As far as causes, I don't know. I just know that I'm wired differently. That doesn't make me ill. It just makes me different. I wish I knew what caused it so I could fix it. OCD is very controlling. It's made my life more difficult and I wish I did know what caused it. I've had it my entire life. I'm 59. There are times it controls me and times I control it. But most often, it wins. Unfortunately.
So I have OCD and as far as I'm concerned it's something that's completely hereditary. A member of my family has it and I've inherited it. It can either be hereditary or it can be something that's passed, that's created through life trauma and this is what I believe anyway, that it's a life traumatic event or it can be passed down from a family member. And as you're growing up in the environment and you have the tendencies, those tendencies tend to be drawn out even more and so it tends to nurture in your early years and then develop by your early 20s I think or late teens. For me it was late teens early 20s but I still had OCD behavioural patterns when I was probably about nine years old from that age, so a good 30 years.
OCD. Some say it is environmental factors that contribute to it. The scientific and medical community actually points to a genetic component and along with a chemical imbalance. Whatever the cause is, it is a very debilitating and devastating disorder. I've lived with it for close to 40 years now, but primarily battling intrusive thoughts. It is my hope that regardless of whatever the cause is, is that someday we can reach a cure for this horrible illness that paralyzes so many.
So I'm not totally sure what caused this. I know there's a genetic component, you know, I have an aunt that deals with some very similar issues that I do with OCD, but one thing that typically makes it worse is just generally being more stressed. You know, for me, if I have a paper or a lab that's overdue, you know, and that's kind of hanging over me, that makes me have a lot more intrusive thoughts. On the way to a test, I typically have a lot of them and those, you know, those are hard to get rid of, but I can deal with them better because I recognize them for what they are. You know, things like lack of sleep, relationship problems, those can all contribute to them being a little bit more challenging. So that's one thing that it's easier to go easy on yourself. You know, if you're wondering why it's happening, you can realize that it's not because of the issue that's actually at hand, you know, that you're having intrusive thoughts about, but it's that you're just generally more stressed and therefore you're going to have more obsessive thoughts.