I was invited to write my history of OCD for facebook group. I know I had symptoms of OCD from a young age, but I have to wrack my brain to remember when it started. I know I had symptoms as early as thirteen, but my real breakdown came from having my daughter. I was fine through the pregnancy; I was really good through the pregnancy. Once I had my daughter I had fear of something happening to her. It consumed me. I kept thinking of when mothers killed their kids and that had me overcome with fear. At the same time my harm OCD started towards myself. I thought I wanted to cut myself, I researched it because I couldn't stop thinking about it. I could only mention it once to my husband, but he didn't understand the extent of it. I didn't explain it to him because I was afraid of what he would say.
This only got worse and I would find myself holding my daughter and crying because of the thoughts. My husband had his own health problems that scared me and I did what I could to hide my own problems. This kept up through moving to Texas from Florida where we had lived since we were married to stay temporarily with my parents. When we ended up in our final place in Virginia, my daughter was almost a year old. That is when I watched a South Park episode making fun of the movie the Human Centipede. I never watched the movie, but thoughts about it grossed me out so much I felt sick. It made me ill and I would tell those around me I was sick. It took that one to get me to research what this was. I knew very little about OCD at the time. I looked it up and noticed that was the symptoms I had and finally went to a doctor.
That was two years ago. I've had a couple (here and here) of break downs since then. Was almost hospitalized once because of a psychiatrist that didn't seem to understand it very well. I went through a few months through the past two years where my husband had to stay home with me to help take care of my daughter. But now I am doing okay again. I have an OCD that comes and goes with my moods. I forget what it is called. All that matters is I am in one of the good stages where the OCD is practically not here.
The best thing that happened and why I am writing about getting better is because of my doctor at John's Hopkins that got me into ERP therapy and got me on the correct meds. This probably isn't the best write up of OCD, but its the best I can do right now.
