A WREXHAM teenager has shared how an online community has helped her to understand her mental health.

For Faith Dodd, 17, spending time in lockdown over the last twelve months has led her thoughts to run wild – which isn’t good when living with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD).

The Rhosllanerchrugog teen is one of the three quarters of a million people that are thought to be living with some form of OCD here in the UK.

She was diagnosed with the condition at the age of 14 and had no idea what was going on inside her head until then.

She told the Leader: “Most people hear the term OCD and think of cleanliness and rituals, but it is so much more than just the physical things – for me, it’s a mental thing.

“If I were describing it to someone, I’d say my OCD triggers thoughts and images in my mind. My brain will just overcompensate as it tries to justify this irrational thought and that then bubbles up into anxiety.

“It has a strain when I try to form relationships with others. I’d constantly be asking for reassurance and become dependent on that as my ‘calming ritual’.

“It probably comes across as a bit annoying but when your mind is in that mode there’s nothing you can do to stop it going round and round. It is a short-lived way of pushing those feelings down for a little while.”

She said that in the last twelve months, coping with lockdown, it heightened her OCD.

She said: “Its definitely been a struggle and a lot of my friends who have the condition too. I’m lucky that I don’t have contamination OCD – which is the type people would commonly know as OCD through hand washing and cleanliness rituals.

“For me though, it was having a lot of down time. When you have a lot of that on your hands all at once that’s when the overthinking happens.”

Now, the Coleg Cambria student is one of many ambassadors for the charity OCD-UK, a network of support for others living their lives with the condition.

She explained to the Leader how she came across the group – funded by Children in Need – after being told about it by a friend who also has OCD – and called it a ‘lifeline’ for herself and many others.

The group have messaging platforms to help one another with day-to-day life or just to just to speak with each other socially.

She said: “I signed up as a way to take back control and not let OCD run my life.

“It’s an amazing platform that allows us to connect and share things with one another that we, as people with OCD, know what can be helpful. People share stories, poems, pictures and we can just chat too – its just a really great platform that allows us to express ourselves.”

You can find out more about OCD-UK by visiting their website, www.ocduk.org.