Personal Narrative: Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

As a young child, I remember having quite a few fears. These include being outside alone, the dark, “scary” movies and so on. I had never thought anything of it. Kids have fears; it’s a normal thing. At least it was normal until I hit the third grade.

It started with having to write down the time every time I looked at the clock. “9:06”. Write it down. Sometime later I’d sneak a glance again, “9:10”, write it down. My worksheets began to be cluttered with random times, floating around wherever I could get them to fit. Something told me I just had to write them down, and I couldn’t shake this feeling. Then, I started to save everyone’s scraps from worksheets we did. “Can I have your scraps?” I would ask all of my peers, and many handed

After going to a special doctor and answering a bunch of questions, the doctor sat me and my mom down to tell us the diagnosis. I have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. This means that I have obsessive or intrusive thoughts that I can’t shake and they give me anxiety. In order to calm this anxiety, I perform compulsive actions or rituals. For example, I can be hand writing on a worksheet for school and suddenly I’ll get these obsessive thoughts that the teacher won’t be able to read my writing and I’ll do worse on the assignment, so I’ll compulsively erase and rewrite it till I feel it is acceptable. This is only one example. OCD affects many parts of my

It was becoming extremely difficult for to keep my life together and stay on track with school work. I had talked with my mom who insisted that I can’t get help without being recommended by the school. I spoke with my counselor who said that I just need to face my anxiety, but that’s easier said than done without proper help. Don’t they understand that if I could just get rid of my anxiety that I would? I got strongly discouraged and felt like no one truly understood. I was sitting there practically drowning and asking for help, but no one did anything.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder doesn’t have a cure; it doesn’t just “go away”. It has its good days and it’s bad. I have overcome many of my physical symptoms with it; I don’t feel the need to save trash nor throw major tantrums as I had before. Although some symptoms have gone, I still face many mental and emotional symptoms everyday. I still struggle with anxiety in some crowds, random bouts of fear, lack of focus, loss of energy, etc. My disorder isn’t as severe as some people’s, but it’s still severe enough that I face it in my everyday