One thing about having something like OCD is that you can’t really take it down yourself. You need someone, either someone who’s gone through it or someone who’s read about it, someone who’s been found fit to look into your head and see what exactly is off. So that’s what I did. I went to see this therapist I got off the Yellow Pages (mistake no. 1), then I called and asked to speak to the therapist. Some guy picked up the phone and asked what I was calling about so I asked if he was the therapist (mistake no. 2). He said he was, and asked me what my “particular concern” was. So I told him I have a condition. He asked for a description and asked me to hold on for a moment. I suppose he was going for a pen and notepad. So I told him I have particular concern that my symptoms indicate OCD. Just seeing if he’d catch on. So he asks, “You mean obsessive compulsive?” I wanted to go “Like duh?” but didn’t. (mistake no. 3). So I set a time and date for my appointment.
I went and met the guy at his office. Or what I thought was his office. And I talked and talked about me, and what I’ve been going through. Meaningful deep belting out. Not holding anything back. And the dude was taking notes. Which I took as a good sign. (mistake no. 4) And we arranged for a follow up session where he’d give me his feedback after he “pondered and analysed.”
So I went home happy. Or at least happier than I’d been before. But with a serious hole in my pocket. I had to pay in advance. Not that they didn’t trust me, but apparently it was “policy”. So I was happier than before.
The follow-up was bad. Horrible. He said from what he’d observed from my behaviour that he didn’t really think I have OCD, that I was “faking it” just coz I know people with OCD and I wanted to “fit in”. So apparently all that discussion of the stuff I’d gone through was proof of my “wanting to belong”. Aren’t there easier ways to do that? Like dressing like everyone else and piercing every possible bit of skin that I wouldn’t have tattooed by then?
In his defence the chap insisted that that’s what the textbook insisted and that I had no “solid obsessions”, and that the compulsions were “fake, imagined at best”. His words. I was shattered. I left. In a cloud. Walked out. Told the receptionist that I didn’t think I’d come back coz I didn’t like the therapist. Which was when she felt it necessary to tell me that that wasn’t the real therapist and that he was the trainee that wanted some practice with patients and that the point was that the patient thinks that the guy was the real therapist. I don’t like pranks. Especially of this kind. So I left and refused to pay. Told them I’d call them.
I did call them. And gave them a piece of my mind. I was really pissed off at them. But then I started asking myself what the implications were if they were actually true. I started doubting myself and my ability to get through whatever it was throwing at me.
But the thing is, it’s people like these that we need. People who actually know about the mind and how it works.
This example was just to show how hard it is to get help for OCD. Very, very hard. Especially in a society that doesn’t believe that things like OCD exist.
With OCD, it takes understanding. The reason why it’s hard to help someone with OCD is that they usually hide it in public. It’s easy for someone with OCD to “blend in” and become one with the rest of society. Easy. I do it all the time. When I’m with my family, with my friends. Only a handful knows. No one in my family knows.
With OCD, therefore, diagnosis is mostly up to the affected person. So there’s the real risk that diagnosis may be fake. Some of the telltale traits of OCD include:

• Extreme anxiety, worrying over things you have little or no real control over
• Extreme reaction to dirt and grime, like excessive hand washing, avoiding things other people have touched, anything that may have become “contaminated” by other people
• Desire for order, wanting to sort things, example playing FreeCell or Solitaire for hours on end with the cards having to be in the order Hearts, Diamonds, Spades, Clubs
• Becoming unusually observant, seeing things that aren’t so obvious and feeling that they affect you more than they should. This is OCD-related empathy. Depending on how you use it, this empathy could be a good thing or a bad thing. Good because you understand stuff more, feel it more and are able to process emotions more clearly, bad because half the time you feel stuff that’s too hard to handle and might end up making you snap and become numb to whatever feeling there is.
• Things you can’t explain, like not stepping on cracks, counting steps, that sort of thing.

These are my symptoms. My core symptoms at least, and they’re what I think is the common symptom to all OCD sufferers.
And that it’s all in your head. But if you’re convinced that you have, beyond reasonable doubt, gotten OCD, then here’s how you get about towards recovery. The beauty with OCD is that you can let some of the bad things go while keeping a chunk of the good stuff. Being a disorder also means that there’s prevailing circumstances.
The human mind is complex, but it is under your control. You control your mind. Don’t let it control you. It can happen, that you do whatever your mind tells you to, but to avoid this, do the opposite
Sort those out first, like broken home, way too much TV, extreme shyness, whatever it is. These may impact on you and leave you scarred. And one response to scarring by the mind is retreating to a perceived safe haven. And this may in turn cause whatever ability the mind has to sort between the perceived rational and the perceived irrational to be distorted. That’s one of the possible causes of OCD.
There is help. If you look hard enough. And it starts with you. Take it slowly. One symptom at a time. Don’t take it on all at once.
Take back your mind.