Have had enough of my OCD habits!

[Notanurse]

Lately I've found a pattern on when my OCD is worse and better. When I'm more stressed or tired its worse and irritates the hell out of me.
Throughout the day its checking my car to make sure its locked when I leave it, I'll literally be checking the doors to make sure they're locked, pressing the lock button 10+ times, walking away walking back to the car to make sure its locked and at times ive got back in the car to just get out again and make sure its locked. It drives me crazy.
When I leave home I take a 10+ minutes making sure things are where they should be, checking windows and doors, making sure EVERY switch is turned off.
When I go to bed of a night I spend up to an hour doing everything mentioned above and when I am so exhausted from work or study I get so frustrated with myself and this crazy need to do these crazy things! In my head I'll tell myself I've checked everything and its OK but if I havent checked it enough or correctly I feel like I have worms crawling under my skin until I've checked everything correctly.

Its really starting to hit me now that my son has caught onto it. He tells me I've checked it already and its locked or turned off or whatever and he's started getting irritated at times too at what I'm doing.

I have briefly talked about it with my doctor and psychiatrist and they haven't taken much notice of it, saying my diagnosis of bipolar is the number one concern when it comes to my management of my mental health. But this is driving me crazy, I have no reason to be checking so much but I feel this need to!
I'm thinking of going back to discuss it but worried they won't really take the concern seriously again. I don't care if its counselling or meds that will help it i just can't stand it any more!

[White_Rose]

Hello Notanurse

Thank you for your post. I can appreciate the frustration of feeling the need to check something that you know is OK. While I have not been in this situation I can imagine how distressing this can be.

I feel disappointed for you that your mental health professionals will not take this seriously. While you do need to manage your bipolar diagnosis there is also the need to manage this additional stress. I would think the stress of managing, or not managing, your OCD must impinge on your management of the bipolar disorder. Your MH professionals probably do take your OCD seriously but feel there is a greater priority. However, you are the person concerned in this and you need to have your concerns listened to and addressed.

I can see why your son is getting irritated and this places another level of stress on you. This also needs to be addressed with your psychiatrist. When we are tired or a little unwell those things we usually manage have the potential to assume huge proportions which is when your OCD kicks in more strongly. In the end it gets to be an horrendous circle of events.

I hesitate to suggest anything that may add to your need to check everything. However, I am wondering if it would help if you made a list of all these behaviours, their frequency and the effect they have on your life/health and on your relationship with your son. These are important factors as they have such a huge impact on your life. If your psychiatrist could see the impact all this is having on you then he/she may be more willing to work with you on this. You could ask if it would be better to go to someone else to talk about the OCD stuff. Without wishing to denigrate your psychiatrist in any way it's been my observation that often they have their areas of expertise and can be reluctant to move into a different arena. This is not to call their expertise into question, just possibly their priorities.

The next time you see your psychiatrist can you state you want to spend the whole session discussing your OCD difficulties. As a patient you do have the right to choose the topic of discussion.

I hope this has been helpful to you. Love to hear from you again.

Mary