Johanna places the key on the lock, grabs the picaporte, open the fence and greet with a kiss.None of the four actions would have anything particular if it were not because, until very recently, they generated uncontrollable anguish: I felt that the germs hidden in a key, those transported in the hands that had touched a picaporte or in the breathAnd in the clothes of who greet her, they were sources of contamination that could kill her.
"There are people who think that having a TOC is fun and consists of doing banal things, such as ordering clothes by color. They have no idea what your life becomes, it is super disabling. The problem is not just what you do: one ofThe cruelest things that the compulsive obsessive disorder has is all you stop doing, "says Infobae Johanna, who is 23 years old and studies lyrics in the UBA.
The trigger - he knew a long time later - was a disease that had her grandfather when she was 16 years old."My grandfather was hospitalized and an intrahospital infection was grabbed, so the doctor asked that those who go to see him wash his hands well. I never knew if it was not to infect him something to him or to prevent him from spreading something to us."Johanna began to wash her hands more and more often and ask her family to find something that was logical: once they returned home, they didn't touch anything without washing.
When his grandfather was discharged, "the torture" did not end: "Everything that was in his house gave me the same fear that he and his supposed infection gave me."Hand washing became increasingly frequent and longer: "Each wash lasted 10 or 15 minutes. And if he left the bathroom and accidentally grabbed the picaporte with his hand, I had to wash me again."The hurts in the hands and dolls began to be visible.
While Johanna tried to hide what she was doing, Toc was already metastasis: "I was afraid of everything. I turned on the lights with his elbows and ran the chairs with his feet."Who interrupts her is Silvana, her mother: "At home I began to see something strange: I used a whole soap per day and all the time the kitchen roll, the toilet paper and the bottles of alcohol was over," she says.It was Johanna, who already wrapped the paper in paper to open them and disinfected to the light tapas.
"To do the homework I had to juggle.Folder leaves, "he says.Bathing was not the solution: "I washed my head and washed my hands. I washed my arms and washed my hands. I washed my ears and washed my hands. It could take an hour and a half to bathe."
Johana not only did but stopping doing: "I stopped going to the dentist because I didn't trust the instruments to be sterilized. Once, for example, I spent a week without washing my teeth because I felt that if I hurt my gum, I went toGrab a super infection and, as I was close to the brain, I was going to die. "And now that she grabs her guitar and starts playing and singing that this was also forbidden.
"I stopped touching the guitar because I was afraid that the metal ropes were rusty and cause me an infection. It was very exhausting: even if it was summer, I went out with a jacket so that nobody rubs me. Traveling in collective was a torture, I did not sit downAnd when I got home I had to get all my clothes. I got to wash my cheeks with soap after someone greet me, "he continues.
Johanna stopped doing what she was doing and replaced by the mimichand in his arm, but not by chance touched him. If they asked him what his hands had hurt, he said he had allergy. If he went to a birthday he just ate: his mind made a very close -up of the hands, the dozens ofHands, who grabbed fried potatoes from the same plate. The holidays on the beach ceased to exist: the image of thousands of feet stepping on the same sand, hundreds of tourists and children pee at sea, fired terror.
"When they came to fix the wi fi it was tremendous, I have panic to the Wi fi and all the devices used Wi fi and emit wavethat are not sulfated, "he lists.Not that she didn't realize that something was happening to her.
"I realized that what I was doing was totally irrational but if I didn't. Until there came a time when I started thinking 'well, or I'm going crazy or this can't be. "
Johanna still did not know that she had an obsessive compulsive disorder (TOC) of a subtype called "pollution.""The obsessions are the intrusive thoughts that are imposed (for example," this is contaminated "," this will infect me something "). And the compulsions are the rituals that repeat to lower the anguish and anxiety that those thoughts fire (wash up to the elbows).
As with drugs, "they need more and more," explains Gustavo Bustamante, a doctor in psychology and specialist in anxiety disorders."There are patients who start with a hand washing and end up washing with lavandina, washing the genitals with boiling water until serious injuries are caused. For them, think about kissing, having contact with saliva or having sexual contact is terrible, that's why they usually arriveTo single treatment, "he explains.
"He couldn't hug her," says her mother. "If you hugged her, she stiffened, you couldn't kiss her either."Johanna explains: "It is that there came a time when I was afraid of everything: to the light caps, to the sneakers and the boots (because of their proximity to the ground), to the doctors, not to mention the bathroomsPublic. To the vessels, to the cutlery, to the napkins, to the floor, on the air of the block through which I was walking. When I was afraid of the air, I endured my breathing and did not breathe again until it did not go through it. "
The world became smaller.And her bed - for being the place she entered with clothes that she had not been in contact with the outside - became the only place where she felt sure.Johanna spent a year and a half doing conventional therapy, which did not work.She until she read an interview with the singer Romina Vitale, author of the book touched: a young woman with a severe touch who had come to defecate in the bathtub so as not to have contact with her own toilet of her."It's that, what she has is what I have," she told her parents.A specialist confirmed it.
Effective therapy is called "cognitive-behavioral" and usually requires medication."First we begin to question those intrusive thoughts: is this real? Can this really get sick to me? Can I really get someone who touches me? Then, the idea is to expose you little by little to the things that give youfear and hold it, "she translates."I went with my psychologist to the Alvarez hospital to walk around the halls. We had to touch the walls, sit in the banks, go to the hospital bath, open the doors, wash our hands and then touch our face."There was once she did not succeed: she left the hospital running.
The psychologist was showing her that nothing happened when she played something."We also had to learn," says her mother. "When we didn't know what was happening to her, she became so bad that we did what we asked us: we washed our hands, I was going to buy her alcohol, more paper. Only later later weThey explained that we were not helping her, because we concretized the compulsion. What we do now is to show him that there is no risk: I open the remote control, we review the batteries, I grab them with the hand, and thus the anxiety is going down. "
As Toc is swallowing everyday life, what Johanna is recovering is that: day to day."When I open a door today, it does not mean the same as for another person. I will never forget when I could touch the bell of the collective with my finger. Or when I got to the sea again. The good thing about treatment isthat every day you can have little victories. And the feeling of power is enormous. "
Then, he says goodbye with a little hug.It is minimal, they are seconds, but it contains each of it: a body that is approaching, the smell of rinse cream that is breathed and the hand of Johanna that, now, is supported, phalanx by Falange, in the armunaffiliated.
