How Did I Win My Brutal Fight With OCD?

I just wanted to share my journey and hope to inspire some of you to get life into your own hands.

One of the hardest things in my life was conquering the OCD.

It all started when I was just ten years old. I used to go into the school and touch the walls everywhere I went. It gave me comfort that nothing bad was going to happen to my family. My classmates made fun of me and it was really hard because I didn't know that it was just the beginning of the long and exhausting illness. I was a very sensitive child and hearing all the stories about children left orphans, and from a big love of my father and mother, I soon figured out a way to “protect” my family. For a few years, my parents didn’t notice anything, and as a small child, I didn’t know what was happening with me.

After a few years, my OCD grew bigger. I couldn’t pass almost any surface without touching it with my hands and secretly thinking that it would protect my loved ones. That is when my parents started noticing it, but that didn’t make it better. Actually, it just made it worse. My mom used to get angry at me. She used to say that I did it on purpose just to get her annoyed, and so every time she saw me touching something, she screamed at me. Then I felt even more helpless, because the only ones that I was doing that for didn’t understand me. And so years passed with screams and tears. That is when I turned 14 and my big depression started. I’ve changed the schools and had no friends; the only boy that I liked in my class used to think that I was a freak. That is how I got involved with the wrong people who called themselves “punks." There was one boy, a lot older than me, who took advantage of me being young and having a crush on him. When everything got even worse in my life with OCD—being without true friends, constantly trying to overcome the bullying and having the worst influence ever—that is when I sank in the deepest depression ocean and even took a lot of pills, with one wish: to end it all, or just to get my parents notice that I need help. That is when I got in to the hospital to clean my stomach from the pills. After that incident, my parents brought me to a psychologist who soon became my good friend. I used to tell her all about my family and my friends and my school. It was a bit better with depression, but it hadn’t helped at all with my OCD. The psychologist signed me up to a psychiatrist who, truth to be told, didn’t know a thing what she was doing. She prescribed me a medicine that didn’t help at all and fed me with it for four years. My OCD grew bigger with every day. It wasn’t just touching, it turned to turning the light on and off for a thousand times, going up and down stairs, walking back and forward on the pavements and etc. Then my parents found me a better psychiatrist who prescribed me better medicine. That is when I felt a lot better with my anxiety, but again, nothing helped with OCD. One day I couldn’t even get up from my bed because I knew that, with all the rituals, I wouldn’t be able to live my life normally. That day, I told myself "this thing has to end now."

And so I started working with myself harder than ever before; watching a reality show called OCD Camp, doing breathing and mind exercises, and I actually started to feel better. I got rid of my rituals one by one, finished high school with actual good grades, and finally, after almost ten years, felt as a normal person.

So, what I wanted to tell you all?

Don’t ever give up on yourself and, most importantly, don’t rely on drugs and psychiatrists to do it all for you. You have to work on that every day, every minute, every second of your life—by yourself. You have to set your mind on the right path and just keep going. Know this: it will be hard—harder than you can imagine—BUT YOU CAN DO IT. No one will do it for you. You have to try for yourself. You deserve a better life without fears and illusions that you can change something by turning the light on and off. You have your life in your hands and only you can make it better. Sending my love to all of you out there and wishing that soon you will feel better. <3