[pixar]

hi guys I'm new here and have never joined a forum to do with mental illness so I would really appreciate if people could read what i have to say and give me their honest opinions.

I have suffered severe ocd disorder since the age of 6. This illness has resulted my life to be a complete misery and has lead me to withdraw from many activities that would cause me more stress and irritate my ocd further. I have cried for many years and attempted suicide because I couldn't take the obsessions anymore. Although my ocd was very severe when I was a child and a teenager I didnt feel strange or depressed. Once I had completed my rituals or was in a area where my ocd couldn't be provoked I was fine. Still leading a normal life, doing my hair, wearing makeup, going clubbing, going on holiday, meeting up friends, going to the gym, cinema etc... as long as I didn't have to take responsibilities I wasn't too bad.. If I had to take responsibilities I would go into severe panic mode. My body would tremble and I would feel like I am being chocked and on occasions have vomited. If I knew I would be the last person that would be locking up that would be pure torture... I knew this rituals would take me up to 5 hrs to check all the doors, windows, gas, water, lights etc and in most cases I havent been able to leave the house so I would just stay indoors rather than deal with it. I go crazy if things are not neat, aren't faced a certain away, if lines are not parrallel. I have to change these into perfect order so i stop my body from having a panic attack. I touch things for no apparent reason because if i I feel like something bad is going to happen. I switch the lights on and off until one of my parents shout at me and I feel so humiliated that I go in my room and cry because no one understands me. I cant have a book shelf or a dvd stack because if they are slightly out of line or bigger books are on top of the smaller book I would go crazy. I had many stupid obsessions when I was a child where I had to step on all the berries on the floor, all the gums and ciggirate packets and If i missed a certain road i would have to go back and do it all over again. I had to check that the bathroom door was always left open, the rug on the floor had to be stepped over every time someone used the bathroom. If I brought a new hair band I will have to wash it with bleach and hot water to remove all germs. Im always washing my hands to relieve anxiety. I have to rearrange the whole fridge so things are parralel and if there is less food items on one self and more on others i have to adjust that. I have to shut doors and windows really hard so i know they are closed. I have to hear they are shut so I can programe them into my brain that they are closed. I have obsessions with num 3 so things have to be done using num 3, i have to dig my finger nails in my palm hard leaving a mark so I remember the pain and if i see the mark it tells me i have checked certain things. i have taken photos of plugs, windows etc so if im out and get nervous i can look at them, there are many more but the list can would endless.

I knew as a teenager my ocd was going to cause my severe problems in the future with studying and getting a job. The thought of the word 'career' made me sick to the stomach. I kept on thinking how can i work like this?? I would be terrified working with money because I would want to check 100 times before giving the change and what if i worked at an office and I wrote the letters wrong and because of this everything went wrong at work or if I worked with children and I did something wrong and was held responsibile over the safety of a child and their parents tried to harm me and I had be locked up or if I worked in a food place and if someone got ill because i broke a glass and it feel into the food. So i decided to go to uni and study rather than go work. I did everything in my power to not work because I was terrified of doing something wrong and being held responsible.

This is when the problems happened.
In my early 20s, when I started uni I started to notice a change in the way i felt. I started to feel really emotionless, heartless, unmotivated, unstable, unsocial, frightened. I had completely let go of my image to the point I didnt even brush my hair. I stopped wearing makeup, nice clothes and instead just wore baggy tracksuits and baggy jumpers, basically I lost all my womanly well being. The only thing i remember was having a wash so I didn't smell. My friends would say i had no expression in my face and that i had really let myself go. I knew there was something wrong with me because few years back although my ocd was really severe I wasn't feeling this way. I was still enjoying life as long i did my rituals or was kept away from areas that made them worst e.g my house and my room.

These feelings got worst and I couldn't carry on with university so i had to leave but I was terrified on telling my parents because they expected so much from me and i would have shamed them up if they knew I dropped out. I carried on the lie for 4 years which i felt awful for. I would leave home everyday pretending to go uni but would go to the library to waste time instead. Getting out of bed was like a torture, every night i wished I would die in my sleep and not have to face another day. It killed me to look into my parents eyes knowing that Im lying The fact that I was lying and combined with the mental struggles i was facing everyday I just got really really ill, to the point i even attempted to throw myself in front cars but i couldnt do that to my parents. I started to feel paranoid from people so i began to look for tunnels where i could sleep in and be alone for hours till it was time to go back to home. Coming home and facing my parents was the worst part because I knew I was lying and I had to act like everything was ok. Every time the phone rung i thought people were after me like |I was some fugitive waiting to be caught. My heart would beat faster than running the marathon everytime i heard the ringing noises. I feared one of the phone calls were going to be for me and if they found me they would come and get me. Weekends i felt safer because phone calls were less. We moved home during the period of my uni years which caused me to fall into more despair because I missed my old room, my old neighbour hood and I just couldnt adapt to the new area and new home. I started to suffer sleep paralyisis and nightmares and just felt disconnected from the world. I started to gain an obsession with anything unhuman like 'the otherside' out of body experience, ghosts, religion, ufos, the paranormal etc, horror movies...I avoided friends as much as i could but because I didnt want people to really know what was happening with me so I did try to link up time to time and really forced myself to ACT like a human....Eventually my parents found out about me falling out of uni and hell broke loose causing me to run away from home in which I went to live with my sister for a few months. I finally came back home after few mnths, my parents weren't too harsh by this point because the drama had calmed down by now.. They didnt understand what I was going through and just kept saying i was lazy for leaving uni and I had let them down. I cried every night to go sleep because it hurt me so much how I let my parents down and how my life had turned out. They forced me to work seen I wasnt studying. I applied to few jobs and got some interviews. Omg going to interviews and dealing with a job was just like torture. I felt like I was being chocked and someone was putting my head in to water trying to suffocate me. I got few jobs but didnt last more thank a month at each because i kept getting severe panic attacks and was suffering severe depression. I suffered like this for the next 6 years attempted suicide many occasions but couldnt do it.

In 2011 I hit rock bottom. I did a strict diet for 6 months which caused my brain to suffer where I became really disorientated from human kind and was REALLY SCARED and desperate to get away from humans. Not having to talk to anyone, not to speak, not to eat, not to get up and do anything was the only thing i wanted. I was very close to robbing a bank so i could go into prison and be locked away from the world just so i could be alone. I was soooo desperate to be away from humans and the world, I tried calling up my GP to ask him if he could be admitted to a mental institute so atleast i could be with people i felt i had things in common with, but obvioulsy i couldnt do it because I didnt want to shame my parents. I was suffering all of this in silence, not a single soul knew what i was going through. I started looking at mental wards online and remember crying and thinking ' i just want to be with them, wish i wasnt here and was with my friends' .... I was really really scared of the world and people were terryifing me. If people were looking at me I would start shaking and would feel sick to my stomach with fear, almost like any minute my masks going to fall off and they are going to discover I am not one of them and kill me. I found it really hard to socialize, to blend in, to act normal because i didnt know what being normal was anymore. I started avoiding mirrors because I was scared i wouldnt see myself anymore and would see a devil or some kind of entity. I felt like I had no balance, I couldnt feel the ground, my body felt like it was floating and that sooner or later the ground was going to open up and i was going to fall in to the the burning lava. ...I got really severe so i went to my gp and cried for help. i didnt tell him my ocd or what I was feeling. I just said I feel really down and unhappy. He put me on antidepresants, slowly slowly i started to feel a bit better and was feeling kind of human like again after taking the medicine so i decided to take up a teaching course. BAD idea!!! OMG when I realized I had to do courseworks which meant checking things over and over again, having to deal with small children and being observered and put on mini tests every now and then that was it!!!! My brain started to collapse and i kept having panic attacks at the school i was doing my placement. My attacks were getting severe where i would have to leave the classroom and run and hide in the toilets till i calmed down. Everytime I was set a task by the main classroom teacher I would go into shaking mode and i would start to stutter and feel extra panic because I feared I was going to say things in reverse order or things that didnt make sense and the teachers were going to look at me thinking 'what a weirdo' I started to avoid talking to people because I was terrified I would start to stutter and make a fool of myself and I even started to forget how to spell basic words. My head became really fuzzy. My memory started to become really disorganized. I was forgetting things easily and just couldnt programe basic things into my head like do this and after that do this. I felt like I would start something and leave it and do something else but i have no clue what Im doing but that Im just floating. In school when people were talking to me my mind would just stop and I wouldnt understand or hear what they are saying.... I feel my body is there but my soul has gone off and I just feel lost all the time and then sometimes i feel my soul comes back to me and then i snap into a normalish mode and can concentrate for a little while and then it goes again. When my soul wonders off I feel like I'm walking on clouds and Im not really sure If i am at the school or not or what i am doing. When i write things down Im not even sure if Ive written them and when i read back what i written im not sure if im reading it...I know I have a pen and paper but im not even sure if im writing things or is the writing in my mind that im seeing and not on paper so then I have to check the paper to see if there are writing. Obviously I got really messed up doing this course so as a result i just quit.

I truly am scared of the world and humans. the human race terrifies me. I feel really weird, akward and lost when Im with humans. I even copy how people respond to things because I feel their way is the right away and i will learn by observing them. I feel my time will come and one day one of those phone calls will be for me.

Im paranoid like hell of the world. Im so scared, sad. I just dont want to be a part of the world. I avoid anything to do with reality and humans like reading books, newspapers, watching the news, watching soaps and normal films with people staring in them... i have an obsession with ufos, the unexplained, horror movies, paranormal things, bigfoot, sharks... anything that is involved with humans terrifies me and anything un-human makes me feel happy and safe.. I have also realised that I draw alot of patterns in my head and on paper and always drawing symbols in my head and on paper....I feel there is something really wrong with me and it isnt the ocd. Could the severe ocd that i have had from childhood turned me into more of a serious mental disorder like
Schizophrenia?

The reason I opened this thread was so that I could get others opinions on the condition I have. I know I have ocd and am not interested in opinions regarding my ocd but rather on the conditions I was hit with i my 20s and continue to have. what type of illness is this? depersonalization disorder maybe? thanks for reading. any opinions will be really appreciated but pls be mature...

[Travelinglady]

Hello, pixar, and welcome to Psych Central! I have not heard of just having OCD making someone more prone to developing schizophrenia. I would think the two disorders are totally separate. But, then, I am not personally experienced with either one. I mainly wanted to welcome you at this point.

Let's hear what other folks have to say.

[Sharp_Lace]

I'm no expert but your conditions sounds like it could be mulitple things. Many many disorders are linked with OCD.

You mentioned that you might contact your GP and see if they would have you put in a mental institution. That might be a little extreme. You could try contacting them and ask if they can refer you to a Therapist or Phycologist so you can get answers.

Also, don't worry about getting help shaming your parents. You are an adult now and they would be happy to see you get help and lead a productive life.

I hope everything gets better for you.

[the abyss]

you need to see a professional about what you are experiencing , and get diagnosed properly. i have ocd etc... it is boring to talk about....but like you it was a nightmare, but now i have it only 2% of the time , and this is without meds , and i lead a normal life .
take care

[Gus1234U]

there is a forum for schizophrena in the Mental Health Support section,, here is a link (i suspect the people who would understand best are reading there)...

Schizoaffective Disorder - Forums at Psych Central

best wishes controlling your symptoms~!