OCD: When Your Mind Tries to Wreck Your Life

Boxing Day of 2006, a day everything changed for me. I went to bed as a relatively happy and healthy 19-year-old, and I woke up with my mind locked onto seemingly ridiculous thoughts, with the most intense anxiety attached to them. The anxiety blowing the insignificance of these thoughts completely out of proportion - into life destroying scenarios, playing out on a continuous, never-ending loop. In the space of 8 hours sleep my mind was trying to make me believe I’d woken up no longer me, and the previous 19 years of my life were just a lie. This culminated in hot sweats, my heart beating out of my chest and eventually vomiting from panic. This same process repeated itself about 20 times on this first day and every day for the next two months. As an already skinny lad, this was weight I could ill afford to lose.  After that initial two months of hell, I was able to hold the incessant panic attacks at bay, but that’s all my life was reduced to for the next 6 years - doing everything I could in every moment to hold back panic.

I’ve heard some people speak of OCD and talk about how they have spikes. Well, those 6 years of my life from that point on were spent in one big spike. There were no ups and downs, just every second of every day spent fighting the thoughts in my head. Even in moments that looked like I was fully enjoying myself, I was still in a full force fight with my mind.

This was 2006, a time when mental health was looked at as weakness, and you, a liability. Social media barely existed; the smart phone yet to be invented. Information at the click of a button not as available. My thoughts felt too crazy to share with anyone, even a GP, for fear I might be judged. My conclusion, a lack of willpower, I’m being weak. Tell no one, get to your next goal, keep pushing, keep fighting, you’ll be fine. That was my mantra, but ‘fine’ never arrived.

OCD rallies itself around an intense phobia which has you believing you will destroy your life and that of others. Your brain knows this isn’t you, these thoughts are not you, but you need endless certainty and reassurance. So your brain takes every moment of every day to prove that you are not these thoughts, a twisted way of trying to keep you safe. The morbidity of it all, is that because you are in an anxiety loop, your brain is also searching for a confirmation bias that you are, in fact, in danger - that these thoughts could come true. This paradox of the mind trying to find certainty in concocted uncertainty, becomes a cyclical hell.

In part, I felt that I had fallen into this trap, because up until now I had never really pushed myself in anything in my life. I wasn't taking life seriously enough, which maybe softened me for this blow. In honesty, I think there is some truth to this. Was primary teaching my dream career? At that stage, no. But I was here because of my lack of willingness to challenge myself at school. Nevertheless, I would not be the person I am today if it wasn’t for teaching, and the remarkable people and students I have met along the way, a journey I will never regret. And it provided the opportunity for growth and challenge that I desperately needed.

I managed to pass my degree, just. I was probably running on 30% cognitive capacity the whole time. Paradoxically, even though I never really pushed myself, I also never gave-up, that bit of grit that is present in my character, saw me through.

At 22, I moved straight to the outback town of Andamooka. YouTube it if you have never heard of it. Many would agree, not the wisest decision to be there during a personal crisis. However, at this stage I had never admitted to myself that I was even unwell. It was also one of the best decisions of my life, it forced me to grow in ways being in the city never would have allowed.  Even though the person the community got to know was a shell of who I really am, I still gave it my all, what it did for me in return, I’ll never forget. I do believe that because I didn’t give up, and that I kept striving in life, I developed enough strength of character to eventually recover.

One thing I was not predisposed to was depression. However, at 23 and after fighting undiagnosed OCD every day for 5 years, depression hit hard. I was tired, very tired. I couldn’t get out of bed to get to work for my tiny community. I finally had to fess to myself that I was, in fact, very unwell. I can still remember putting my symptoms into Google for the first time - seeing it written in front of me was fear inducing, as up until that point I had never said my symptoms out loud, let alone written them into a search engine. The forums that appeared had hundreds of people posting with the exact same symptoms – it was an incredible moment, I no longer felt lost in this world. However, another realisation dawned on me, I had a serious mental illness in OCD, and I had moved myself 6 hours from the level of help I truly needed.

I moved from the outback to a country town much closer to Adelaide, where I also had family. Making new friends as an adult is hard enough as it is, but trying to do it whilst hiding the worst of mental illnesses is a near impossibility. However, I managed to make great lifelong mates at the school, but still struggled to truly do this out in the community. In all honesty, I probably came across how I felt, a bit ‘off’, which would characterise someone in a mode of constant survival. I worked through about 18 months of doctors and psychologist appointments, until finding Zoloft.

I’m now 25 and I’ve finally been put on Zoloft. Once it kicked in, I finally experienced quiet for the first time in six years. I remember waking up that morning and thinking a thought I wanted to think, with no interruption. Hearing the birds outside and just listening to them, without my mind trying to destroy me in the background. I was free and I was me again, finally. It wasn’t quite as simple as that though, I’d never experienced mental freedom as an adult, so in many ways I had to now build myself and focus on the person that I wanted to become, rather than constantly feeling like I was running from who I do not want to be.

Unfortunately, recovery lulled me into a false sense of security, and I kept stuffing around with the dosage, even coming off the tablet all together for long periods. At that stage, still young and dumb, I felt these tablets were a sign of weakness, a secret shame, and I wanted off them so bad - to finally be fully ‘normal’ again, like everyone else. Well, when I needed it to go back on the tablet, it pooped out and didn’t work. This again placed me into another full-blown OCD cycle, now into my 30s. This started years of having to try different meds to find one that could do what Zoloft did previously. It was a long, arduous journey, but after about 2 years of trial and error, I found another.

I do believe pursuing a career, one that requires your all like teaching, kept me going through the toughest times. That self-transcendent purpose of giving what I had to help the next generations with their journeys, is maybe what helped me survive mine. It’s why I am such a big believer in ambition and setting the correct goals – it provides the right kind of hope.

Of my now 20 years of being an adult, I ‘lost’ 10 of them to this illness. A few years ago, at 35 years of age, I decided to start talking about this with people, ridding myself of the shame I carried for so long. I could have given up so many times along this journey; I honestly have no idea how I even survived sometimes. Now at 38 and healthy, I’m determined to never look back and set myself on a path to become the person I want to be, an opportunity that was taken from me for so long.

I’ve learnt that we are no freer from the laws of the universe than anything else. Sometimes life hands you a challenge you never asked for. One thing life will guarantee, however, is if you don’t take the opportunity to choose your own great challenge, the world will eventually choose it for you. I intend to make the most of this opportunity.

 As my favourite quote goes:

 “Hard choices, easy life. Easy choices, hard life.” - Jerzy Gregorek

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