Six Years After My OCD Diagnosis, I Can Have Knives In The House Again.

A stranger at a party was telling me a story about his bike getting stolen, but all I could think about was the knife on the table behind him in my friend’s kitchen, where they’d been cutting limes for beers. It had been left on the cutting board and it terrified me. Even as a friend nudged me to pay attention, I couldn’t get past the potential weapon lurking over his shoulder.

Recently, I had developed an intense phobia of knives completely out of nowhere. Every time I saw a knife, all I could imagine were the bad things that might happen. What if I accidentally cut off my finger, or accidentally cut my partner? I became so afraid that I secretly threw out most of the knives in my house, leaving behind only the blunt ones.

At around the same time, I found a crowbar while out walking and I begged my partner to pick it up and throw it away so that it couldn’t hurt anybody. It was a few months later that I attended the party and had to leave early, exhausted by the fear brought on by the small knife on the counter. I had no idea that it would take six years of treatment and self-understanding before I would be able to own a real set of knives again.

As a child, I felt like I had to do the “right thing” at all times. I simply wouldn’t allow myself to make any mistakes. I was also highly afraid of germs and I couldn’t eat anything that I had touched.

This was exacerbated during anxiety-inducing times like the early days of high school, trying to find a job after college and a few months into my first job in the media industry. In my 20s, I began to suffer from intrusive thoughts like suddenly imagining a bus hitting me. They were very distressing and I was afraid that if I ignored them, they would happen against my will. While I had intrusive thoughts about all kinds of frightening events, the knife phobia felt like one that I could control, as long as I made sure not to use them.

After a few months of working for a major broadcaster, panic attacks took over and I would have to touch my face multiple times a day to make sure that I hadn’t suffered from a stroke. I desperately wanted to leave my job, but my boss didn’t want me to go ― the lack of control over my own life made me spiral even more.

My fear of rejection and perfectionism made my job in the media industry a difficult one to navigate, forcing me to take time off for a period when I was unable to leave the house. I had a particularly hard time when I worked in live news for six months. I couldn’t ever switch off, waking up at 3 a.m. full of adrenaline and ready to put out a live news broadcast. When I was offered an extension on my contract, I had to turn it down for health reasons, despite not having another job lined up.

At my breaking point, I had started going to therapy at 9 in the evening, as this was the only free time I had during my day. I was in my late 20s and I knew that I should have tried counseling earlier, but I was just too afraid. Despite the kindness of my therapist, after several months of sessions, I wasn’t sure that we were truly getting to the bottom of my issues. I couldn’t help but feel like I was missing something. I just knew that my brain was atypical, and always had been. While I had been diagnosed with anxiety and depression, I knew it was neither of those things.

As I spent much of my time at work, it made sense that my revelation happened at my desk, in the newsroom. While on a website about mental illnesses, I clicked on the tab for OCD and read through the symptoms for the first time. I realized that they described me completely, from the constant “checking” to the crushing sense of responsibility for everything that happened around me. The relief was instant and tears came to my eyes as I realized that there could be an explanation for everything that I’d been feeling since I was a child.

While I didn’t want to rely on “Doctor Google” for a diagnosis, it did make me reconsider my approach to my mental health and why straightforward therapy wasn’t really working for me. After changing jobs to be back in my home city, I decided to quit traditional counseling and go to a psychologist who specialized in phobias, OCD and trauma instead.

Once I’d been to a few sessions, it was no surprise when he told me that I did have OCD, as I’d suspected. By that point, I’d already researched and come to terms with it, so I began cognitive behavioral therapy with him in order to manage my intrusive thoughts. He was a kind man who used a whiteboard and marker pen to explain my brain to me. I believed him when he told me I could manage the feelings that were dragging my life off course.

CBT teaches people with OCD to challenge their thoughts and identify any patterns of thinking that are causing unhappiness or holding them back from enjoying their lives.

Over the time I spent in treatment, I gradually learned to look at my thoughts more dispassionately and with less judgment. Instead of believing that a bus would hit me, I would think of all the times I’d walked past one that hadn’t hit me. It made me feel less afraid that my thoughts would somehow “make” something happen, as I knew in my rational mind that wasn’t possible.

After about six months, I could function better. While my condition was well-managed, I might still have intrusive thoughts about accidentally hurting myself if I was tired or under a lot of stress.

After COVID, I decided to start a new career, one that didn’t provoke the same anxieties as my previous high-pressure jobs. I also managed to meet a wonderful partner during this time. When my boyfriend and I decided to buy a new house together, he asked if we should buy a knife rack for our new kitchen. I didn’t hesitate to say yes. As someone who has always wanted to learn how to cook better, it has been game-changing to have functioning knives in my home again.

I had a good reason to cook, as I was pregnant with my son when we moved. It was important to me that he would have healthy meals and unconditional love.

While I had big ambitions, real-life parenting was triggering and healing in equal measure, with some of my OCD symptoms threatening to return when my son was a baby. My life felt so out of control that it was difficult to avoid checking him constantly, anxiously watching his chest rise and fall while listening to his breathing. I went back to therapy to handle my OCD symptoms, but once I was less worried and getting more sleep, the symptoms went away.

Despite this upending of my life, the knife phobia never returned. I never thought I would be able to stop thinking about knives, or stop being afraid of coming across them everywhere I went, but my mind just doesn’t go there anymore. As I approach 40, I trust myself more and have better things to think about.

Even though I live a very normal life, it is still one that I feel unimaginably grateful for, as I believed I would always be plagued by fear and avoidance. Today I feel content to simply be able to be a parent. Living with a mental illness requires bravery every day. Now, I don’t just do it for myself, but for my young son, too.

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