copyright 1999
I have always been a worrier, always anxious. But I dealt with it. Approaching the age of 40, my worries got out of hand. I was diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder. I struggled with doubts when I left the house. Had I locked the door? Turned off the coffee pot? The stove and lights? Often, I returned home to check something again.
People without OCD find it hard to understand why we can't turn off the thoughts and stop the compulsive behaviors. They can't understand what is going on in our heads. The easiest way to explain it is to describe the progression of my thoughts and actions.
Before leaving the house, I would check the appliances, lights, toilets and doors. I checked them in a certain order, and if I was interrupted, I felt compelled to start over. Frequently, I stopped and wondered if I really had checked to make certain the stove was off. Struggling with fear, I began touching the knobs to make certain. Then I questioned if, while touching the knobs, I had actually turned the stove on.
This thought compelled me to check the stove again. I obsessed about the stove -- or coffee pot or door -- after I had already left the house. If I couldn't get the thought out of my mind, I called my neighbor and asked her to check. I needed certainty. "Probably" was not good enough.
If I was nervous or preoccupied, it took longer to complete my checking rituals. At first, once was enough to relieve my anxiety and fear, but soon checking once did not produce the same relief. The continuing distress would compel me to check again. I was checking things over and over, with only minimal relief of anxiety.
I worried about everything. Not your ordinary worrying, but the constant and obsessing kind of worrying. My work as a home health nurse involved seeing patients in their homes. When the day was over, I didn't sit down to relax. I sat down and went over the day's events, searching for a mistake, a potential problem, something to "fix." Something would stand out as left undone or done imperfectly.
A phone call to check on the imagined mistake solved the problem at first. Soon it took more and more phone calls to satisfy my need for certainty. Maybe I said the wrong thing or left something out in the first phone call. Often the worrying continued into the night and the next day. Entire days were filled with worrying and phone calls. I didn't realize it at the time, but the checking rituals only increased my anxiety, rather than alleviating it. This is because rituals only produce short term anxiety relief.
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