Who We Are 

We are a group dedicated to the improvement of OCD treatment and awareness in Idaho. We are in the beginning stages of achieving this goal, and are currently focused on providing support for Idahoans with OCD. Eventually we hope to contribute to:

Sam's OCD Story:

My name is Sam, and this is my OCD story. My OCD began in earnest at the age of 12. At the time I was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, commonly known as the Mormon Church. At 12 I was being introduced to new church classes and expectations, and my sharply worsening OCD rapidly molded itself around my fears of religious unworthiness to devastating effect.


It’s still difficult for me to recall the details of what my OCD looked like. I can remember spending hours, virtually days kneeling and weeping in my room as I prayed for forgiveness - never feeling cleansed, never feeling like I had properly repented. I would obsess for the majority of the day, often all day, every day. My obsessions usually centered around having committed a sin, or even having wanted to commit a sin. 


My primary compulsion, besides reviewing and rechecking whatever incident had triggered my obsessions, was confessing my perceived sins to my bishop (a local religious leader within the LDS church), who also happened to be my father. Every day, sometimes multiple times a day, I would spend hours sobbing, wracked with emotional pain and feelings of terrible guilt, maybe confined to my room or pacing outside of my dad’s office - hour after excruciating hour. I would only have a brief moment of relief after I finally built up the courage to ‘confess’ my perceived sins, a daily agonizing catharsis which gave my OCD just enough satisfaction to keep me coming back, day after day, confession after confession.


My life passed that way for over a year, obsessively convinced I was perpetually guilty of horrific sins, full of evil desires and impulses, and compulsively confessing to my increasingly confused father. My paroxysm of religious fear, rumination, and paralysis was absolutely total.


It wasn’t long before my parents took notice of my strange behavior, despite my attempts to conceal my anguish. My mother especially took the lead in searching for a diagnosis, scouring the internet for answers and taking me to clinic after clinic for testing. No mental health professional or organization in Idaho could provide the answers she was looking for; she was told I was experiencing general anxiety disorder (GAD), or needed trauma-dependent therapy, or a host of other treatments which she was convinced were inappropriate. Eventually she took me to a clinic in Utah which correctly diagnosed me with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, specifically a subtype called Scrupulosity.


As my parents were preparing for the hugely difficult decision of whether to move hundreds of miles so we could access the nearest treatment option for OCD, the seemingly impossible happened. Without special intervention or sustained treatment, my symptoms began to go into remission. Although I struggled to explain it at the time, I instinctively knew the hold OCD had had on my mind for over a year had been broken, and another year later I was largely free from symptoms of OCD.


It took years longer to process the extent to which the trauma of OCD had shaped my mind and outlook on life. As I learned more about others’ experience with OCD I saw my story being repeated without end. I saw parents like my mom, desperately searching for answers with well-intentioned clinicians who were not equipped to interpret my symptoms. I saw families uprooted and disturbed by the emotional ravages of OCD, and the contrasting lightness with which popular culture treated OCD on social media and entertainment media, casual references which so obviously reinforced stigma and hurt people. I met and heard the stories of dozens of Idahoans and others who were living with OCD, and how frustrated they were by a lack of resources, education, and accessible treatment options. 


Although my symptoms have faded, my OCD story is very much ongoing. There exists a massive gap between the needs of people with OCD and their loved ones, and the services and support available. I am hopeful that sharing this story, and starting OCD Idaho, will help contribute to a better world for people with OCD. Together, by building a community from our stories and a movement from our efforts, we can make our world better. We can spare a parent a fruitless search for answers, can save a person decades of life made agonizing by unchecked OCD, and can help a 12 year-old kid somewhere in the world begin to realize why he feels so much fear - and why he doesn’t need to.