A year after my breakdown, OCD is finally losing its grip on me

I have a confession to make. I’ve stopped mediating. I haven’t been to see my therapist in eight months. In two weeks, I’ll be off my meds completely. And I feel… fine.

A year ago, I wrote about the experience of living with OCD for The Telegraph. About how, in the winter of 2017 and the spring of 2018, I felt like my entire world was spinning out of my control. I didn’t recognise myself or my own thoughts anymore, and I was terrified. I’d wake up in the morning so anxious at the thought of how difficult the day was going to be that my stomach muscles would spasm with enough force to bend me double.

I went to one therapist, and then, when that didn’t work, I went to another, who put me on to cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), recommended books and websites to check out, and exercises to do at home. I started running every morning and lost loads of weight. I got a dog. And, on 27th December 2017, I started taking Sertraline, an anti-depressant designed to boost levels of the happy hormone serotonin in the brain.

What followed wasn't an easy process, by any means. Sertraline tends to make you more anxious at first and, as I leapt from zero Sertraline to 50mg and then 100mg, the ensuing pill-induced anxiety was possibly the worst part of the whole thing. Instead of feeling relief, I started pranging out 24-7. Sometimes it got so bad that I’d burst into tears when friends were round, or cry on the floor when I was home alone.

Then, around two months later, it levelled off, and I started feeling OK.

I didn’t feel detached, or spaced out, like some people report feeling on anti-depressants. I didn’t have time to. We moved to a new city in April, and I spent the majority of 2018 travelling for work, frantically writing to deadlines when I wasn’t away. In the odd week I had free, I realised I’d eventually stopped thinking about OCD and whenever I could feel myself starting to slip back into old ways, I listened to my body – got a good night’s sleep, tried to eat well, stopped drinking – and I was usually OK.

For me, at least, how my head feels is often a symptom of how I’ve been treating my body in general. Know that, and it’s an easy fix.

A week ago, I went down from 100mg to 50mg, and in another week or so, I’ll go down to 25mg for a fortnight, then zero. I had a long call with my doctor about this. Rushing the process could be catastrophic. But, for me, the risks are worth it. It was never the plan to stay on pills long term, and though it’s scary to come off them, I don’t want them to become a crutch for my head.

What has helped me the most (apart from an endlessly supportive and understanding girlfriend) is CBT. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy teaches your mind to work in different ways, search for alternative (often less scary) explanations to what is going on in your head, and mechanisms to cope with and banish disturbing thoughts, and to generally see the world in a different light.

For me, CBT is essential. If I feel my mind slipping, my first course of action is to consider the actual, realistic reasons why I could be feeling a bit under the weather. Am I tired, hungry, stressed? A mixture of all three? Work that out, and instead of worrying in your mind, you have a tangible solution: nap, eat, go for a run, etc. Likewise, if I feel myself getting anxious about something, rather than dwell on it and let OCD win, I tell myself I know what this is, and I’ve dealt with it before, so there’s no point in entertaining this behaviour for a second. Usually, it passes.

This week is OCD Week of Action, which encourages anyone who's struggling with the patterns of their mind to book an appointment with a doctor.

To that important message, I would add this personal recommendation: if you're looking for a therapist, seek out one who is qualified in CBT. The first therapist I saw knew very little about CBT and while he was a help during the initial flush of panic, the long-term benefits were questionable.

Looking back now, it seems to me that taking a pill or talking about your past without learning how to re-wire your OCD brain is like taking pills for a broken leg, and running on the broken bone. It’s only going to cause more problems in the future, and might get you some odd looks at Park Run.

I’d be naive to think that I won’t have down days, or get anxious from time to time. Everyone does. How would we appreciate the good times without the bad? CBT has helped me embrace this, and not catastrophise about every grey cloud. A problem isn't the end of the world, it’s just a temporary inconvenience.

Meditation is a key component of CBT, and in my opinion, the best way to both focus your mind and teach yourself to let things go. So why have I stopped? Well, the first answer – and this applies to therapy too – is that now I’m feeling better, and have been for a long time. I’m scared that making meditation and therapy regular parts of my routine will remind me too much of when I was in crisis mode, desperately trying to claw my way out of the hole. It’s superstitious, I suppose, but there you go.

I’m aware, too, that abandoning things like meditation and therapy is what leads people to relapse. So I'm not abandoning them completely; I'm just finding ways to make them work for me. For example, instead of setting aside ten minutes in the morning to meditate, I try to run to the gym every day, or take a long bath as often as I can. A decade ago, on some horrible organised trip to Thailand, Buddhist monks made our tour group sweep their courtyard. “Working meditation” they called it. 'Yeah, right', I thought at the time. But, the act of focusing your thoughts on something like your cadence as you run really can work as a form of meditation, and you’ll feel physically better for it to. It doesn’t have to be a chore, or an inconvenience.

And while my therapist likely wakes up and checks his phone each morning, longing for my call, I haven’t given up a form of therapy, either. Now more than ever, I know the importance of talking about how I feel, encouraging others to do the same, and even just chatting about how knackered or fed up we are from time to time.

Over the past year, I've found the more I talk about how I feel, the more other men I know want to open up to me. I’m not talking about whispered chats in pub corners with close friends, but honest, open ‘how are you’ conversations. We talk about how we feel, listen to each other, offer help when we can, and then move on to the football/cinema/ballet dancing. Simple.

The point, really, is that one year in, this is what works for me, and while it might not be exactly what works for you, if you’re willing to put the work in and face OCD head on, you’ll soon realise its power to influence your day is all in your mind.

One last note. I can’t stress how helpful the book Overcoming Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (Overcoming Books) has been. It might have saved my life, and I can't recommended it enough for anyone suffering from OCD, anxiety, or any line of continued, disturbing thought.

Do you suffer from OCD? What coping mechanisms have you used to support your mental health? Let us know in the comment section below. 

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