NEWBIE - Diagnosed with 'mild' OCD by GP

Hi Guys.

I'll try to make this as succinct as possible:

In a nutshell, I've always had OCD tendencies, from a young age. But they were so mild (e.g. as a child (5-10 years old): walking on every other tile, having to touch something with my left hand before using my right hand, etc) and, for a long time I didn't realise it was a problem, until it grew and grew and got to the point where I had to see my GP about it 2 weeks ago, at the age of 25. She has referred me to a OCD help group of some sort, i'm still waiting for a letter for it.

The problems themselves keep changing... I've had all sorts of 'things' come and go, including;

Religious OCD - Incessantly praying every 30 seconds
Paranoia of being caught - e.g. If I spit on the floor, someone could take a sample, send it off to a lab and prosecute me for littering

Cleanliness - This is a current problem that I have, particularly in regard to staining substances - Discuss cleaning hands often, food on table (then other people touching it), cleaning door handles, opening doors with sides of fingers, wiping down clothes, etc.

Worrying - for example, intense uncontrollable worry about something that may not be dangerous - eg. going abroad, was heater plugged in? I sometimes worry about things, despite checking!

Social worrying; For example, if I send a friend a message and he/she doesn’t reply, I then start reading through my old messages and try to see if I said something wrong… I then keep reading and reading and eventually come to a (wrong!) conclusion that I have, and needlessly start apologising for it

Ritual-like behaviour; Usually combined with other points, I feel the need to do something in a ritual-like fashion. Rather than check a door is locked, I need to do it a certain number of times before I’m satisfied. Its like a sort of itch in my mind that needs scratching, almost.

Rituals in response to irritation: If I get disproportionately irritated by something, and sometimes I do (for example, if someone tuts after sipping a drink), I feel the need to do that back to them even louder and a few times. This is because I would otherwise get told off for having a go at them.

Disproportionately irritated by everything Indian - my parents are Indian, and for some reason I just hate everything to do with Indian culture - the food, TV shows, music, the language, culture itself, social norms, even their facial and hand expressions, and their accents...

Facial expressions - I do certain facial expressions to somewhat alleviate an ‘itch’ in my mind, and it feels good when I do it. Although I am in control of them, I tend to do them when I am happy. It feels better after I do them.

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I am generally a weird person, so I don't know if its just the OCD which is a problem here. Here are a few personality traits of mine that make me... very odd indeed;

1) I keep changing phone number and email address. I like this idea of having a 'fresh' email address, or 'fresh' number. It gives me some odd pleasure, despite having to ring up every single company (bank, insurance, etc) to tell them my change in contact details

2) I have been described as very intense. I am very full on... I either don't go with my friends to a nightclub at all, or I'm right in the middle of the 'floor having a dance-off with someone. A friend of mine asked for a topic bar as she didn't have them in the part of England where she lived, so I sent her a box of 50. This has severely affected my ability to form a relationship with a girl as well as I'm "too full on"

3) I have very strong, right wing political views. I know I won't get much sympathy on here for holding those views, but I think its best to mention it because its probably an indicator of some mental problem - especially considering that I've just deleted all my friends off Facebook etc last week, as they all supported Jeremy Corbyn. These people have been my friends since I was at school, and we shared many good times together - but their views angered me so much that I decided to delete them, and I felt no sadness after doing it. They were saddened and kept texting me saying to put differences aside, but I didn't care. I literally have no friends left - they were all my friends. I'm now literally a loner. But I don't care and feel no shame in that.

4) I don't care (combines with point 3) - I don't feel bad emotion when I hear about disabled or unemployed people, and I don't feel bad when the adverts for starving children in Africa comes on on the TV. I just don't feel any emotion.

5) I really really enjoy house music.

6) I can't really openly say this on the internet, but sometimes I do things without fear of consequence. A "mild" example of that could be that I used to park in disabled parking bays all the time (I only stopped when I heard that people started scratching cars parked there - which of course triggered my OCD and made me convinced that if I park there for just 30 seconds, my car will definitely be scratched).


I know I sound like a horrible person, but I'm on the road to being a better person. Its just that I'm at the start of that road, and I know its quite a journey to the golden beach at the end of it!