Hi everyone, just signed up but would really like to know other people with ocd to bounce ideas off and talk to about different aspects of ocd. I realise that it's important to share my ocd with people on this site but really am very ashamed of it so it's quite hard, none of my current friends know i have ocd, my family know from when it was much worse and i couldn't hide things and i think the people i currently live with know as it's been getting worse recently, i also see a psychologist every week but even with all that it's still very hard, even sitting at a keyboard. Here goes though, I'm a 27 year old guy from New Zealand, my ocd started when i was around 13 (in an intrusive way, i may have had signs of it earlier i'm not sure), i went from being one of the top students in my year to not being able to concentrate at all and really unable to complete any work successfully. Through my time at high school it never really improved to any considerable degree, i saw councillors and took prozac (Fluoxetine) which helped to an extent. I was really ashamed of taking medication for my ocd so always came off it as soon as possible, in hinsight this was stupid from every angle as i know i need all the help i can get. Immediately after high school I got in a huge rut, with nothing to fill in my day my ocd got much worse, i spent about a year and a half like this until starting taking Clomipramine and seroiously seeing a councilor and eventually leaving my home town and starting university in a different city. For the first year away my ocd inproved quite a lot, being around new people was a big distraction but that eventually faded. I'm 27 now and the last 6 years or so have been pretty much the same, definitely big ups and downs but looking at he big picture not much change at all.
My current OCD.
I currently see a psychologist once a week and have prescription for 300mg of Clomipramine a day, although depending on how i'm feeling i often take less (my psychiatrist knows this), this is mostly because it can make me very tired. I obsess about a lot of things but some of the most intrusive ones include re-reading and re-checking things in general. I often have very high anxiety because of the need to re-check or being unsure about things in general, or the need to complete things, waiting for anything is very hard.
Like i said i really would like to get know people so feel free to ask or share anything especially if you feel you have similar ocd symptoms etc. =)