That girl has OCD...

My first memory is an obsession I had when I was 5 or 6. I was in a gift shop in the mid-west and I was picking out a stuffed animal from a huge group of stuffed animals that were essentially the same. I picked up one and was about to bring it to my parents so they could get it for me and I noticed that it had a flaw on its face, something from the manufacturing. I went to put it away and I started to notice that they were all imperfect, I got this huge wave of anxiety and I then determined that if I were to put the first one back I would be rejecting it for being ugly and that would be a horribly mean thing to do. I brought the first one with the "flaw" to my parents and after that I developed a compulsion that I had to pick the first toy or stuffed animal I touched, to be "fair" to them. I did that my whole childhood until I was about 12 years old. I still get guilt feelings when picking stuff out in stores, I'm sure its related to this experience.

I am now 24 years old and I was just diagnosed with OCD 5 months ago. The ironic thing is that I have been in therapy on and off for 8 years to treat my anxiety and depression but OCD was never officially diagnosed or even mentioned. Actually, nothing was officially diagnosed...I was seeing a therapist who didn't like to diagnose people my age (at the time I was 17) because of the "stigma" that mental disorders carry. If I could go back and change anything, I would have tried to get an offical diagnosis back then. Anyhow, I now know that I have 'primarily obsessional' OCD which is harder to catch because of the lack of physical compulsions. I have a few physical compulsions but I am mostly plauged my the horrible horrible mental compulsions. Sometimes I feel like my brain is going to melt because of all the anxious activity in my head. I was also TERRIFIED to tell anybody, even my therapist about my obsessions because I was "sure" that they would tell me that the reason I couldn't stop thinking about these things, was because I truly was whatever I was fearing/obsessing about at the time.

So, I discovered I had OCD the night before I went into an outpatient mental health program in mid-April 2006 (I admitted myself because I had a nervous breakdown and had to take a medical leave from school). I was searching online for "obsessional thinking" and a link came up which had personal accounts of the obsessions that go along with OCD. In the past, behaviors I have had did strike me as OCDish but I don't have any contamination OCD, so I quickly disregarded it. I was just as uninformed as most of the general public in thinking that people with OCD are only concerned with contamination and orderliness. I have sexual, violent, relationship and perfectionism obsessions...all the fun ones. :)

This is the link that I found...

http://www.concernedcounseling.com/communities/ocd/doubt/look.html

After reading some of those postings, for the first time in my life I knew exactly what was wrong with me. I was so grateful and overjoyed that I started crying right then and there...and then of course, since I have OCD, an hour later I started doubting that I even had OCD. I decided I must be the one person in the world that really is their obsessions. LOL. It's not really that funny, but it is just so OCD that I can't help but laugh.

Now, I am getting really good treatment though and I have an actual diagnosis. Severe OCD with BDD and social anxiety disorder, ADD and major depression. I'm still getting used to it, but that is me in a mental health nutshell.