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Read about other peoples lives and their experiences. Try and have a greater understanding of how OCD sufferers live their daily life. Read the funniest true life stories, the happiest, saddest most emotional stories. Many people with OCD felt alone until they witnessed the story of someone like themselves.
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Symmetry/Exactness
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Daniel was a perfectionist. He was always tidy, his books and videos were even and in alphabetical order, his shoes were lined up neatly against the wall, his pictures and posters were perfectly in line with each other and all his furniture was too. It wasn't just stopping there, it was getting worse. If he saw something an inch out of place, he couldn't rest till he got it just right. At the age of 12 he had his room just right. Daniel felt that if he didn't keep things as he wanted them, something bad was going to happen to his family. Daniel could spend anything up to four hours a day organising his room.
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Touching
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Emma recently came out with having OCD as it was affecting her family life. She is now receiving help. It started when she was a little girl. She had a fear of her mum being injured or killed in a car accident and thought by touching an object once, twice or a number of times she would avert this tragedy from happening. She repeats certain activities, for example, sitting down and getting up a number of times until she feels right. There were times when she had visited department stores and had the urge to touch things like the floor or things out of reach. The security guards uniform was another thing which she felt she had to touch.
At the cash desk, waiting to pay for her goods, she was having the twitches and started to fidget because she was still thinking about the security guards uniform she had to touch. When it was finally her turn to pay, she handed over the money, but felt she had to touch the notes one more time, but had already handed them over. Emma started to stress because she hadn't achieved her rituals: she thinks something will now go wrong, whether it be today or tomorrow.
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Disease/infection
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Kelly had an appointment with the doctors for a routine blood test after coming back from holiday. Later that day Kelly didn't think much about it until she got back home. The idea came into her head that she was injected with someone else's needle, either by accident or on purpose because she thought the nurse didn't like her. She asked her friends what they thought. She even asked her mum. Kelly was worried she might of have caught a disease such as AIDS. She called the AIDS hot-line several times a day for assurance. She read every medical book she could about AIDS. She was on the website day and night to find out if she was displaying any of the symptoms. Kelly stopped eating and had sleepless nights thinking about whether she had caught AIDS. For a 17 year-old talking about dying, it was worrying, so her mum took her to the doctors, who sent her to a psychiatrist.
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Mental Acts
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Jack sees negative images of people in his mind, especially his family. If an image pops up in his mind about a family member having a car crash or an accident, he will try to avert this to a happy image quickly. For example, if he is walking down the street and suddenly he thinks of an image of a family member in danger, he will feel the urge to trace back his footsteps from the point the negative image came into his mind and start again, but this time he will try and imagine a good image of his family member before he carries on walking. He feels if he doesn't do this, the negative images might happen in real life.
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Checking
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When Jason goes out, he has to check just about everything. Was his computer turned off? Did he turn off all the lights? Did he shut the door properly? Did he forget the television on? Jason is very worried that the house maybe broken into, or his house might be on fire and goes back and checks it again. By the time he is done checking the last thing, he wasn't to sure he checked the first thing.
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Cleaning
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Mark and his girlfriend were both looking forward to moving in to their first home together. After a few weeks of settling down, Mark's girlfriend started to wonder why Mark was spending so much time in the bathroom. Mark made roughly 10 trips to the bathroom that day and spent on average 5-10 minutes each time; this was nearly every day. Mark's girlfriend was curious, so decided she had better find out. One afternoon, while Mark was in the bathroom, she quietly went up to the door and listened. She heard continuous heavy water runny. She opened the door slightly and saw her boyfriends hands in the wash basin, scrubbing and scrubbing, rinsing the soap off, then starting again, scrubbing and scrubbing.
When Mark's girlfriend confronted him that day, he just shouted at her for spying on him, but eventually he came out and started crying with a sad depressed face, but all he could say was, "I feel dirty all the time and I couldn't do anything without carrying out my rituals. I try so hard to prevent myself from doing this, but I can't help it".
OCD sufferers are NOT Mad, Crazy, Insane, Alone, Dangerous , or likely to Harm Anyone. People with OCD do not carry out their unpleasant thoughts. They are loving, caring and normal like everyone else.
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