What is OCD?

  Well if you have OCD, I don’t really need to tell you what it is do I, but like myself you might live with someone who has OCD, or a friend might have it, so for you lets look at it not in text book detail but in real life situations. OCD has may forms but usually it is characterized by people having distressing thoughts or images that can affect them physically,  usually by repetitive tasks and compulsions, its like when you get a silly song in your head and cant clear it, you keep on humming the song in your mind like a broken records, over and over again until it drives you mad, well this is like OCD, , you get thoughts and do actions over and over again, to the point where it becomes really distressing, you know its all in your mind but you just cant believe yourself and stop. ‘I knew a person who had to sit in front of the fire for an hour after they had turned it off, it became an obsession, every night she did this act by herself in the cold, once I asked her why she did this and her reply was ’I don’t really know’, she knew the fire was safe, but she couldn’t let it go. Like myself in the past, I know what its like to be stuck, in a cycle, it’s distressing and scary’.  A sufferer of OCD, can feel that the task there performing over and over again is in some way important and critical to there life, like it’ll be the end of the world if they don’t perform it, some relief may be felt after the task but unfortunately this is all to short, and the urges soon reappear. ‘When I had the urges to keep cleaning my face over and over again it felt like this was the most important task in the world, it took up hours of my day, it took up all my energy and resources, it made me feel bad, even ill, its hard to reprogram your mind away from this but its not impossible’.Other signs of OCD, can be constantly rearranging objects, or an extremely distressing one which is called ‘counting’, here a person counts there footsteps, lets say they can only walk ten steps to there car any more or less is very distressing to the sufferer and usually means repeating the task over and over again, I’ve seen this form of OCD, in action myself, my ex-girlfriend had this problem, she would count every step and repeat it over and over again until she got it right, it became really distressing for her and for me, when we where in the street she would look onto the floor all the time, stepping over cracks, walking back to re-check objects on the floor to make sure there safe, I myself don’t have this problem but as a non-sufferer its all too easy to imagine doing this, if I walk down the street and start looking at the floor I can imagine myself stepping over the cracks, re-checking objects, counting my steps, it can be scary to allow yourself to get drawn into it. But all too easy to understand how it happens. Suffers don’t usually go to the doctor or even tell people of there problems, I think this is because there scared or embarrassed to tell others, I myself was. There is one really distressing form of OCD, that people will probably never tell anyone about but I have known someone who suffered from it and its extremely distressing for them and I feel it needs to be mentioned, this form is called ‘Cancelling Out’ or ‘Unwanted Sexual Thoughts’, the sufferer has images in there head that they’ve hurt a child or they have fears that there paedophile’s, an extremely distressing thought as you can imagine, my experience of this is of a friend, she had these distressing thoughts and images in her head for no reason what’s so ever, and she only ever told me about it, I told her these thoughts and images  don’t make you evil or a paedophile at all!!! It’s just your mind playing tricks on you.Even though I reassured her over and over again she found it hard to accept this and had doubts about herself, I kept on and  told her these images mean nothing, they will pass, so please reader don’t distress yourself if this has happened to you, your not alone, really.  There are many other forms of OCD, but lets face it, you don’t really need to know right, and if you do I have provided links at the end to assist you, my real reason is to try and help you not scare you more, so lets continue and look at what its like living with someone who has OCD, a subject that’s all to often overlooked I think.