Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #632714 in Books
• Published on: 2006-09-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 76 pages

From the Author
Alison's story begins at The Priory, a world-renowned clinic
for patients with mental health problems. She takes us back to the dawning
of her OCD, when she was bullied as a young child. We see how it gained a
tighter and tighter grip until harrowing and traumatic rituals took over
her life. Happily, like all the best stories, Alison's ends on an
uplifting note.

Alison now runs an OCD Support Group at The Priory and Judy Karbritz runs a
similar group at Edgware Hospital, Middx.

About the Author
Alison Islin is a devoted wife and mother as well as working for
the mental health sector.

Judy Karbritz is a writer with a regular column in Healing Today, the
flagship magazine for the National Federation of Spiritual Healers. She is
also a performance poet and has written for various journals, including the
Jewish Chronicle.

Excerpted from Get Out of My Head!: My Life with OCD by Alison Islin, Judy Karbritz. Copyright © 2006. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter 1
ROOM 13

We called it Dracula's Drive. The road down to The Priory was wide and
winding with occasional speed humps rising like giant molehills in a plush,
newly mown lawn. At night, the branches of the trees and bushes that grew
either side took the form of spindly touching fingers that blocked out any
moonlight.

I was huddled miserably in the back of my husband Brian's car one
freezing morning in January 1993. I was 32, a mass of obsessions,
compulsions and nerves. My skin was raw from where I'd picked it, my
eyebrows virtually non-existent from constantly pulling at them. All this
took place in public; when I was alone I tore out my pubic hairs to get
some relief from a devil I was about to face, here at The Priory.

As you will discover, my journey to The Priory was far longer and more
tortuous than that seemingly endless half mile down Dracula's Drive.

Like a rabid dog finally too exhausted to drag wildly at its chain but
now lying slumped on the ground, I too had reached the end of my tether. I
had no more fight left and finally admitted that I needed help. I had
confronted what I was, and no longer kidded myself that I was normal.

And now I was being voluntarily admitted into this sanctuary in the
hope that I could learn to live and function as any other normal woman.

What was normal? To me it was a woman in her 30's who could clean her
teeth, remove the day's make-up and empty a dishwasher. It isn't that I
didn't want to do any of these ordinary daily activities. I desperately
wanted to do them but I simply couldn't.

I felt I was in an ever-decreasing spiral, being sucked into a black
hole by my fears, obsessions and compulsions. By now it was affecting all
my family in ways you wouldn't immediately imagine. "Mummy washes her hands
over and over till they bleed and has to make breakfast in a certain
order."

I had to dress my children in a certain way, left sock then right
sock. Left leg went into trousers first and left arm had to go into
sleeves before the right. If they did it in the wrong order or if my
concentration was broken we had to start all over again.

I would make a drink before the cereal or toast. When I buttered the
toast I had to wipe the vestiges of butter off the knife so that I could
see the serrated edge.

Although, as you will discover, I have come so far since those days I
still have a need to carefully wipe my knife as well as having to arrange
the plates in order of my children's age. They say old age isn't for
cissies; in my opinion neither is OCD.

Customer Reviews

O.K
this book was a bit short but it is good for anybody wanting to know what a person suffering with OCD is going through.