“OCD has always impacted my life for as long as I can remember. It has been something that caused me to constantly doubt everything around me, whether that was in school and doubting that I actually understood things, or doubting that I could actually follow directions correctly.”

“What ifs continue to impact my life. I think for me the what if of not being good enough, of not being perfect. I still wish people could understand how devasting this OCD really is.”

“When OCD really started to impact my life, everything that was simple, just became really hard.”

“I think the hardest part about having Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, besides the exhaustive rituals, the torment that was in my brain, was the loneliness and isolation.”

“At my worst, I was laying in my bed with my hands underneath my body to protect myself from myself cause I was so convinced I was accidentally going to hit my head and end up in the hospital.”

“My experience with OCD has been a journey. Not every day is going to be good, and not every day is going to be bad. I do want people to know that there is help available and you’re not alone in this…”

“It was hard to even get dressed in the morning. It was hard to go to bed at night. Go to work. I would have to do constant rituals in order to feel calm for that second, but then it would happen all again…”

“Hope is knowing that every time we fight our OCD, we get to take a step closer to every single thing in our life that’s meaningful to us.”

“OCD knows, cause it’s part of our mind, what we care about and what we love. And if anybody loved their child as much as I do, it just loves her. It just attacks her constantly.”

“That’s where my choice comes into play, whether or not I take the bait, whether or not I go down the rabbit hole. And so this fear about what if I’m stuck in my head forever, interestingly enough, I get some say in whether or not that fear comes true.”

“I had no clue this was OCD. I had not been treated for OCD. My insight was so poor, that I thought that I was these things. These what if thoughts, I thought were absolutely 100% true.”

“I was unrecognizable to my family and friends. I had stopped being able to care for myself, brush my teeth, wash my face. I was completely debilitated by my intrusive thoughts and by rumination. I barely left my apartment. I definitely had my world turned upside down because of my OCD.”

“OCD can start really small, but when it gets to be really really bad, it can completely debilitate you. It tore my life completely apart.”