![]() I often forget where I put my keys and I keep pencils in my beard. ![]() I am perhaps the messiest person you will meet, a point which amused both friends and relatives on my diagnosis. That’s why when it crops up in conversation, I refer to it as the full, “obsessive compulsive disorder” in the hope that it will make people think about the words and not some glib aphorism relating to tidiness. Thankfully, therapy has given me a volume control where it is less Spinal Tap’s 11 and nearer a soothing and less exhausting 5.Ī word of explanation: OCD isn’t always about cleanliness, and yes, people who say they’re “a bit OCD” is massively annoying. It was an assumption and I never questioned it. Until therapy in my late thirties, I thought everyone thought like that. Imagine driving with a bullying gremlin in the back of your car screaming through a megaphone that you’re not driving correctly, and you’ll get somewhere near the volume of my internal voice and what it shouts at me. When the voice in my head is lying to me (which is most of the time), it is very, very loud. To illustrate this, I always describe my OCD as being “mentally deafening”. I had to stop and think hard about this, but I soon realised that it had indeed had a lasting and severe impact on my functioning since I could remember. I found that OCD is categorised as a disability. The disorder that less than six months previously had been unknown was now a thing that had very real implications for my life. Through them, I secured more support than I ever had done before. Someone suggested that I go and talk to the student services department. By then, I had finished my finals and I had received a lower grade than I had hoped for. My family were lovely about it, as were the staff on my course. There were new obstacles too, namely telling people. Suddenly, I had a context in which to frame them. Many of the events and quirks of behaviour in my past were beginning to make sense. Another memory was of going back to my place of work after finishing a shift because I was convinced I had inadvertently burned it down. Lots of little events over the course of my life suddenly made sense – such as spending ages checking taps were off as a child and being so frightened on an occasion in my twenties that I hadn’t locked a friend’s car properly that I checked the handle repeatedly until I ripped it off completely. The diagnosis – and the excellent UK National Health Service treatment which followed – changed everything. I got a referral to a stress course and one-on-one therapy. Sitting there in the GP’s office, the piece of jigsaw that had been missing my whole life had finally slotted into place. The verdict was straightforward and concise – I had Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). I booked an appointment with my GP and described everything to her. When I woke in the morning, exhausted, I knew something was deeply wrong with me. A crippling fear subsumed my mind until one appropriately stormy night, my mind caved in on itself. Secondly, I became convinced that I had committed terrible wrongs, despite knowing that no such things had occurred. I flunked a viva I was absolutely sure that I would pass. ![]() Yet, I was going to the gym more than ever and I was on the verge of an exciting new career. I would show up for seminars early and I couldn’t understand why no one else was quite as eager as me. Conversations began to play on a constant loop in my mind. There were missed instructions for assignments, despite my diligent attention. That was when things began to happen that I couldn’t explain. My grades were great, I had made friends on my course, and yes, that purpose in life that had been missing before was now burning brightly. If you had asked me then, I would have said everything was fine. That was until my undergraduate final examinations. There were vivid flashes, but it quickly slipped away. The more I looked for it, the more it would hide, like trying to remember a dream when you wake. I knew that deep within me, there was a piece of the jigsaw in my psyche that didn’t quite make sense. However, I was acutely aware that there was still something missing. ![]() I relished every opportunity and for the first time in my life, I felt that I had direction. In my mid-thirties, I flung myself back into education at undergraduate level to pursue a new career in healthcare. Through the grief, a transformative experience occurred within me. It wasn’t until a friend died that I suddenly realised time was precious.
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