Incertus

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.

DIRT provides hope for OCD hand washers

16 June 2008

A new treatment for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) pioneered at the University of Sydney is having great success by targeting the beliefs behind the obsessive behaviour rather than the behaviour itself.

Now this is interesting. The OCD I live with has, so far, proven to be uh, treatment resistant. So I am always looking for new forms of treatment. And this sounds promising. Besides you have to love the acronym. DIRT (Danger Ideation Reduction Therapy). A bit more info on it can be found here. http://www.commonlanguagepsychotherapy.org/index.php?id=54