Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)My first symptom of OCD started when I was 11 years old, where I became obsessed with shampoo bottles in the bathroom being in an orderly fashion, with the labels all lined up so they could be easily read. I don't suffer with that symptom any more, it only lasted a short while and then my OCD moved on to checking doors to see if they were locked.
Do you know I don't think I can remember. If I had to say I think it was probably started with continually checking everything was safe before I left the flat and that I'd locked the door. I'd continually check that I'd got my keys whilst I was out. It then progressed to continually checking that I'd not dropped anything when I lost an important paper whilst I was out.
Most of my obsessions and compulsions stem from accidents that I've had because of my epilepsy. So although they are based on real events, those events have long passed and no longer exist. Yet my brain still registers those events and so I continually catastrophise. My brain continually shows me the worst case scenario. So my obsessions and compulsions snowballed, the more I tried to stop them the more rituals I created.
TT
Unregistered
Since my OCD started only really about 7 months ago, I can remember. I started to have contimation isssues but not about germs, which I am obsessed with now, but with chemicals. Some people came to visit and my parents let them smoke in the house :(, and I read up on passive smoking and it said that chemicals from the smoke stay present in houses after the actual smoking is done, and they continue to harm your health by being in the air in dust and in fabric etc. This terrified me and I started scrubbing everything I deemed to the most contaminated, such as the chairs and table in the dining room, which continued to smell for a while afterwards because the smell got trapped in the wood. I had to do it in secret so everytime my parents went out I got to work, praying I wouldn't get caught.
The smell left the house a couple of days after the guests had gone, but I still kept worrying. I could hardly touch anything in the house, especially fabric things. I've actually got over that now, even though it still does concern me. I think I've accepted that there's nothing I can do now, though I am still fighting my parents about letting people smoke in the house. They seem intent on continuing to put my health at risk though, never mind that I have asthma. 
Oh well.
Rant over. 
Unregistered
My first symptom was when I was two and everything had to be either "male" or "female" oriented. Either things were pink or blue. I assigned all things a gender. On blue days my dad had to drive me to pre-school and on pink days my mom had to. That is probably the only obsession/compulsion that has lasted with me until my adult years of course it has changed a lot.
I was about 10 when I can remember having to have everything neat and in order around me. When I became a teenager I used to bath two or three times a day and constantly change my clothes.
I used to sleep upright as well so that I didn't mess up my hair that had to be in place at all times. The age that it all started seems to be around the time my dad commited suicide.
Bridget
I'm not sure which symptom was actually the first, but my OCD first reared its head when I was about seven or eight. One of the first things I remember was being haunted by this horrible vision of my mom being burned to death in a fire. I used to visualise her charred skeleton, and this caused me a lot of upset. Thankfully, it never happened, and my mom is still very much alive to this day.
But I went through this spell back then, which ended one day when I broke down in front of my older sister, and told her all about it. It didn't bother me after that, and I'm not sure that being haunted by ficticious black thoughts are OCD symptoms, but I have a feeling there's a connection.
I had other symptoms around that age, too. I can remember my best mate at school at the time claiming that he once drank blood from a crab, or something daft like that. So I worried that he was going to die as a result of that, even though he was fine, and some time had passed since this supposed thing he did.
I also used to flick imaginary balls of plasticine (or something) off my thumbs while I was sitting in the classroom. Whether I did this an even number of times or not, I don't know, but I used to do it. I also went through a phase where I had a horrible fear of death, like I'd ask my mom "will I die if I do/don't do this?"
So there's quite a few symptoms from my childhood, but I can't accurately pinpoint which symptom was the first.
Steve
Unregistered
I am sorry as well too, Bridget. Niki
Hi -
it was checking wheter my first transistor radio, a Grundig Elite Boy, was put on 'off' every night, whilst knowing that I always put it off after use, to save batteries. Even when the living room of my parents was full of visitors, I had to go at, say, 9 PM to open the radio-and-turntable box, a giant Grundig Mandello, to make a final check.
's funny... all these names are still present in my head at age 51, while I was around 10 way back then.
Nice topic BTW!
Hi Cuthbert,
You're bound to remember as in our day it was something special if you had a transistor radio. It's not like today where kids have loads of various gadgets.
I can understand the checking as the batteries in the early transistor radios didn't last long and they were expensive as they were usually the 9 volt batteries.
That takes me back, secretly listening to Radio Caroline whilst in bed under the sheets with my little transistor radio, and denying to my mother that I had it on. Those were the days Radio Caroline - That gives my age away doesn't it?
Trudy
Hi Trudy -
great memories. You're right about the value of a good transistor then. My point was more that, although I knew for 100% that it already was off, I had to check again.
I listened to Luxemburg, and BFBS (some AFN). The Bee Gees, Roy Wood and Wizzard, and my all time heroes, The Beach Boys. I listened in secret too. Magic stuff, the sound of AM radio...
Sometimes I think that we were more lucky than today's kids with all those iPods, computer games, and so on.
These kids even seem to be at message boards and texting each other. Have you ever heard of something so silly?
I was about 8 and i watched as my Mother washed the dorstep and then the pavement outside our house. I remember thinking but people are going to walk straight through it and make it dirty again!! too young to think 'contaminate'
It has to do with brightness of mind, Poppyfields. At age 8 you made that strong association in your mind, between a clean doorstep and pavement, and these becoming dirty again by others. Not all children do that.
In first principle you were thinking right, only: the chance of 'picking up something bad' was negligible. Other kids just rush in, fall, get a bruised knee, and so on. They mostly didn't even think of such a chance.
Nice to read your feedback. My thoughts were that on either side of the 'clean washed' pavement, people on eithr side would tread straight on over it and thus both sides would make it unclean again! A child of 8 with a bright mind - an interesting view and one i'd never thought of - thanks. Poppy
My first "OCD symptom" was very strange, because it wasn't OCD. I've always had some vaguely autistic traits, one of them being extreme sensory sensitivities - though it always used to be tickly clothes, not sounds.
Well, pretty much overnight I suddenly started having terrible trouble with certain sounds. Traffic noise mainly, and any kind of buzzing or whirring noises like that, but sirens worse than anything. It was really extreme, worse than anything I'd ever had before - I'd get into such a state I didn't know which way up I was. I spent a lot of the next few weeks with my fingers in my ears, or playing music to drown the noise. (We live on a main road!)
As I say, this kind of thing is well known with autism, but never with OCD. But I started getting actual OCD symptoms pretty well straight after that. Makes no sense. Come to think of it, OCD rarely does.
Unregistered
Hi everyone
I always thought that my OCD started at age 23 but now I'm starting to wonder if it was earlier. When I was a child, primary school age I was terrified that a man was going to come and 'get me' while I was in bed. My mum would tuck me up and go back downstairs and when I heard the downstairs door close I would get out of bed and start searching all the bedrooms - there were three bedrooms, a bathroom and toilet and I had to do it all very quietly so no-one knew. I would search each room in turn, bathroom and toilet were easy because the only place anyone could hide was behind the door and they were on one side of the landing, but as I checked the other rooms I had to watch all the time to make sure no-one ran from a room I hadn't checked to one which I had. I had to look under the beds, in the wardrobes, behind the curtains, anywhere it would have been possible to hide and always come out backwards but watching all the other doorways. I had to be careful checking behind doors in case someone came out of the wardrobe while I wasn't looking so I needed eyes in the back of my head. Also if I had to go upstairs to the toilet I was too frightened to go into the bathroom in case I got trapped by the 'hiding man' and I had to be back at the bottom of the stairs before the toilet finished flushing, so I never washed my hands. Now I wash them all the time!
Was this OCD or just childhood fears?
Wow, that sounds so familiar, only i would have been steaming the carpets clean and guarding that no one went back into one of the rooms done before i had completed the circuit!!!
Mine was when I was 6 years old. I had to wash my hands before touching door handles in the house. It has escalated to more things over the years.
Hi CHILLIGIRL,
Welcome to the forum. Thanks for sharing yout experience with us and if you want to tell us about the other things we will be here to listen. As you can see you are not alone in the way OCD affects you and others who have similar experiences may be able to offer some tips and advice about how they cope.
Best wishes,
Caps
Mine was the number three and multiples of three. Also intenses fear of hell and dying in the night. bedtimes were a nightmare as i would have such a long ritual of going to the toilet couldnt be in multiples of three so sometimes would go 14or more times. Dont remember excat age prob about age 8 as something happened at school and although i hadnt done anything, was convinced that they thought i was lying ect ect ect
Hello
My first symptom (recognised as OCD), was checking documents at work. Having recognised the symptoms, I now believe I had OCD when I was about 10, because of the behaviour I was exhibiting then.
Numbers
Swan I identify with the number 3 and multiples of the number 3. Any checking or other compulsions I do are never completed 3 times or in multiples of 3. All odd number are a no no, but Five, however, is strangely a good number as are all even numbers. I dn't know exactly why five is a good number, despite it being an odd number.
John
Johnny,
In contrast to you, any checking or compulsions I do have to be done an ODD number of times. If I do something twice or four or 40 times, it is not done. Something about doing it the second time cancelling out the first, the fourth cancelling out the third etc. Weird, huh?
Cheers
Jon
Hi Jon, I understand all about the canceling out over and over.. Except my checking/compulsions have to be done an even number of times leaving out the numbers 12 and 6, which are bad numbers for me. At one point in the past, I would not even buy anything at the grocery store, if it had a 6 or 12 in the price any where instead, I would buy a different priced item free of those numbers. How silly was that?
Joyce,
I think we were twin kids!
I used to have to check behind doors, under beds, etc. Then I would switch off the light and JUMP to my bed so he couldnt grab me from under the bed...just in case I missed him the first ten times I checked! lol. I believe the checking was OCD now, but then I just thought I was a big chicken.
One day my dad asked me 'What are you going to do if you find someone?' Well. That really struck me...I gues I'd get killed KNOWING it was coming! 
So I suppose it was a good bit of therapy my dad did there...what difference did it make if I knew he was there or not? If I die I die...I just hadnt considered that it was something I could never know for certain. We're all going to die...we just cant be certain HOW. Darn! I'd really like to know how, when, and where thank you! I suppose if I really think about it though, I'd rather live life fully not knowing than not live life while consumed in compulsions trying to 'catch' death in the act of 'getting' me...:)
I had so many my ocd started when I was 5, Im now 24, i remmeber fearing breathing in bad luck e.g. if breathin in while thinking something bad then I would need to breath it out and if while I was breathing it out I was directing the breath at a certain object then I would not be able to touch that object and if I did I needed to wash my hands. quite complex for a kid hey! My Mum says my primary school teacher approached her saying that she was concerend how many times I washed my hands during a day!
I used to have a breathing thing also - I had to breath out in a certain way, and trying to get it 'just right' used to torment me. In fact if I remember rightly at one stage, when I did get it just right, I wrote down on a piece of paper that I had got it right and signed and dated it. I think I then had to sign another piece of paper verifying the first one and so on. I ended up with several bits of paper which I put away safely in the attic. One day, for wahtever reason, I saw the folly in all of this and threw the whole lot in the bin. That was many obsessions ago!
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