Hello all
Tricia, what a great thread! I’m new here but ive been following this forum for a few days now and I thought I should share my experience in the hope that it will help others and to find comfort myself.
Before I go into a long story about my battles with OCD, I just want to apologise for the long post. I would also like to start off by saying something positive, I had my first battle with this nightmare 8 years ago and I beat it, completely! So recovery is definitely possible. Unfortunately for me, after 7 free years, losing my mum last year means I’m now battling the same demons again but I have faith that I will conquer my anxiety/OCD once again and I want you all to know, you can too.
So here goes, I first experienced OCD when I was 22, triggered by terrible things I read/ heard on the news about sexual abuse. (I guess I was sensitive to such news because of my own Sexual abuse experience which at the time I had never ever mentioned it to anyone)
I recall the first night I had a panic attack, I was babysitting for my God daughter who was four at the time and for some reason I began to think about the news coverage and about my past experiences for the first time. I then asked myself many questions like, why would anyone in their right mind abuse a child , what do they find sexual about a child……….. And because I’d read that victims of child abuse can become abusers, the final question that has plagued my life since, ‘What if I became one’ before I knew it my mind was full of awful intrusive thoughts. And all at the same time, I got a groinal response, I felt sick, faint and I was literally floored, I was supposed to stay the night but I was so scared of my thoughts and the out of control feeling that as soon as the girls mummy came back I ran off home. I loved them dearly but after that day I truly felt like I never wanted to see them again.
That was the beginning of my down spiral, I couldn’t fathom or understand what had happened to me in one night and my world had turned upside down. From then on, I would have terrible anxiety and panic every time I saw children. Also the ‘What if Question’ slowly became “I am” and I was convinced I would hurt kids. For month I continued to have anxiety/ panic attacks / the groinal response at the sight or distance noise of a child. I would spend all day in a daze, trying to understand what was happening to me, trying to control my mind but nothing worked. My mind had become a vacuum for all things disturbing; it would go from sexual thoughts to graphic violent thoughts, I was scared I would turn into my worse nightmare, the very awful things I hated about our society. It was so weird!
I spent 4 month in therapy but all my thoughts and symptoms were put down to my sexual abuse history, in fact she never even mentioned anxiety once, let alone Intrusive Obsessive thoughts. Having lost faith in the therapist, I decided to scour the internet for information on depression forums because that was the only symptom I recognised at the time. Luckily someone on a forum told me about intrusive thoughts and recommended a book called ‘Imp of the Mind’. That was the beginning of my recovery, 7 years ago. Soon after, I was able to realise I was not mad, that I had an anxiety disorder and learned that Obsessive thinking was how it chose to manifested itself in me. From that day onwards, I stopped fighting the thought because I labelled them OCD/ Anxiety thoughts AND just like that they disappeared.
And for 7 years, I was free of such thoughts, I never looked back. Occasionally, me and my best friend would discuss my experience and laugh at some of my most ludicrous thoughts I had. I was convinced I was a lesbian, a psychopath, you name it, I was it! I never ever thought it would return. Unlucky for me, last year I lost my dear mum after a long battle with cancer, at the time I thought I was coping well with the loss but in hindsight there were a lot of things I was experiencing that suggested I was on the slippery slope back in to OCD hell hole. I had begun to beat myself up, convinced myself I was bad daughter when there was nothing more I could have done for her. I was also having intrusive thoughts like, digging her out of her grave to see her again – ( And in the same way the sexual thoughts felt so real, that too felt real, like I would lose control and dig my mummy out) It was scary stuff!
I never recognised it as OCD until about 6 month later; once again, the news was dominated by terrible news about a woman who’d abused some kids in her care. When I was reading it, I was disturbed that a woman could do that and before I knew it, I got the groinal feeling, I panicked and had an intense anxiety attack. I desperately tried to implement all that I had previously learned by reminding myself it was OCD but I began to succumb to it and before I knew it, I was having attacks whenever I saw children, and it’s been down hill since.
Now, 8 month on, I’m still suffering, I’ve read many books, I understand my condition but for some reason I can’t seem to apply the knowledge, some days I feel on top of it and can see it’s all a pile of B.S then I crash bang and my obsessive thoughts just get worse. And because it won’t go away, I keep thinking what if it’s not OCD and what if I’m actually a flawed person who is evil deep down etc. Sometimes, I actually believe that I am my thoughts and this breaks my heart!
Will it go away again? How do I apply what I know to get better again? Where I am going wrong? If you know please give me a shout. I am seeing a therapist but if anyone has a great one to recommends one in London please give me a shout.
I apologies for the long post and thank you for taking time out to read my post.
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