OCD Hope

If you have OCD, the question of 'what if?' pops up in your brain quite a bit. So often that we become unaware of the chatter it's creating in the background. The last post, 'The Other OCD', briefly mentioned some of the thoughts that people with OCD experience. The list is far from comprehensive. A common reaction to the intrusive thoughts (obsessions) mentioned in the previous post is, "what if I'm the exception and I'm really a bad person?", "what if I'm one of the few people that feels horrible about these thoughts but I don't really have OCD?", "what if I secretly like having the thoughts?", "what if I seek help and the therapist reports me to the police?"  An example of a very common intrusive thought is "what if I were to harm someone?". It's an intrusive thought that isn't an OCD thought, it's a human thought. All people, those with OCD and those without OCD, have intrusive...

OCD takes the morals that you most cherish, the things that define the fabric of who you are and turns them against you. Beyond the behaviours of compulsive hand washing and checking lies the other OCD that doesn't get talked about often. It's the OCD that shows little to no outward behavioural actions. It exists in the form of thoughts that have the ability to make your world seem like it's ending and that life isn't worth living. Many refer to it as Pure O because it displays no apparent compulsions; physical behaviours. The name Pure OCD, or Pure O as it's often referred to, can be very misleading because it suggests that it's 'only' obsessions. It must not be that scary, anxiety provoking, debilitating, or there's nothing that can be done about it because it lacks a compulsion. Nothing could be further from the truth. I live with this type of OCD. I'm not trying to minimize the suffering and hell that people with washing and check...