“OCD attacks what we value most.”

My first memories of having OCD symptoms began at around six years old. I was an extreme perfectionist. One of my first memories of this was of doing a painting from Beauty and The Beast from a magazine and something went wrong- I coloured outside the line, and I started having a small panic attack, feeling really angry and crying. My mum witnessed this and bought me a new magazine with a new picture to colour in.

There were other times too. When I would play cards and put my cards on the table, they had to be aligned. The next player couldn’t put their cards on the table until mine were in place, otherwise I would become angry.

It affected other areas of my life too- if I wore my hair in pigtails, they had to be exactly the same size and shape otherwise I would get very upset. Even though I had an awareness even at that age that what I was experiencing wasn’t right, it wasn’t until later I realised they were ways my OCD was manifesting.

As I got older, I experienced bullying in school which led to severe anxiety. I wasn’t able to sleep or eat, I vomited a lot (through anxiety). It was around this time I also developed really disturbing thoughts, like I was a bad person and bad things are going to happen if I don’t confess to, or seek reassurance about, different things. I know this sounds really stupid because when I was in a calm state I knew nothing bad would happen, but when I was in a heightened anxious state, I truly did believe my thoughts. I spent years and years living with these intrusive thoughts.

Some thoughts I remember having were intrusive thoughts about not wanting to be around children in case I sexually harassed or harmed them, as well as thoughts around specific objects. I remember being at my cousin’s house and touching a particular lamp. When I got home I started to panic and believed that because I touched it, it would fall and kill someone. I felt so guilty and had the overwhelming urge to call them to confess and check if anyone had been hurt.

People think OCD is about compulsive hand washing, but it is so much more than that. There are different sub-types, including those that focus on morality and relationships. Mine is predominantly Harm OCD. I wasn’t so scrupulous around germs and cleanliness, but I had a lot of thoughts around being a bad person, morality and being a sexual predator.

I also struggled with my sexuality.  I consider myself to be heterosexual, but OCD can make you doubt your sexual orientation. It’s basically the doubt disorder; you constantly think, what if? What if this thing happens? It causes a lot of anxiety and distress.

Nowadays I have found a great partner, but I battle with Relationship OCD, which makes me want to leave him even though I love him, because I think I may hurt him in some way and that I’m a bad person. I also think, what if there is someone out there better suited to me? What if there is someone out there better for him?

My compulsions are mental; reassurance seeking, checking things online, confessing my bad thoughts, and experiencing extreme guilt because of them.

For my diagnosis, I went to a private therapist. First I tried going to a public therapist (in Spain we have public healthcare) but she didn’t do much. Here, our public mental health care just fixes everything by telling you to breathe in and out, and they give you appointments once every sixth months.

The private therapist told me that I have an obsessive pattern but didn’t mention OCD as my diagnosis, even though I had done my research and I knew I had OCD because I met all the criteria.

I have recently started working and earning money, so I changed to an OCD and anxiety therapist and started ERP therapy. I can’t tell you my experience with it because it’s very recent, but I am trying to reduce my mental compulsions (which, in fact, is increasing my anxiety, but it’s normal and part of the process).

Sometimes I have doubts whether I have OCD or not, even though getting the diagnosis made me feel relieved and understood. But OCD it’s tricky and makes us believe that our thoughts are real and they aren’t OCD- that we are actually not mentally ill and that we must act on our thoughts.

I have always been an excellent student and luckily the bullying, anxiety and OCD haven’t impacted that area. But in my relationship (I started dating my current boyfriend six months ago) OCD is a big problem. I haven’t told him about my disorder, but I struggle with it daily. I have fears of harming him, of not being 100% compatible (with OCD, we need to be 100% true about things), I have intrusive thoughts about other guys and think that I am an awful girlfriend and that I am cheating on him.

With my friends everything is fine. But my mother suffers because of my mood swings due to intrusive thoughts. When they come, I tend to be extremely irritated and depressed. I can spend a whole week crying, not eating due to anxiety and sadness, and lying in bed without the will to do anything because I am consumed by my thoughts.

In films, OCD is portrayed as the stereotype of being clean and washing your hands. But in fact, the majority of people I have meet (online) with diagnosed OCD have intrusive and disgusting thoughts that cause a lot of guilt and shame. To relieve that anxiety, we perform compulsions, that can be seen or not.

Not even my mom believes that I have OCD. She thinks it’s just anxiety because I am not neat and tidy. She forgets to check that I have other most common, but lesser known, symptoms; black and white thinking or dichotomous thinking, perfectionism (in general, not only with having all my things aligned like films have made us believe), extreme guilt, difficulty to make decisions, low self esteem, and not trusting myself because I don’t know who I am (OCD makes you doubt everything and makes you believe that you are your intrusive thoughts and therefore and awful person).

When I started suspecting I had OCD five years ago, I felt relieved because I wasn’t crazy, my condition had a name. I had always known that it wasn’t just simple anxiety. Anxiety makes you worry about the future. I had anxiety symptoms, but I worried about random and strange thoughts that popped into my mind and didn’t seem to go away. 

Imagine that you hate stealing and you will never do it. But intrusive thoughts keep telling you that you have stolen in the past, and you don’t remember it. Or OCD can also make you have intrusive thoughts about you entering in a bank and stealing, which causes guilt and distress, so you need to confess your intrusive thoughts, make compulsions or whatever to feel relieved.

It was hard to understand that I had OCD because you only generally see the references from films, in which they trivialize the disorder. It’s having constant intrusive thoughts that are ego-dystonic. People with OCD will never act on their thoughts. For example, if they have intrusive thoughts about killing someone, there is pretty much a 100% certainty that they will not. You can feel safe around them.

OCD attacks what we value most. Friends, family, kids, partners- that’s why it’s so terrifying. And that’s why we feel so much pain when a thought like that appears in our mind.