My name is Stephen Brown and I have had Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) since I was 3 years old. From this age and right up until about the age of about 14 I had no idea what I was suffering with. All I knew was that every day I was plagued by unwanted intrusive thoughts, (the obsessions), which caused severe anxiety. The thoughts were always about something bad happening to others, particularly my family and friends. To try to eradicate these thoughts I, like so many people with OCD, would perform compulsions.

For example: if I had a (thought) that the chair I had just got up from was going to colapse the next time somebody sat down on it and they would get hurt; then I would repeatedly sit down and stand up until it felt right, (the compulsion). I wanted to make sure that the chair was not going to colapse and that the next person to sit in it would be fine.

This is just one example of many that I have experienced throughout my life with OCD. When I was about 14 years old my mother saw an article in a magazine that she was reading and she showed it to me. The article was about someone who had OCD and the story that they shared sounded just like the experiences that I had had. From then on what I was suffering with now had a name.

Over the years I have had several courses of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, (CBT) but the standard treatment for OCD now is Exposure Response Prevention Therapy (ERP). This treatment helps the person with OCD to face what their fears are without resorting to compulsions to eliminate them. This therapy can be very affective but it takes both a lot of effort and being consistent in the approach to reap the benefits.