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Your Pain is Your Catalyst: What My War with OCD Taught Me
I use to be someone who sat in their misery and sat in their pain. Sad songs, sad movies, if it was sad you best believe I was engulfed in it. There was little to no awareness behind what role my trials and tribulations served in my life. I was merely a victim in an autobiography where everything went wrong.
As in most cases where we aren’t taking the universe’s sign to wake up, it took a cosmic two-by-four to the side of the head to finally smack me back to reality. OCD I had not faced had driven me out of a relationship, I was making mistakes and absolutely destroying myself over them, I was anxious and depressed. I also had final year university staring me in the face. The perfect combination for a very rude awakening.
A Brief Overview of OCD
For those who do not know, OCD is characterised by intense worry over irrational fears. The fears are often driven by unwanted intrusive thoughts that can appear as images or mental chatter that the sufferer finds extremely distressing -largely due to their taboo and inappropriate nature-. These worries then drive the sufferer into carrying out specific behaviours, or compulsions, to relieve their symptoms. These compulsions can look like washing your hands, fact-checking online, constant awareness of one's thoughts, and reassurance…
