I Had REAL OCD | healthkicker

Thursday, 18 March 2010

I Had REAL OCD

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When I was a kid I had obsessive-compulsive disorder, like actual OCD and not obsessive compulsive personality disorder (which is a milder form of OCD and what people more often have when they think they have OCD).

Criteria to diagnose OCD:
1. Have at least one of the following two: obsessions: a recurrent and intrusive thought, feeling or idea; or compulsions: a conscious repetitive behavior linked to an obsession that, when performed, functions to relieve anxiety caused by obsession.
2. The person is aware that obsessions and compulsions are unreasonable and excessive
3. Obsessions cause marked distress, are time consuming, or significantly interfere with daily functioning.

From as early as I can really remember, which is around 5 years old, I had both obsessions and compulsions.

From years 5-8, I had a series of questions I had to ask my mom before I went to bed at night. Questions like "Am I going to get a nose bleed? Am I going to wake up in the morning? Am I going to get a tummy ache?" ...the list would get progressively longer. If my mom wasn't home, I'd have to ask her over the phone. I wet the bed once when I was 6 and for the next year, I would compulsively go to the bathroom like 10 times or how ever many times I could manage before I fell asleep just to make sure my bladder was empty. I would compulsively check my alarm clock over and over again just to make sure it was set to the right time and that I had my homework in my backpack because I would get in trouble if I woke up late or didn't turn my homework in on time. I would repeat things in my mind over and over again until I said it just right.

Even at 7/8 years old, I KNEW what I was doing was nonsensical. If I JUST checked it, how could it suddenly have changed? But I couldn't stop until I did it just right or else I would have that overwhelming feeling of anxiety. It was almost like a voice in my head was telling me to repeat and repeat until I was satisfied and the voice went away. (mind you, it was not like a schizophrenic type voice). I was really scared that I was crazy so I never told anyone about it.

There are 2 ways to treat OCD (using both is most affective):
1. Medications to reduce the level of anxiety.
2. Behavioral therapy called exposure and response prevention: essentially you force a person to do an anxiety provoking task without letting them do any of their compulsions. ie. put dirt on someone's hands w/o letting them wash them. The idea being that once a person can fully feel the entirety of their anxiety, they will realize that it's not THAT bad and the body will actually attenuate itself and will get used to that level of anxiety.

Since I'm Chinese and we traditionally don't really recognize psychiatric disorders, I was never formally treated and had no idea what was going on. My parents thought my behavior was odd, but kind of just turned a blind eye to it. But even as a kid, I kinda knew how to treat myself with this "behavioral therapy". I would force myself to stop doing whatever compulsion/obsession and let myself feel that full anxiety and I would usually get over it. But always, within a few weeks, a new compulsion/obsession would develop. Starting at 7 years old, I was in constant battle with myself.

But I got flamming lucky. Even with treatment, only about 30% of pple show significant improvement. Mine kind of just resolved on its own. My compulsions stopped by middle school. My obsessions decreased in intensity and frequency by high school, with almost full resolution by senior year. I think my hormones just kind of leveled out and as I focused my energy more on school, I had less reserve for my OCD.

Now, while I am still a little bit crazy lol, it's not at all in an OCD way. I wouldn't even qualify as having obsessive compulsive personality disorder. But I really feel for pple who are still struggling with OCD. It can be a seriously debilitating condition, one that many don't really understand. When you are constantly fighting against yourself every minute of every day and constantly fleeing from anxiety, it is an awful feeling.
And of the many ways I've gotten extremely lucky in my life, I got really lucky that this went away.