Embarking on Psychodynamic Group Therapy for OCD

This week I attended the first in a series of assessments and preparation to join group therapy for a minimum of 2 years to combat by OCD. I met with a psychiatrist who specialises in psychodynamic therapy and leads the group I am to join.

His detailed consultation of my current symptoms of OCD was very unsettling but I appreciate that it’s the only way he can effectually help me. I have suffered with OCD for over 10 years before it was diagnosed. I rather frustratingly knew that something wasn’t quite right with me in times of stress but never guessed I had OCD choosing to believe that I was lazy, pathetic or just stubborn.

I have responded to group therapy well in the past but the sheer depth of the treatment I am facing now, not to mention the duration of therapy, is overwhelming. I also have to address the fact that I feel hopeless to some extent that I can be helped. After all, I have been like this for as long as I can remember. I concede in order to improve my quality of life and to achieve the things I want to in future I need to do this, no matter how unsettling and uncomfortable.

I am grateful for my friends and family who are providing me with encouragement and support to make such significant changes in my life. The last few months have been trying in terms of the amount of pain I am enduring from my endometriosis while I wait for a date for laparoscopy so things have no doubt felt bleaker than they really are this Winter.

However, the months of waiting are now over as this new year brings me new opportunities and hopefully relief. The group therapy I am about to undertake is no doubt the hardest thing I will ever have to do to counteract my OCD but if it makes me a sustainably productive member of the workforce then it will be worth it.