Personal Stories

What is it really like to have OCD? Read the following personal stories about real people with obsessions and compulsions. Left untreated, illnesses like OCD and related can cause suffering, shame, and disability.

Four Million Suffer with OCD

As a boy, Bill Ford would spend hours in church, going to confession, sure he was going to hell. Caroline would wrap band-aids around each one of her fingers every day to keep getting AIDS. Fran was so concerned about cleanliness that she used scotch tape to remove hairs from the bed and washed her house keys. These are just a few of the stories of the millions in the US who suffer from obsessive-compulsive disorder.

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Sexual Obsessions

The following details the course of a devoted family man who began to have uncontrollable pornographic obsessions. He turned to his church for help, as well as relatives and a therapist, but none recognized the OCD behind the pain. His obsessions and compulsions were getting progressively worse each day.

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Compulsive Overeating

The following is a story about a young man who became obsessed with food, secretly eating large amounts of food in secret. No matter how hard he tried to stop bingeing, all resolve would disappear within a few days. In desperation he tied a 12-step group for overeaters, yet after several group meetings he realized that he wasn't getting any better.

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Family Member with OCD

The following is a story about a wife and mother who struggled to keep her family together in the face of her husband's terrible OCD. She shares her strategies for maintaining her sanity when insanity reigns at home.

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Life Just Doesn't Feel Right

The story of a young man coming to the realization that he had obsessive-compulsive disorder and that he needed help. Documented are his obsessions, which include checking, repeating, counting and religious obsessions. He shares his journey from the darkest time of his disorder to his successful recovery.

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