Description

By Sandi Sawyer

ISBN: 978-1-84991-673-8
Published: 2011
Pages: 37
Key Themes: Mental Health, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Recovery

Description

OVERCOMING AN OCD, is a story about the author and a few of her friends’ battle with OCD.
This story has some interesting conversations between the author and her friends as they discuss their individual OCD.
Sandi Sawyer makes no claims that her cure will cure anyone, however, she sincerely hopes that everyone who reads this book will benefit tremendously from it and that it will help people to understand OCD sufferers.

About the Author

Sandi Sawyer, born May 21, 1949 had a long and tough battle with OCD before she finally invented a cure. For years she didn’t have a name to associate this behavior with, so she thought that she was crazy, even though she wasn’t.
It wasn’t until she and a few of her friends formed a regular group discussion and used the idea that she came up with, that she, along with most of her friends were finally free of their OCD.
Sandi’s friends who weren’t completely cured are happy to be left with only one annoying habit that is almost cured.

Book Extract

My fears really began after seeing a rat in our bedroom when I was pregnant with my first child. I was terribly afraid of rats and mice and I’m still afraid of rats; and I’m not especially fond of mice either.
Anyway, when I saw the rat I put one of my hands on my stomach and the other one on my mouth as I let out a scream. I suppose that’s a natural reaction for anyone that’s afraid of rodents, or terribly afraid of anything.
A few days later I remembered what I had heard my mother say about marking unborn babies and became horribly afraid that my baby would be born looking like a rat.
The rest of my pregnancy was a nightmare. I jumped at every little noise and continuously looked for rats and mice as I walked from one room to another.
Brad put out traps and rat poison, but my fear of rodents remained the same.
A lot of days Brad would come home from work to find me on the kitchen table, or in bed, afraid to get up because I had seen a mouse or a rat, or thought that I seen one.
As I look back on my pregnancy, I can honestly say that I don’t know how I kept from having a complete nervous break down.
I know that Brad went through a lot, dealing with me and my fear of rats, but he had no way of knowing the private hell, so to speak, that I was going through. I would have traded places with just about anybody that was normal – anything to relieve my troubled mind.

My fears went from marking my baby, to fears of things that I had never before thought of being afraid of. I became afraid of my dreams, and even began trying to predict my bad dreams, thanks to learning how from listening to my mother’s and grandmother’s conversations when I was a child.
It wasn’t long after I began predicting my dreams that I wished that I had never listened in on adult conversations when I was a child.
I learned a lot of useless stuff when I was a child, but learning the way I did helped me later on with my children. I learned from my own behavior that children can be sneaky, and that they will learn bad stuff quicker than they will learn good stuff.
Anyway, I learned from listening to my mother and grandmother that to dream of a wedding meant that someone in the family, or someone close to you would die – possibly within two weeks.
A bird flapping its wings on a window of your house also meant that someone you knew would die – usually someone in the family.
Dreaming of yourself, or someone you knew wading in muddy water or getting muddy meant that you or they would soon be ill.
Dreaming of crying was supposed to be a good dream, however, dreaming of smiling meant that you would soon be crying.
Dreaming of angels also was a sign of death.
Dreaming of a white horse meant death, but dreaming of a black horse meant severe trouble.
Dreaming of fire meant anger in the family, or for someone close to you.
Dreaming of dark clouds also meant trouble in the family, or for someone close to you.
Dreaming of hound dogs or cocker spaniels or other mild mannered dogs meant peace would come to the family soon. I always wanted to dream dreams of that nature since I loved animals – especially dogs.
Dreaming of white bedclothes or hospital beds meant that someone in the family or someone close to you would be sick and probably hospitalized.
Dreaming of anyone dressed in dark clothes was a bad dream and usually meant death.
Dreaming of angels was supposedly a sign of death.
I dreamed quite a few dreams of angels, which kept me afraid that my baby would be born dead.