Wow, this thread has actually taken off in a way I wasn't really expecting, which is awesome. Thanks to all of you for opening up and sharing your experiences. I'd feel kind of hypocritical if I didn't share my own after how awesome all of you guys have been, so yeah.
The earliest memory of a horrible time with anxiety was when I was around 7 - I was in a store with my mother and all of a sudden, I had the horrible feeling that I'd stolen something. I didn't know why, and I hadn't stolen - or considered stealing - anything in my entire life, but I just felt a massive wave of dread and uncertainty. I burst out crying on the way home, and compulsively checked my pockets every couple of minutes to make sure - absolutely sure - that I hadn't stolen anything. This lasted for a couple of months ( I don't know exactly how long, as it was a LONG time ago, but it definitely wasn't a one-day thing ). I also remember from a very early age engaging in other compulsive behaviors (tapping my fingers an exact amount of times on each thing, touching a surface with both hands at all times, not stepping on cracks, washing my hands repetitively). I also showed early signs of hypochondriasis, or constantly believing that I was sick and / or believing that minor ailments were horrible, life-threatening diseases.
This anxiety manifested itself in different forms throughout my life until a month and a half ago. I engaged in compulsive behavior related to safety and privacy (checking locks, burners, windows), continued some of the cleanliness ones, and had some relatively minor physiological obsessions that usually lasted for no longer than a couple of weeks. I also experienced eating and body image disorders like anorexia and body dysmorphia for a couple of years.
It was all relatively manageable and unintrusive, until around two months ago. It started with a intrusive thought, but I didn't classify it as that, so I turned it over and over in my head, giving it importance. I won't share the exact content, but it fed upon and exacerbated the worry I felt over coming out as gay. It kept getting worse and worse, and the intrusive thoughts started coming on more frequently and more concretely, sometimes even accompanied by images. Like you,
Togie , I struggled with depression at the same time (in fact, the two often go hand in hand). The thoughts expanded to fill a variety of topics like harm, morality, and control. I had trouble sleeping, I couldn't eat like I used to, I had nearly constant anxiety and I was worried that my thoughts were representative of my actual desires in some way. I researched into OCD, because I thought it might be what it was (having informally diagnosed myself with it earlier in life), and a lot of it fit. Of course, though, OCD is a doubting disease, so just knowing that I had it wasn't the cure-all. Also, my hypochondriasis and generalized anxiety disorders kicked in, and I started experiencing a variety of new symptoms of OCD. Those disorders interact with each other in a particularly annoying way, but fortunately, they're all pretty much treated the same way, through CBT.
In the last month, I've started going to therapy, and although I'm certainly not all the way cured, I am getting better. As new symptoms come up and old ones return, I feel more able to deal with them and I've been able to take back a huge part of my life. I realized that a lot of it was still tied up in my being in the closet, and I came out in the middle of it all as well, which, although not curative, has been a nice thing to happen during all the crazy.
One of the things that's super important to me is awareness, so I'd like to talk a little more about OCD (which is the biggest struggle for me) because there's a huge amount of misunderstanding around it. I probably hear phrases like "If you want to be OCD about it, highlight your notebook...." or "I'm so OCD, I spent 10 minutes color-coding my markers..." a couple of times every single day, and besides being syntactically hilarious (it's essentially like saying "I'm so diabetes when I eat a hamburger"), it's a massive trivialization and oversimplification of a pretty devastating disorder. Although OCD can take the form of the things everyone is familiar with (cleanliness, perfectionism, organization), it spans a wide variety of activities, thought processes, and compulsions. Some people have what is informally called "Pure O", or a focus more on the obsessive and intrusive thoughts rather than the compulsions (although, recent studies seem to suggest that much of the brain activity that's labeled as obsessive is also somewhat compulsive in nature), while others have their OCD manifesting in rituals and repetitive actions.
I think the way mental health problems, and OCD in particular, are viewed by much of society is rather interesting and unique in the form of ignorance that accompanies it. Although many mental health problems are made fun of and trivialized (e.g. "Stop being so bipolar!!", "I saw The Notebook and I got super depressed I was crying for like thirty minutes", "She's such a psychotic bitch"), OCD is a strange case in that when I tell people that I have it, they aren't aware that it's even a serious condition. Just like the words "retarded" and "depressed", "OCD" has found itself in the vernacular with very little of the actual meaning it holds attached to it.
So yeah, just thought I'd do my part and share my own experiences. I might update this post as I progress just so people can see the journey. Thank you again to all of you for getting this thread off to a great start.
