From Tortured to Almost Free

Book excerpt: From Tortured to Almost Free: A Psychiatric Therapist’s Life with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is the story of the author’s horrific struggle with severe OCD at a time when little to nothing was known about this macabre, debilitating mental illness. Honest, unwavering, and raw, the author takes the reader along as she struggles to make it through a day, a day in which ordinary things such as cigarette butts, classroom closets, and the starting of an automobile engine create terror. Twenty years later, this same author, now a therapist to others with this horrible disorder, is armed with knowledge and techniques and the realization that how OCD behaves has everything to do with the underlying beliefs one holds of oneself. Changing these beliefs often is essential for getting well. Sharing with her readers all she has learned, the author provides a hands-on course in what gut-wrenching, severe OCD looks like and what it takes to get well. Essential reading for those who struggle with OCD and for all who are determined to help them.