Welcome to Anxiety on Your Mind, the series where we explore the reality of living with anxiety. In this edition, Paul Carter, 45, who lives in West Sussex, shares how he navigates intrusive thoughts that come with OCD
Paul Carter as told to Fiona Fletcher Reid
I’ve had obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) since my early 20s, and experience intrusive thoughts regularly. What I’ve discovered is that the more I dwell on these thoughts, or allow them to take over, the more anxious I become. Plus, anxiety is a common trigger for intrusive thoughts, so the two feed into each other.
One thought that runs through my mind constantly is the worry that my anxiety is completely made up in my head. Sometimes I think I’m going to be ‘caught out’ – that someone will dissect my anxiety, and expose my OCD as bogus, or simply self-induced.
I know that talking openly about mental health is supposed to help, but it takes enormous energy. Often, I feel as though I’m tweaking the way I present my anxiety to ‘convince’ people that I’m telling the truth, so they’ll believe my experience. Other times, I worry that talking about it simply bores people.
This week, I tried to listen to a podcast about mental health, but had to switch it off because I found it unbearable. It made me wonder if that’s how other people feel when I open up about my anxiety – which wasn’t a pleasant feeling.
Work is also a source of stress for me. I often feel as though I’m falling behind, or that I should be further ahead in my career by this age. Earlier this week, I found out that I didn’t get an interview for a job I’d applied for, which was disappointing – especially as I felt I’d done really well on my personal statement.
It’s tempting to spend much of my day on LinkedIn searching for new opportunities, but I make it a rule not to go on there during my working day, and that helps. It can be a distraction, and makes me feel more anxious. Doing meaningful work is really important to me, and one thing that filled me with pride this week was co-creating a learning package on the duty to prevent sexual harassment at work.
Nature is a source of joy for me – specifically, the pond that my family and I have in our back garden. Perhaps it’s because I had a pond when I was growing up, which attracted fish, frogs, dragonflies, and grasshoppers. So many of my happy childhood memories centre around the excitement of seeing what the creatures were getting up to in our pond and, now, I get to experience that again with my own family. This week, I was delighted to discover that my tadpoles had turned into froglets – very exciting!
I also love watching films; they’re a form of escapism for me. I enjoyed taking my son to see Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning at the IMAX near Waterloo. However, I did experience some intrusive thoughts when I went to the bathroom, worrying that something terrible might happen to my son without me there to defend him. Thoughts such as: ‘What if he’s kidnapped? Is he strong enough to fight them off?’
These fears made me hurry to get in and out of the bathroom as quickly as possible to get back to him. Of course, he was absolutely fine. But then more thoughts arose: ‘People wear masks in the Mission Impossible films – is it definitely him?’
Something similar happened the next day when I walked through the gates at the train station, and saw the public information poster warning people to remember to use the brakes on wheelchairs and prams. I visualised my children when they were young rolling off the platform in their prams, as well as my dad in his wheelchair calling out for me to save him. In the moment, the anxiety feels so real, because I can see it happen in my mind’s eye, and I can really feel the impact.
Exercise is a welcome relief. Often at lunchtime, I’ll run a 5K in Hyde Park. The weather was hot this week, and I was struggling a bit with that, which triggered anxious thoughts about passing out as I was crossing the road surrounded by fast-moving traffic. I managed to stay upright, but I was scared I might collapse.
I find that in these situations, it’s always easier to cope when I’m alone – when I can just take myself off to a quiet spot and relax. I also like to go to the gym with my son, although I’m admittedly starting to feel like a 45-year-old. I was tired from the race on Friday, and running seven miles on Saturday.
Reflecting on the week, I can see the symptoms of my OCD and anxiety are still there, but nowhere near as intense as they were when I was younger. Plus, there have been some wins – like watching my tadpoles in the pond, and achieving some success at work. Living with OCD and anxiety hasn’t been easy, but I’m proud of how far I’ve come.
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