware of it)? You try to reason with the child and understand his/her reality, but the responses just don’t make sense. If I had just been taught to separate out what is and is not reasonable in my thoughts, I think a lot of my pain could have been avoided (or at least softened). But that’s life, and all you can do is work to heal yourself now. It’s taken me two years of therapy and medication to finally rise above the trees. Now I’ve gotten a better view of where the OCD ends and I begin. The way I look at it, everyone has a gift and a wound. One of the many challenges in life is to find people who won’t merely flatter you when they see your gift, and who won’t run away when they see your wound. OCD is a really tiring, frustrating, and painful wound, but it’s just a wound. Try to push it aside and embrace your gift, you’d be surprised what can heal with effort over time.

I think it was approximately1989 when I first experienced OCD behavior.I didn’t recognize it as such but now, thinking back, it was OCD.

I worked in a pizza store and was put in charge of closing the place down at night.I found myself checking the ovens the locks, the safe and All appliances(even the refrigerator doors) several times over. This was very aggravating for the person closing w/me but VERY embarrassing for me, but I just couldn’t help it. I would often get home and then drive back to the restaurant to check the door to make sure that I locked it, get in my car,sit there for a few minutes and get out and check the door again. I would do this over and over a few more times before I could finally go home. At home the rituals continued, I had to check the curling iron, all the knobs on the stove, the front and back door locks and my daughters breathing several times before going to bed.

After I re-married, I still did all of the above and much more. Before I could give my kids any medicine, I would read the dosage over end over and then measure it out and study the amount in the medicine spoon before I could give it to them.I also had a similar ritual when taking medicine myself. Another big thing w/me was, I would be driving down the road and thoughts of my having an accident would invade my brain. First, I would imagine the accident itself, I would be pretty busted up but the kids would be fine, then I would wonder how long it would be before we were found, how long it would be before my husband would be contacted and who would watch the kids while my husband came to the hospital to be w/me and on and on, this would happen almost every time I would drive. Sometimes I would have thoughts of my husband or one of my kids dying and couldn’t stop until every tiny detail of their funeral was thought out. I was left feeling very sad, depressed, and tired.

I’m now taking 150mg of Zoloft and 30 mg of Buspar per day. I still have the rituals but the urgency to perform them has lessened considerably and the depressing thoughts are almost non-existent! The biggest problem I have now is forgetfulness, especially if asked where I put an important paper or asked to repeat important details of a conversation. I think the pressure of having to remember something important for someone else just causes my brain to shut down. At least my husband has learned that he must exercise great patience w/ me or matters just get worse. He really is great.

I’ve never known life without OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder). From as far back as I can remember intrusive, unwanted thoughts and fears have plagued me.

The first “episode” of OCD that I can clearly remember was when I was about 5 years old. I became totally obsessed with thoughts about heaven, hell and eternity. I was raised in a church going home where religion and spirituality were very important. I would spend hours trying to figure out “eternity”. I felt that if I could somehow “figure” it out, I would be okay.

The concept of not having an end, as is the case with eternity, was far more than my 5 year old mind could handle. I was “scared” of eternity. I prayed to both God and the Devil at the time, asking, no begging them to help me, to help me STOP thinking and worrying about eternity. In time, the “eternity obsession” faded and about the same time an entirely different set of symptoms appeared. I began feeling compelled to do certain physical motions, such as eye blinking and making “clicking” noises with my tongue. Even at the tender age of 5 or 6, I fully KNEW that there was something WRONG with me, that this behavior was not “normal”, but I couldn’t quite figure it out. I did my very best to hide what I now know to be “tics,” holding it all in for as long as I could and then finally releasing it all once I was alone. I usually did this in bed at night, which is also a darn good place to have obsessions. Bed time was not my friend.

I can remember standing back and watching other children, looking to see if they were doing the same kinds of things I felt so compelled to do. They were not. It messed with my self-esteem alot and I pretty much suffered alone as I did not really want to tell anyone about the weird and constant thoughts I had or the repetitive, senseless physical motions I felt “compelled” to do.

By the time I was 7, I very much had a “secret world” going on inside myself, one that I dared not share with anybody. At times, I thought I was crazy, at other times I thought I was just a “bad person” or a “stupid person”, anyway I looked at myself, I definitely wasn’t who I wanted to be.

Obsessions, fears and panic attacks would plague me off and on during my adolescent and teen years, but it wouldn’t be until I was 20 when I had symptoms bad enough to put me on the Psychiatric ward. This would not be my first experience with Psychiatrists, as I spent a part of my teen years seeing one. Unfortunately, at no time was I diagnosed with OCD or Tourettes, those diagnoses would come much later. During my time in the Psych ward, I was given several different medications including tria-vil, elavil, sinequan, ativan, valium, zanax, desaryl and others that I can’t even remember. What was my “official” diagnosis at that point? “Schizoid Affective,” which looking back now and having the knowledge that I have now, that diagnosis would be a huge laugh if the whole thing weren’t so sad!

Although I had always thought of myself as very intelligent, I found myself at the age of 20, sitting across the desk from Social Workers who told my Mother that I would NEVER live a normal life. That the most independence I could ever hope for was to live in a half-way house. Thankfully, I NEVER believed any of that for one second. I was definitely down, but not out. When everyone else wanted to “give up” on me, in no way, shape or form, was I willing to give up on myself. Looking back at my life and the tremendous struggles that I have had, my “fighting spirit” is probably what saved me. I partially attribute that to having Tourette Syndrome, where “tenacity” and “perserverance” are well-recognized tourettic traits.

I would struggle with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder pretty consistently for the next 15 years, with most of my obsessions now revolving around the fear of acquiring HIV and AIDS. Although I had no risk factors for getting AIDS, I became absolutley obsessed with the fear of being “contaminated” by the HIV virus. During a 8 year period, I would have more than 40 HIV tests, all negative of course. But due to the doubting nature of OCD, I would no more than hear a “Negative” result from the clinician, that I would doubt what I actually heard, doubt the accuracy of the test, doubt the honesty of the Doctor and doubt that the test was even performed. I could think of a million scenarios of “why my negative test result could not possibly be accurate.”

And so it goes with OCD. It’s a never ending circle of doubt and deception. On the very off -chance that I received my “negative” test results on a rather good OCD day for me, I would then walk to my car, perhaps see a bandaid lying on the ground and somehow “convince” myself that I now acquired HIV from that bandaid. A reason for another test!

Like most people with OCD contamination fears, I clearly knew that I was being irrational, but it didn’t matter, the OCD had a life of it’s own and it would always win. And those of us with OCD contamination fears can come up with the most far-fetched and crazy “beliefs” on how we could become contaminated, most of them totally flying in the face of reality. That’s one of the hardest things with OCD is that for the most part, we are completely lucid. We KNOW what we are thinking and doing is crazy, but we can’t stop. So not only do we deal with the horrors of the OCD, we struggle greatly with our own sense of self esteem because we cannot control the OCD.

Somehow during all this HIV/AIDS craziness, I was still able to marry, work and have a child. It was not easy, it never was. Medical treatment for me was a nightmare and I did absolutely everything I could to avoid it. Just walking into a physicians office for me, meant a future HIV test. At this time, I was under the care of doctors who were well aware of the problems that I had although it would be some time before I would hear “OCD”. My internist kept me on an antidepressant called “Sinequan” and I did receive some small measure of relief from that.

One day, while reading a new book on AIDS (I amassed quite a library on the subject!), I read that there are some people that get tested over and over for HIV because they suffer from what is called – Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. The book further stated that HIV testing wasn’t their “real” problem, the “real” problem was the Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. I could NOT believe it! They were talking about me! I felt the sky opened up to me at that moment! It would take a few more years and more research on my part to finally ask my Doctor about trying Prozac, which I had found out about by researching OCD and it seemed promising. Well, I can honestly say, that the from the very first day I took Prozac, I experienced a true miracle in my life.

Like many, if not most people with severe OCD, I have several OCD things that hang around in my life. I do some counting, I do ALOT of checking. I actually had one 5 year rather intricate nightly checking ritual that mysteriously disappeared by 2nd day on Prozac. It was AMAZING! And my contamination fears about HIV lessened and lessened and although not completely leaving me, the nearly incapacitating grip that it held over my life ceased. I was a new person, a fairly “normal” person, something that I never in my whole life thought I’d ever be. I was able to pursue my goals and dreams with wild abandon and I did and still do, just that.

I have an extremely HIGH level of functioning for ANYONE, much less someone with OCD. I am a dedicated athlete, I travel with my sport, I coach children. I have gathered alot of accolade and notoriety with my sport and what I have done in it and with it. I’m well known enough in my town and state, that for now, I choose not to reveal exactly what sport I’m in as I do coach children and at this point in my life, I would do nothing that could in any way jeapordize that. Unfortunately, we still live in a society that does NOT understand mental illness and neurological disorders and those of us with such problems are VERY likely to experience misunderstanding and prejudice.

Some day, I would like to come totally “clean” with my OCD and Tourettes because the vast majority of people that know me will be absolutely stunned. No one would ever guess what a struggle life has been for me. People see me as accomplished and very “togethor”, many probably would not even believe me if I did tell them! But I think my story would be important for others out there who are also struggling with OCD. My story is one of hope and I hope that just by telling this small part of my story, that I can help someone out there with OCD who reads it.

Do I still have OCD? You bet! OCD is as much a part of me and who I am as the tics I have from Tourettes. I still count, I still check, I still wash my hands pretty darn good, but the level of which it interfers with my life is “acceptable” to me. Sure, it would NEVER be acceptable to a “normal” person (and I use that term loosely), but to me, it’s a miracle! At least for me and my OCD, the right medication made all the difference in the world and I encourage everyone with OCD to NEVER give up. If you’ve tried all the medicines, try all the new ones that come out. We are gaining alot of information about OCD and I’m confident that new and even more promising treatments lie ahead.

Most of all, I would like other OCD’ers to know that you are NOT alone and you are definately NOT crazy. If this is what your being told, ignore it, it is NOT the truth. Love yourself, believe in yourself and NEVER stop trying to tame this wild animal inside us called OCD.

Mary