My experience of overcoming my OCD
Ever get that feeling that you haven’t locked your car door because you can’t remember doing it? In that moment, you just start imagining everything from your car stereo being stolen to some hooligan taking your car and selling it on the black market and that’s before you even think about the ramifications it will have on your insurance premiums and so on. So to calm your nerves, you go back to your car and you press the unlock button on your key then lock it again just to make sure. That’s it. Your mind is at ease, your car is secure and you can walk to wherever you were going.
Now, imagine that because you don’t trust yourself or because of a long streak of bad luck (or any other anxieties), that fear of your car getting stolen just doesn’t go away immediately? You keep thinking it’s unlocked so you keep on checking and checking until you’re either exhausted or you’ve done it enough times to make sure as much as you can, that you’ve done your bit to protect your car. Historically, this would mean checking at least 3 times so you do it that many times to feel a sense of safety and relief. That is what OCD felt like to me: a seemingly endless cycle of intrusive thoughts, anxiety, compulsion and temporary relief. In this post I want to shed light on what my experience of it was, how I overcame this and some lessons I learnt in the process.
How it started
I became aware of my OCD when I was 15 years old. I had been dealing with it unknowingly for possibly years before but 15 was when it came to the forefront. From having a conservative Muslim upbringing, prayer was always a part of my daily routine. I wanted to pray five times a day and be a ‘good’ Asian Muslim boy. I wanted God to give me all of His blessings, I wanted my parents to be happy with me and I wanted to set a good precedent for my younger siblings. Now, at this stage you’re probably thinking ‘wait a minute, is this Muslim gonna Qur’an-bash me?’ and the answer is ‘No, though my issues were loosely based on my interpretations of Islamic principles, I am no expert on Islam and I’m not here to preach. So carry on reading’. This was my idea of ‘good’ at the time and this was the starting point for my temporary turmoil.
In Islam, every Muslim has to perform wudhu. This is a ritual act of washing to purify yourself prior to performing prayers, reading the Qur’an or other acts of worship. There are things that can break your wudhu such as passing wind, losing consciousness and bleeding among many other things. My issue was related to the ruling that if you get a drop of urine on your clothing, depending on the extent, you either have a shower and change your clothes or you clean your genitalia, wash the spot that the urine is on and perform wudhu again before you can pray. You could say this problem of mine literally pissed me off (bad joke, sorry!).
How it started for me was whenever I urinated, I would have this doubt that somehow a drop may have fallen on to my trousers and when this happened, in the early days, I would just wash that part of my clothing and perform wudhu again. However, this act started snowballing as it no longer allayed my intrusive thoughts. Slowly but surely, I was in a default state of assuming that my clothes were contaminated with urine and touching anywhere near my crotch area and then touching something else would contaminate someone in my household, invalidating their prayers as well as mine.
This had several consequences for me. Firstly, before I prayed I would have a shower, do wudhu and change all of my clothes (only if I had urinated or had bowel movements in between prayers). On many occasions if I went to the toilet before bed, I would wash all of my sheets for fear that they would be contaminated and if anyone touched my bed, they would be contaminated too. Finally, I kept washing my hands if I had come into contact with my crotch area to stop the deadly urine from spreading around the house. Yes, this is really what I thought! I firmly believed that my body was a curse and anything I came into contact with would need to be washed for fear of taking away a good afterlife from those I loved.
Before I knew it, the effects of this problem rippled into other aspects of my life. My hands had blisters from washing them so much under hot taps to remove the urine, I couldn’t sleep properly from the stress and anxiety and some of my relationships with friends and family had deteriorated from my mind being pre-occupied with this issue. I felt batpiss crazy (sorry, again).
The day I accepted that I had a problem
I was in school, feeling pretty tired from the stress and sleep deprivation. At the beginning of my English lesson, I had this uncontrollable urge to have a dump. Normally I would avoid going to the toilets in school as a result of my issues but this was a day I made an exception; duty was calling and I reluctantly had to answer. After some excruciating minutes of deliberating how I will keep clean during my mission, I put my hand up and asked for permission to go to the toilet. While doing my business, I took great care to make sure I my clothing didn’t touch any unclean areas of the cubicle e.g. I ensured that my jumper didn’t go anywhere near the toilet lid. However, unbeknownst to me, my trousers were touching the floor. When I noticed this, the first thought in my mind was that my trousers were basically drenched in other people’s urine! I thought about how this would lead me to contaminate everyone in the house etc. (I’m sure by now you get the picture). So then I decided to get out of the cubicle and wash down the contaminated parts of my trousers.
As I was going to leave the cubicle, I hear a bunch of the guys come in to the toilet. At this point, I sit back down. I panic for longer, thinking ‘when are they gonna leave?’, ‘what’s taking them so long?’ and more importantly, ‘I need to get back to class’! These guys were your standard truants, skivers, whatever you want to call them. I had no idea what they were doing, they definitely weren’t using the facilities. All I could hear was laughing, swearing, some kicking and other physical contact for a good 20 minutes. So I stayed inside the cubicle because I just didn’t want to be caught out doing this:
I’d been in the toilet for most of my lesson by the time I’d left the cubicle and washed and dried my trousers. I felt absolutely shit. I felt bad because I’d missed the lesson going through a mock exam and my friends were all wondering where I’d been, so I had to just say I had a massive shit which led to a lot of laughter and mickey-taking. I was more worried about the repercussions on my GCSE grades at the end of the year with the pressure piling on at home and my parents wanting me to get all A*s while I was going through what I was going through. The rest of the day was more of the same: stress, exhaustion and misery.
While having dinner with my family that day, I just kept thinking about how much of my life this problem had ruined. I couldn’t eat. My mum and dad kept asking what’s wrong and I didn’t respond initially. I already felt like a burden as they had recently become concerned and annoyed (understandably) about the amount of laundry I’d been doing over the last few months and I just didn’t want to speak about it. But after a some minutes passed, I started bawling my eyes out. I told them that I keep washing my hands, I keep washing everything, I can’t sleep, I’m always worried and I just didn’t know what to do. I explained my pee problem, my feelings of guilt and uncleanliness and the concerns I had about the way I practiced Islam. This was embarrassing but somewhat cathartic because I had bottled it up for so long.
Hearing me say this, my parents offered me some words of comfort saying that it will be okay, I just need to control my thoughts, I need to pray sincerely and that they’ll help me and get me help. However, as the months went on my problems stayed the same and now that they were aware of my compulsions, they would call me out on it and we would argue.
Getting help
The first place I went to was the doctor’s. I explained to my doctor that I feel like I keep getting drops of pee on my clothes and that this makes me worried and wash everything. My doctor booked me in for an ultrasound scan as he wanted to check if I suffered from any kidney problems causing incontinence (I didn’t). Looking back I’m surprised that I wasn’t referred to any mental health practitioner or anything. My doctor said ‘if you’re worried about wee being dirty, it’s sterile’. Yep. That was all I got from that. I wish those words had changed my life and I fast-tracked to becoming this guy:
…but I didn’t.
The next step was brought on by my parents. After months of trying to comfort me and some tough love, they decided to take me on a trip to London. Little did I know that within a couple of hours, I’d be in a room with this Islamic teacher who would ask me loads of vague questions to see if I was possessed. Questions ranging from what I dreamt about to what worries me to what things I watch etc. The atmosphere seemed a bit tense and I really had no clue where he was going with his diagnostics but I just wanted to be told that I’m not possessed. So, when he asked me ‘when you go near fire, does it feel hot?’, I froze and after moments of deliberating like this:
I replied saying ‘no’, hoping it was the right answer. At the end of the ordeal, he prescribed me some special water to drink and add small amounts to my bathing water for the next 30 days. He told my parents that he thinks there was a chance I was slightly possessed by one of Satan’s mates and that this water would ‘cure’ me.
On the way back, my parents and I got stuck in the middle of the motorway due to heavy snow and had to stay at a hotel for the night. I felt so guilty and like such a burden on my family. I promised myself that I’d give whatever this guy told me to do a shot.
…I then did what was asked of me and obviously it didn’t work. 30 days on, I still carried out my compulsions as normal. By this time I actually believed that it was an illness that would just go away with time if I left it and I didn’t know what it was.
Change
A year on from that day in school, feeling more hopeless than ever, I confided in my aunt about all of the things I was experiencing. She then explained to me that what I was experiencing has a name and it’s called OCD. I went to my GP to confirm this and then I was referred to another doctor. This doctor was more understanding and explained to me about OCD, gave me some advice on how to manage it and provided me with some useful resources and tips to make some lifestyle changes (I was very obese at the time).
I read a lot about what the disorder was, the common triggers, intrusive thoughts and compulsions. I started to understand that I was trying to control things that I had mostly no control over because I felt guilty, I held myself to extremely high standards and I was afraid of hell. By controlling these small things, I would be giving myself the safety that my family and I weren’t going to hell.
Upon realising this, I began to make some changes. I promised myself that I would not perform wudhu more than once unless I had obviously wet my pants. Even if I suspected there was urine on my clothes, if there was room for any doubt, meaning if I could tell myself ‘well, I didn’t see it so it may not have happened’, I would favour not washing. I would also stop washing my hands if they came into contact with my crotch area and I would only wash them if they were visibly dirty (pre-COVID-19 times). Finally, no matter how uncomfortable it felt, I wouldn’t throw my sheets into the laundry just because I had gone to the toilet before I went to sleep.
My initial fear was that something bad would happen if I prayed without my wudhu intact, that God would punish me and I would know. However, I had to go against my instincts and push on with my new rules. The early stages were awful, I felt sick and I was even worried that people I loved would die as a result of my heresy. After a while of persisting by letting my thoughts pass and not interacting with them and catching myself when I’m ruminating, I realised that nothing terrible happened.
After three months since setting these boundaries for myself, I became comfortable in myself again. I had set new goals in the process to divert my attention, I focused more on revision, joined the gym and began rebuilding some of my friendships. These things helped me along the journey and kept my mind occupied with other things that would add value to my life.
Eventually, due to my anxiety (this can be another blog on its own) I did also undergo a course of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) which helped me be more present, interact with my thoughts less and be more constructive during periods of worry. I use these skills to this day whenever irrational thought patterns creep up.
I bet you’re thinking ‘wow, great story Nabeel, but what exactly did you do apart from set those rules?’ Well, the summary of the key success factors for me are outlined below.
Lessons learnt
- Accepting the problem — for months I thought nothing of these rules, I thought I was doing the right thing. I had to realize what was going on and that these rules were no longer serving me. I then had to make new ones that would serve me and my objective wellbeing. This was the first step to recovery.
- Seeking help — always persevere to seek help. Although some attempts at seeking help were fruitless, even still I felt less alone. It can be easy to feel alone during any mental health issue so having people trying to support me helped and eventually it did lead to solutions and lasting improvements in my mental health. You are not alone, never give up.
- Self-compassion — forgive and love yourself, you can’t control the world. When this started, I felt the sole responsibility to be a perfect son, a role model and a strong believer. Holding myself to such a high standard made me beat myself up a lot. I would always seek reassurances that I am a good person and that God loves me. I had to learn that the best person to tell that to myself was me. I had to tell myself that I am not responsible for everyone’s sins, that God would know what I’m going through and forgive me and that I am a good person regardless. I needed to reframe what good was to me because I set the bar too high for myself.
- Mindfulness — to this day I still worry about the future consequences of my decisions. Although this is good in small doses, thinking about life as a long line of dominos does not help. Whenever I was thinking about the afterlife during my recovery, I had to bring myself back to the present moment and focus on what’s in front of me here and now.
- Be brave — this is the biggest lesson I learnt. The thing that holds everyone back from positive change is fear. This fear made my days miserable. I had to be brave and face up to the consequences that my mind had made up. I faced up to ‘imperfection’, found out that it was actually okay and that I could handle it.
Everyone’s experience with OCD is different as there are so many types of OCD, so I know that these rules may not be applicable in every situation. However, I hope what I have written helps someone to know that they are not alone and encourages them to take the steps to accept the problem, seek help and bring about the positive change they need in their lives.
If you think you have OCD, please see your GP/therapist and visit https://www.ocduk.org/ for guidance and resources.
