My OCD - a fear of going crazy through sound obsessions
UPDATE: we have discussed Hattie’s experience in greater detail on our new YouTube channel - the video below!
Content Warning: OCD obsessions, anxiety, depression
By Hattie Butterworth
How to write about my most debilitating OCD theme is a question I have asked myself daily since being in recovery. I’ve known for so long how much I wanted to raise awareness for OCD, following the breakdown I suffered in 2020. Rose Cartwright, author of Pure, remains my greatest inspiration for having the courage to share. The truth is that my obsession is still difficult to talk about. Even though I have made tremendous strides, recalling the details of my suffering is hard.
I suppose I would call this obsession ‘fear of going crazy’, but I’m not sure that explains it properly. It encompasses a fear of schizophrenia, psychosis, a fear of losing control. Still, it goes beyond a fear. It has felt like ‘the start’ of severe psychotic illnesses many times- sending my mind into uncontrollable panic spirals, often lasting for weeks or months.
The last severe episode was the worst this obsession has ever presented itself. I have suffered with this fear since watching The Soloist, a film about a cellist who develops schizophrenia and ends up homeless, when I was around 14. But in the summer of 2020, it caught me completely unawares and became all-consuming overnight. I still remember when the obsession suddenly clouded my vision. I was sitting on my sofa and started to imagine I was hearing the ice cream van which, at the time, came around multiple times a day.
Convinced I was starting to go crazy I put my fingers in my ears, checking whether I could hear the sound inside my head. I didn’t think I could. But I wasn’t sure. All night I would obsess- was that the sound of the ice cream van? Am I going crazy? Or was it just a car going past? The feeling was one of disabling shaking, terror and helplessness. My mind would recreate the sound of the van in a way that is hard to describe. This is where the compulsions come in- I want to reassure myself, and you, that the sound I was obsessing over wasn’t actually a sound in my head, but rather an imagined sound or a ‘thought sound’. It turns out that my brain could make these ‘thought sounds’ very loud and incessant. I memorised the sound of the ice cream van so vividly that I thought about it all the time.
The next few days saw different sounds added to the obsessions, including sirens. If I left the house and heard a siren, I had to be able to see the source of it otherwise I would be convinced I was going mad. Similarly, another sound obsession became children screaming or playing. As soon as I heard a trigger sound, my mind couldn’t focus on anything else. It was as if that sound was the loudest thing in the world until I was sure I knew it was real. This was so exhausting and felt like the most impossible thing in the world to see an end to. Everything was distressing because I couldn’t escape the sounds. The more I obsessed, the more convinced I became that I was losing my mind. I stopped eating, sleeping, smiling or laughing anymore. I felt so ashamed, telling myself over and over that I was sure it would be easier if I actually was mad. I couldn’t believe the agony I was in could be ‘just anxiety’ or ‘just OCD’ because the power my mind and fears had over me was terrifying.
So the days went on and the obsessions continued. Are those noises real- is my sister on the phone or am I hearing voices? I started to obsess about my chewing and the sound of crunching- would I hear this crunching sound forever? I had a new fear that some sound I would make would stick forever. Many sounds I heard would then repeat round and round in my head until a new sound was found. If someone banged the door, I would repeat that sound, until a plate was ‘clinked’ and the plate became the next few minutes’ sound. Then I’d focus on what either I or someone had said and repeat three words over and over. It was also focussed on music. I would repeat short phrases of songs in my head, similar to stuck-song syndrome, but completely relentlessly.
My obsessions were also around delusions. Was I delusional? The obsessive delusional thoughts came so quickly- what if my neighbour is out to get me? No, I don’t think that. I don’t really think that. Reciting ‘I don’t really think that’ is one of my biggest compulsions. If I have a thought about someone hurting me, or being ‘out to get me’ and will repeat ‘I don’t really think that’ in my head as my way of reassuring myself I’m not ‘going crazy’. This is one of the ones I still struggle with today. Another compulsion has been to show affection to the person I have had an intrusive thought about, just to convince myself that I don’t really believe it and that they aren’t really ‘out to get me, going to poison me, going to kill me’ etc.
We go back again to sounds. Was I really hearing it? Was I actually about to ‘go mad’? Were people around me safe? Was I safe? Questions I asked an OCD specialist on the phone after three weeks of suffering relentlessly with a new severity of this obsession. She said it was common for people to obsess in this way. I became angry inside. I had never heard of anyone explaining a similar obsession, nor had any of my hours of internet-reassurance-searching turned up a story like mine. I was convinced it was the start of psychosis, but she was sure that all I needed was ERP, Exposure Response Prevention. I knew what exposure meant and I hated the idea, because I had religiously avoided anything to do with psychosis, schizophrenia or severe mental illness for years due to my OCD. Part of the shame was that I knew my fear was keeping me from learning the truth, stigmatising people suffering with the condition I was so terrified of. I knew that exposure meant getting to know them, understanding them and be ready to accept their illness as a possibility for my future, and the future of pretty much anyone. None of us are immune to a psychotic episode.
I began on 75mg of venlafaxine and felt better within just two weeks. I started with a specialist OCD therapist and took on exposures. It was awful. He made me sit with my trigger sounds, focus on them and stay with them. He made me listen to ice cream van compilation videos- which do actually exist. I watched A Beautiful Mind- the most traumatic experience but very important for my healing. I spoke to and read about musicians who suffer with schizophrenia-related disorders and began following lots of schizophrenia awareness accounts. I watched schizophrenia simulation videos, walked around the grounds of mental hospitals to try and dispel my fears around mental contamination, and wrote out pages and pages of ‘I am schizophrenic’. This all felt like the most tremendous risk to me, but it has opened me up to a world of beautiful and strong people dealing with an illness, the stigma around which has subsequently caused me my illness. If I hadn’t believed all schizophrenic people were suicidal, dangerous and suffering from wild, incessant hallucinations, I don’t believe my fear would have been as strong as it was.
I am still struggling with this obsession, but I know how to challenge it every day. I am comfortable with the unknown and with accepting how little I truly know of my future. People close to me often question why it is that I continue to expose myself to content which makes me uncomfortable, even now I’m largely recovered. It is because I want to remain vigilant. Exposure is something you need to work on, like a muscle. It is also because my fear has surprisingly now caused me to be very interested in psychosis and wanting to advocate for those suffering with it.
My extreme fear has led me to love people with schizophrenia in a way that I might have never experienced otherwise. OCD is never really about the thoughts, but this obsession has taught me more about mental illness stigma than I ever realised.
If you are suffering from OCD or any other type of mental disorder, see our resources page for guidance and support.