Tug of Love

Each time I visited the sink, I would wash my hands repeatedly for a count of eighty washing cycles. This became my safe number. As long as I cleaned or checked something eighty times, I might possibly accept that it was clean or safe. In other words, decontaminated.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, or OCD, has to be one of the most terrifying experiences ever encountered by a human being and is completely irrational. Sufferers fear that something terrible is going to happen, which is usually brought on by some deep-seated anxiety. These thoughts are called ‘ruminations’ and they lead to compulsive actions that people feel they must complete in order to rid themselves of the fear. For me the compulsion was to wash my hands repeatedly. At my worst, I would visit the sink forty or fifty times during the course of the day when I thought I might be ‘contaminated’.

As you can imagine, after this much washing, my hands were red raw. I washed and dried them till they bled. My hands looked like an old woman’s rather than those of a young mum. For many years, I believed that this was how I was going to live the rest of my life and I couldn’t cope with that. I wanted out!

My OCD fear was a very extreme and unusual form that involved a fear of colours. As you can imagine, this made it a massive problem. Every time I touched, or eventually even saw, a dreaded colour, the ruminations would begin. I don’t know what I feared would happen, but I was terrified that once I was contaminated, I would spread this to my children. It got to the point where I could not touch my own children for fear of harming them. As you can see, OCD is both irrational and terrifying to those who experience it. It is an illness of the mind, like any other illness that affects parts of the body. People should not be judged or shamed for having a mental illness. It can be extremely debilitating and life altering and it can happen to anyone. Mental health is not selective.

Many a time I sat on the back doorstep crying and begging God to take this illness away. I actually began to believe that the children and my then husband would be better off without me. I thought that my husband would be able to the give the children a more normal and natural life on his own.

On two separate occasions, I tried to take my own life by overdosing on paracetamol. I am not proud of this fact. Once fully recovered, I confessed these sins to my parish priest. He blessed me and said that my sins had been absolved. I thought this would make me feel better about myself and especially about attending Mass. But in reality, I didn’t feel any different. I found it difficult to go to church for many years, as I felt I didn’t deserve to be in God’s house. I believed I was a bad person.

Back then, I was not heavily religious, but I was baptised a Catholic and brought up in Catholic primary and secondary schools. I believed in God’s teachings and although I found it difficult to be in church for a while, I still held a strong belief and I had faith and hope. I prayed to God every day.

Today, I aim to be a good person and mother. I like to think that I am trying to be as good a Christian as I can possibly be.

When I was suffering badly with the OCD, I used to think the only way I would be free of the awful thoughts would be in death. I am lucky though, as I am now very much alive and mentally well, with a quiet and peaceful mind.

Perhaps I should explain how I came to be in such a low, depressed and anxious state. A little family history may help to fill in the gaps.

Chapter 1: Childhood

My very earliest childhood memories are not actually of home life, but of school days, which were, for me, a far happier time. With hindsight, I think the reason for this has to be that at school there was far less criticism and condemnation compared to what I remember at home. I like to think that, actually, my teachers quite liked me.

I have very fond memories of some of my primary and secondary teachers with whom I felt I had a good bond. Despite my strict, almost controlling home life, I even formed special relationships with some of the more apparently stern, harsher characters, whom many of my peers mocked, feared or disliked. I think that’s because none of them were ever as harsh as my own mother and when difficulties arose I was somehow always able to see the softer, more caring approach from even the hardest of our teachers. I learnt at a very young age how to manipulate these situations to my advantage. I don’t mean to say that I did this deliberately, more that it was a survival technique that seemed to work for me.

I’m no expert in the field of psychology, although the working of the human brain, including what happens when it goes wrong, really fascinates me. If I had my time over, or I was younger, I’d like to have trained to be a doctor specialising in psychology, helping the many people affected by problems of the mind. However, previously I didn’t have the confidence to even believe this would be a possibility for me.

I believe, with all my heart, that our emotional difficulties must somehow be linked to all of our life experiences and, therefore, naturally include our very earliest experiences from the moment we not only enter this world but from the very moment of our conception. More so, I feel that our earliest memories and experiences must impact on the impression we have about the world around us, including the lessons learnt in the beginning, in the home and in our schools.

When I recall my fondest of memories regarding my teachers in both my primary and secondary schools, what’s interesting to note is that I usually became most closely attached to mature, female teachers. In hindsight, I think maybe I was trying to find a warmer maternal figure who would give me the attention I craved and the warmth I needed, and I think, most importantly, encouragement. Even in my early adult life, while working as a care therapist and as a nurse, I still sought out this form of relationship in my colleagues.

Praise was something that was most definitely missing in my childhood. In fact, I think it’s fair to say, there was never any praise or encouragement from my mother. There was nothing positive, only negative in the form of attention I received. It seemed to be all criticism and condemnation. I had very little attention at all from my mother, who was a businesswoman. At that time, during the sixties and seventies, this was a new breed of woman, who appeared to have little time for her family. However, as a child, I was not aware this had an impact, or that it was of any significance. Now, as a mother myself, it is easily apparent to me that what children need most, more than money or material goods, is good, quality attention.

My sister Jan and I were ‘latch key kids’ from a very young age, even in infant school. This was very unusual back in the seventies but for us it was all we knew. So, as small children, we naturally assumed that the way we lived was the way everybody lived. We had no idea that our young friends and classmates were living much happier and more relaxed lives than ours and that in their worlds love, praise and attention were much more freely available.

Therefore, my own conclusion is that my school behaviour, although not particularly naughty – well, at least not until the later senior years – was, in fact, the behaviour of a young child craving and seeking attention – even affection. During my primary school years though, I do have very fond memories of many quite humorous events, both with my friends and teachers.

I was a bit of a cheeky little urchin but I also think that from an early age my sense of humour and wit was quite appealing to my teachers. While being a bit cheeky and maybe a bit of a handful, I was also very eager to please and eager for praise. I did, indeed, work extremely hard because, let’s face it, I didn’t feel I was the ‘smartest cookie in the tin’. Certainly, my mother didn’t give me credit for having any intelligence, so I believed this to be true. I worked exceptionally hard to achieve the grades I did. This was reflected in my school reports, which I have kept to this day and make for very interesting and somewhat ‘humorous’ reading! What was apparent, that I see from reading them back now, was that my primary school teachers did, in fact, recognise my intelligence. They recognised hard work, determination, a willingness to please, and above all, a polite and well-mannered disposition. What more could a parent could ask for? One teacher wrote, ‘Joanne works and works, just like a little beaver.’ That was written when I was just six years old.

Yet I dreaded taking my school reports home. As a child, I didn’t see the reports, and due to my mother’s criticism, I assumed I was failing. I spent my time trying to please my mother for most of my life, desperate for her praise.

What is also interesting to note is that for a child, who was already recognised by teachers as having intelligence, wit and humour and, indeed, as being very ‘entertaining’, many of them also described a shy, sensitive and frighteningly ‘anxious’ child!

Chapter 2: Milk Bottles and Sunday Roast

The only real memory that sticks in my mind about our first house, which we only lived in until I was six years old, is the incident with the milk bottles.

Our first house was in Greenfield Crescent in Cowplain. In those days, the milk came in glass bottles with silver foil tops and was delivered by the milkman to the front doorstep. On this occasion, there were three children in the house: me, Jan and our mum’s younger brother Tim, who was twenty years her junior, the same age as me, her youngest child. Tim, and I, both aged five, and Jan aged seven, being youngsters, were all up bright and early in the morning. I decided to help my mum by bringing in the milk. There were two bottles on the doorstep so I picked one up in each hand. I marched into the kitchen very triumphantly and proudly with my milk bottles. I was completely unaware that I was, in fact, holding the milk bottles upside down. As you can imagine, with the pressure of all that milk on the little silver foil tops, something had to give. As I raised the bottles with a triumphant smile to show my mum, the milk exploded through the foil tops and I, in my terror, dropped the glass bottles on the hard linoleum floor, thus adding to the mess and chaos. All three of us children froze in terror as mum’s temper, as anticipated, also exploded.

There were other adult family members in the house that day too and they have since reported that they had never, and have never since, seen three young children move so fast. To this day, I have never discovered where Jan and Tim hid that day. I spent the entire day cowering behind the old-fashioned metal dustbin in the garden. I can, at least, see the funny side of this story now because I was only trying to help and win praise. This is one of the incidents that Jan, Tim and I never discussed until recently when, I have to admit, we all had a blooming good laugh about it!

On another occasion, one Sunday lunch time, Jan and I were waiting at the table for our lovely roast dinner, when mum decided to have one of her ‘melt downs’. Often these were ranting and raving but sometimes things got thrown and even broken.

This was a particularly bad melt down for some reason and as the roast was busy cooking on the oven, mum decided that she was going to launch the rest of it at Dad! Veggies, potatoes, boiling water and all. How he wasn’t badly hurt I’ll never know.

Jan and I were about eight and six respectively and not averse to cleaning up, which we often did after such events. Not on this occasion though. Mum stormed out of the house on one of her disappearing acts (which sometimes lasted a couple of weeks by my memory) and Dad quietly began the daunting task of cleaning up the kitchen, which as I’m sure you can imagine, resembled something akin to a bombsite!

This time, Jan and I didn’t venture to help. We didn’t dare move from the table but merely wondered what on earth we were going to eat, as by now, our tummies were rumbling.

A while later, Dad came into the dining room and placed a bowl of gravy in front of each of us. He said something like, ‘Sorry girls, that’s all that’s left of the dinner. Pretend its soup!’ We were both so hungry and frightened by now that we didn’t dare not to eat. We also didn’t dare to look up, not once – not at each other and certainly not at Dad, as we knew he was probably feeling mortified. He was such a proud man. So we just ate our ‘soup’ in silence.

In hindsight, I can laugh at these incidents, and you might agree that this could portray quite a comical scene – although maybe that’s my weird sense of humour. But, in all seriousness, the difficult situations in our childhood, for me anyway, can only be seen and discussed in a light-hearted manner and with an element of humour. It’s the only way I can handle these memories. By seeing the funny side of things and laughing about it I find my mind is distracted from the truly horrible nature of the situations.

That’s not to say that I don’t take it all extremely seriously. As I’m sure you can imagine, for two young children to live constantly in a state of nervousness and fear is not a healthy way to live. Indeed, I feel that the emotional turmoil we were subjected to, for me at least, eventually led to the scars that marked my adult life with a constant cycle of ill health. At first, my mental health suffered and, after overcoming that, I spent an equally difficult time limping from one physical illness to another.

There were a couple of incidents that can never be laughed at and even I will never be able to come to terms with these events, as no child should be exposed to such atrocities early in their life.