Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

taken from my old blog

O.C.D.

This is something I have been going threw severely since senior year. 

Honestly I showed symptoms of what is "commonly" associated with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder my whole life. When I was little I had to turn my light off while staring at my bed and then run directly to it as soon as I turned the switch. If I spun one way, I had to immediately turn the other, or else i'd feel as if I was tilting. Once I became old enough to realize that these behaviors were effecting my daily life, I self diagnosed myself with ocd. I never thought of it as a serious issue since the symptoms began to dramatically decrease as I grew older.

Senior year, I went through something that changed what my life was like up until then. I don't regret it happening at all, but it effected me internally a lot more than I thought possible. 

I actually do not want to go into detail of the symptoms but I will in hopes that this will help someone reading it because it was by far the hardest thing I ever had to deal with in my life and Just thinking of anyone else going through the same things is upsetting and I hope I can help them.

Senior year, I began to have "weird" feelings towards girls. I personally have NOTHING against homosexuals and don't think anything negative of it. I also believe that being "gay" is something you're born into, just perhaps maybe you were not comfortable dealing with it so you pushed it away. So when I began having these feelings, it freaked me out at first because I had never had attractions towards females to this extent in my life! It made me extremely uncomfortable. I was incredibly embarrassed by these feelings and it made me feel very confused. After a while I came to the realization that I love myself no matter what my sexual orientation, or how friends, family or peers reacted to it. 

This is when things became unbearable. As soon as I excepted the fact that I was probably Bisexual, all those feelings went away. I then began to have weird sexual fantasies that are horrendous and  I can't even say. It was such a mental burden that I completely fell apart.

I would sit in my room and cry for hours every day, I would pray constantly, I actually believed I was a sociopath and would spend my days looking up symptoms of this mental disease among others. I reached the point where I thought of committing suicide because I couldn't deal with being inside my own head. 

I was too embarrassed to ask for help, and honestly thought if I did I would end up in a psych ward. I became an empty shell. I would curl up on my floor and let my mind go blank for hours. 

After a while I couldn't feel anything anymore. Everything I did and didn't do was too much for me. I would inflict pain on myself just so I could feel anything. 

Eventually I told someone I needed help and began seeing a therapist, who was incredibly sweet and diagnosed me with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. She explained that there are many different types of OCD, and that mine is part of the more severe groupings which include, sexual thoughts, also including blasphemy; thoughts of hurting or killing someone, etc. 

O.C.D. is often imagined to be a disease where people need to continuously do rituals such as washing your hands or making sure everything has a place. It's not that easily identifiable, OCD comes in many different types. The one I particularly suffer with is one that causes you to continuously think of things that make you feel uncomfortable. My therapist informed me that it feeds off of making you feel uneasy and as soon as you began to relax and accept something it brings out something new. Prime example, my homosexual thoughts disappearing as soon as I accepted them. 

This type of OCD is actually incredibly common, reason why it seems otherwise is because those who suffer don't want to admit it, because the thought of telling someone is terrifying because it already scares the shit out of them, how can they be expected to tell anyone else?

Currently I am on medication to control the symptoms, I am taking Zoloft and Abilify. I'm not going to lie and say they are miracle workers and unfortunately they haven't completely erased all my symptoms, but they have greatly improved my thought process. I may still have unwanted thoughts but it is a thousand times easier to make them stop. I also am finding it easier to tell myself my hands are clean after washing them once, before i'd have to force myself away from the sink after washing a dozen times. 

Thing is, if you have this problem, I know it's scary, believe me, but maybe that's because we have this mindset that no one else is like us, that we're abnormal and wrong. Maybe our thoughts are negative ones, but that doesn't mean millions of others don't suffer from the same thing! In fact they do! You are not a horrible person! You have a horrible disease! Be kind to yourself and allow yourself to ask for the help and advice you need! 

Bonne Chance

much love<3