Myself

  Lets start with a little about who I am and my past, as it seems the best place, my name is Matt Williams, I’m 27 years old and from England, as I grew up I was a quite shy lad, I suffered from terrible acne all through my teen years which I can say has affected me, but as I became an adult of around 20 this cleared up and I was able to take some control of my life.  However, during these teen years I started to really suffer from self awareness, constantly looking in the mirror, constantly checking on my skin, avoiding other peoples gazes, I became obsessed with myself obsessed with cleaning my skin and got to the point where I was bunking of college and hiding away from people, almost like I was something to be ashamed of, well, this is what my brain told me, its amazing what your mind can do to you isn’t it. Well, this self loathing and obsession made me shy away from life, not participate and basically give up, but as the acne started to clear so did my mind, I still today have an obsession about how I look and how others perceive me, to the point were I carry a mirror in my pocket, not to gaze at myself in some self loving vain way but to look at myself and make sure I look ok, that I look acceptable, its strange, I ask myself why do I do this? When I look in the mirror I look the same as I looked when I left the house, but I still need to look and check, it’s something I don’t think I will ever really overcome. And this is it with OCD, , there are no miracle cures, you’re not going to change over night, but you can step by step learn to control it.  ‘The fact is most people have OCD, to some small degree, how many times do you check your keys in your pocket? How many times do you make sure you have your rail cards in your coat, even though you know their there? How many times does a person check there change even though they’ve counted it two or three times? Everyone does that’s the answer, so everyone has it to a small degree, but some, like I had and people I know let it be there life, it stops been a little annoyance and ends up been your master and ruler. Does this sound familiar?’  A person who doesn’t really suffer from OCD, can easily walk through a door or wash there hands once, a person who does suffer from OCD, might have to walk through the door over an over again, they might have to wash there hands dozen and dozens of times and still feel dirty, this repetitive task is why its called Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.