I said I had OCD in high school. I haven't been clinically diagnosed, but I dint need to be. I know its what was going on.
Definition
Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a type of anxiety disorder in which you have unreasonable thoughts and fears (obsessions) that lead you to engage in repetitive behaviors (compulsions). With obsessive-compulsive disorder, you may realize that your obsessions aren't reasonable, and you may try to ignore them or stop them. But that only increases your distress and anxiety. Ultimately, you feel driven to perform compulsive acts in an effort to ease your distress.
So I had this one teacher who was really big on reading. I remember one time she asked me if I had read the captions under the picture. Most high schoolers would have been like, yeah! Even if they hadn't. That was not me. So after I got points taken away for not reading and heard her go off on how we are not to skim, haha, my anxiety kicked in.
I need to add here another thing that really hurt me. I was very, very spiritual. I was also being taught that the "voice in my head" was the Holy Spirit. So I'm sinning if i miss a word and "skim", so therefore the Holy spirit is guiding me to re-read things so I wont mess up (and displease God).
Soon after this reading incident I started rereading sentences if I missed a couple words. This turned into a compulsive thing that I was literally sounding out every syllable in my head. OH GOD! Prepositional phrases threw me off like you would not believe. Say I was reading, "In the beginning of the the year, the student went insane." I would re-read that first part like 10 times I kid you not. The OCD voice, which I was under the impression was the Holy Spirit, was telling me to do it. So my OCD brain became God. Oh it was bad. Very very bad.
My mom took me in for glasses because my eyes hurt so bad. I had perfect vision! I was just spending all day reading and my eyes were worn out from going back and back and back. I would get massive headaches. Sometimes I would beg my mom to read to me. I had to get the Bible on tape to read along to it. That would send me into a tail spin. Spiritual OCD person, reading the Bible, their brain (God in my eyes) telling me to re-read it over and over.
Dishes! I would wash a dish, set it in the rack, and "the holy spirit" would tell me there was something dangerous on that plate that I needed to rinse off. So... we'd re-wash it.
Now, I wasn't a religious psycho. I knew there was something wrong, but never considered OCD. I thought OCD was when you cleaned alot or hated things to be out of place. And Lord knows that is not me!
I'm sure this blows some of you away who know me now. I'm alot different now. I have completely grown out of my OCD. Even though I'm not even close to as spiritual as I was, I still believe in God. I believe He's alot more intuition than regular thoughts. I just realize now, hes not some little alien living in my brain with controls.
This RUINED my Junior year of high school. I was sick of being berated by my own head. I just wanted out. I seriously gained like 30 pounds and cried every other night. Thankfully, I loosened up alot, but unfortunately I did overdo it. But I will find my balance. I'm young! I don't tell alot of people this because its so unbelievable now. Its a year out of my childhood that I wish I could forget. I have it under control and will never let it steal another second.
