I have struggled with OCD for almost 3 years now. I have days when I feel like I will never feel like my old self the way I was before OCD emerged into my life unexpectedly. My OCD journey started out fearing death as my obsession. I cried for weeks trying to cope with this obsession. My compulsions were simple yet they were purely mental. I would perform my mental compulsion to combat the anxiety that arose from having my death obsession spike. I would think to myself “You’re only 30 you have a long time before you die.” This compulsion would bring my anxiety down from a solid 10 to about a 4 then it would level out until my next spike. After about a month I recovered and felt fairly normal for about a year. Then it hit me one day. My OCD returned with a vengeance. I had a random thought one day...”What if you’ve hurt someone in the past and forgot about it”. This harm obsession became my next obsession. I would have violent thoughts enter my mind. They caused me great distress as I knew deep down this wasn’t me but my OCD tried to constantly convince me that I was this terrible monster of a person capable of these horrible acts of harm. It got so bad that my now ex wife had to drive everywhere we went because I was afraid to drive thinking I would hit someone when I was driving. It continued to get worse I was forced to downgrade to part time at my job and virtually became housebound and reclusive to everyone except my closest family members. I finally decided it was time to seek professional help. I sought out the help of a local psychologist whose specialty included OCD. To make a long story short she was of no help and every time I would visit her she stared out the window behind me and I felt she was ignoring my concerns for the most part. During my 3 month tenure her best piece of advice to battle my OCD was to put a positive picture in my wallet and to get it out and look at it every time I had a spike. I was prescribed Paroxetine by their psychiatrist as well as hydroxyzine to assist my anxiety. Since I realized that my psychologist cared more about her life outside her profession I said to hell with it and stopped seeing her. I continued my medication however. At this time I felt like I was at a dead end. I began researching every piece of information I could get my hands on. I studied the works of several renowned scholars from online sources as well as personal experiences from other OCD sufferers and began to compare them with mine. I began to develop my own techniques to counter my OCD spikes, which I still use to this day and feel that they have improved my well being. Shortly thereafter I discovered this very mobile app and have taken great pride to be part of this community. I feel like everyone here is family because we are all here to help and support each other with the ultimate goal of banishing OCD from existence. I truly feel with everything in me that we the OCD victims hold the key to the OCD puzzle and I feel that if we continue to share our experiences we just might discover some kind of missing link that binds us all and through that discovery perhaps we can find the ultimate anti-OCD technique or techniques that with dedicated practice will restore each and every one of us to complete mindfulness. I hope this message finds all of you well.