About Orchard OCD

We are happy to introduce you all to our new member of staff, Ana Maria! Ana Maria has just started working for Orchard OCD as Fundraising and Communications Officer. She will liaise with partners, donors, and collaborators, and help disseminate Orchard's work, so that more people can access ground-breaking research. In this week’s blog, we learn more about Ana Maria and the work she will be doing for Orchard OCD. Hello, Ana Maria! How are you feeling about starting work at Orchard OCD? Hi, everyone! I am beyond excited to start working at Orchard OCD! I have known Orchard for many years, and their work is unparalleled. Orchard comprises everything that I love and care most about, which is people's wellbeing, patient co-production, and research. It has all the features and support offered by charities whilst pushing the boundaries of OCD research in a rigorous scientific way. I cannot wait to be a part of the team! Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? As you can probably tell by the long name, I am Brazilian and have moved to the UK in 2017 to pursue a PhD in Psychology at the University of Cambridge, under the supervision of Professor Trevor Robbins, a world renowned OCD researcher. It was during my PhD that I truly understood what it meant to live with OCD, as, despite having a bachelor's and a master's degree in Psychology, no academic work taught me as much as interacting with people with OCD. My research focused on understanding the factors that contribute to the difficulties in stopping obsessions and compulsions through neuroimaging (electroencephalography) and on evaluating a new intervention for OCD, which led me to work with Professor Naomi Fineberg, my current postdoctoral supervisor at the University of Hertfordshire. What are you working on to start things off at Orchard? I have started with full energy and, thanks to Margherita's help, am having the best training! I am working on disseminating Orchard's work through social media and webinars, which will bring the latest in OCD research! We are hoping to increase fundraising targets to be able to conduct cutting-edge studies, so I am focusing on research grants and collaborations. Please contact me if you have any suggestions! What are your hobbies outside of work? I do love a good book under the blankets and watching period pieces, although I have a particular soft spot for West End musicals too! I love practising sports and have trained karate since I was 5 years old. Nowadays I have been testing myself on cricket (British influence) and tennis, but my regular exercise is running and gym. I have two cats and enjoy spending time playing with them. Welcome, Ana Maria! Got any fundraising, communication, or research ideas? Please email Ana Maria at anamaria@orchardocd.org to start a conversation.

My Journey with OCD: Daring To HopeI’m a 27-year-old musician from North London. My journey with OCD has been an incredibly confusing and multifaceted one, shaped significantly by what could be called ROCD. My ROCD extends beyond romantic relationships, affecting my connections with friends, music, art, geographical places, memories, and even emotions themselves.The earliest memory I have of OCD dates back to when I was around 8 or 9. At age 11, I had what I now know are clear signs of OCD, with comorbidity of symptoms of anxiety and depression, and when I think back to those times, they seem impossibly emotionally bleak. Although these symptoms reduced around 13-15, they resurfaced with a vengeance during my first romantic relationship at 16. The isolation, fear of madness, unexplainable turmoil, confusion, and repulsion at my own mind is something that I will never forget. Within six weeks, I had gone from being in the most confident period of my life, to having suicidal thoughts.In 2014, a year into that relationship, I really was reaching a breaking point, and was starting to fear that I couldn’t survive the onslaught of horrendous thoughts much longer. In desperation, I dared to search online for "fear of being a paedophile", half-wondering if GCHQ were monitoring me as I searched. I was stunned – there were thousands of results about OCD. Reading the symptoms list on the OCD-UK website felt like someone had written a book about me. As many of us OCDers know though, realising that you are not alone, is absolutely life-changing – but it does not solve the disordered thinking.The relationship ended shortly after that discovery – we were both troubled teenagers – but my mental health issues persisted. After moving out to university and being in a generally turbulent mental state in London for 1.5 years, I talked to a university counsellor, who urged me to immediately seek help. I was surprised by that – I’d never taken my problems seriously. My perception of what constituted a legitimate mental health problem had been unintentionally skewed by having psychiatrist parents who met in a high secure psychiatric hospital, bless them. As doctors, I might add, not patients.And so began many years of talking therapy. It provided really valuable insights into my past, and connecting those times to what I was currently feeling – but it didn’t directly address my OCD, or give me the tools to deal with it as it was happening. In 2019, after OCD decided to try and crash and burn my brain again, I really stepped up my recovery efforts. Apart from listening to countless hours of the OCD Stories podcast (Stu I love you), and reading as much as I could about my disorder, I had a brief course of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) in 2019 and subsequent therapy with NOCD in 2021. Both of these therapies offered further insights, but nothing seemed to really be sticking.When I found myself in an unending moody, depressive, and incredibly angry depressive fog in the summer of 2021, I felt like my brain had to be reset, so I began taking Sertraline. It has helped alleviate my depressive symptoms and facilitate the work I had done in therapy – and also makes me less unbearable to live with (much to my partner’s relief!). However, if you are thinking of taking anti-depressants, please research thoroughly. I researched a LOT before taking Sertraline, and I had done a lot of other therapeutic work prior to taking it. There are no magic bullets that I know of yet, but there is definitely a pre- and post-Sertraline me.Something that remains unchanged through all of this is the automatic, knee-jerk perception I have of my OCD. It has always felt like a foreign body, an alien invader intruding on my life, like a monster from an absurd bad dream. Conversely, when I'm feeling really low without much conscious OCD activity, everything around me seems to slow down into what I call ‘dead-end pain’. I can feel the intense urge to binge eat and can get very angry and difficult to be around. And yet, as horrible as this is, it doesn't feel foreign. For some reason, my brain accepts it, perhaps because it is less ‘bizarre’, and society would probably understand that feeling and the overt causation for it more than OCD.  Put it this way, if you say to someone that you are really sad because your dog died, you would anticipate that they could understand that right? But if you told them that you’re in utter turmoil because of your hyper-fixation on a specific component of your best friend’s voice, or something equally bizarre, it might be pretty difficult to trust that someone would understand. So, accepting OCD is a long and challenging journey.At 27, I am currently receiving proper OCD treatment at a high-quality treatment centre for the first time. Learning about Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT) and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) has proven challenging and helpful so far. Additionally, I am increasingly interested in the potential of psychedelics, particularly psilocybin, as a treatment for OCD. Inspired by Rose Cartwright’s "The Maps We Carry" and keen to learn more about Professor David Nutt’s research on psychedelics, I am cautiously optimistic about the future of treatment for this disorder.My journey with OCD is ongoing. Despite all these hardships and my tendency towards turbulent emotional states, I have experienced times of incredible happiness in my life and continue to have hope every day. I want to live a life with the ability to feel connected to people, be a decent person, and to find pride and profound emotional meaning in my and other people’s creative work. It is not a coincidence that all three of these goals are the main targets for my OCD. The courage to love and experience joy is a very underestimated strength.“There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” – Leonard Cohen

In this week's blog, Dany shares his OCD story and offers us insightful considerations:How are you? Something we ask and get asked every day. I’m sure the majority of us answer with “I’m good thanks, how about you?”But are you good? Are you really ok? Would it be better to say how you’re really feeling? Is it easy to say how you are really feeling?I walk my daughter to school. She’s happy, she skips along excited to see her friends. Her happiness makes me smile. We get to the playground, kids and parents greeting each other with the normal morning “how are you? I'm good thanks”. How are you? Do I answer with “I’m fine” or do I say how I’m really feeling? Do I say actually I’m awful. It's taken me 15 minutes to leave the house because I’ve had to check every door and window over and over again. I’ve checked the gas is off on the hob a few times and even sniffed it just to make sure and also I stood staring at the clock to be on an even number before I left the kitchen because if I don’t do these things there’s a good chance in my mind that I’ll probably get murdered on the way home or someone will break in to my house and either burgle it or be waiting to kidnap me. Maybe I’ll just stick with “doing good thanks”.When I get home all I want to do is go to bed, shut myself away from the world this way nobody can get me, nobody can hurt me. I don't have to do compulsions over and over again. Yes, the intrusive thoughts are still there but I’m shut away from the world in bed, nobody can get me here, it’s my safe place.I have things to do so I can’t shut myself away. My dog needs walking. I need to prepare my lunch for work and various other day to day tasks to do.I’ve not heard from my wife since she got to work. Is she ok? In reality she’s fine but the intrusive thoughts in my head are telling me what if she’s not? What if she’s had an accident on the way to work and she’s dead?I can make this ok. All I need to do is all my normal compulsions and she will be fine. I’ll tidy the cutlery drawer and line everything up completely perfect and then once I've done this I’ll stare at it for a bit, get them all out and line them all up again then maybe I’ll do it again!My dog is pacing around, and she’s desperate to go out. A simple task like this can be a nightmare. All I have to do is walk out of my door, lock it and off we go. Unfortunately, I can’t do this. Time to check the gas, check every window and door over and over again, time to wait for the clock to be even. Leave the house, lock the door, check that door is locked, walk away, go back check door. Walk away again full of anxiety that I’ve left the door unlocked and when I get home someone will be waiting in my house to kill me. Leaving my wife with no husband and my kids with no dad. Sounds awful right? This is what having to deal with intrusive thoughts is like. OCD is ruining my life. I don’t want to keep living this way, but I can’t tell anybody about this. It’s my secret, nobody needs to know about it.How easy could it possibly be to just tell my wife what is happening to me? Surely it can’t be that hard? I wrote my wife a letter and explained everything that was going on. I cried reading it back and thought what a coward! How could you possibly not talk to someone you love face to face rather than a letter? Letter goes in the bin, I’ll just keep this to myself, this is who I am now, I have dealt with it for so long alone, I can carry on this way.The day came that I could no longer go on living with OCD by myself. I was exhausted. I was tired. I didn’t want to carry on living this way. I needed to talk.I sat down with my wife. I cried then cried some more while trying to explain what had been happening to me. I can easily say it is one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do in my life. But also, one the most rewarding because this led me to getting help. Speaking to people who understand about OCD. Getting therapy, although very challenging, has made my life better and easier. I’ve done Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). Both are brilliant and I highly recommend them.Talking about problems especially for men is difficult but needs to be more common. If you really want to man up speak up, don't hide your problems away. Life can and will be better by taking that first step and telling someone about what's going on in your life.So how are you?