I used to touch everything in my room 'that had a bad omen' and shut my curtains multiple times 'to stop my family dying'... this is my life with OCD

By SOPHIA STANFORD, NEWS REPORTER Published: 20:37, 29 July 2026 | Updated: 20:59, 29 July 2026 As a child, Natalie Altman would spend an hour before bed touching items around her room that she felt correlated to a bad omen – all to keep an inevitable sense of doom at bay. With her Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) centred around death, she believed to her core that her loved ones would pass away if she did not complete her extensive 'checking' routine, or would become ill herself. 'I'd have to shut my curtains multiple times, because if I thought of someone during it, I'd worry it meant they were going to hang themselves,' the 27-year-old told the Daily Mail. 'If I smiled or pouted in the mirror, I'd have to do it evenly on both sides of the face, or else I'd have a stroke on one side.' Enter adulthood and Natalie's paranoias about her own health would grip her so violently that she would visit hospital multiple times terrified she would be dying of an incurable disease – throat cancer, pleurisy, a stroke. And when doctors told her there was nothing wrong, the PR Account Manager felt compelled to get another opinion. One therapist even told her that her OCD was so overwhelming that she believed she would never be able to have a partner. 'Sometimes I sit on the train, and I feel like I'm cursed. I think "why are all these people not worrying about it? How are all these people doing their day-to-day life, and they're not worried about dying and other people dying?"' she said. Natalie Altman, 27, said she can't remember a time that she did not experience OCD relating to helath anxiety and performed elaborate rituals to keep her loved ones and herself safe Health anxiety is a subtype of OCD, a serious mental health condition that locks sufferers into a loop of 'what ifs' that begin to take over their life, driven by a fear of uncertainty and dominated by intrusive thoughts. Compulsively assessing yourself for signs of illness and a need for reassurance are common symptoms. From the age of nine, Natalie felt drawn to articles about ill health in newspapers, fascinated by the story but would then imagine the symptoms for herself. 'I had such a wide vocab at a young age about cancer, not because I was weirdly smart or anything, but because I was so fascinated with reading these awful stories.' At 15, Natalie became convinced that she had throat cancer. 'Every time I ate, my mouth would have this weird feeling - and I've had this with other various symptoms - but this one was so persistent,' she explained. When she finally was taken to see a doctor following repeated pleas, she was told she did not have cancer. But only a few months later, Natalie again thought she was sick, this time with pleurisy – 'I had never even heard of it, I just googled it and found it.' By the second time she went to the GP, she was referred for therapy for suspected OCD. Eleven therapists, two psychiatrists, hypnosis and schema therapy have all been pit stops along Natalie's journey to manage her OCD. 'I've been discharged from two therapists, because they said they couldn't help me anymore,' Natalie admitted. Worried that if someone doesn't reply quick enough 'something awful must have happened', another therapist had a pessimistic outlook for potential relationships. She explained: 'This therapist said that the level of anxiety I get about people, someone couldn't cope with it. 'I didn't deep it that much at the time, I thought "maybe that is why I haven't had a boyfriend".' But she soon met her fiancé, Aaron, who volunteered going to therapy himself to understand better how to support someone with OCD. 'I'll talk to my fiancé and I'll be like, "are you not worried about me dying? And people dying?" And he's like, "no, why would I?" I can't fathom it,' she said. In therapy, they spoke to him as though they'd be talking to Natalie, explaining what goes on in an OCD brain and 'tools to know how best to deal' with her obsessions. Despite a therapist saying her OCD would inhibit her from maintaining a relationship, Natalie's fiancé, Aaran, went to therapy to better understand her condition Natalie said she can't remember a time when she did not have OCD but highlighted that she had a happy childhood growing up in north London and is still very close with her parents. She said: 'Before bed, I'd always make my parents promise me they won't die, or that there would be burglaries. 'In the bunk bed I shared with my sister, I'd stand over her and watch her breathe to make sure she's ok. 'At nighttime, I'd regularly worry I can't breathe, and I'd message random people who I was barely friends with, who were still awake on Facebook, just being like, "are you awake?". 'I'd be so excited to go to bar mitzvahs and stuff when I was little, because maybe I'd be too tired to do my 'checking' when I get home. And I always have to do my checking. 'I just felt like I had to do certain things or something bad will happen if I didn't.' Natalie developed depression by the end of school – a common side effect of OCD, with up to 50 per cent of sufferers experiencing a major depressive episode at some point in their life. 'My thoughts would just ruminate so much… I'd have these awful thoughts about life and health and the point of life, because everyone dies. 'I was so worried about leaving school and getting older, and "oh my God, people are closer to dying", and then when I went to Uni, it was, "oh my God, everyone dies", and my depression got quite bad'. This depression ironically funnelled a new paranoia that she may develop schizophrenia. While studying at the University of Nottingham, she would cry herself to sleep every night, but Natalie was hesitant to tell her parents how severe her depression had become. 'We're so close, but I didn't want them to know… I didn't want them to, I don't know, be upset or anything,' she explained. 'I did try to get mental health support on the NHS at Uni, but the waiting list was so long, I just couldn't afford that help without parents, essentially, at that time in university.' What once felt like a doomed prophecy, Natalie said she has learnt to 'thrive' with the condition, hoping to prove she can still live a fulfilling life despite sometimes feeling debilitated by her thoughts Despite promising friends she was OK, one concerned pal insisted that her parents needed to know the extent of her depression so she could get proper help. While she was out on a date, they visited her parents and urged an intervention. The next day, Natalie came home and a therapist was quickly arranged who prescribed antidepressants. 'I felt like I couldn't see a way out and I went on it with the view of it being for 3 months, and then… I'm still on them,' she said. Coupled with schema therapy – a form of psychotherapy that identifies self-defeating 'schemas' or patterns – Natalie felt it was the first combination that 'properly touched the sides of my depressive thoughts'. However, when she tried to come off her medication slowly during a stable period, she was not aware that the medication was also in turn helping manage her OCD. Some months after her final pill, a sensation in her eye led her to spiral into a severe health anxiety episode. She begged her fiancé to take her to A&E for her 'brain aneurysm' and when he refused, she went alone – the doctors there confirmed she was healthy. Shortly after, Natalie left for a work trip to Australia where she had a headache and she 'couldn't think of anything else it could possibly be' but a stroke or a brain aneurysm. 'I paid to see a doctor there but the whole trip, I was giving myself symptoms of weird brain sensations,' she said. On her return, she saw her private doctor twice, her NHS GP, three pharmacists, and called 111. 'They all said I was fine, but I didn't believe them.' Blood tests and neurological scans ensued which proved she was healthy – 'I still didn't believe them'. Two days later, she returned to A&E and begged for another scan. Natalie said: 'Before the doctor did the scan, she said, "are you gonna believe me when there's nothing there?" And I replied "yep". 'When they told me everything was fine, I immediately thought "what if they didn't do the contrast right?" 'After that, I got an urgent referral to a therapist who said "I actually can't do anything because your thoughts are basically just too much at the moment". 'Then I got urgently referred to a psychiatrist, where I was put back on my pills. And when people accuse her of wasting NHS money? 'It's just so real in that moment that it feels like you need that resource. I don't do it because I wanted to take the p**s - I did it because it literally feels like you're going to die.' Nowadays, she uses her Cognitive Behavioural Therapy to 'control' her OCD better, although it still creeps in. She said she makes her fiancé say 'see you later' when he leaves the house and will wake him up throughout the night to ask 'are you okay?'. 'When I'm not with Aaron my OCD goes mad - if he goes on a work trip or stag, I am very stressed until he texts me he is awake,' Natalie said. She checks on when her parents and sister were last on WhatsApp when she first wakes up and will keep monitoring their status until they do. Before bed, she will text her parents 'best mother, best dad ever' and check them, as well as her sister, on Find My Friends. She then flashes her torch a certain number of times and sets different timers on her phone. 'I also put a different engagement ring on to sleep and I touch it six times, one for me, my mom, my dad, my sister, Truffles, my dog, and Aaron,' she added. 'Next, I have a physical calendar for the wedding and I flash lights at it or I worry that something bad will happen.' Sharing her experience on TikTok helped her find community – something she said she missed when she was younger, frantically trying to find celebrities who may have had a similar diagnosis. More recently, Sir David Beckham has come forward with his diagnosis that manifests as a need to arrange cans of Pepsi in pairs in his fridge, while Megan Fox, another sufferer, has said she has such a fear of germs that she'd wash her hands until they bled. While official statistics suggest between 750,000 to one million people in the UK are diagnosed with OCD, studies show that it takes an average of nine years for experts to spot it – which means thousands are likely falling through the cracks.  Natalie hopes that speaking so candidly about her compulsions will also educate others – for example, dishing out the phrase 'you're so OCD' often lacks the nuance behind it, Natalie said. 'It's never funny and I think people don't understand that OCD often comes with intrusive thoughts. It's so misunderstood. 'They don't know what it's like to have something in your head saying you have to do this or someone will die. 'I also think people don't understand that you can be a really rational person and still have OCD in your thoughts. 'It's more than just being scared of getting cancer, everyone is. It's so much more than that: it's giving yourself the symptoms, it's obsessing over it.' On the flip side, Natalie says that the silver lining of her OCD is that she expresses her gratitude to her loved ones at all times: 'I always tell them how grateful I am, how much I love seeing them. I don't believe in ever waiting for the right time to say it, I think you should always just say things… OCD makes me more empathetic.' What once felt like a doomed prophecy, Natalie said she has learnt to 'thrive' with the condition, hoping to prove she can still live a fulfilling life despite sometimes feeling debilitated by her thoughts. 'I always question, "why do I have this?" But then I remind myself I'm so lucky, and feel lucky I have access to resources. 'It's not stopping me doing anything in life. It's just… really annoying. But I've accepted it, I'll have it forever.'