Perhaps the greatest lesson I have learnt from dealing with OCD is that most of our anxieties stem from the belief that we can totally control our lives. Many of us engage in a daily futile battle to seize control of every aspect of our futures. Step one in fighting anxiety is accepting that life is full of uncertainties, and although this can make us feel uncomfortable, it is a truth that we must embrace and learn to live with.

Uncertainty is the OCD sufferer’s greatest enemy. The slightest uncertainty about my future, my identity and the direction my life will follow opens the door for OCD to ask some terrifying questions which normally begin with the phrase ‘what if?’ What if when you leave your house tomorrow you will have a terrible accident and die? What if your choice to leave home and go to university is wrong and ruins your life? OCD thinks in black and white: decisions are either right or cataclysmically wrong, my life is either perfect or over, my actions or either correct or I am a bad person. OCD demands certainty, and it will deploy all sorts of scare tactics to try to obtain a life that is ‘safe,’ that involves no risks, or no changes that might cause anxiety. OCD is a child that is afraid of invisible monsters in the dark, that wishes to stay in the light where everything is comfortable and familiar.

But OCD becomes increasingly petulant in its demands. As we get older, we have, on the face of it, a great deal more control over our lives. We can make our own decisions; choose how to spend our time and what our priorities are. We can try new and exciting things and inevitably the move to university means making new friends and forming new relationships with the people around us. My OCD was not keen on the risks inherent to seizing these new opportunities, and one way I have been able to overcome it and to be able to continue with my life is to accept that I don’t always have to be in control of every aspect of my life, and that every decision that I make does not have to perfect. This has been liberating, and I think that there are many others in Cambridge, who deserve to be liberated from their own self-expectation.

I am a big supporter of people who get out into the world, who work hard to be original, inventive and to build their own futures. I am no proponent of superstition or fate. But letting go of control and stopping your battle to micromanage every part of your life allows you deal with stress and anxiety a great deal more effectively.

It has never been a harder time to be a young adult, and consequently our anxiety largely stems from the feeling that we aren’t where we should be, that somehow our lives are not matching up to the ideal that is created for us by external pressures and that we create for ourselves. In an attempt to appease the anxiety that screams, ‘your life isn’t as it should be’ we each in our own way try to meet the impossible standards of the rulebook that we have conjured for ourselves.

My attempts to appease the anxious beasts have been compulsive behaviours in response to obsessive thoughts. But in Cambridge, I see people around me desperately grappling for control in a number of different ways. Whether it is working excessive hours furiously in the library, restricting your calorie intake or exercising to the point that your bodies are aching and exhausted, it is important to question your motivation for this behaviour. That’s not to say that enjoying your work, having a healthy diet and a great exercise regime are not aspects of a well-balanced life. But when they become a means to gain a sense of control, to appease pervasive worries that you are not good enough, and that your life does not live up to impossible standards, this can be an indication that there are aspects of your routine that are being fuelled by anxiety.

The ‘Type A’ lifestyle is idolised in our current Anglo-American society. The internet is littered with posts about how successful people rise at 5.30 am having slept only for 4 hours, surviving on a diet of avocado, and finding time to squeeze a fitness regime around working solidly. During Cambridge exam term, notions of routine and order become almost fetishised. Rumours of ludicrous feats of productivity are exchanged in hushed tones in the café or the buttery; ‘have you heard about the third year who gets into the library by six AM?’ Apparently the lawyers at Trinity are only sleeping for 20 minute intervals in between completing tripos past papers with full marks.’

Before I had OCD I believed that if I did well in my A levels, and went to a good university everything would be wonderful and I would be happy.  That life ran along a smooth track of achievable goals and predictable life events. At no point did I imagine that I might develop a debilitating illness, that I would be considering not taking my A levels at all, that circumstances might arise that were somehow, completely out of my control.

And suddenly the things that had mattered so much before, that two per cent in my English literature exam, my performance in a badminton tournament, the opinions of my peers didn’t seem so important. Working towards good mental heath was my only goal, I focused on that, and let life happen to me. I still struggle continually with OCD thoughts that come from a sense of expectation and responsibility- that come from the mistaken belief that I am the master of my own destiny, that I must control everything from my tripos grade to my social group, with a sustained conscious effort. Undoubtedly there will be many people who disagree with me when I say that my experiences have taught me to let life happen to me, rather than to attempt to always take the steering wheel.

But acceptance of uncertainty, acceptance of the reality that my decisions are small in a universe of random and infinite probabilities, has helped to release me from the grips of stomach churning anxiety. My advice for this week, if you are feeling anxious, is to try loosening the reigns on your life a little, and conceding a bit of control. The stresses that loom large might suddenly look a little smaller, and something amazing might come of the time you that left unscheduled, unplanned, uncertain.