Coping with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder by Kevin Gournay & Rachel Piper & Paul Rogers

Author:Kevin Gournay & Rachel Piper & Paul Rogers
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: SPCK
Published: 2012-03-29T22:00:00+00:00

6

Rachel’s story

My house is not immaculately tidy and I only wash my hands a few times a day; my clothes are crammed into drawers and the baked beans are never in the same place in my kitchen cupboard. Is this why I lived with the nightmare that is obsessive compulsive disorder for several years before a diagnosis was finally made? Is it because I do not match the stereotypical ideas of how an OCD sufferer behaves? I have OCD, and yet I do not carry out external rituals that draw attention to my disorder: everything takes place in my head, where the ‘voice’ of this mentally incapacitating illness cannot be heard by others, and where rituals cannot be seen.

OCD manifests itself in many different ways; my symptoms are not uncommon and yet even members of the medical profession failed to recognize them during those early years. They call OCD the ‘secret illness’, and a lack of diagnosis is common to many people. In my opinion, the reason for this is shared between gaps in understanding and the shame felt by people who are too afraid to reveal the extent of their symptoms. The unwanted thoughts and rituals associated with this disorder are often accompanied by feelings of guilt, whereby those afflicted will blame and punish themselves for its existence. When I look back at my childhood it is apparent that the traits were already there; my father, a very strict clergyman who died when I was 16, encouraged them, although not deliberately. He provided the content with his sermons about the consequences of sin, and everything in our lives had a time and a place; we lived in a world where spontaneity was discouraged and perfection was actively sought. My personal belief is that I was born with an inherent predisposition to OCD, with life experiences providing the catalyst. By the time my first child was born I believed that God would take her away from me because I was so full of sin. This is where the main part of my OCD story begins.

It is impossible to describe the unique love a parent feels for a child. I felt that love, and yet within weeks of her birth there were times when I could not bear to touch my daughter, and I screamed for her to be taken away. My behaviour was described as rejection, but that description was wrong: it was the behaviour of somebody who felt so undeserving that they were too afraid to embrace their maternal feelings. I do not know which came first, the anxiety that led to the OCD or the clinical depression; I think perhaps they came to me hand in hand. At first I just feared that God would take my daughter away, but then ‘magical thinking’ – one of OCD’s most powerful weapons – came along, and I believed that I had the power to bring about her death with my thoughts. In the early hours of each morning, I would wake abruptly from my drug-induced sleep with the same repetitive, unwanted thoughts in my head.

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