Taking Control of OCD by David Veale

Author:David Veale [Dr David Veale And Rob Willson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781849019293
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Published: 2011-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Early adulthood

By the time I was taking my A levels I’d had OCD for about ten years. The subject of my intrusive thoughts had stabilized; they were predictable and routine but they were agile and had lost none of their impact. I had a girlfriend but my intrusive thoughts made me feel like I was living a lie. I continued to throw myself into academic achievement – I was desperate not to fall behind as I was not sure what my life meant without this spurring me on. At the back of my head was the thought that maybe if I got to university there was always the chance that I might outgrow my intrusive thoughts.

This was around the time that a new intrusive thought came my way. This time it was that I am or am going to become a paedophile. Maybe I was getting a little bit bored of the intrusive thoughts about me being gay and my OCD decided to give me some variety. It took very much the same form as the other intrusive thought but was more upsetting. Visions of children I knew would come into my head when I least wanted them. I would deliberately look at children to ensure that I could prove to myself that I was not a paedophile. However my tolerance for the anxiety that this caused was less because the implication of this intrusive thoughts being true was horrific in the extreme. The anxiety was intense, the hair on my legs would stand up, I would feel a lump in my throat and I would produce extra saliva, all of which I interpreted as some kind of proof of some kind of arousal.

The intrusive thoughts on the two subjects would interchange throughout the day. The paedophile thoughts packed the biggest punch but the thought of being gay continued to get a reaction. It is certainly a strange combination of thoughts to come up with and I would like to make clear to the reader that I have always thought it was really unfair on gay people how I could juxtapose the two things. I suppose in a way the subject matter was irrelevant: it was the fact that they were both things that I was worried about and my mind and body just decided to react to them in the same manner.

University was 80 per cent great. I met my best friends there, I had a string of girlfriends, I partied hard and I became a lot more socially confident. Interestingly, studying became less important to me; I did enough to get the grade I wanted but not much more. I think that I realized that I did not want to become a career academic and I consciously decided to maximize the social experience. This was, of course, a healthy departure from my previous overly academically driven frame of mind. The bad 20 per cent was dominated by my OCD and at times I must confess that it felt like much more than 20 per cent.

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