What It Became...

After my fist six years of dealing with OCD, I thought I had it figured out. I didn't know what it was but I had learned to live with it, the way it was. And then it stopped being what it was and changed into something else. I was afraid of the uncertainty and doubt, the fear and guilt, the differences of what it used to be and what it became....

At ten years of age a great deal of family issues were going on in my life. My mother was dealing with flashbacks of the horrible sexual abuse she suffered by the hands of her father. Her marriage to my step dad was on the rocks and now she also had a child that was worrying her. Me.

The checking and counting had stopped as well as the touching. I still washed excessively but most of the more defining traits of what we thought OCD was, had seemed to vanish overnight.  I was no longer late because I had to touch the door knob twenty times until it felt right. I didn't need to count every bean in my three bean soup. I seemed normal on the outside, and that was the point. With OCD nothing is ever normal but it tends to seem that way if you don't know how to look for it.

The outward compulsions had turned into a more ominous symptom. I was ruminating. My ruminations were about this and that but mostly about death. I don't remember exactly how it all played out but basically, I was talking about funerals, coffins and hearses...a lot. And it scared my parents. So they went to a child psychiatrist that ran an outpatient program at a hospital. They told him of my previous symptoms and my ruminations about death and he saw dollar signs. You see, my dad had excellent insurance and it covered a two month stay at a mental facility. The psychiatrist convinced my parents that I was suicidal and a danger to myself. It scared my parents badly, so they signed me in because he was a doctor and he convinced them I could be saved but only if I was institutionalized. I was ten.

Promptly I was I walked to the child ward section of the mental hospital. Anyone who has been institutionalized knows that the first thing they do in the processing of a new patient is a strip search. I was carted off into a tiny room where I was disrobed and my clothes rifled through. I was made to turn slowly around and searched naked. I was made to open my mouth and lift up my tongue to make sure I was not harboring drugs orally. I distinctly remember the feel and taste of the gloved hand in my mouth. Probably why I hate dentists to this day. I remember being embarrassed because I was wearing my underwear that said Wednesday on them and it was a Monday. Funny, how your mind can't really process what is going on so you get embarrassed by the silly things and remain numb to the things you should be horrified by, like being naked in front of complete strangers. I felt lost and scared and like I was being punished for something I had said or done but didn't know exactly what it was. I wasn't allowed outside contact from my parents or family for two weeks. As was protocol.

It was hell. We weren't allowed to have our personal items. No underarm deodorant, toothpaste, brushes, toothbrushes, shampoo, or soap.Those had to be signed out to receive. They counted all of the forks and spoons after each meal as well as all pencils after we had to write our daily assignment. Lest we ,twelve and under group of kids, try to shank someone in the halls (sarcasm). I saw a kid being tied with leather restraints to the bed because he was "mouthy." I can still hear his screaming in my head when I think about it. We were all given the same medications at night, in a line by the water fountain and again our mouths were checked to make sure we swallowed them like good little children.  Our parents had no idea we were even medicated. We were forced to do group therapy but nothing of any importance was ever discussed except who said what to whom and the like. I was never treated or diagnosed. The hospital was later shut down for fraud. It seems they admitted children, teenagers, and adults for insurance payoffs even though most of them were not mentally ill or if they were many were not suicidal. I was one of those kids. I was not a danger to myself or others and that doctor knew it.

I learned nothing from the hospital except that I didn't want to talk about my obsessions anymore. Talking about them could end in me going back to that place. The place that never taught me how to deal with OCD or that I even had OCD, but how to wash my own laundry and keep my room "military style" clean.  Something I learned because the hospital did regular searches and checks and I didn't want to get into trouble. You didn't want to get in trouble there. My old roommate got in trouble for planning to escape during my stay and "accidentally fell" in her room while alone with two orderlies. She ended up with a huge knot on her forehead. It was the size of an egg. She was twelve.

I am sure my OCD was screaming at me at this point but I told no one. I kept my head down and did what I was told. When I got to go home I never talked about the mental ward. I blocked it out until last year. I hadn't even told my best friends or my husband of twelve years. It was too awful to remember and so I didn't.

In fact I don't remember most of that whole year. It is all blocked and I have little to no recollection of it besides the faint glimmers of memory  and flashbacks of being in the hospital.

Around the age of twelve the OCD was quieter but I started to have panic attacks. Severe panic attacks when going to school. Leaving my mother to go to class became unthinkable and I was completely unable to stop the fear and crying spells. I saw other doctors but no one seemed to have an idea on how to help me with this debilitating fear. Just like the compulsions it too disappeared.

At fourteen while grabbing a towel out the closet the voice was back. The voice I remembered from childhood. The one that taunted me and made me check, count, and touch over and over and over again. It told me if I didn't touch the shelf the same way on my left arm as I did my right then my mom would die in a fiery car crash. I hit the floor in agony, tears rolling down my face. I didn't know what the voice was but I remembered all of  the pain I had as a young child and I remembered that this voice was the cause of all of that pain. Again, I started to outwardly compulse. Each time believing that I had gone completely insane but being unable to stop it.  I went to yet another doctor but finally got a diagnoses. I had Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and I was started on medications for the first time. The medications trials seemed to go on and on but finally I was given one that worked decently and the compulsions lessened and lessened until they stopped. However the panic attacks were back in full force leaving me to miss a great deal of school.

At fifteen, the PureO side came out. My OCD was now telling me I was a lesbian. I fretted and worried. Not because I was afraid of what my family would think, because they would love me regardless, but because I knew I had never once had a crush on a girl in my life. I had only liked boys. Only wanted to date boys. Only dreamed of marrying a boy...ect. Nowhere was there a desire to be with a girl and yet my OCD refused to let it go. It bombarded me with images of naked women and girls kissing. It talked to me constantly about how I was a very closeted lesbian and I just didn't know it. It was made harder to process by the fact I hadn't kissed anyone yet so the OCD played up on that fact as well.
... How do you know if you have never even been kissed? You know you like girls and not guys. You are so gay. Just admit it...
I felt like I was going crazy. I knew I was straight and yet the doubts kept coming. Washing over me like a baptism of lies and deceit. I became afraid to spend time with my friends because they were girls and my brain kept telling me I wanted to kiss them or I was sexually attracted to them. It became torture to have to sit next to a girl in class. The shame of the things my brain was telling me in lurid and explicit sexual detail made me flush with guilt and embarrassment.  I was so confused I felt I had to test myself to see if I was gay. When I would have an intrusive image come into my mind I would try to see if it felt like I was aroused.  Hoping that maybe it would be a way to finally solve the doubt. It was never conclusive enough for my OCD because it would say I was when I wasn't. So much so that I started to doubt if I had been or not. I concentrated so hard on trying to prove to myself whether I was or was not gay by gauging arousal that every time I had one of the homosexual OCD thoughts I felt like I had to pee or vomit or both. It was torture and I had no idea what to believe anymore. The OCD had confused me to the point I felt like I preferred no sexuality preference at all. I didn't want to be gay or straight, I just wanted to be free and maybe become a nun. Then it wouldn't matter either way, because I would be celibate. I really thought joining the nunnery may have been my only hope but I was and am Southern Baptist and Baptists don't have a nunnery or nuns to speak of....The irony wasn't lost on me.

Thankfully, I had a really good therapist who also happened to be a Lesbian, so in talking with her I learned that this torture wasn't indicative of my preference at all. It was all OCD trying to confuse me and torture me simply because that is what OCD does. If I had truly been a lesbian then I wouldn't be agonizing over it or testing myself. I would know. Generally, people know which way they swing or at least have an idea. This made sense and the Homosexuality OCD fear symptom finally dissipated once it no longer was able to upset me anymore. It had haunted me for a year.


I had finally conquered this particular PureO obsession but it would end up being the least agonizing symptom. As I grew older the more devastating and haunting my symptoms became. My new symptoms would be more heartbreaking and scary. Out with the old and in with the new. My next symptoms were Harm Fears and they scared me more than I could ever imagine....

Neurotic Nelly

The next installment :http://neurtoicnellyocd.blogspot.com/2014/01/i-was-unaware-and-unprepared.html

Previous installment :http://neurtoicnellyocd.blogspot.com/2013/12/and-so-it-begins.html

And So It Begins....

Often times when I talk about living with my disorder or my mental illness I refer to the fact that I have lived with this albatross for over thirty years. Sometimes, I am dumbfounded as I say it aloud and hits me like a barbell to the chest. I have dealt with this for longer than most couples stay married. If it were a career choice instead of a mental illness, I would already have payed into my retirement fund and be living off of it ( probably somewhere in Florida wearing hideous, dark blue denim, high-water pants with an elastic waistband, dark black wrap around sunglasses, and  that little old lady red visor hat old people wear in bingo halls). If it were a prison sentence I would probably be out by now (depending on my crime).  If it were calculated by dog years, I would have suffered for over 112 years. You get the picture...it's a long time.

I wanted to talk about how OCD has affected my life. How it has changed over time, the pain, the struggles, the frustrations of what I have gone through as well as the many different symptoms I have had, but I realize that it would take more than one post to fit thirty years of this.....mental haunting into words. I want to be honest. I need to be honest. This is not just my blog but my confessional. My priest. My window to the world that I look out from and I so desperately want to just let it all out. Hang the dirty laundry and let it dry. Release the haunting and be free to finally be brutally honest not just about the more "comfortable" symptoms most of us willingly talk about but also the really bad ones. The ones none of us share because it makes us feel dirty, bad, sick, and so very very alone. So, I am taking that first shaky step with wobbly knees and unsure footing with this first installment of how it all came to be, how it all began, how it all started.....And so it begins.

My first vivid memory of an intrusive thought was around the age of four. My sister and I were playing outside. She, being two years older than me was my only real source of all things worldly. She was my Tom Brokaw of the news department and everything she said was taken as truth. After all, she was bigger and smarter. She was six. She told me that when you swallowed; the food, drink, saliva, whatever turned into blood as it ran down your throat. I was horrified. I hated blood and just the mention of the word made me feel faint. I am not sure how I reacted right after she broadcast this bit of news to me, but soon thereafter I started having issues with swallowing my own spit. I was afraid it was turning into blood and it scared me. I also started washing my hands, excessively. To the point my hands were cracking and bleeding. I became aware of how things were "dirty feeling" or "tainted" even when they appeared to be clean. Then the thoughts came. The ugly scary thoughts that turned my insides cold as ice. They made my palms sweaty and my heart jump in my throat. They showed me images of my parents suffering and dying in horrible ways. Car crashes, house fires, random crazy murderous burglars.....the most vile and scary things a kid could imagine and I was afraid it would happen to my parents, my friends, my aunts and uncles...ect. It made me think about death and the death of my loved ones, my pets, my friends, myself. It terrified me more than any boogeyman lurking in the closet or monster under my bed. It was the monster that lived under my bed, but I carried it everywhere I went. It lived in the recesses of my brain. It dwelled in the corners of my mind. It played in the shadows of my cerebral cortex. It left me unable to concentrate on anything else but the fear and the nauseous feeling it left in the pit of my stomach. I started to pray until it became a mantra. A mantra I said exactly the same way over and over and over and over, every time these images would pop up. I said them with tears in my eyes. I said them with my tiny fingers jammed so far into my ears that it hurt, while screaming "Shut up! Shut up!" over and over again. I hated the voice in my head but I didn't realize the voice was only in my head. I thought maybe others could hear it too. I didn't know it wasn't normal. All I knew is that no matter how hard I prayed, no matter how much I cried, no matter how loud I yelled it never went away. It never ceased. It never stopped. I said the mantra so often that after thirty years I still remember it verbatim. Most people have wonderful playful memories of the age of four and all of the innocence and laughter. All I have is the memory of : No No No, No No No, No No No No, No No No.

Soon the "No No No's" didn't work anymore and I resorted to slapping myself in the forehead. The pain made the intrusive thoughts waver. The shock of the slap gave me a instant relief but not for long enough. So I did it again and again. It got to the point that I would bruise my forehead from hitting it so hard, so often. When my slaps became not hard enough to shock the intrusive thoughts anymore, I started begging, pleading with my mother to slap me in the forehead. "Harder, Mom it has to be harder or the thoughts won't go away."

She took me to the doctor and he suggested it could be Obsessive Compulsive Disorder but they weren't treating children for it at that time and certainly not children that young. He suggested that they not tell me anything about it or draw attention to it and maybe it would go away on it's own....it didn't.

The washing became not enough to quell the anxiety and fear. Now it had spread into things like counting. One, two three, four...... Now I have to start over again....One, two three, four. I don't like even numbers. Four is bad, I need three. Why is there four when there should be three.....One, two, three, four.....

And onto touching things to make them even. You touched that part of your right  hand on the dollhouse. Now you have to make it even. Touch it in the same spot with your left. No, that doesn't feel the same. Touch it again. Touch it again. Touch it again. Touch it again. Touch it again. Do you want your parents to die? Then touch it again. Touch it again. Touch it again. Touch it again......

And finally it spread into checking. Are you sure you shut the front door behind you? I can see that it's closed but how do you know if it is closed all the way? It could be just halfway closed but not latched. Is it latched all the way? Turn around and jiggle the knob. Okay it's closed but are you sure? What if jiggling the knob knocked the door loose and it isn't really closed? Better go check it again. You don't want it to be open and something bad happen. Check it again. Are you sure it is really truly closed? Check it again. I am not convinced it's really closed. You may have knocked it loose. Check it again. And again. And again. And again.....

I was four and this had become my new reality. Not the reality of my friends who rode their bikes and played with their Barbie dolls carefree, but my reality. A reality where even if I rode my bike or played with my Barbie doll's my mind was sure to trick me. It was sure to plague me. It was sure to punish me relentlessly over and over again. It was sure to remind me that I was responsible for anything and everything that could possibly go wrong. It all depended on me. The future depended on my ability to touch things evenly, count correctly, have clean enough hands, and making sure the front door was closed and latched all the way. My family's life depended on it. It was a lot to ask of a four year old. And it continued that way with the guilt, shame, and anxiety of all  four compulsions until I turned ten. Then it changed into something else entirely. Something much worse....I became a PureO.


Neurotic Nelly

Next installment: http://neurtoicnellyocd.blogspot.com/2014/01/what-it-became.html