What It’s Like to Have OCD
What my OCD is like and how it started
OCD is different for everyone, and yet so many symptoms are the same, but this is what it’s like for me and maybe just seeing one inside view will help someone else to understand what the illness is or for a fellow sufferer to know they’re not alone, because believe me. It’s taken me years to feel brave enough to say I have OCD. I used to be so ashamed of it.
I’m going to use OCD a lot through this, so if you don’t know, OCD stands for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. OCD is a debilitating mental illness that affects 2.2 million people in the USA and three-quarters of a million in the UK. That’s 1.2% of the populations on average.
Describe OCD
If I were to describe it in one word, I’d say, heartbreaking.
Of all the words, that’s the one I choose because that’s how it sometimes feels to me. To be so alone with an illness that gets widely misunderstood and misrepresented.
How Does OCD Start?
For me, I think I’ve always had it. Or at least it’s been there for a long time.
I used to think it started when I was in my early twenties. My daughter was born, and a few months later, I lost my grandmother. It was so heartbreaking for me. She was the…
