Body Punishment

Author is a nationally award-winning columnist and author with a respectable publishing profile, particularly with essays on family dynamics and family health and recovery. Author’s candor about her OCD diagnosis and history of alcoholism, eating disorders, self-harming, atypical depression, and attempted suicide makes her relatable to fellow OCD sufferers who are seeking understanding for their own diagnoses. Such individuals usually suffer in private because of the humiliating nature of the disorder. Millions of people suffer from OCD, with symptoms ranging from mild to severe, and from merely frustrating to completely catastrophic. In addition, millions of alcoholics and other addicts have an OCD component in the physiological make-up of their addictions. The American public is often fascinated by popularized stories of certain OCD behaviors, such as excessive germ phobia, obsessive counting, or repeated safety checks, but most do not understand what OCD feels like to the afflicted. This book explains its development and destruction from the perspective of an insider who lives it every day. The healthy behaviors that the author learned to practice in order to manage her OCD may be of help to others seeking means of managing their own.