The day my brain broke: Living with anxiety and OCD

Looking back, I know now that my brain was not broken and doomed with anxiety, but at the time, that is exactly how it felt. 

Around the OCD and anxiety community you will hear the saying of a “broken brain” a lot. Well, I guess it’s a perfect description of how one might feel.

I remember it clearly; I was at university, and the covid-19 lockdown was about to start. I had recently ended my previous relationship and started seeing somebody new, when OCD decided to rear its head at full force. 

In retrospect, OCD came as the result of a multitude of stressors. Like a pressure cooker waiting for its impending explosion.

I can remember the day like it was yesterday. It was like something was triggered within me in just an instant. My calm exterior eroded and the internal doubt just began to unload.

Uncertainty was unlawfully invading my mind.

My brain began to flood with thoughts and anxiety started to take over my body. 

The obsessions started with this new “relationship” I was in but slowly started to mould into different themes. 

I was obsessed with the idea that I could one day “get depressed”. I was obsessing about leaving university and what that would look like for me. I was even experiencing Real Event OCD and facing feelings of guilt over memories/events in my past.

I couldn’t deal with not knowing if this was real or not and I just couldn’t deal with not knowing how my life would turn out.

I think one of the scariest things about living with OCD is: It feels so real, it really does feel like your worst fears and going to come true. Like you can’t trust your own mind and that you are terrified of the things your mind can produce.

How did OCD show up for me?

This period of time began with sleepless nights, constant googling, reassurance seeking and A LOT of tears. Then came the guilt about things that have happened in the past.

I remember being drunk at the time of this happening, so I decided to sleep it off. But in the morning, it hit me like a ton of bricks. 

This wasn’t just regular anxiety that we feel on a day-to-day basis, this was urgent, and I felt like I was going to die.

Whilst my brain was doing a 360 on me, the only thing I cared about was reassurance. I NEEDED reassurance. I needed to know if I was going to be okay. So, I made it my mission to ask everyone. 

I was mainly asking if they thought I was “going to be okay”, pleading with them to give me any ounce of comfort from the most repulsive feeling I have ever felt.

The sneakiest thing about compulsions is that OCD will try to get them into every angle it can.

One concerned look on a friend’s face, and my anxiety would spiral. One ounce of doubt in a friend’s response to my unnerving question and it would set me right back into uproar.

It was a time when a lot of my checking compulsions became obvious. 

I was checking every aspect of my being. Whether this was monitoring my heartbeat to see how much anxiety I was feeling, checking how much sleep I was getting and even checking how many times I could think of something else apart from the turmoil in my head.

The closest people to me at the time were the target of my doubt. My flatmates were being bombarded by my constant need to know if I was going to be okay and I wasn’t going crazy. It was truly terrifying, and I think one of the biggest obstacles to my recovery was this dying need to get reassured.

My anxiety at the time was being constantly monitored…by yours truly. 

The breaking point:

I think that due to days and weeks of constant anxiety, a state which my body had never been in before to this extent, I would get triggered by almost anything.

My thoughts mostly, but then came the real life triggers.

This included food, alcohol, caffeine, sleep, university work or just any aspect of my life at that time. 

I believed that because I had drunk alcohol the day of feeling this anxiety, I  could never drink alcohol again as it would make me feel anxious. You can just imagine how this would affect a university student, drinking was in our nature and thoughts about my university experience being tainted were torturous.

I also swore to never drink caffeine again, I knew that caffeine is a trigger for anxiety, so why would I do something that would make me feel that way?

Moving onto food, I knew I wasn’t eating enough food in the day when my body was in that state. It doesn’t take a scientist to figure out that an anxious state can close your stomach. But at the time thoughts about not enjoying food again would take over and made meal times agonising.

Sleep was a big one as I knew I needed sleep to rest my brain but I couldn’t sleep due to intrusive thoughts keeping me on high alert, a cycle which lasted a long time.

A reflection of my OCD and anxiety:

Looking back on the day my brain broke throughout my recovery I began to piece together manifestations of OCD linking back to my childhood.

I was always a sensitive child with anxious tendencies although I managed to hide them very well. 

My fears stemmed from a very young age. I remember being terrified to sleep in my own room. I was often haunted by frightening thoughts that something terrible would happen to my family. 

As a young girl, I was often preoccupied with thoughts of death, feeling intense fear and unease whenever it came up. I would fixate on it, with unsettling images appearing in my mind as I tried to fall asleep. 

The only way I found comfort was by sleeping in my parents’ bed.

I was also petrified of terrorist attacks which linked to a fear of flying. You get the jist- it’s always been in my life.

But it wasn’t until this day in university, where everything came to a head and I realised how detrimental my compulsive rituals and thinking patterns were becoming.

What have I learnt since the day my brain broke

The main thing I want to point out, is that although the day my brain broke felt like the scariest and most surreal experience, my brain does not continue to function in that way. 

It is no longer “broken” and if anything, it is developing and learning every day and at times, in better ways than it did before.

I have definitely come a long way since that day. I have shed a lot of tears, changed a lot of habits and took full responsibility for the recovery of my OCD.

Through my recovery journey I learnt a lot about how anxiety manifests for me and how the rituals/compulsions I took part in were fuelling my feelings.

One good thing that came from the constant anxiety was that it pushed me towards discovering my recovery journey. 

My constant googling brought me across forums describing OCD and across videos which were describing my life, as if these people were in my head.

One big element to my recovery was accessing therapy on the NOCD platform – although there are many, many helpful sites out there, this is the one that worked for me.

I don’t understand how they do it, but it’s like some of the therapists are living in our minds- they really understand us.

A huge comfort I found through my recovery journey was learning that I am not alone and that my brain really isn’t broke- like I thought it was.

My past triggers, although may never completely slip away, I have accepted and quite frankly couldn’t care less about anymore.

I do drink alcohol (not all the time obvs), I drink caffeine a LOT – as I am a night owl so mornings are hard, and my food and sleep patterns are usually great.

My final note:

One great quote I am going to leave you with, is by and OCD specialist Dr Patrick Mcragth, on the aspect of OCD feeling real. 

“Of course it’s going to feel real, if it didn’t, then I wouldn’t have a job” – it may sound simple but once examined it’s one of my favourites.

I will go into themes in some later posts and the content of intrusive thoughts but for now I wanted to leave you with a piece that navigates my OCD journey.

If you have related to anything that was spoken about in the post, then feel free to leave a comment and get in touch with us.

We would love to hear from you guys and any similar stories that you have.

Ending it on a note of community, answer this for me in the comments: What is one thing that has helped you cope with uncertainty?