Arguing with uncontrollable, unwanted, nightmare-like thoughts, that escalate as you try to stop them. All day long.

I’ll keep this short. I remember as a young child having OCD rituals every night before bed. I would have to have my eyes shut and repeat several obsessive thoughts, while I touched the corner of the bed a certain way. I would do this over and over until it “felt right”.

Ever since then, these unwanted thoughts and compulsions just continued to take over with everything I did. It didn’t matter if it was during class, conversation, work, or even things that were done personally. This constantly made me shy away from everything that I actually enjoyed doing, as well as losing confidence in myself.

It was tough being brought up driving karts, cars, and racing motocross. I loved it and always wanted to push myself to continue and progress, but everything and anything that gave me the tiniest bit of anxiety triggered OCD, and the obsessive thoughts multiplied.

I’d get paranoid and have to repeat under my breath that I didn’t want any bad situation (motocross accident, sickness, death, anything) to happen to me, my friends, family, or anyone (still doing this same repetitive routine today). It was almost like if I thought it, it would be my fault. This could be triggered by something as simple as looking at a race car. The thoughts would be about hundreds of bad (nightmare-like) situations, even though I was focused on one activity. Once I was done repeating the unwanted thoughts about one thing, I would move on to the next. This lasts all day long.

I didn’t find out the details of OCD until sophomore year of College, when I refused to present my project. Every time I was getting ready, the obsessive thoughts multiplied because I was so nervous, and I would panic and skip them. This is when I did some research online and read a lot about OCD. I posted on a forum to get some advice and eventually made myself talk to a professional.

Till this day I still have these obsessive thoughts. I actually have Pure-O OCD, which is pure obsessional. I’ll have these repetitive thoughts about hundreds of different harmful things, and repeat them all day long. It can be triggered by any daily activity, including video games (shootings, stabbings, anything from the game), watching movies/the news, reading, seeing harmful objects, anything. Even watching racing on TV, in person, Facebook videos – any harmful situations.

The repetitive obsessions/thoughts are constantly about illnesses or harmful events and about things I’d never do. They will randomly “pop up” and there is no way around them. The harmful thoughts are the worst. I’ll have to repeat that I would never hurt someone, and that I don’t want anyone to be hurt. It could be about a specific person, myself, or a complete stranger. Now replace “hurt” with more specific reasoning (shootings, stabbings, sicknesses, etc.).

Obviously I know that I would NEVER hurt anyone in any way, and that completing these rituals doesn’t change a thing. But with OCD you can’t stop it. There is no way around it and it can easily take over your life.