Hannah Bourne-Taylor article in the Daily Mail

When I was in my twenties, I left my life in central London and moved to Ghana with my husband for his work. Jobless, friendless and with nothing to do, I spent my days alone. Isolation fuelled my OCD like gasoline.

OCD manifests itself in people in different ways like a bespoke parasite that worms its way into a sufferer’s conscious and highjacks their thoughts. The mental health charity, Mind, describes OCD as a ‘disorder in which people have recurring, unwanted thoughts, ideas, or sensations (obsessions) that make them feel driven to do something repetitively (compulsions).’ Obsessions are triggered by fears, often of contamination, portrayed by Jack Nicholson’s character in the film As Good As It Gets. For me, my OCD is triggered by the fear of anything suffering. When I’m suffering myself, from stress or unhappiness, my OCD offers a dysfunctional coping mechanism, refocusing my mind on preventing any suffering around me as though, by helping something else, my own suffering will reduce.

When I was younger, I would turn everything the right way up – tins of beans, books, shoes. It wasn’t to tidy them but to stop them from being upside down because if I was upside down, I would eventually die so I applied this warped logic to everything. Shoelaces had to be carefully extracted from underneath shoes otherwise they would be trapped; teddy bears had to have their heads outside of the bedding otherwise they would suffocate; gates had to be shut otherwise they would run out of energy holding themselves up, swinging on their hinges. I lived with OCD throughout my childhood without knowing that it was a disorder, without knowing that other people suffered from it too. By my late teens I had grown out of the more illogical compulsions and stopped rescuing shoelaces. Instead, my OCD focused on lights and fans being left on in empty rooms, of taps running, of washing machine’s blinking at the end of their cycles, desperately wanting to turn them off. Facts give my OCD oxygen: the annual quota of electricity last year was used up by July in 2021 and with thousands of lights left on carelessly, these truths merge with my intrusive thoughts, blazing through my mind.

Living in Ghana without a purpose, weakened my mind to the onslaught of OCD. After a year of living in the capital city, we moved to house surrounded by an overgrown garden. Amongst the palm trees there was a swimming pool. It looked like heaven and it was until I noticed the insects drowning in the water, unable to get out. Then it was hell. My OCD latched on to my natural instincts to save the insects and galvanised this desire so that it was an obsession. I felt compelled to save every single insect, prioritising checking the pool, scooping hundreds out of the water, making rafts, patrolling like a crazed lifeguard, unable to leave the pool for any decent amount of time. When I started waking up at night to check the pool, my husband got suspicious. I had never told a single person or been officially diagnosed with OCD because I didn’t dare admit that I was, at least partially, mad. I kept my strange secret, intending to carry it to my grave but when my husband started questioning me, I knew he would find out. The idea of him accusing me before I admitted it spurred me to tell him. Through floods of tears, I confessed. ‘I’ve got OCD. And not in a casual way people often joke about it but the sort that beats up my mind,’ I said, wincing, unable to look him in the eye, convinced he was going to leave me. His reaction was a complete surprise. He comforted me, reassured me, invited me to talk about it. I felt a tangible relief, my OCD diluted in the same way as a nightmare doesn’t seem so scary in the morning.

Shortly after I shared my secret, we moved to rural Ghana. On the edge of the grasslands in the middle of nowhere I worried that being so remote would lead to the OCD overrunning my mind. But then a tiny wild bird changed my life, not only giving me purpose but altering my perspective on everything. I found a fledgling finch fallen from his nest after a huge storm. Knowing he would die if I left him, I took the finch back to the house and unwittingly began an intense three-month period of raising him. Utterly dependent on me, we were inseparable. The finch slept in my hand and made nests out of my hair, curling the waist length strands up before falling asleep, content, safe. When he was older, we spent every day following his flock so one day he could rejoin his wild family. 84 days of living with a feathered friend on my body every waking hour where the vast differences between me and him shrunk so there were none. Like me he needed security and reassurance and craved affection and although smaller than a wood mouse, his personality lit up the room. He taught me how to embrace every moment. I had no time to engage in my OCD by carrying out compulsions so when intrusive thoughts started to flood my mind about lights or fans being on, I could do nothing about them. I had to look after the bird, keep him safe. I had to feed him otherwise he would perch on my finger and throw his head back, whipping his wings out, calling his shrill hunger call like a matador having a tantrum. I had to comfort him, stroking the side of his tiny face until his head lolled at bedtime, until he was too sleepy to protest, until he stopped nudging me to stroke him more. I put my obsessive energy into a life that really needed me. I got used to dismissing the intrusive thoughts, gradually recognising that the less I carried out the compulsions, the less power the obsessions had over me. By not responding to my OCD, a space was made between me and the disorder, expanding little by little so the intrusive thoughts became quieter, less intense. This practice is very similar to one of the treatments for OCD known as Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP). While there is no full cure, there are other treatments too – Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and medication as well as other forms of therapy.

These three little letters haunt many people. According to the charity OCD UK, there are three quarters of a million people living with OCD at any one time just in Britain. That’s 12 in every 1,000 people. For over twenty years I felt utterly alone with a burden I could not see or understand, oblivious that so many other people were going through something similar.

Confronting the disorder by acknowledging I had it and understanding how purpose allowed me to push OCD away felt like a revelation. Finding out more about the disorder by reading articles and hearing other people’s stories on charity websites like OCD UK gave me insight which made me feel stronger. I still have OCD. There are times when it pops up like a sinister jack-in-the-box, luring me into its web, but I feel lighter, more in control and far less beholden now that it’s no longer a secret. I feel thankful to the tiny wild bird who needed my help more than I needed to carry out compulsions because he made me deal with my OCD instead of giving in to it.