Welcome to my world.  The weird, and not always wonderful, world of OCD living.

I feel like an explorer setting out on a hike without a definite destination, but on this journey:

• I am going to try to write as honestly as I can, whilst considering the feelings of my family.
• I hope never to offend anyone, so names will be changed (to protect the innocent).
• I will try not to be too depressing (for too long) in any of my writings.
• I want to give the readers the nitty-gritty truths, that some readers who don’t suffer with OCD may cringe at.
• I will try to convey the humour that others may have seen, but I didn’t at that particular moment.
• I want fellow OCD sufferers to be able to get solace from my experiences, so they know they are not alone.
• I hope to provide new snippets of research findings – brief rather than detailed, but with a link to the article.

The main point of this website and my book will be to EXPOSE this secret and lonely condition in order to weaken its grip on sufferers.  I apologise to readers that I don’t have a happy ending after successful therapy or treatment.

I initiated private counselling in 2007 that was expensive, and therefore only lasted a few weeks and didn’t seem to have any useful impact on my “hard-wired” thought processes, but presumably I didn’t give this treatment sufficient time to take effect.  Additionally, I have read many books and workbooks about how to improve life with OCD to make it more bearable and minimise its impact on everyday life.

I appreciate that it takes hard fought battles of the mind daily to try to eradicate the grip of OCD, but I’m either a weak-willed character or possibly too stubborn to believe that I can be cured, and so I manage my life with OCD-work-arounds.  By doing this, I try to appear normal (most of the time) to people who don’t know me well enough to realise I adopt the swan effect of appearing to glide along, but beneath the surface I am flapping furiously to get anywhere!