My Story

One member of the groups story

My first OCD related memories are from junior school. Walking to school trying not to step on the cracks on the pavement in order to stop various disasters from happening. This did seem to work as none of the disasters actually did happen. Later I also worried other people could hear what I was thinking, even though logic told me this was rubbish. I did think I was a bit weird but kept this to myself. None of this was a problem too much of a problem until later in my life.

The first difficulties started as a teenager, when I would say I now I was suffering from a form of social phobia. I don’t want to go into this to much as I still find the whole thing embarrassing to talk about. But the problems I had for some time took over my whole life. Everyday life was a bit of a struggle.

This phase petered out into my teenage years. The excitement of teenage life allowed me to push things to the back of my mind. Moving from quickly from one thing to another.

I was involved in an incident that put me under a lot of stress around the age of 21. I recall one day going to the post office the time was around 11 am. I had a strange feeling of looking down on myself. This was when to me my OCD started in earnest. I would not find out until over 20 years later that OCD was actually the problem I had.

I became obsessed with these feelings and the causes for them. Did I have something wrong with my brain? Was I mad? I fought this with everything I had. Obsessions and compulsions!

The obsessional thoughts morphed and expanded into other areas. I had spells where the I fell into deep dark depressions for months at a time. I could just about carry on with everyday life when in these spells.