Mental Hostage

Hello everyone, my name is Alex.

I am 23 years old, and for the past 20 years i have displayed characteristics of OCD.
My compulsions started off small and minor and progressively got incredibly worse as i got older.
Today, I feel as if I am enslaved to my "inner demons" and obey them to get relief of anxiety.
But the tasks I am put through to achieve relief, are up most exhausting and pathetic. I have no control over any of my compulsions and view that they MUST be done or else I will continually think about it. (this completely ruins me. It sucks the life out of me and I feel rendered useless).

The characteristics that I experience are of the following.
Intrusive thoughts, repetitiveness, risk inclination, neat and orderly, sanitary issues, fear of something bad happening with odd numbers.

Here's the breakdown of my typical day. See if any one can relate or give advice please. I am seriously begging for help here. This is my story

I wake up every day and the suffering begins. I can only lay in bed and rest as long as I don't have an intrusive thought about an Image, person, person's name, or bad situation.
When this intrusive thought begins, I must get out of bed and touch my bed 4 times, pick each foot up individually (like a football player running in place) 4 times, and if I land on my right foot with a bad thought, I must continue to repeat the foot lifting and setting down until i land on a good thought. (usually baseball, fishing, money, lottery, (anything good)).
In an hour of time, I would usually end up getting in bed and get out of bed about 15 times until I finally get everything right. This makes my girlfriend quite annoyed because she doesn't like the bed to move when she is sleeping but I can't help it. If i have an intrusive thought, I HAVE TO DO COMPULSIONS to get rid of the thoughts. That's just OCD for my BED

Lets talk about the rest of the day.
Sitting down in a chair takes me a few minutes if i'm lucky. I must land on my right foot with a good thought before i can sit down. any bad thought causes this process to repeat.
Picking things up. sometimes i can just touch the item that needs to be picked up ONCE, then grab it and pick it up. Other times it becomes more difficult depending on situations. Objects in tight spaces or that have other objects resting on it give me the most trouble. I literally have an OCD nightmare picking something up if it is not in an open area. I begin with the foot lifting and setting down until i land on a good thought. Then i bend down and attempt to pick the object up. If i touch the object and there is an intrusive thought, i repeat my process until it is correct.

Taking off shoes.
The tighter the shoe around my foot, the more anxiety I am presented when it comes time to take it off. The reason it is harder when it comes to tight shoes, is because It takes longer to take off, which yields more times I can have bad thoughts, which can expand the time it takes to take a shoe off. If i manage to get a shoe off and walk away and then have a bad thought, I must turn around and put the shoe back ON and repeat my process.

Closing doors

I begin my doing my foot thing and attempting to have a clear head before i touch the handle and turn it. If i open the door and i have an intrusive thought mid way, I close the door and start over. [b]Let's be thankful the door isn't squeeky because I live in an apartment building with neighbors across from me[/b]

Taking off a back pack
I must have a clear mind with no intrusive thoughts before i begin to take off my backpack. If i encounter a bad thought, i put the backpack back on. Repeat the process until correct.

I have issues with just about EVERYTHING i do in with with OCD.
Why am i so punished? Why do i HAVE to make things perfect?

Thanks for letting me share. there is a lot more to my OCD then what I listed above.
Looking for feedback please

Dear Alex:

Fellow OCD sufferer here. I used to have so many compulsions, many of them elaborate and some would keep me up at night because I had to them and had to be awake to do them. The torture!

I am sorry you too are suffering. Your descriptions make it clear.

My compulsions got weaker over time. At one point I was able to sleep like a baby, night after night. At one point the many, changing compulsions became fewer and more simple. As a 7th grader, walking to school, I walked so many steps toward the schools, so many steps back, then I imagined I was going over a rope in front of me, raising legs (and hoping all along I was not watched)- school was far away and that was ... well, it was. Presently my compulsions are as simple as when I sit at the dinner table, I have to remove something that is on the table. Sometimes I resist it.

However bad it was, it is better now.

You asked why do you have to do those compulsions, is what you meant by "Why do i HAVE to make things perfect?"- from my experience what happened was I had an obsession, a thought that meant I was in danger, that something bad was about to happen and the compulsion was like a ritual meant to prevent something bad to happen. When I resisted the thought repeated itself until I did the compulsion. Then there was relief until the next time.

Fear-> Compulsion (ritual)-> relief....Fear->compulsion, etc.

I hope this is helpful to you.
atina

Hi Alex,

Everything that you described, that was me. I still experience it, just not as intense as it used to be, which is quite recent.

I too have suffered from a very young age, as far back as I can remember.
Every morning I would try to prolong that in between wake and sleep state before I actually woke because it was the only time I wouldn't feel intense compulsions.
I would get in and out of bed innumerable amount of time at night and morning, because if I got in to the bed while having a negative thought I would have to keep repeating until a positive thought came.

Same with touching objects (and yes, the less space an object was in the more anxiety! Corners and cracks, in between pages of a book, even pockets etc). Taking off/putting on clothes, shoes, accessories, sitting down in chairs (looked like I was dancing into it) closing/opening doors, leaving a room or building I had to go back and forth over the threshold until I left on a positive thought/vibe, I thought if I left anywhere or did anything that has negative thoughts associated with the last time I was there that anything associated with that time or place would be contaminated with negativity and suffer, and then make me suffer more too.

And the list goes on. Every. Single. Thing that could be touched or thought of, and then the emotional contamination too. Fear that people would steal my energy and replace it with their negative energy and that I would slowly become them. I used to not even be able to say this out loud or write it.

Luckily, somehow I came across existentialist philosophers Albert Camus and Jean Paul Sartre and they had a profound affect on how I viewed the world. Yes this situation and world I'm living in is absurd but completely fascinating. What can I do? Suffer, commit suicide, become absorbed in something else (substituting one vice for another) or face the absurd and rebel against it. So I chose the last. And started doing my own form of exposure therapy, cognitive rehabilitation and when I compulsion or obsession came up I just let it take its course, meditated on it, became mindful.

Of course it tremendous effort and I hope you have support, people that can understand, or at least try to, that are close to you. Over time you can change your perspective on what you experience. And like atina said its a cycle, a cycle of distorted thoughts and distorted reactions to those thoughts.

I hope you find your path to better thoughts, peace.

Thank you for your feedback! I heavily appreciate someone reading my issues and responding. I don't know what route to take to fix my issues. Is there a certain type of medication that works for everyone? And what type of therapy do I require?
-thanks