OCD made me so scared of the outside world I couldn’t leave the house

For Alexandra Walker, 43, childhood trauma triggered deep-rooted fears that affected her every move and left her struggling to leave the house. Here’s how she’s learnt to control her obsessive behaviour.

When I look back at my childhood, I can pinpoint the roots of the anxiety that became an obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) so debilitating that it affected my work, my social life and even at times my ability to leave the house.

I grew up to be scared about the world because my parents were overprotective, wrapping me, their only child, in cotton wool and not letting me leave our house in London on my own until I was 15, which made me fear the outside world.

I now realise that my dad was emotionally abusive. He could be a really loving father one minute and then really angry and scary, like Jekyll and Hyde, and I was always trying to appease him.

One day when I was about 10, he became furious when I reached into the toilet to fish out an object I’d dropped and made me put my hands in a sink full of Dettol for 10 minutes afterwards. I just remember standing there full of shame, feeling I'd done something very wrong.

Fear of germs

Then at 15 I was hospitalised for several weeks with pneumonia when the antibiotics that saved my life gave me such severe gut problems that I couldn’t eat. Alone and scared, I didn’t know if I was going to die, and while I did recover, I developed an overpowering fear of hospitals and germs that might make me sick again.

As a teenager, fearful of germs, I remember obsessively checking towels for dirty marks. As a young adult, after gaining a degree and doctorate in maths, I got a great job in the civil service. But I couldn’t touch door handles or push buttons in lifts and would find ways to avoid shaking hands without being rude, carrying armfuls of notebooks so I could just offer a rueful excuse.

I’d always have the back-up of antibacterial gel in my pocket for the times it couldn’t be avoided, cleaning my hands under the table in meetings, hoping people didn’t think I was judging their hygiene levels.

But while I’d learnt ways to cope with my obsessive-compulsive behaviour over hygiene, I soon developed another deep-rooted fear – that an action or inaction of mine would lead to bad consequences for someone else.

Seeing danger everywhere

By now I was 28 and working in the Treasury. I lived a 15-minute walk from work, but the walk would take far longer as I couldn’t make it there without stopping every few minutes to attend to things in the street that could potentially harm someone. If I saw broken glass on the pavement, I’d get this sickness in the pit of my stomach at the thought that if I didn’t dispose of it, someone could injure themselves on it – and it would be my fault.

But the worries didn’t stop there. What if, after moving the glass to a safer place, someone still came to harm as a result? The fact that I hadn’t broken the glass made no difference – I knew about it and therefore I was responsible. All I could see was potential hazards out there and my brain just kept on sprouting new dangers.

Some days I would struggle to leave the house, paralysed by my fears, knowing that there were all those dangers out there, and the potential to harm other people. Once in the controlled environment of the workplace I could function much better.

Exploring my OCD mindset

Eventually of course I had to find a way to manage my OCD as it was seriously affecting every aspect of my life. At 23, I’d married Simon, the single most amazing person in my life and my absolute rock, and he’s always been willing to help me work through my fears. But I also worked with a counsellor, one of the ministers at our church, and she helped me get to the root of my fears and faulty beliefs.

We realised that the emotional bullying from my father and the sense of anxiety he’d instilled in me had given me heightened fear about the world in general, and my hospital experience as a teenager had left me with PTSD.

Through counselling sessions, gradual exposure to danger and acceptance, she helped me realise that Christianity did not make me responsible for other people, in spite of ‘love thy neighbour’. I remembered I used to pray as a child and my prayers included an unwieldy list – friends, aunties etc – and if I didn’t say the prayer exactly right, I’d have to go back to the beginning, or the prayer wouldn’t work, and they would come to harm. I now realise that having parents who fed my fears rather than helping give me perspective was what made me develop OCD as a way of making an unmanageable world manageable.

Covid catastrophe

Over the course of a few years, I got better at letting things go, knowing that the anxious feeling that was compelling me to do something would usually disappear if I just walked away. Coping with being responsible for teams of colleagues at work as I took a more senior role in 2013 was a significant breakthrough.

But then Covid came along to throw a spanner in the works. It was a perfect storm for both types of OCD in my life, because there was genuine risk everywhere, and germs were the big worry. You can imagine the impact being told we could seriously harm or even kill each other had on someone with a ridiculously heightened sense of responsibility for other people.

I was also hugely worried for myself that I might catch it, because of my fear of hospitals. Seeing those TV images in March 2020 of people in intensive care on breathing apparatus, I told Simon that if I caught it, I’d rather die than go to hospital.

In order for me to feel safe, everything had to be decontaminated, all food items cleaned before they went into the fridge and cupboards. Parcels from the outside world would be sprayed with antibacterial spray then sit there untouched for three days. It’s only very recently that I’ve stopped wiping food down.

At this point I was COO for a charity, and luckily for us, both our jobs made remote working possible, so we could stay germ-free. My employers knew I have OCD and I got a private diagnosis of ‘extremely vulnerable’ so our employers could understand that, for someone with a condition as powerful as mine, hiding from the world was the only option for us as a couple.

Even when it was allowed to see other people and eat out, I carried on shielding and eventually we moved to the Northwest Highlands of Scotland, realising we’re happier in a quieter place.

Breaking free

Yet, slowly and gently, my desire to do certain things began to outweigh my fears. I missed my friends and was willing to have them travel up to stay with us. Gradually I have pushed my boundaries and found I can cope with more. Last week I needed to see a GP and instead of doing it remotely, I walked into the surgery and was not worried about touching the door handle – it doesn’t sound like much, but for me it’s a breakthrough.

I’ve now trained in coaching and counselling, helping people to rebuild their lives after going through great difficulty. Whereas it was a monster before, my OCD is now like a troublesome little pet. I know that achieving this grand mission I set myself to keep the entire world safe is impossible, nor can I entirely protect myself from germs. And that’s no bad thing, because in fact I’m leading a pretty normal and happy life.

See www.damselnotindistress.co.uk

Read more

OCD made me think someone would kidnap my children if I didn’t check the locks (Yahoo Life UK, 9-min read)

What are the signs of OCD? David Beckham opens up about ‘tiring’ cleaning rituals (Yahoo Life UK, 5-min read)

As a mum with OCD, this is how I handle the Christmas overwhelm (Yahoo Life UK, 9-min read)