LUCY Shiel was living her best life in college when her mind was attacked with dark thoughts that made her believe she was a “bad person” – and left her searching for answers for YEARS.
The Kilkenny woman was only 19 when a chronic condition came on “very suddenly” as she lay in bed after a night out, sending her head spinning.
And while multiple therapists waved the condition off as common anxiety, Lucy wasn’t convinced and finally considered she may be experiencing OCD.
The lifelong condition can be so debilitating that the World Health Organisation has ranked it among the top ten when it comes to the most disabling illnesses of any kind – in terms of lost earnings and lessened quality of life.
Lucy, now 25, told the Irish Sun: “I didn’t always have it, it came on very suddenly when I was 19.
“It was four years after that before I had even came across the concept of OCD online through American research.
“I had worked with therapists in these four years before but unfortunately none of them could figure out that it was OCD.
“Once I came across it myself, I went to my GP and I was like, ‘I think I have this’ and he was very good, he was like, ‘Okay, I’ll refer you for psychiatric consultation’ and once I got there they were like, ‘Yes this is very textbook OCD’, and that was two years ago.”
Lucy says that living with the condition was still a nightmare even after being diagnosed.
She explained that life with OCD is a constant battle between the brain’s conscious and subconscious, which is constantly spiralling into negativity.
Lucy herself was plagued by the fear of not being a good person and was always mentally battling self-doubt.
She explained: “It was hard, it was horrendous. It’s categorised by this onslaught of intrusive thoughts that are usually quite dark in nature, because those are the ones that grab your attention obviously.
“So they’re the ones that will make you stop in your tracks and go, ‘Why the hell did I just think that?’.
“They’re racing thoughts and as soon as they come at you you’re thinking, ‘Why did I think that?’, ‘What does this say about me?’, and you’re trying to get that thought out of your head.
“And the compulsive behaviours come in, some people might put the light on ten times because they think if they don’t then someone’s going to die then it’s going to be their fault.”
Lucy told how she was plagued by thoughts that she was somehow a bad person, adding: “A lot of mine was totally internal, from the outside looking in you wouldn’t think I was doing anything but I was doing a lot.
“I had compulsions in my head, neutralising a bad thought with a good thought after it, fighting with a thought or reviewing my memories to confirm I’m a good person. I’ll think, ‘You’re a bad person’, and I’ll go, ‘No, no, no, this is why you’re not.’
“So you’re always engaging in the thought in some way whether saying no that’s wrong or trying to disprove it, literally anything to get rid of it.
“I guess I spent a lot of time in different therapy chairs telling people about this.
“They said it was just anxiety and I tried to make peace with that but I had anxiety as a child and this was different.”
DIAGNOSIS DISCOVERY
“Another compulsion is Googling your symptoms but by Googling my exact thoughts I came across this Reddit page talking about OCD, and I was like, ‘This sounds pretty right.’
“That’s how I found out it was OCD and I thought yeah, ‘This is definitely me’, so I brought it to my GP and I was like, ‘It’s this thing’.
“Is it common, it’s hard to know because a lot of people will never be diagnosed or won’t admit to it because some of the intrusive thoughts are really dark and taboo and people are ashamed of the experience in their head.
“I know that two to three per cent of the world have it so you could apply that to anywhere.”
HERE TO HELP
Lucy decided that the lack of information available in Ireland was leaving people with OCD in the dark.
So after receiving her diagnosis, she created OCDiaries, an Instagram page aimed at educating people about the condition where she outlines what OCD might look like, the symptoms of it, and how it can be managed.
She said: “Since I started the page I’ve spoken to hundreds of people who have said thank you, I didn’t realise there were other people like this in Ireland.
“I wanted to start therapy again and I suffered a bereavement after my diagnosis and after I accepted that Ireland maybe doesn’t have our own resources I was telling people what OCD was.
“I wanted the person I was working with to understand OCD so if I fell into a spiral they would be able to cop that.
“Ireland is very behind, even though the knowledge is there, they don’t have it.”
DEBILITATING BATTLE
And the 25-year-old said that the crippling condition is often misrepresented and played for laughs in the media, despite the reality being much harder to deal with.
Lucy said: “It’s so misrepresented in the media as this funny quirky thing where you like to have things a particular way for no reason other than that’s just how you like it but that’s not how it is.
“That’s actually obsessive compulsive personality disorder which people can be diagnosed with, that’s very typical of the stereotype we see in the media.
“OCD is really different from how it’s portrayed in the media, they’re very different, it’s actually so debilitating.”
But the Lucy said that the condition doesn’t have to control the life of those who live with it.
WHAT ARE THE SYMPTOMS OF OCD?
OCD affects different people in different ways, but usually appears as a particular pattern of behaviours.
These include four main steps:
- Obsession – where an unwanted, intrusive thought or urge repeatedly enters a person’s mind.
- Anxiety – the unwanted obsession then provokes a feeling of intense anxiety or distress.
- Compulsion – as a result of feeling anxious, a person will carry out repetitive behaviours or mental acts that they feel driven to perform to better the situation.
- Temporary relief – the compulsion will offer temporary relief to the OCD sufferer’s anxiety – but the obsession soon returns, causing the cycle to begin again.
While it is possible to just have obsessive thoughts or just have compulsions, most sufferers will contend with both.
Common types of compulsive behaviour in people with OCD include:
- Cleaning and hand washing
- Checking – such as checking doors are locked or that the gas is off
- Counting
- Ensuring order and arranging things ‘perfectly’
- Hoarding
- Thinking “neutralising” thoughts to counter the obsessive ones
- Avoiding certain places and situations that they feel could trigger obsessive thoughts
Lucy explained that after years of struggling with the condition, she went to A&E to deal with her nightmare situation.
Since then, she’s been prescribed medication but is still on a journey to discover and spread more information about OCD.
She continued: “I fully believe that recovery is possible, it is classified as chronic, it’s something that until the end of time I’m going to have to be on top of but I’ve been taking medication for the past two years.
“It was honestly a lifesaver. Prior to that I went to A&E and said, ‘I don’t think I can do this anymore’. It had been such a tough four years I said, ‘I can’t live the rest of my life like this’, the medication was a lifesaver.
“Some people have it for as a long as they can remember, I didn’t.
“It came on in an instant – it was crazy, a lot of people I’ve spoken to it’s come on them suddenly, I don’t know there could be something in our genetics that were predisposed, it could be trauma, there’s still a lot to know about it.
“So you can have intrusive dreams also, you know how you have dreams and they’re so bizarre and you’re not in control of them, they come from your subconscious, I like to think that’s where OCD thoughts come from.
“In a non-OCD brain there’s a filter between your subconscious and conscious mind that notices everything, but somehow that gets damaged and then all of those thoughts come to the forefront and you end up with these crazy thoughts.”
‘ATTACK CORE VALUES’
Lucy added: “My thoughts are very managed with my meds, they still appear but the meds give you space to realise it is OCD, and the big thing is not to respond to the thought once it presents itself.
“Nine times out of ten I’ll be successful with that with the medication, you have to just let the thought be there no matter how terrorising it is which is obviously easier said than done.
“The ones that distress you attack your core values, for example I’m not a religious person but a big one for religious people is they get thoughts while praying, that they are being blasphemous to God.
“I don’t get that but I get thoughts tracking what I do find important, because then you’ll pay attention.”
Lucy said there’s still a lot to know about OCD, which affects roughly 156,000 people in Ireland.
Asked if she had a message for those who would like to know more about the condition, she said: “You definitely know people who have it, your loved one could have it, it’s not a silly funny thing it’s very hard to deal with.
“But recovery is possible, it can feel like it isn’t, it can feel all consuming like my life is over but it’s not.”
STAR’S PAIN
Earlier this year, RTE star Brendan Courtney also revealed he battles with the disorder.
The popular presenter said he was diagnosed at 25, but had become obsessed with washing his hands when he was just six-years-old.
Lifting the lid on his horrific symptoms, Brendan said: “I didn’t get intrusive thoughts until later in life and I could go and read about it because it’s terrifying.
“Whatever the bizarre thought is, the next thought is, ‘Oh my God why did I just have that thought’, and then you spiral.”
Brendan added: “I found OCD appears after very stressful times or during very stressful times.
“So you’re logical, but your emotional ability to just discount the thought, you can’t do that because you’re stressed.
“So you attach to this thought and then you feel really stupid. You feel really out of control.”
The Dublin native bravely spoke on air back in April about fears he had as a young adult.
TOUGH TIME
He said: “It can be quite harrowing. It’s not just your hands are dirty. My fear in my 20s was sharp objects, knives.
“I couldn’t look at knives or have knives in the house because my internal thoughts would then attach themselves to some harm.
“And then I’m like, ‘Why am I thinking that?’, because I didn’t feel like that.”
Brendan has learned how to “cope” with his distressing thoughts through counselling, therapy and books.
He explained: “It presents itself when I’m really stressed or when I’ve had a bereavement or something out of control. So I now have a good understanding.
“But then you’re afraid to say that even because it’ll present somewhere else!”
