Ben's journey of overcoming OCD.

I remember the day I got diagnosed with OCD. I was fourteen. I’d been seeing a

counsellor for maybe a week, before she straight up told me something like this:

“Based on what we’ve discussed today and last week it’s pretty clear that you have

obsessive-compulsive disorder, which is OCD.” If you’ve got OCD, you’re familiar with the reaction people have when you say that you have it. That was the exact reaction I had, when I was told that I had it. “But I don’t care whether those pencils are colour-coded or in a straight line. So that can’t be it.”

I was young and uneducated on the topic. So, even though at that very moment I was

fighting down a hundred tiny voices in my head, the voices were telling me to do stuff or else bad things would happen. All simply because I had walked into the room with the left foot first instead of the right one. I still didn’t understand what I was being told.

That’s my origin story, it’s nothing like Clark Kent or Bruce Wayne’s origin, I don’t

have any superpowers yet, but I am still waiting to get struck by lightning to test the

Barry Allen theory.

While I did get officially diagnosed at fourteen, I had OCD long before that. Eight was the age when I first started being obsessive and doing compulsive things in a disorderly

manner. I won’t go too much into it, but I was terrified that any food I ate or any

chemicals within a mile would poison me. I know this fear can be quite common

within the OCD community. I won't go over too many of the compulsive

behaviours that I did to rectify my ‘poisonings’, but I’ll go over one or two.

Whenever I was given chicken nuggets for dinner, I would pick them apart

to make sure they weren’t in any way raw. Despite loving nuts, I began to convince myself I was allergic and from then on, any packet of food would be thoroughly scanned for a ‘may contain nuts’ label. I felt that the fear came from an episode of Tracy Beaker.

So, my first counselling session happened at eight. My therapist was big, bald and scary

to eight-year-old me, so naturally I did not listen to a word this man said. He never

mentioned OCD, he simply told my mum to make me a peanut butter sandwich and

the next session tried to convince me to eat it and not think about my non-existent

allergy. His logic was simple, by eating the sandwich and not dying I would realise it

was in my head, made up and bam - cured. But he missed one thing and that was that I

was eight and had mastered the art of facing the wall, yelling no and folding my arms.

We did not go back to that man.

Eventually, I just kind of forgot I was meant to be afraid of these things and started doing them again, enjoying my food containing nuts and eating chicken nuggets. By the time I remembered I was afraid of these things, it was clear that I was safe, so for that time it was bam cured…mostly. I don’t need to tell you that those thoughts don’t exactly go away, essentially, they can sometimes flare up when you face any emotional spike. I had little flare-ups from eight onwards and most people didn’t even notice I was doing specific things. I turned the light off and on again, whoopsie, my ten-year-old hand slipped. Or I was caught mumbling the same phrase over and over to myself; must be a song lyric and not me trying to convince myself my thoughts aren’t true.

It wasn’t until I was fourteen, as I said, that I had a bad wave of thoughts that did break me down massively. It was only when I went from a top-tier student to nearly failing my mock

GCSEs, that my parents and I decided therapy was needed to see what was going

on. A week later, diagnosed with OCD.

That therapist was much nicer, she asked me about my feelings, each flare-up I’d had and what I think caused it. It felt like my entire life was being put together and making sense. Every 'weird' thing I did for no reason, now had a reason. I was taught how to manage my thoughts, distract myself, divert the thoughts, and the thing that helped me the most, tackling them head-on. I went out of my way to challenge every thought I had, that was even remotely OCD. I took it a step further and began setting off all my old triggers and pushing back. It felt a little odd watching Tracy Beaker as a fifteen-year-old, but I wanted to own my thoughts. I’d intentionally try to trigger myself and not react to the thoughts. If I was focused, the thoughts went from 100% of the time to 5% of the time.

Whenever I wasn’t focused or had something that sent my emotions haywire the

thoughts would zoom in, flooding my mind and putting my body into fight or flight.

Due to my therapist (who I’d stopped seeing) and her methods, I chose to fight

every time and challenged my thoughts, even doing exactly the opposite of what

they said. Which did go wrong once, I was told by my mind to keep flicking the light

on and off, so I instead intentionally turned off the light and walked into the room,

right into a table. That bruise lasted a while.

I’m nearly twenty-two now, and I haven't had a flare-up in years. Whenever an intrusive thought comes around, it’s gone within a minute, because I always remember the methods I learnt in therapy and my willpower to control my mind, is stronger than those little voices.

I hope that reading this has made at least one person facing OCD feel heard and if you know someone with OCD, now you know that it’s more than just colour-coding your highlighters, as I once thought.

A note from Hannah (founder):

Please remember that this article is Ben's own personal experience, journey and recovery of OCD. Everyone's will be different. The methods Ben has explained here, about how he overcame his struggles with OCD, are not to be treated as professional advice or a diagnosis. Please seek medical advice if you feel you may be effected by OCD.

Don't forget to look after yourselves!

Speak soon,

Hannah