I have dealt with taboo thoughts, like many with OCD, around sex, sexuality, and harming others in a sexual way. This combination of therapies has truly helped me. The next topic is much harder for me to discuss, but I have been able to come to terms with this through EMDR and IFS therapy this year. I had already had OCD at that time, but my symptoms became more severe, likely from both the head trauma I endured and the emotional trauma of being hit. That said, mine was not ‘random.’ I had been hit by a car as a pedestrian at the age of sixteen. As I said, this is not an uncommon thing for a person with OCD. I feared hitting a pedestrian, to the point that I would obsessively check the rearview mirror for people even in the middle of the highway, touching and tapping the window as an additional compulsion. Let’s start with my fear that I was going to hurt someone while driving my car. While the intensity of my intrusive thoughts and compulsions was irrational and very characteristic of OCD, what I hadn’t made the connection to until this year was the way my traumas have influenced the content of my OCD. Two very different subjects, but both are very common for someone with OCD. My OCD has centered around many themes, but the main themes I have dealt with since my teen years, and subsequently as an adult, have been around sex and harming others with my car. It has taken eight years of therapy (I am now twenty-eight years old) to have teased apart all of these factors. I grew up feeling different for several reasons, including being a part of the LGBTQ+ community and grappling with those struggles. I also have ADHD and Autism, conditions that I was born with but were not identified until later.
I don’t remember a time I didn’t struggle with OCD and Generalized Anxiety disorder. I was diagnosed with OCD at nineteen years old, despite struggling for the majority of my life with it. Many of us also struggle with depression, personality disorders, substance abuse, and chronic physical health issues.
Speaking from my own experience at least, I had developed poor coping mechanisms for most of my life because of my complex trauma, such as eating disorders, self-harm, and other addictive behaviors. CPTSD survivors may have many comorbid conditions too. CPTSD arises from not just one trauma but ongoing trauma (some examples include emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, neglect, bullying, discrimination, and others), typically beginning in childhood, although not always. If you’re on this blog, you likely know what CPTSD is, so the short version-CPTSD is essentially PTSD with additional symptoms like emotional dysregulation, relationship challenges, excess shame and guilt, attachment struggles, and dissociation. Often magical thinking is involved, such as thinking that touching the window in increments of two will keep one safe from a natural disaster.
The key factors are obsessions and compulsions, anxiety, and the knowledge that these anxieties and compulsions are irrational to some extent. Someone else might need to align everything in perfect symmetry to ‘prevent’ their family from dying. Others might convince themselves they are hitting someone with their car and have to check and re-check the spot they drove over to ensure they didn’t hurt anyone. One person with OCD may have fears of contracting a deadly illness and wash their hands hundreds of times a day, while another person may question their sexuality repeatedly and have to touch the wall to reduce the thoughts. This can look vastly different for everyone. OCD is characterized as an anxiety disorder, one that involves obsessive, intrusive thoughts followed by compulsions. I feel that trauma has only exacerbated the OCD further. For me, Obsessive-Compulsive disorder genetically runs in the family, so I was likely to get it whether or not I experienced trauma. I want to emphasize that this is my experience and my experience only not everyone with OCD has underlying trauma and not everyone with complex trauma will develop OCD. I will start by explaining what OCD is, what CPTSD is, and how they influence each other for me.
For years, I didn’t even realize I had any ‘trauma ’ I personally just chalked it all up to being ‘an overthinker,’ and later OCD once I received that diagnosis at nineteen years old. I have had OCD since childhood and still struggle with bouts of it today. As I have delved further into trauma work and my recovery from Complex PTSD (CPTSD), I have noticed a vast overlap with my Obsessive-Compulsive disorder (OCD) symptoms.
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