(This is a past post from another blog of mine.)

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 uniformed 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…

[link=”http://www.concernedcounseling.com/communities/ocd/doubt/look.html”]concernedcounseling.com[/link]

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 Bipolar II. I’m still getting used to it, but that is me in a mental health nutshell.

3 Comments
  1. al102499 18 years ago

    I still do exactly the same thing when I pick out a stuffed animal. I feel silly but sometimes I stare at them forever trying to find one without any defects and after all that I feel bad and end up going back to the first one.

    Ally

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  2. billdoor79 17 years ago

    Hi, hope you’re doing okay. The bit about the stuffed animal is something I do now, with pretty much anything that I buy. I’ll spend ages trying to select which item to pick up, and if I pick up something and it’s damaged, I can’t put it back because it’d be unfair to make it think it’s being bought and then put it back! Or if there’s only two of an item left, I’ll avoid buying one because it would mean the other one would be left on it’s own… crazy. I’m a bit better now as my girlfriend helps me and it’s something I’ve really tried not to do myself, but it’s very hard at times.
    Anyway, all the best.

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  3. delusion3 16 years ago

    Maybe that is the reason I don't have any stuffed animals. I can't take the obsession that comes along with OCD so I avoid it altogether 🙂

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