It was a family celebration, Christmas. The events were just starting to dwindle and friends/family were heading home. There was snow outside and it was very cold. I was sitting on the couch in my little festive dress, which my mother had purchased for me.

Someone had left the television on, and it caught my limited attention span. It was the story of a young (but older than me) girl and her favourite teenager babysitter. They were close friends and the girl adored her.

One day, the babysitter drives the girl and herself to her boyfriend’s house. While in the car, (alone) the girl (whom I assume now was experiencing a sort of jealousy) notices a knife her babysitter has sitting in a cup holder.  Her babysitter returns to the car, only to have the girl stab her in the heart.

I felt a pain of revulsion in my stomach , and at the moment, my heart leapt from my chest.  I swiftly got off the couch, a weird feeling in my stomach.

I knew of murder (The Lion King was still fairly new, but Scar was pure evil), but I hadn’t comprehended it.

I had plenty of babysitters, as my parents worked full time jobs. I loved my babysitters.

Instantly, questions swirled in my mind, questions  I had never pondered before. Questions like: “How could she have done that to another human being when she loved her?” “Doesn’t she miss her?” “Wouldn’t it have hurt her?” “She was young, like me!” “Everyone will hate her once they find out the truth!” “God will punish her.”

That’s where the fear was born and that’s when the thoughts would cling to me.  They would continue to haunt my childhood and eat me up even into my adult life.

I began obsessing over stabbing people. I thought, “What if I could do such a thing for such a silly reason? God would hate me, everyone would hate me! I would hate myself!”

I went to bed with uneasy thoughts that night and a weird pressure – what I presumed was me thinking I was just going to stab my babysitter. I went to sleep hoping the thought would be gone the next morning. I was wrong.

Not only was the thought there to stay, but it drastically distracted me from school. I would look around at my classmates and ponder, “Do they have the same fears as me? Am I abnormal and crazy? Am I bad because I’m having such bad thoughts? No one else seems to have these thoughts or seems upset.” My teachers took note of my behaviour and informed my parents.

My stomach hurt and the thoughts lasted for weeks. My babysitter would come over and I would wake up very early so I could play Super Mario Brothers and distract myself from the fear that I would stab her before school.

My babysitter was an elderly woman and, to me, much like a grandmother. She would make lunch every day and play with us (I have two other younger sisters).

Sudden flashes of me wielding a knife and my hand covered with the blood of my babysitter flashed in my head. I would close my eyes, but these thoughts and images were mental. Eventually, the stabbing thoughts not only surrounding stabbing my babysitter – but progressed to my younger sisters, parents, and friends, too.

After a few months, I could no longer take it. I thought for sure one day I would crack and grab a knife. I felt sickened and crazy and evil. I liked my life, but I thought myself to be undeserving. As a six-year-old, I was considering some pretty terrible truths. One day, late, around 12:00 AM, I received the courage to express myself to my parents. The nervousness I felt while explaining nearly made me faint.

“This is it,” I thought. “My life will be over soon. Mom and Dad will hate me for having such bad thoughts, and they’ll put me away. Everyone will hate me. But I don’t want to kill or hurt anyone, so this is the way it’ll have to be.”

“Mommy, I need to speak with you of something very important.”

My Mom sat up from her bed and looked at me curiously. My Daddy sat up, too. They both cast worried looks in my direction.

“Are you sick?” She said getting out of bed.

Dad got out of bed and picked me up. He placed me on the counter in the washroom. (The washroom was like their examining place for when we were sick.)

“Daddy…Mommy…I have to tell you something because I can’t take it anymore. I’m having very bad thoughts. I think I’m a bad person. I’m worried I’m going to hurt people with knives.”

My Dad gave me an odd look.  “Do you feel like you’re going to hurt people with knives?”

I nodded.

“God doesn’t like people who hurt others. It’s wrong. People who hurt others go to hell.”

My stomach fell.

“No. Ray. Is that all that’s wrong? They’re only thoughts. You wouldn’t really do anything. They’re just thoughts that are disturbing to you. I’m glad you told us. Don’t worry about them. We know you’d never do anything.”

I felt my stomach float. For a second, I felt bliss. Now they knew. I confessed and they weren’t going to send me away forever! My Mothers smile reassured me. My mother was a nurse, she’d know if I were crazy or not! Perhaps I was just over-reacting. Perhaps now that I confessed, it meant I was a good person! What killer would confess their dark secrets?

For a few days, I felt free of the thought. But it came back. I was wrong about the confessing to my mother. I decided that from here on out, I would fight the thought. I realized that when I was distracted (in school, ect), I felt normal.

Maybe I could fight off the dark thoughts when I was bored by myself. Perhaps if it was true that I wouldn’t act on them, I would just suffer silently. I deemed myself insane and abnormal, but I wanted a childhood and I didn’t want to ruin it because I was different.

“All I want is my childhood. That’s all. Then I will confess my dark obsessions to the authorities and they can put me away.”

And that’s how I grew up. Every day, flashes of images of me wielding a knife would pop into my head, sometimes when I was at my happiest.  I still to this day cannot watch any gory movie, I still suffer from intrusive, unwanted thoughts.

The thoughts have evolved, too. I have obsessed about shoving friends into incoming traffic for no good reason. I started not enjoying public swimming, as I feared I would hold people’s heads underwater and make them drown.

I have had thoughts surrounding sexually touching my younger sisters or other children, despite having positively no sexual interest in doing so. I’ve had thoughts surrounding if I said something horrible to a friend that would result in them committing suicide. I have had religious thoughts in defiance of God during Church.

I developed an obsession while learning to drive at 16 surrounding a fear that I would purposely drive pedestrians over. Because of this obsession, I refuse to drive, which makes life difficult.

I worry I’d choke or drown younger children or the elderly, so I refuse to babysit babies and I refuse to be around old people alone.

In an effort to fight these thoughts, I developed mental rituals (or sometimes physical), like saying, “No!” to myself out loud or in my mind, over and over again. I’ve tried to think of nice images (like a deer in a forest or my parents) to override the bad thoughts. I try to be extra nice and giving, thinking that perhaps this will make the guilt subside.

I’ve had physical compulsions, too. While younger, I developed a fear of germs and over-washed my hands until they bled. I pulled out my eyelashes and was forced to be monitored by a doctor because I could have eventually lost my eyelashes. I like to pull out strands of hair sometimes and I rub my nose. I scratch books because I like the feeling of scratching the pages – a habit which results in my family and boyfriend going insane (as it produces an screeching noise)!

I’ve never acted on any thoughts. I am now 21.

I’ve taken every sort of anti-depressant I can think of. While a few have worked and freed me from my thoughts, I did not enjoy their side-effects and am now in the process of dealing with the demons medicine-free. It’s not working too well.

No one who looks into my eyes would ever guess that at that one moment, in my head, I may be having an intrusive image of me stabbing them. I appear normal. I appear pretty friendly and down to Earth. I’ve confessed to a few close friends, but I keep the secrets of my dark gruesome thoughts to myself, mostly.

It’s a silent war waging in my head as I fight to relax myself, as I fight to free myself.

Balancing my life and these thoughts takes up a lot of energy. These thoughts distract me and cause me to distance myself from others. They distract me from school work. They keep me unorganized. But I still manage to maintain a seasonal job. I still have friendships. I still have family.

I’ve never known what I a normal life may feel like. I’ve battled these thoughts over and over to a point where this is simply my reality. I look enviously at most people – their heads clear, their perspectives and ambitions not over shadowed by intrusive images. And I realize how good of an actress I am. After all, it’s not easy multitasking these distracting thoughts and managing a social life.

Sometimes, I catch myself thinking; “Are they all acting too?”

Click below to order Check Mates, the first ever collection of fiction poetry and artwork about OCD

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The article stated that there are many doctors up in arms over the UK’s decision, claiming this law basically says ‘quacks’ are okay.  A conflicting viewpoint was put across that really it ought to be the patient’s choice which sort of treatment they take, either herbal or pharmaceutical.  The article also noted that one such herbal remedy under contention is St John’s Wort, as used in the treatment of depression.

I think the key here is ‘choice’.  Last I checked, the US and UK supposedly invaded the Middle East under the pretense of bringing ‘democracy’, yes?  And I appreciate that a little government intervention is necessary from time to time, but when it comes to our health, shouldn’t it be up to us what we put in our bodies?

Example 1:

Many of my good friends have neurological conditions.  One such friend was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder a couple years ago.  He tried prescribed medications for a while, but they only seemed to make him worse, so he stopped, and started exploring his options.  He struck upon a vitamin regime that did not cure his symptoms, but it did improve things greatly for him.  Unfortunately, by that point so much damage had already been done at his job, due to his condition going undiagnosed for so long and due to his colleagues being small-minded and not accepting / understanding him once the diagnosis was made.  My friend has been severely bullied at work for a long time now, and the abuse built up to a point where he just couldn’t handle it anymore.  He felt so low, he went back to the doctor, and in his vulnerable state, he agreed to try a new prescription.

He went on a course of Sertroline (Zoloft in the States) – something I took myself, many years ago, and which had greatly detrimental affects on my mental health.  In my experience, I was a guinea pig for this ‘miracle drug’, and when things went wrong, the doctors were suddenly uncontactable.  In my friend’s case,  he sank lower and lower over a period of six weeks, until one morning his partner found him slicing open his own wrists.  Thank God my friend does not live alone, else he would have died.  Instead, though, he was rushed to hospital and saved.

One could argue he was depressed anyway, so how can you say this was caused by the drug?  Except my friend has never been suicidal before – and if you look around the internet, you will see there are several class action suits being filed in connection with this and other such drugs due to unprecedented violent acts on the part of patients taking these prescriptions – and when I was taking the drug myself, after sinking into a suicidal state unlike anything I’d ever experienced before (not to mention developing schizophrenic symptoms), I read in the list of side effects contained in the medication box that this ‘anti-depressant’ and ‘anti-anxiety’ tablet could, in fact, cause ‘anxiety’ and ‘suicidal ideation’.

The day before my friend started self-harming, he had gone to see his doctor again and told him how depressed he was feeling since taking the drug.  The doctor’s reply was to increase the dosage!  And might I add that never was there any suggestion to see a psychologist who could help him work through his pain, even alongside the medication.  This, too, has been my own experience: unless I begged for a psychologist and absolutely insisted upon it, it was not given to me.

I’m not saying the drugs don’t work for everyone.  But I have spoken to many fellow diagnosees (if there is such a word!), read many books on these subjects, and have tried a variety of medications myself.  The general consensus seems to be that for some people these medications work – for others, it is helpful to take the drugs on a short-term basis alongside some other form of psychological therapy, so that they feel a boost in spirits and clarity to enable them to focus on the therapy and learn the long-term techniques to help themselves.  For others still (myself included), the drugs do not have any affect on the actual condition, but they do induce a lot of nasty side effects.

Another point to mention is that I believe we focus so much on the diagnosis, we forget about the ‘little’ things, like sleep and diet.  For instance, I have started on a vitamin regime (similar to my friend’s) that has meant at long last, I sleep at night and I wake up refreshed.  This has in no way cured my symptoms – but just getting that sleep has de-stressed my body and mind so much, my symptoms have become much more bearable.  I also tried a year of talking therapy and discovered that much of the pain and volatility within me was due to experience, not the diagnosed conditions themselves.  Through this therapy, much of my frustration and unhappiness was healed.

The point is: it should be our choice.  I don’t know about you, but I do not want to live in a nation governed by people who decide what we’re allowed to put into our bodies in the name of health.  There is a reason these chemical compounds are called ‘drugs’ – they have the potential to be dangerous, depending on who takes them and for how long.

I think people often view doctors as all-knowing, but it’s so important that we step back and remember the human body is not a machine.  You can’t call up Tech Support when something goes wrong, have them run a few diagnostic checks and come out with a foolproof solution.

Example:

Just last year I developed some kind of infection that required antibiotics.  I was given a basic prescription, and within 15 minutes of taking the drug as prescribed, my temperature shot up to 105F, I lost feeling in the right side of my body and my chest started seizing up.  I was in absolute terror.  My husband threw warm wet flannels over me to bring down the temperature, and slowly I came back to health.  We spoke to a nurse who said it was a result of the drug, because apparently you shouldn’t take that particular pill if you have neurological conditions – which no one bothered to check when giving the prescription.  I spoke to a doctor who prescribed a new drug and his response was, ‘There’s nothing wrong with the antibiotic – that should not have happened to you.’  Yes, but it did happen.  But he just kept saying, ‘It shouldn’t have.’

Doctors do not have all the answers, despite how advanced they are.  They particularly do not have all the answers when it comes to the brain.  I would also argue there is a huge issue of spirit involved, when delving into matters of the psyche, i.e. some scientists believe everything is down to chemical reactions, and others believe there’s something more to it, something beyond the body.  There’s no way to prove it either way.

So do I think the UK government has just said it’s okay for ‘quacks’ to practise in our nation?  No.  I believe they just reaffirmed our right to choose – which is just how things should be in a so-called democracy.

I just pray we keep it that way.

Vrinda Pendred

Editor & Founder

]]> http://conditionalpublications.com/2011/02/23/herbal-or-pharmaceutical-your-choice/feed/ 1 http://conditionalpublications.com/2011/02/06/watch-the-check-mates-ocd-book-launch-party/ http://conditionalpublications.com/2011/02/06/watch-the-check-mates-ocd-book-launch-party/#respond Sun, 06 Feb 2011 12:41:42 +0000 http://conditionalpublications.com/?p=657 The launch party for ‘Check Mates: A Collection of Fiction, Poetry and Artwork about Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, by People with OCD’ – available on Amazon today. Also, now in a kindle edition! Part of the proceeds will be donated to OCD charities.

At the launch, Vrinda Pendred (Editor & Founder of Conditional Publications), Sharon Meyer (Promotions & Communications Assistant) and Beth Barker, all writers for ‘Check Mates’, gave readings from the book, talked about its purpose, and shared a little bit about what OCD really means.

Watch Part One

Watch Part Two

Click below to order Check Mates, the first ever collection of fiction poetry and artwork about OCD

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as well as ‘OCD – Everyone Relates to It and It Can Be Overcome’, with relationship coach Geoff Laughton, which can be found here – as well as OCD, this interview touches on bipolar disorder.

Click below to order Check Mates, the first ever collection of fiction poetry and artwork about OCD

amazon.com amazon.co.uk amazon.ca

In recent years, OCD has become more publically discussed, with celebrities coming forward and admitting they are afflicted by the condition.  Yet when David Beckham went public with his diagnosis, much of the world made jokes and laughed.  There was little consideration for his lifelong struggle with his own mind, or the difficulties it might pose for his family.  There was even less acknowledgment that most people are at least a little obsessive-compulsive themselves.

Despite the growing awareness of such conditions, stereotypes persist…and an inspiring group of people have decided to do something about that.

‘Check Mates’, edited by Vrinda Pendred, is the first ever collection of fiction, poetry and artwork about OCD, by people with OCD – the real experts on the subject.  It also marks the launch of Conditional Publications, the only dedicated publishing house for writers with any kind of neurological condition.

Divided between ‘Realism’ and the ‘Beyond’, this book drives the absurdity and horror of OCD straight home.  It has been put together by writers and artists from around the world, and showcases a wide range of emotions, from love to hate, joy to rage, fear and sorrow to hope and optimism.  There’s even a little bit of humour!  Everyone will find something to relate to.

What it doesn’t do is shy away from the truth.  Every angle is covered, no matter how painful, which makes for a startling and moving read.

If you have OCD, you’re going to find yourself in this book and realise you’re definitely not alone.  If you don’t have OCD…you’re probably going to find a little of yourself anyway, because that’s what this book does: it forces us to look at our own neuroses.  I think this book is set to crack wide open a few stereotypes that have been flying around for far too long.

And as if that’s not enough, part of the proceeds from the sale of the book will be donated to OCD charities.

‘Check Mates: A Collection of Fiction, Poetry and Artwork about Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, by People with OCD’ is coming to Amazon on 11 May 2010.  To show support of this inspirational new book, a collection of authors, coaches and healers from around the world will be giving away free online gifts if you purchase the book on its launch date of 11th May.

AND … Vrinda Pendred, the editor of ‘Check Mates’, is giving away an EXTRA special gift of her own: ‘The Passenger’, an unpublished short story about Tourette Syndrome.