It can be very hard for us to get inside other people’s heads and experience what they are experiencing. For example…

Here are some descriptions that some of my recent patients told me about what their OCD symptoms feel like when they are stuck in the middle of them:

I feel extremely anxious like I am coming out of my skin. I feel remorse and guilt for having the thoughts. I don’t see them just as thoughts but as something I might take action on and that is frightening. I also feel isolated from the ‘normal’ world.

When I am in the middle of my OCD symptoms, I am anxiety ridden and fearful. I get so consumed in my symptoms that hours can go by and I have gotten nowhere.

It feels very focused, like I cannot access other things going on around me until I deal with my OCD thoughts.

And here’s what they most want their family members’ to understand about their OCD experiences:

“That the OCD is a function of something that occurs in the brain and the person with the OCD cannot help having these thoughts and certainly did not consciously create them.”

“I think for me the most important thing for my loved ones to know is that I felt out of control and was afraid that something horrific would happen if I stopped rituals. It was not to aggravate them or to get attention from them, in my head it was to protect them and others.”

“Probably that their loved one who has OCD knows that what they are compelled to do is not ‘normal’ but that it is as natural of an impulse as the need to scratch an itch, though it feels more ‘mandatory’ than that. That they are doing what they feel they ‘need’ to do, and that to get better they have to work through separating what is actual ‘need’ and what is OCD so that they can work on quieting the OCD impulses.”

Click here to view an excellent NY Times feature on OCD sufferers describing their own symptoms.

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