About – updated

Hi and welcome to my blog. If you have found yourself here, I assume you or someone you love suffers from OCD and anxiety issues. This page is about my struggle, my therapy, my faith and how I believe God is delivering me through this very frustrating, very frightening disorder.

I first remember suffering from OCD symptoms in my junior or senior year of high school. I became fearful of contamination and germs and would have to wipe my hands – usually on a desk or other inanimate object – a number of times after someone touched me to wipe the germs off. This went on as best I remember until I graduated high school and went off to college. Once I got to college, all the symptoms disappeared. I don’t know if that is because we drank in college and that alleviated the symptoms or if they just went away during that time.

I don’t remember the OCD starting again until after a major break-up I had around 1995. I began to have what I believed were blasphemous thoughts and would have to pray over and over again. Once I started drinking again, those thoughts went away.

The OCD returned again just before my life was turned upside down. I had been having mild panic attacks for years and went to the Emergency Room several times thinking I was having chest pains. I was diagnosed with panic attacks and went on my way. They were annoying when they occurred, but I didn’t overreact too much to them. Shortly before 2000, I began having problems with a neighbor in my apartment complex and I remember always having to repeatedly check to make sure I locked the door and turned off the stove – sometimes returning four to five times to check the door I knew was locked.

In 2000, I had more panic attacks and wanted them to just go away. I went to a doctor and he gave me a handful of samples of Celexa, 20 mg. I took one pill and ended up in the ER having every known side effect you can have to the drug except for coma and death. I went for several days having such severe panic attacks back to back that the only relief I got was to sleep. Two days later, I had tremors so bad that I was back in the hospital and they had to give me Vistaril to stop the panic. I took that for about a week, then stopped. After I came off the Vistaril, I felt my seratonin shoot off inside my brain. It was a euphoric yet very scary feeling, and when it happened, I felt the Lord say just take my hand and hold on.

That holding on to Jesus’ hand lasted through 11 months of some of the worst and best days of my life. I got to know the Lord in a way I never had before, but there were days I didn’t think I would survive because of all the panic. Finally, in July of 2001, the Lord healed me from the panic I had been experiencing from the reaction. For nine years, I didn’t have any more panic attacks, but I still felt anxiety from time to time.

To alleviate that anxiety, my OCD from years past reared its ugly head and began slowly to wreak havoc in my life. At first, I just didn’t want to be around pills. Oh, I would take a pill if I had to for my health, but it was a major ordeal and caused a good deal of anxiety. I would only take it if I absolutely had to because something worse medically would happen if I didn’t. Then it got to the point, I would get upset if anyone walked by me with pills or if I saw pills somewhere. Then it progressed to white powdery substances and chemicals and poisons. As you can see, it was getting progressively worse as time went on. After I got married almost five years ago, we were besieged by ungodly amounts of stress from my husband’s side of the family. That is when the ocd began to rise noticeably. I ignored the warning signs and kept soldiering on in life. The warning signs kept coming until the collapse.

The collapse began a little over a year ago when I had two major panic attacks – the first in nine years – after eating. Because my brain wanted to attribute panic to some type of reaction, I began having a hard time eating. That in itself did not cause the collapse.  An exposure right on the heels of that – when I had already been shaken – from one of my triggers was the straw that broke the camel’s back. In reality, it was all the cumulative stress I had been under that caused the collapse. I not only had to deal with my ocd, but I had to go back to the very core of where it began and deal with the issues I had long covered up and buried. The issues I thought I had dealt with – I had not. The wounds I thought I had let God heal – I had not. Before this happened to me, I prayed a simple prayer. I asked God for some reason to heal all the wounded places in me – both the ones I knew about and the ones I didn’t. And, God answered.  And, so the hard work and the rebuilding began. What I thought was falling apart was actually the tearing down of the strongholds and the rebuilding of the life. I’m still in the process of rebuilding. I can’t wait to see the final beauty that unfolds from the ashes of my life.

It took a while but I now am eating normally again and I am eating almost all of the foods that I was avoiding. There are only three not back in the menu – strawberries, peanuts and shrimp. And, now I am in the process of taking back all that the enemy and the enemy called ocd have stolen from me. The last year has been tough, but God has been faithful!

My biggest fears are contamination fears mainly centering around harm coming to me through pills, drugs, certain chemicals or poisons - anything resembling these items can trigger anxiety and the ocd tells me to fear or run. I have been learning to fight back with God’s help and my therapist,  and I have been taking back my life one step at a time. 

I am doing exposure response prevention and cognitive behavior therapy.  I have recommended the same workbook my counselor recommended to me on the main page under links. This is a secular psychology book  that treats anxiety and ocd from a holistic approach, and so when it lists spiritual  and religious aspects in one chapter, they list various types of spirituality including God. I only list and belong to one type of spirituality and that is God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. I have also listed the OCD Foundation’s website where you can find a wealth of information. You will find under links also the ministries that help me the most. Joyce Meyer’s ministry and Beth Moore’s ministry. I highly recommended Beth’s book, “Praying God’s Word,” and I saw more movement in my struggle when I began using this book in prayer. I also recommend Joyce Meyer’s books, especially, “Never Give Up.”

There has been a great deal of prayer surrounding me. Prayer is key in this struggle and you should never be afraid to ask for it and to do it for yourself as well. This blog is my story through the rest of this. I will talk about my therapy when appropriate, the good days, the bad ones, the in between and my faith. This is the story through OCD to the other side. I would also like to hear your stories, your thoughts, your struggles. My hope is that this blog will help others who are struggling. It is also my hope that those of you already on the other side of this would choose to leave your words of encouragement.

I will also talk about my sweet husband from time to time. It is hard for him too. We are coming up on our five year anniversary, and the last year has been hard on both of us. Our loved ones suffer too. I hope through it all, this blog will allow us to rejoice together, laugh together, sometimes cry together but always be honest in what we are going through as we go through to the abundant life that God has for us.

“For I know the plans I have for you. Plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans to give you hope and a future.”

“For God did not give me a spirit of fear, but of power, love and a sound mind.”