#let's jump back into the book that took me 4years to read

[watercolouredpoet]

Philip Pullman in conversation with Michael Sheen - Penguin Random House...

Now that is simply unfair... The most important author of my life and my current obsession just chatting away.

Oh how I wish I could be a fly behind the scenes of this relationship...

Meeting Philip Pullman is basically the most important thing I'd want to do, beyond being a parent or an author or anything. Just fucking hug the man and cry a bit.

[bipolarandocd]

Here I have wrote an insight on my own experience with obsessions and OCD

I once was told by my therapist that you can be addicted to anything such as drugs,alcohol,ciggerettes and believe it or not sex!

In the past years i have had many different obsessions/addictions that i didnt know how to control and i didnt realise i was addicted to certain things including becomming obsessed with one hobby then losing intrested after a certain time and then another different hobby comes along and i obsess about that.

When i have this main addiction at the time, i can not stop thinking of the subject. for example i suddenly had high intrest in baking cupcakes! i hate cooking and i never thought id become intrested in baking cakes at all. I researched from how to bake to what ingrediants i needed and apliances to be able to bake. everytime i was googling and researching and watching youtube videos on baking cakes i was feeling a high energetic feeling, like i was buzzing and i couldnt stop thinking of what i want to do with this hobby. i was up till late at night losing sleep constantly obsessing over baking cakes. Pay day come and that was it, all my money went on what i needed to buy to bake, and i started to bake for couple weeks and spending money on this intrest without thinking of the consequenses of having to pay bills ect.

I was feeling good i had adrenaline and was happy but the same time if i didnt act on this urge to spend on this hobby and act on it id feel aggitated and restless! i had no control how to stop the urge! i was ADDICTED.

After a little while maybe a month later I lost all intrest in baking! id wasted time and much money on something i no longer had intrest in. the high feeling the buzz and adrenaline had gone.

Another day comes and again another addiction/obsession comes along!

this time its art and crafts, im definatly not creative and never had intrest before but once again this pattern like the baking comes along and the high feeling buzzing and adrenaline is back for the arts and crafts, money wasted and time because again after a while the intrest goes.

Iv had many obsessions such as joing the gym, learning to play piano and then guitar. wanting to become a councillor/mentor even studyed at home and passed the course for councilling yet again after time i didnt want to become this!

Items iv also obsessed about and had strong intense urges to buy whatever it was i had to buy to keep the feeling i had inside to make me feel good. its like a drug, something i obsess about was keeping me high and excited and i had to act on this to keep the good feeling.

I was even once addicted to dating sites! i was getting adrenaline from joining up and making profiles to searching people and messaging. i couldnt come off the applications and i could not stop the urge to search the profiles and messages, this took over alot of my time and i didnt understand why this was happening and why i was feeling a good adrenaline over dating applications. This addiction took a long time for me to stop and realise it was the longest obsession i had. i still dont understand how this become an addiction.

I now somehow understand how people who are gambelers feel and have no control how to fight the urge to not step foot in the bookies.

When you dont act on the compulsion towards the obsession then your going to feel awful, aggitated, restless, angry and feel your going to lose your mind. its all you think about, theres nothing else you want to do and its impossible to concerntrate on anything else other than wanting to go into the bookies and gamble! its not just the feeling you believe you will win, its the feelings of adrenaline and intense high feelings of happy and excitement from walking thru that door to placing the bet and waiting for the outcome, but when you lose of course you are down, you lose money and are overwhelmed with guilt! the same feelings i get when i dont act on something i obsess over or addicted to.

Paranoia become a problem for me and its an uncontrollable and disturbing thought I have that is intrusive and I know I wont act on this thought but the feeling I get is intense and impossible to stop the thought and I start to avoid doing things to stop being scared. Standing at the train station waiting for my train to arrive and I see ahead its arriving and my mind instantly pictures myself jumping in front of this train and I'm confused and petrified of this thought and scared but also distressed because I know I wont act on this and I'm scared to look at the train coming towards me so I look away until its stopped! have a fear of sleeping because if I do I believe someone will come into my home to come upstairs to my bedroom and attack me, the longer my eyes are closed my mind visions someone getting closer and closer to me, once I open my eyes this vision is gone and I'm safe.

I have a son aged 14 also with ocd and paranoia and his feeling controlled by his thoughts to do actions he never did before. At at young age around 4years old he would ask for help to put his shoes on and I'd attend and grab the right shoe to put on for him and in a sudden moment he would scream, beg and beg for me to put the left shoe on first, I never understood why. I'd ask why and what's wrong and ask him to calm down because he was extremely aggitated and stressed but, once I changed the right shoe for the left his response stopped and was calm and I could see the change how relaxed he was. This went on for months and I thought 1st he was just trying to control me and want to get attention when in fact he didnt have control of himself for this and it was a behaviour from his OCD that took me a while to realise!. After maybe one year this shoe problem having to be the left put on first stopped but, then come another pattern and thought in his mind that again took over not just him but took me in too.

Night time was bedtime story, we sit together in my sons bed and I'd open the first page and start to read aloud to him. A few pages in I'd start to read the page for my son to suddenly become very aggressive and tell me to read that sentence again because it's wrong, I re read the sentence in the same tone I did before. Again with aggression and crying he beg me to repeat and said it's wrong how I said it. After having this problem many times eventually i said the sentence in a way that calmed him down and made him relax and i could continue the book. It wasnt until after researching and seeing his doctors this was all OCD behaviour in which if I didnt say the sentence in a certain tone then he would feel uncomfortable and have to force me to re read it for him to feel safe!. Never did I think this would be an OCD problem but it was. Night time bedtime stories was very difficult for us.

After sometime this OCD pattern with my son vanished but, another appeared. Once I tuck my son to bed and kiss him good night I would walk away but then he would suddenly shout to me to touch the top of his duvet! Now bare in mind on this time I thought OCD was about cleaning hands or things in order so when I'm having all these orders from a 4 or 5 year old this is looking like he wants control over me and to do what he wants and if I dont do it he will go crazy!

To keep him from being angry and crying fter refusing to do what I'm ordered to, I'd do what he wanted so I'd turn back towards him in bed and i would do what he ordered to tap the top of his duvet. Would you believe just by doing this demand he stopped suddenly crying and being angry to being able to lay down and relax.

Can you see here theres a pattern of not just my son being distressed but I am too because I didnt know what this was about and I'm told by others his trying to control me but as a mum I had something telling me it's something more but what?!

Il never forget the time my son would arrive in the evenings from being with his dad the weekend friday to sunday. Around 7pm sunday evenings every week my son would arrive back home in his dads car straight to the front door.

I'd hear the car arrive and I'd open my house front door before my son got out the car. Well this started to become a problem for my son because he wanted to knock on the door before I opened it! Why? I asked him and my son couldn't explain the reason but again become angry, hitting me, shouting, crying and begging me to shut the front door and let him knock. In this time I refuse to feel controlled and said "no". But there was no calming my child at all. He was going red in the face, shaking, and very very aggitated. What else can I do but to now let him take control and I now close the door and let him knock first and I open the door after? Can you see the controll this OCD had not just over my son but now I'm involved and controlled by it.

Either way I had no choice but to re do the task by closing the door and letting him knock for me to then open again. Instantly he again was calm and able to walk into the home! Again I'm shocked how quickly just doing that demand would make him change so fast and change.

Now by my own experience and understanding through research too after many years and I had little knowledge of OCD but these behaviours from myself and my son wasnt what I expected and have learnt that this was OCD.

We see the behaviour first and our compulsion to act on what we feel at the time of what our thoughts are telling us and having to have no control over this and noone to understand what was going on inside our minds but, noone knows or understands the feelings what we have and the intense anger inside ourselves and as much was keeping our attention and distract us from other things to have no choice but to act on this feeling and do the compulsive behaviour to make one feel safe and secure and comfortable in ourselves.

Not only was my son being controlled but so was I

OCD has come to us both in diffrent forms and mostly in times of stress or anxiety. Also it manages to change from one obsession to another. And the compulsions change .