OCD: A Day in the Mind

NB for those who have OCD - I don't know about you, but I have definitely picked up new obsessions from hearing about other people's. This article is full of mine, so you might like to skip it if you do that.

I took a quiz the other day that informed me I have 'moderate OCD symptoms'. Considering I am paralysed with horror for at least an hour each day, and usually considerably longer, this was both reassuring - my crumbling mind is not terminal - and horrifying.

For the last week, I have had the energy to do precisely nothing except just about manage my work and obsess. I am much stronger on obsessions than compulsions, most of the things I imagine happening being so outlandish that no compulsion can be invented that could possibly ward them off, and far too ridiculous to even be worked into surrealist fiction.

The fact that my OCD is the thing preventing me from cleaning my house is what inspired me to write this article. People hear 'OCD' and think 'clean'. I bloody wish. Not that it would be good to scrub my hands bloody, but at least something would be clean.

I don't clean. Instead I mull over, torture myself with, and google the statistical chances of all of the following possibilities. (I apologise in advance if this list is boring. I am bored of it too, when I am not crying or googling.)

• I have accidentally written a note that will expose me as having done/said/thought something wrong, whether I have done it/said it/thought it or not, and this will obviously become known to everyone I know and destroy my life. I take photos of any notes I make as evidence for the defence in my mental court case later.
• I have accidentally said something sexual or rude or cruel out loud, or my thoughts are loud enough that others can hear them whether I have done so or not.
• I can be/have been seen acting weird on CCTV (cue checking for cameras, which doesn't look odd at all).
• Someone has installed a secret camera in my home and is broadcasting my weirdness somewhere (cover that suspicious screw in the bathroom wall with bubbles).
• My colleagues will think I am drunk or mental because of a weird look I gave them, or the fact I stumbled while walking around the office, or because I spoke funny (act elaborately normal).
• People know something about me that I don't; I must be the only woman in the world who sees a man staring in the street and assumes "he has some secret dirt on me" instead of "he's checking me out".
• I have accidentally sexually harrassed someone, usually by looking at them wrong or speaking in too sweet a voice (maybe they think I am trying to be seductive?) or smiling too much or making a joke.
• A scented tealight I lit two or three days ago might still somehow be burning, and I better go back and check it isn't in case the whole terraced street goes up in berry-scented flames. I will just take a taxi to work.
• I smell, somehow, despite showering and wearing all clean clothes - usually evidenced by the taxi driver opening a window or one of those irritating people who are always on the bus announcing that something smells bad, on the rare occasion that my checks haven't led to me missing the bus.
• I have accidentally exposed myself to someone.
• I have accidentally sent someone a rude message.
• I have accidentally posted something compromising on social media (I have had Instagram for 7+ years and never posted anything, because I am too scared to give the app permissions).
• None of this is actually OCD - it is the prodrome of something, and I will soon have a psychotic break and lose the ability to remember that people are not actually watching me on secret cameras. Or maybe I will have a psychotic break and start sending people offensive messages.
• I will have a psychotic break and do something terrible but other people will not realise why, and think I am a Really Bad Person.
• I will accidentally commit a crime or gross misconduct, end up in the papers and have to leave the country (sometimes I check the papers to make sure I am not in them).
• People think my cat is miaowing loudly because I am abusing her (she actually just really likes attention), and one day the animal welfare people will come and take her away and I will end up in the papers and people will whisper about me in the street.
• I will become famous and successful (no, I don't know how either) and everyone who I have ever offended (or accidentally sexually harrassed or written rude messages to) will come out of the woodwork to share all about how bad I am and I will be destroyed and have to live in hiding.

This list is not exhaustive, and I am exhausted.

I have tried CBT, and regular counselling, and Prozac, and I am worse, not better. Not that these things made me worse, just that they seem to be unable to stop the relentless mind-eating march of OCD.

The latest thing is that I have signed up for a private treatment consultation; let's see if money can buy sanity.

A poem I wrote about this kind of thing: RSM