Ten years of being diagnosed with OCD, the highs and lows of mental health

My 24th year on this earth also marks my tenth year of being diagnosed with OCD and of trying to seek help for it. I’ve always been open about my mental health online, so what better reason to share more of my story?

At age 14 I was entering into studying for my GCSE exams, I had my first every boyfriend and everything seemed new. I guess my brain thought why not throw something else into the mix. I can’t really remember a moment where I thought hmmm I need to go to the Doctors about how I’m feeling, but I remember being sat in the Doctor’s office and being passed a leaflet about OCD. I was told I had both depression and OCD and referred to a counsellor that I would see for a few months until she left on maternity leave and I was put onto a waitlist that I never seemed to leave. Queue ten years of different councillors, therapists and methods. But this blog post isn’t about that, it’s about living with OCD for the past ten years.

You can read more about my OCD on my blog here:
OCD and Me – consider this the older version of the post I’m now writing
Seeking help for my OCD – this talks about the different variations of help I have sought for my OCD
Stop using OCD as a throwaway term – a blog post about the use of the term OCD and how to use it correctly

At 14 my OCD was very different to how it is now, but one thing hasn’t changed, my OCD linked to contamination. I live in fear of catching a sick bug and for that reason, I obsessively and compulsively clean my hands and the space around me. I do this to the point that the skin on my hand cracks open and is redraw.

The other symptoms of my OCD, which have improved greatly since my childhood, were counting, checking behind me and making a hmm sound. The checking I barely do anymore and was in the form of turning behind me to see if I had dropped something. I would walk home from school every day and turn around every few minutes to check behind me for forgotten items falling from my bag. I felt compelled to do this, as with the hmm sound. You may be reading this thinking this sounds very tame, but OCD is defined by the obsessive thoughts that take over your brain. I would go hmm out loud as a child to check I hadn’t lost my voice. I can’t remember when this stopped, but I’m glad it did. Finally, the counting, something that still happens on the odd occasion. I would count things like glasses on a table, for example, let’s say there were three glasses. So I would count one, two three, one, two, three, one, two, three. You can see how that one really got to me.

As my life has taken on direction and as I can control it more, I have noticed certain parts of my OCD taming down. I don’t think they will ever truly be gone, but a lot of the things I used to do, I no longer do. My contamination OCD has become very much part of me over the last ten years. I don’t get ill often so I can’t really complain about that aspect and really I can’t think what I would be like without this OCD. I acknowledge the cuts on my hands are a negative side effect, but on the day to day, I can manage my OCD. It’s when someone close to me gets a sickness bug that I really struggle and the panicking begins. I’ve had to leave my house in the past because I can’t cope with being around the illness, so in those situations, it has hindered me more than I would like.

A big thing I’ve learned over the last ten years is who to trust with my OCD. I’ve told various ‘wrong’ people throughout this time and have learned how to avoid this now. Not everyone understands OCD and I do my very best to counter this online, but you can’t reach everyone. Some people still turn their noses up when you mention OCD, and even when I don’t mention it but do things like getting my own cutlery out from my bag at work, I still receive strange looks.

I’ve called this blog post, the highs and lows because I know first hand how controlling OCD can be. I know how mental health can affect day to day living and how low it can make someone feel. I know what it’s like to be called weird too for some of the things I do because of my OCD, I’ve even once been called a freak. But amongst all of this is my individuality. I hold my OCD close to my heart because it as much part of me as my love of books is and my passion for creating. My OCD has made up parts of my personality for the last 10 years. It makes me who I am, and yeah it makes me a bit different, but does that have to be a bad thing?

I don’t hate my OCD, because then I would lose precious time wishing something away that will probably always remain with me. People may have opinions about this and say I’m choosing to have OCD, I’m not, but I have spent ten years trying to change it, so for now, I’m going to just live with it.