What it’s like to live with OCD

“My OCD won’t allow that.”

“I’m so OCD about these things.”We’ve all heard it before. The throw away line when someone likes something neat or ordered. They blame it on OCD. Like OCD is an easy get out of jail free card for wanting things their way.

But what is it actually like to live with OCD. To have your every day governed by an invisible force that makes you question your morality, your sanity and even your identity?

What is it like to be fearful that one wrong move, as innocent as it may seem to the rest of the world, could mean the difference between life and death for those you love?

And what is it like to wake up every day, with everything you’ve ever wanted in life - a loving wife, a beautiful daughter, a dog who you love dearly, the best job in the world, the best of the best family and friends - and have no happiness, just the thought of what danger will I need to neutralise today with uncontrollable washing, avoiding or panicking? At my worst, I was spending more than five hours every day trapped in compulsions. Five hours of my life, every single day, that OCD took from me.

This is what it’s like.

OCD is like living with this unshakable fear that comes with you wherever you go. It sits in the back of your mind and makes you question every move. It finds a way to make everything you do somehow relate to your deepest fears. That fear of harming those you love. That fear that you are responsible for every move your children make. That fear that if you just switch off for one second, the worst may come true and you are responsible for preventing that. This is what people misunderstand most about OCD. It doesn’t attach itself to things you hate. It attaches itself to what you love most.

For me OCD came about for the first time in my life after a near miss on the road. A drunk man, walking out, late at night in front of my car as I traveled along a road I had driven a thousand times before. As I jammed on my brakes, he leapt out of the way. The fear that I was so close to disaster weighed heavy on me every day after. Every time I got behind the wheel I replayed that moment over in my head.

From that point on, the obsessions started. In my mind, every pothole in the road was a body I didn’t see. Every second I couldn’t recall was the possibility that I caused an accident. And every distraction was OCD trying to trick me into believing I had missed something important.

I avoided driving for months. I was too terrified. So I bought a dashcam. But then I couldn’t drive without it. It was my saviour. It gave me the ability to get in the car again. But then came the compulsions. Every drive I had to watch back. Not just snippets. The full drive. In slow motion, watching every imperfection in the roads surface, to ensure it wasn’t a body, or a dog, or something that I missed because I was blinking, adjusting the aircon or turning the volume down so I could concentrate better. It was exhausting. I was embarrassed. A simple task like driving became the biggest moment of every day. The fear overwhelmed me. I did anything I could to find an excuse not to do it.

Whenever I needed to go somewhere I would arrive more than half an hour early just to ensure I had enough time to watch the clips back. I would park a block or two away from where I had to go, so no one I knew would see me. I would take my laptop with me and my trusty SD memory card adapter and ashamedly sit with my head down, avoiding any eye contact with the outside world and then it would begin. The painstaking seconds would tick by as I watch the clip, frame by frame, double checking and triple checking, from all available angles, just so that I had the ability to hold a conversation or even get my job done once it was over. As the time got closer to when I needed to be somewhere I would panic. My heart would race. I felt physically sick as if I was going to vomit. I needed to get this done. I would rather be late for an appointment than go in and not be able to be present.

The first few months were hard. I had to organise myself to be able to get all of this done undetected. Until I worked out my strategy and what I need to do to survive each day. Then once I had it down pat, I could switch it on and off. The moment I walked in the door, I was present because I had taken care of my compulsions and obsessions. I had fed the OCD what it needed. It was content, for now. While it slept I functioned, all the while in the back of my mind I was thinking about the next drive. The drive home. The drive tomorrow. The excuse for why I was late. It was an act I kept up for months, even years. If I wanted to keep this a secret from the world it had to have no cracks. It was all about timing. So I would leave hours early sometimes, which meant earlier wake ups, less sleep and no breakfast just to get the compulsions done.

I was ashamed. I was embarrassed. I no longer saw myself as a man or a husband. I needed to keep this from the world because I didn't want people to think of me the way I thought of myself. I feared if people knew the truth I’d be treated differently. I’d be the sad case that people felt sorry for. That people would be constantly checking in on. And above all, I felt like I was failing my identity. The third generation firefighter, the peer support officer, the stoic, man and husband who didn’t live up to the expectations.

I can remember clearly one day, receiving a call to check in on someone as a Peer Support Officer, just as I was sitting in the car watching my dashcam. But I willingly and gratefully accepted the job, because helping others or being there for someone who is struggling gives you a purpose that fills a hole in you when your own life feels broken.

Nonetheless I felt like a walking contradiction. Calling someone up, checking in on them, ensuring their wellbeing when my own wellbeing was suffering more than ever. But that was my choice. I didn’t want the world to know and for as long as I could keep up the facade, the charade would continue. When you’ve spent your whole life building this identity, and that identity is present in everything you do - a husband, a father, a firefighter - you’ll do anything to protect it.

And OCD didn’t end once I got control of my driving obsessions and compulsions. It shifted. It found something new. Something I loved even more and it came for that. By this point we had lost our first daughter, Mia Grace to stillbirth. I already knew what it felt like to lose a child. OCD knew that too.

Once Willow arrived and Archie had his health scare, hand washing became my compulsion. My obsession was keeping Willow and Archie safe, at all costs. I was petrified of being the reason one of them got sick or even worse. I remember having this line that replayed in the back of my head every day, “you’ve already lost one daughter, don’t mess this up.”

So I over protected, I over compensated and I became hyper responsible. Once I touched anything I washed my hands. Anything that could be considered dirty, anything that one of them couldn’t eat or come into contact with because it was a toxin. I washed. And I washed. And I washed. Until the washing took over my life.

The fear was like nothing I had ever experienced. It made me avoid doing things I once loved. I stopped socialising. I became a hermit because inside the four walls of my home I could control the environment and what they came into contact with. In my mind, it was the safest option.

If I heard someone cough or sneeze I avoided them at all costs. I took the long path around. The least direct route. Whatever it took to avoid them.

When I met someone, I feared shaking hands. That show of masculinity, between one man and another. But keeping my family safe was more important to me. If I did shake hands I would avoid touching anything at all until I could go and wash them again. My phone, my clothes, my daughter, even patting Archie’s head for fear that if I spread germs to his fur and Willow then touched him, I would be responsible for making her ill.

I was trapped in a prison controlled by my own mind and every day was torture. Washing my hands was not a simple task either. When my OCD hit rock bottom I was washing my hands anywhere between 8 and 12 times whenever I washed them.

I would pump the soap and lather my hands and scrub. In my head I would count to 20, then repeat. Eight times was my go to, it started at one, then two, then three, then six and then I landed on eight. After the eight I had to do three short washes, just to be sure. They were ten seconds each.

As I washed I would look at myself in the mirror. I would say to myself, stop! You’re failing. As a husband and as a father, you’re failing. You’re not being the brave, strong man you spent your life trying to become. You’re a shell of yourself and you need to do better.

I was embarrassed. I was ashamed of myself. I would walk out of the bathroom and avoid looking at Jordan. I couldn’t look at her. I felt I was failing her. I wasn’t the man she deserved.

The same with Willow. She deserved a father who was there to protect her, not fear for her every move.

I didn’t need to tell Jordan what it felt like inside. She could see it in every day I spent standing over the bathroom sink. With every head-bowed walk out of the bathroom. And every moment I sat vacant, staring into space. She knew something was on my mind even if I didn’t vocalise it.

She became my lifeline. She picked up what I couldn’t. The things I feared most, she took over. The cooking of the raw chicken, the taking the bins out, the cleaning the bathroom. In my darkest hours, she just sat next to me and said we will get through this together. This is not your life forever. She stood solid. She became the stoic presence I was for her during the depths of our grief.

I watched her carry the weight I couldn’t without hesitation. The days she worked for 10 hours then took the bins out. The lunch breaks spent cooking because I couldn’t touch the raw food. The weekends spent nursing me through breakdowns.

Her time became non-existent. If you ever want to feel like a failure, watch your wife carry all of that. Tired. Emotional. Broken too from watching the love of her life crumble right in front of her eyes, and never once complain or shed a tear for herself and what her life had become.

The pressure to get better was even heavier after watching her carry all of this. I knew it couldn’t go on forever. But Jord gave me everything I needed to get through this. There was no magic cure and it didn’t happen overnight.

Even when I told her she would be better off not caring about me anymore, because I was sick of seeing the people I love more than anything in this world suffer because of my mental health struggles. She gave me love. She gave me patience. And she gave me the gentle encouragement to keep going when all hope felt lost.

When the opportunity for help arose and I was too afraid to take it, she helped me see what it could become and that at the other end of the tunnel there was some light.

And most importantly she gave me love and empathy. When I sat, a broken man she didn’t try to fix it. She didn’t offer solutions. She sat, her arm around me and said I can’t say I know how it feels but I’m here for you, no matter what. If it’s love. If it’s care. If it’s just an ear to listen. I’m it. And that alone was enough to get me through my darkest days.

The other thing that Jord did that allowed me to make significant progress towards recovery was celebrating the small wins. For me self-recognition or giving myself praise for tackling exposures was incredibly hard. It’s not in my nature to want to celebrate something that I believe I “should” be able to do, like taking the bins out but Jord held that space for me during the moments of success.

She was the first to pat me on the back, tell me to stop and be proud of what I had done and label it as a huge milestone. She allowed me to see the wins for what they were not for what I thought they should be. Her recognition of what I deep down knew was huge but tried to downplay, gave me the acknowledgment and confidence to tackle the next exposure.

I found that whenever Jord sat with me she never once made it about her. She never told me how much my mental health was affecting her. She didn’t need to. That in itself was what I needed at the time. The guilt that would have put on me would have been insurmountable. I honestly don’t know how she had the strength to stop herself at times because I could see it on her face, how much it pained her, yet it was always about supporting me with whatever I was struggling with.

The other things I found Jord never did which would have been my instinct was come up with solutions to my problems. She trusted that the professionals I was seeing were the right people to do that and eventually the tide would change. She never googled. She never asked AI. She just sat and empathised. I don’t know where I would be without her.

If you’re supporting someone through OCD right now I hope you can take some perspective out of this. To maybe put yourself in their shoes, see things from a different angle and take home something that you can do to help support them through the toughest chapter of their life.

OCD took so much time away from me. Time spent in compulsions. Obsessing over my deepest, darkest fears. Trying to protect Archie and Willow even if it meant losing my own sense of self, relinquishing the identity I spent years hiding behind and finding myself all over again, as a stronger, braver more courageous father and husband than I ever thought possible.

So what is it like to live with OCD?

It’s torture.

It’s life changing.

Losing Mia Grace is the saddest thing I’ve ever been through, but overcoming OCD is without doubt the hardest thing I’ve ever been through in my life.

So next time you hear someone say, “I’m so OCD,” or “my OCD won’t allow that,” challenge them to really understand what they’ve said. Help them begin to understand what OCD might be costing someone who does suffer from it just to wake up and face every day. If you know someone with OCD, ask yourself, what can I do to show that person that they are doing life changing work by facing their fears. And maybe just maybe, together we can help the world to see what it’s actually like to live with OCD.