Andi
04-08-05, 08:35 AM
Interview by Catherine O'Brien
Diana Wilson was plagued by dreadful visions until she discovered that she had obsessive-compulsive disorder, and learnt how to cope with the condition
ON THE face of it, our holiday in Normandy could not have been more perfect. Our B&B accommodation was remote enough to make us feel that we really had got away from it all, but not so remote as to make the journey to it arduous. The days were warm and sunny and there were fields where our three elder daughters could play with abandon while I sat under the shade of an oak tree with the baby, who was almost one.
By night, however, the mood changed. Chilling thoughts would enter my head — thoughts that were centred on the deep, dark pond at the bottom of the garden. To the bewilderment of my husband, Rob, I would place a heavy chair by the bolted door of our room. I was convinced that, in my sleep, I was going to take my children, one by one, to the pond, and drown them. I believed that the chair was the only thing that could stop me. As I crashed through the door, Rob would hear me and wake up — and the lives of our children would be saved.
I have met several mothers who, when I relay this story to them, confess that they, too, have feared they might drown their children. It is the sort of irrational notion that can surface when you are suffering from postnatal depression. Fewer, however, can identify with the perpetual and alarming delusions I lived with in the years after becoming a mother. For me, childbirth magnified a condition that I had unwittingly been battling with for years — obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).
Most people know a little about OCD. They understand that it is a mental illness that can lead to compulsive rituals. They may have read about Howard Hughes’s germ obsession, or Paul Gascoigne’s relentless checking of light switches. Less often talked about are the symptoms from which I suffered. I believed that I was going to harm — and probably kill — my children. Vivid, uncontrollable images would play in my mind in which I was slashing them with razor blades or strangling them with their dressing-gown cords. These thoughts were so abhorrent, so grotesque, that I could share them with no one — until the day, four years ago, when I reached breaking point and finally got the diagnosis and treatment I needed.
Two or three people in 100 are affected by OCD at some point in their lives. It is a condition that can often be traced back to childhood and, in many ways, I was a classic case. Now 39, I grew up in New Zealand on my parents’ farm in Hawkes Bay with my two younger brothers. I was no more bound by rituals than any other child — until around the age of ten, when I began to play tennis competitively.
I showed promise, and within a few years had reached national level. There was talk of my going to an Australian tennis academy, but the better I played, the more I seemed to lose my nerve. I would be close to winning a match when a thought would come into my head that I wasn’t going to be able to throw the ball up and serve. I would tell myself that if I won the next point, I would win the game, but if I lost it, I was finished.
These panic attacks — which I now know were the mild beginnings of OCD — were enough to take away my greatest childhood pleasure — playing tennis. Instead, I went to boarding school, where I made friends easily, but flunked exams. Again, when the pressure was on, the thoughts would come: “You can’t do this.”
I left at 18, became a ski bum and went travelling. En route, I remember seeing an Aids poster in the mid-1980s, when the disease was at its most anxiety-inducing. Immediately, despite the fact that I had yet to sleep with anyone, I was convinced that I was HIV-positive.
My travelling brought me to London, where I worked as an assistant in a Montessori school. I met Rob, a lawyer, and life seemed good, but as I reached my mid-twenties, I knew my behaviour was becoming more extreme. For weeks I could be fine, then there would be stages when I was convinced that I had left the iron on, or the stove — and I might have to check them ten or more times before leaving the house. I was forever washing my hands, and I couldn’t understand how other women could go in and out of a public lavatory within minutes, when the same process would take me as long as half an hour. From the moment I entered, the fear of contamination was all-encompassing. I had to be so careful about touching the door handle, the flush, the seat. With pincer fingers, I would use toilet paper to wipe every surface. By the time I exited, I would be exhausted.
Rob picked up on none of this — not because he lacked powers of observation, but because part of the nature of OCD is that those affected are obsessively secretive. When I was 28 we married and I became pregnant. How could I possibly tell Rob of the irrational, but utterly convincing, thought in my head: that he was not the father of our baby?
My OCD was driven by the things that mattered most to me. As a child, it was my tennis; as an adult, it was my children. All I wanted was to be a loving mother, and so it was that the birth of my daughters (now aged between 10 and 4) triggered the worst phase of my illness.
Any mother-to-be has a heightened sense of awareness about protecting her baby. Not only could I not bear the smell of petrol fumes, I couldn’t go to a petrol station for fear that they would kill my child. I still worried that I had Aids and I developed a huge problem with food.
When weaning my second and third daughters, I would fastidiously prepare fresh vegetables, but then get it into my head that I hadn’t sterilised the bowl enough and throw the whole lot out. I would spill some oven cleaner on my jumper, which then came into contact with one of their nighties. I would wash the nighties, but then become obsessed that they were still tainted with harmful chemicals. The only option was to place the nighties in the bin. I genuinely believed that if I didn’t carry out such rituals, my children would die.
My most tortuous dread, however, was that I would murder them. These thoughts came not from any sort of inner desire but from my reading, for example, a report about a woman in Minneapolis who strangled her children. Maybe two months later, I would walk into one of my daughters’ bedrooms, see a dressing gown, recall the report and think: “That’s you. You are probably going to do that.” And then “It’s going to happen tonight.”
Every night, before I put the girls to bed, I would remove the dressing-gown cords, place them in a bag and tie it with maybe six knots. I believed that I was going to kill them in my sleep, and the only way to stop myself was to make those cords unobtainable. I had a similar problem with razor blades, which I would hide in my cosmetic bag and put out of sight.
By the time our fourth daughter was born, these thoughts — known as ruminations — were coming not just daily, but sometimes hourly. On one level, I was still functioning normally. I had to — if I disclosed what I was thinking, I was surely going to end up in prison. But inside I believed that I was turning into a monster. There were moments when I contemplated suicide.
At some point a combination of sheer exhaustion and the madness in my head drove me to my GP, to whom I made a muddled confession. She diagnosed postnatal depression. The Seroxat she prescribed helped, as did the counselling with a clinical psychiatrist. But the thoughts still came and that holiday in Normandy proved a turning point. I returned drained because, in an effort to stop me drowning the children in my sleep, I had forced myself to stay awake.
I told my psychiatrist what had happened and asked him if I was psychotic. He said that I wasn’t, nor was I going to harm anyone. He gave me a diagnostic questionnaire. The first question was: “Do you believe you have Aids?”
Learning that I had OCD was both a relief and a shock. There is a certain stigma about having a mental illness, but the knowledge that I was not going to harm my children quickly assuaged that. I underwent a course of cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT), which involved fortnightly sessions over about three months.
CBT gives you reality checks: so you think someone other than your husband is the father of your baby? OK, what was the colour of his boxer shorts? It teaches you to tackle ruminations head-on. Rather than struggle to avoid them, you invite them in. So now I look at the dressing-gown cord, and at my sleeping children, and instead of panicking and scooping the cords into a bag, I tell myself that I am not going to harm anyone. And the thought may say “Yes, you are” and that might go on for five minutes, but I now have the confidence to resist the thought until it disappears.
I took the decision some time ago to be open about my OCD. Talking about it raises awareness and reduces the stigma. When I tell friends and the mothers of my children’s friends, I invariably find that they are intrigued. Some cry and some laugh at my more ridiculous notions — but always with me rather than at me.
I would never be naive enough to describe myself as cured, but four years on from the diagnosis, my OCD has pretty much gone. On the rare occasion when a thought enters my head, I have the tools to deal with it. CBT has freed me to do what I wanted all along: simply to love my children.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,8123-1557369,00.html
Diana Wilson was plagued by dreadful visions until she discovered that she had obsessive-compulsive disorder, and learnt how to cope with the condition
ON THE face of it, our holiday in Normandy could not have been more perfect. Our B&B accommodation was remote enough to make us feel that we really had got away from it all, but not so remote as to make the journey to it arduous. The days were warm and sunny and there were fields where our three elder daughters could play with abandon while I sat under the shade of an oak tree with the baby, who was almost one.
By night, however, the mood changed. Chilling thoughts would enter my head — thoughts that were centred on the deep, dark pond at the bottom of the garden. To the bewilderment of my husband, Rob, I would place a heavy chair by the bolted door of our room. I was convinced that, in my sleep, I was going to take my children, one by one, to the pond, and drown them. I believed that the chair was the only thing that could stop me. As I crashed through the door, Rob would hear me and wake up — and the lives of our children would be saved.
I have met several mothers who, when I relay this story to them, confess that they, too, have feared they might drown their children. It is the sort of irrational notion that can surface when you are suffering from postnatal depression. Fewer, however, can identify with the perpetual and alarming delusions I lived with in the years after becoming a mother. For me, childbirth magnified a condition that I had unwittingly been battling with for years — obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).
Most people know a little about OCD. They understand that it is a mental illness that can lead to compulsive rituals. They may have read about Howard Hughes’s germ obsession, or Paul Gascoigne’s relentless checking of light switches. Less often talked about are the symptoms from which I suffered. I believed that I was going to harm — and probably kill — my children. Vivid, uncontrollable images would play in my mind in which I was slashing them with razor blades or strangling them with their dressing-gown cords. These thoughts were so abhorrent, so grotesque, that I could share them with no one — until the day, four years ago, when I reached breaking point and finally got the diagnosis and treatment I needed.
Two or three people in 100 are affected by OCD at some point in their lives. It is a condition that can often be traced back to childhood and, in many ways, I was a classic case. Now 39, I grew up in New Zealand on my parents’ farm in Hawkes Bay with my two younger brothers. I was no more bound by rituals than any other child — until around the age of ten, when I began to play tennis competitively.
I showed promise, and within a few years had reached national level. There was talk of my going to an Australian tennis academy, but the better I played, the more I seemed to lose my nerve. I would be close to winning a match when a thought would come into my head that I wasn’t going to be able to throw the ball up and serve. I would tell myself that if I won the next point, I would win the game, but if I lost it, I was finished.
These panic attacks — which I now know were the mild beginnings of OCD — were enough to take away my greatest childhood pleasure — playing tennis. Instead, I went to boarding school, where I made friends easily, but flunked exams. Again, when the pressure was on, the thoughts would come: “You can’t do this.”
I left at 18, became a ski bum and went travelling. En route, I remember seeing an Aids poster in the mid-1980s, when the disease was at its most anxiety-inducing. Immediately, despite the fact that I had yet to sleep with anyone, I was convinced that I was HIV-positive.
My travelling brought me to London, where I worked as an assistant in a Montessori school. I met Rob, a lawyer, and life seemed good, but as I reached my mid-twenties, I knew my behaviour was becoming more extreme. For weeks I could be fine, then there would be stages when I was convinced that I had left the iron on, or the stove — and I might have to check them ten or more times before leaving the house. I was forever washing my hands, and I couldn’t understand how other women could go in and out of a public lavatory within minutes, when the same process would take me as long as half an hour. From the moment I entered, the fear of contamination was all-encompassing. I had to be so careful about touching the door handle, the flush, the seat. With pincer fingers, I would use toilet paper to wipe every surface. By the time I exited, I would be exhausted.
Rob picked up on none of this — not because he lacked powers of observation, but because part of the nature of OCD is that those affected are obsessively secretive. When I was 28 we married and I became pregnant. How could I possibly tell Rob of the irrational, but utterly convincing, thought in my head: that he was not the father of our baby?
My OCD was driven by the things that mattered most to me. As a child, it was my tennis; as an adult, it was my children. All I wanted was to be a loving mother, and so it was that the birth of my daughters (now aged between 10 and 4) triggered the worst phase of my illness.
Any mother-to-be has a heightened sense of awareness about protecting her baby. Not only could I not bear the smell of petrol fumes, I couldn’t go to a petrol station for fear that they would kill my child. I still worried that I had Aids and I developed a huge problem with food.
When weaning my second and third daughters, I would fastidiously prepare fresh vegetables, but then get it into my head that I hadn’t sterilised the bowl enough and throw the whole lot out. I would spill some oven cleaner on my jumper, which then came into contact with one of their nighties. I would wash the nighties, but then become obsessed that they were still tainted with harmful chemicals. The only option was to place the nighties in the bin. I genuinely believed that if I didn’t carry out such rituals, my children would die.
My most tortuous dread, however, was that I would murder them. These thoughts came not from any sort of inner desire but from my reading, for example, a report about a woman in Minneapolis who strangled her children. Maybe two months later, I would walk into one of my daughters’ bedrooms, see a dressing gown, recall the report and think: “That’s you. You are probably going to do that.” And then “It’s going to happen tonight.”
Every night, before I put the girls to bed, I would remove the dressing-gown cords, place them in a bag and tie it with maybe six knots. I believed that I was going to kill them in my sleep, and the only way to stop myself was to make those cords unobtainable. I had a similar problem with razor blades, which I would hide in my cosmetic bag and put out of sight.
By the time our fourth daughter was born, these thoughts — known as ruminations — were coming not just daily, but sometimes hourly. On one level, I was still functioning normally. I had to — if I disclosed what I was thinking, I was surely going to end up in prison. But inside I believed that I was turning into a monster. There were moments when I contemplated suicide.
At some point a combination of sheer exhaustion and the madness in my head drove me to my GP, to whom I made a muddled confession. She diagnosed postnatal depression. The Seroxat she prescribed helped, as did the counselling with a clinical psychiatrist. But the thoughts still came and that holiday in Normandy proved a turning point. I returned drained because, in an effort to stop me drowning the children in my sleep, I had forced myself to stay awake.
I told my psychiatrist what had happened and asked him if I was psychotic. He said that I wasn’t, nor was I going to harm anyone. He gave me a diagnostic questionnaire. The first question was: “Do you believe you have Aids?”
Learning that I had OCD was both a relief and a shock. There is a certain stigma about having a mental illness, but the knowledge that I was not going to harm my children quickly assuaged that. I underwent a course of cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT), which involved fortnightly sessions over about three months.
CBT gives you reality checks: so you think someone other than your husband is the father of your baby? OK, what was the colour of his boxer shorts? It teaches you to tackle ruminations head-on. Rather than struggle to avoid them, you invite them in. So now I look at the dressing-gown cord, and at my sleeping children, and instead of panicking and scooping the cords into a bag, I tell myself that I am not going to harm anyone. And the thought may say “Yes, you are” and that might go on for five minutes, but I now have the confidence to resist the thought until it disappears.
I took the decision some time ago to be open about my OCD. Talking about it raises awareness and reduces the stigma. When I tell friends and the mothers of my children’s friends, I invariably find that they are intrigued. Some cry and some laugh at my more ridiculous notions — but always with me rather than at me.
I would never be naive enough to describe myself as cured, but four years on from the diagnosis, my OCD has pretty much gone. On the rare occasion when a thought enters my head, I have the tools to deal with it. CBT has freed me to do what I wanted all along: simply to love my children.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,8123-1557369,00.html