Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
part 2

Reading about descriptions of obsessions doesn't give you much feeling for what they really are like.  Examples do.  Here are some.

This 11 year old boy started doing badly in school.  This was pretty surprising as he had always been a good student.  Jonathan knew why, but he was afraid to tell anyone.  He was worrying that he might loose his temper and hurt someone.  He never had, but he felt like he might just do it some day.  For some reason that he can not explain, if he does anything with the number "9" he thinks he will loose control and attack someone.  So the more number "9" he sees, the more he worries about losing control and attacking someone.  He wishes he didn't have to think about this all the time, but he can't help it.  It takes a lot of energy out of a person to avoid reading or saying the number "9".  It means that he is very slow to do his homework (especially math) and has a hard time playing games with his friends.  His parents are about to kill him.  He will not go to bed at the usual time (9:00 O'clock!).  He refuses to ride the bus, is slow to get ready, and never seems to listen.  He is in a world of his own.

When Kim was 11, she started seeing pictures in her mind of kissing boys in her class.  She pictured kissing their genitals.  She also pictured kissing girls.  She had never been abused, and she had never even heard of oral sex before.  The thoughts scared her.  She thought she was going crazy.  She couldn't sleep at night.  She was afraid to go to school.  She had severe headaches.  Finally, she told her mother and she was brought to her family doctor.

Richie doesn't know when it started, but he has always been a big counter.  Now that he is in seventh grade, it is a lot worse.  He thinks he will probably fail the year if he doesn't count things just right.  What things?  Well, how many tiles is it to his locker from homeroom?  How many steps are there to the basement?  How many children are on the bus?  The problem is, he isn't quite sure he hasn't missed a number here, so he has to go back and count it again, and again, and again.  Once someone bumped him just as he reached tile number 278 or was it 279?  He got so mad, he screamed at the other boy.  When the principal asked what was going on, Richie decided saying nothing was best.

Ashley once went to Halifax and was walking along the sidewalk with her friends.  She stepped on something yucky, but didn't think much about it until they got to the hotel.  The idea came to her that it was a condom, and probably she would now get AIDS from it.  She asked her friends what they thought.  She asked her mom.  Ashley was 15 and had never even kissed someone and was at zero risk for AIDS.  She called the AIDs Hotline at least twice a day for assurance.  She begged to go to the doctor for more tests.  She read every book she could about AIDS.  When she started talking about her funeral arrangements, her mother took her to the doctor who sent her to the psychiatrist.

Like most 16 year olds, Andrea was very excited to get her driver's license.  She was a careful driver and her instructor and the testing person both commented on what a careful and mature driver she was.  Looking back, she maybe was a little too careful.  The first week she had her license everything went fine.  Her Dad was quite excited that she would be able to drive down to her dentist appointment in Yarmouth all by herself and then pick him up at the fish plant on the way home.  Well, Andrea's Dad was about to call the RCMP after an hour of waiting for Andrea.  When she arrived she was in tears and exhausted.  Her father assumed she must have been in an accident, but that was not the case.  Andrea drove by the Port Maitland school during recess.  She got a kilometer down the road and started wondering, could she have accidentally run over a child in the road and not noticed it?  So she drove back to check.  No, all the kids were now inside.  So off she drove again another couple of kilometers.  Maybe she should have asked the school secretary just to be sure.  She could hardly drive with these thoughts going over and over in her mind.  The moment she got to the dentist, she was on the pay phone to the school.  No, they said, all the children were fine.  And so were her teeth.  Unfortunately as she drove home she passed a bunch of kids on their bikes, a couple of dogs, and a group of kids playing hockey in a driveway.  She figured she had hit them all and each time had to go back and check at least once to make sure she hadn't.

Ann is a quiet girl who always seems worried.  Over the last year, she has had a lot to worry about, at least in her own mind.  She sees different shapes in her mind, and has to cut them exactly in half or turn them exactly half way around.  If she doesn't her Dad's boat will go down with him.  She doesn't know how it started, and she certainly doesn't know how to make it stop.  No one would ever have known about this if she hadn't mentioned to her Aunt that she wished she would go to sleep and never wake up again

If you asked Darrel's brother Tony what kind of person Darrel was, Tony would say he is a great brother, as long as you don't mess with his stuff.  Darrel was always tidy, but now it was worse.  At age 10 he had his half of the room just right.  Exactly half the legos were on the one side of his bed, the other half on the other side of the bed.  The Gargoyles were lined up perfectly.  The books and videos were absolutely even.  His clothes were sorted by color.  His posters were perfectly lined up.  All the furniture was lined up with the lines in the wall paper.  Tony himself was not like this, and most everything else in his life was a mess.  Darrell told me that he felt that if he didn't keep things just right, something bad was going to happen to his Dad.  His Dad was usually out fishing.  Darrel thought that if he didn't keep his things just right, his Dad's boat might go down.  Darrel's father couldn't care less what his room looked like.  Darrell was on the verge of failing as he was not doing his homework.  Why?  He could not make the letters just right and had to keep starting over.  He spent a good three hours a day organizing his room.

Kelly met her boyfriend last year when she was 16.  He is 18 and they are madly in love.  Or at least she thought so until about a month ago.  She started to wonder if she really did love him and if he really did love her.  So she asked him, and he reassured her that he loved her.  That helped for about a half an hour, so she asked him again.  After telling her this about 30 times a day for a week, he was starting to wonder if maybe he had choose the wrong woman!  He shared this burden with Kelly's mom. Kelly asked her most of her waking hours the same thing. Do I really love him?  After a few weeks of this, Kelly's mom was going out of her mind.  When Kelly's friend Tanya called and said she was worried because all Kelly ever talked about was you know what, Kelly's mom decided to do something before Kelly ruined every relationship she was in.

Deb did not come from a religious family.  They rarely attended church on Sundays.  When she was 13 she started wondering if there was a God and what he might think of her, which is not uncommon.  The same thought kept going through her mind, "Am I doing what God wants?"  She finally started asking people what they thought.  She asked her parents, a friend's youth pastor, and a teacher.  No one could reassure her.  Then, almost overnight, the thoughts changed to wondering, "Will I be forgiven for what I have done wrong"?  Now Deb hadn't committed any unusual sin.  She had never thought of this before.  She started to do worse in school as she spent more and more time thinking about this.  Sometimes she tried to find the answer, but mostly she just sat and thought about this question over and over and over.  Finally, her Mother confronted her and told her that she was going for a urine drug screen for street drugs.  After a big, big fight, Deb finally told her parents what she was thinking.  They thought she was going crazy and brought her to the hospital.