OCD
2012-07-26 || 9:57 a.m.

Okay, so I will be writing here for the next 21 days.

Yesterday two strange things happened to me. Firstly I watched a documentary about OCD. I watched it because my youngest niece has OCD and it is awful for her. She has recently been put on anti-anxiety medication because her compulsions had got so bad she just had literally no quality of life. And I love my nieces and I love my sister and I wanted to understand better how it is for them. Anyway, I learnt something unexpected. I learnt that OCD is not just compulsions it is also obsessive thoughts.

Now, I've had obsessive thoughts for years. Its not something I have ever written about and its not something I ever talk about. In fact, I didn't even know it had a name. Since I was 13 I've had dark, awful thoughts that just come into my mind. Its almost as if they don't belong to me because it is not ME thinking them: they just appear there unbidden. Now you can begin to see why I have never written or spoken about it. If you start to say to people that you have thoughts that come into your head that you have not been thinking, you will be labelled as something you probably do not want to be labelled as. Now these thoughts that come into my head are, like I said above, awful, dark, terrible. They are not voices or actions. I don't get thoughts telling me to go stab somebody but there are definite trigger points and when it happens it is like I am being bombarded with thoughts. Almost as if someone from somewhere else is firing them into my brain and I have no way to deflect them. I can't stop thinking them however hard I try. I will mentally try to push them away but they won't budge.

Well, anyway, apparently obsessive thoughts are part of OCD and you don't have to have compulsions to have OCD.

Now I have no idea if I have OCD but I definitely have obsessive thoughts.

I spent the day quite upset about this. I have no idea whether other people have this happen to them too as its not exactly something that makes a great conversation starter and anyway, since I first started writing on here ten (yes ten!) years ago, I have no friends now - no-one to speak to. My life is really quite different. I don't even have the luxury of lovely anonymous online friends anymore just a series of acquaintances. So I have no clue if this is normal. It doesn't feel normal. So I spoke to my husband about it. I didn't want to talk about what the dark thoughts are but he wouldn't let up badgering me for details. He didn't say a lot. He laughed a bit but people laugh at uncomfortable things so I don't think he was particularly laughing at me. He did however put on a Youtube video for me to watch.