Daniela Barroso, 22, has been suffering from OCD since being eight years old
Daniela Barroso thinks she has had almost every sub-type of OCD over the years(Image: Daniela Barroso© SWNS)
A woman with OCD was unable to leave the house for three months and was convinced that she had pushed someone off a bridge.
Daniela Barroso, 22, first experienced symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder at the age of eight, when she would wash her hands up to 30 times an hour.
Her symptoms worsened as she grew older and in November 2024, she developed intense intrusive thoughts, becoming constantly convinced she had caused harm to someone or said something awful to a friend.
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To try and ascertain what was real, Daniela began recording every moment of her life, including going to the toilet, but she still struggles to believe the footage is real.
Daniela, from London, spent hundreds of pounds buying a new toothbrush after every use and didn’t eat a proper meal for weeks, as she felt the food was “contaminated” or dirty.
Daniela first experienced symptoms of OCD at the age of eight(Image: Daniela Barroso© SWNS)
Her condition is so severe that she has attempted to take her own life, hasn’t left the house since March, and she said she feels as though she no longer has a personality, as her OCD has completely taken over.
Daniela, who runs a business making custom phone cases, said: “I get constant intrusive thoughts; I don’t know what’s real anymore. I haven’t left the house since March.
“Every time I leave the house, I convince myself I’ve said something terrible or I’ve pushed someone off a bridge. I started recording everything, even going to the toilet, but then I wouldn’t believe the recordings.
“At one point, I’m convinced I had every single subtype of OCD.”
Daniela’s OCD, which is a mental health condition characterised by compulsions and obsessive thoughts, would leave her washing her hands so obsessively that they bled.
“I would wash my hands 20 to 30 times an hour and would go through up to three bottles of hand sanitiser a day,” she said.
Her concerned mum took her to the doctors, where she was diagnosed with contamination OCD, a subtype of obsessive-compulsive disorder, characterised by intrusive fears of germs or illness.
Daniela’s parents were asked to monitor her condition and hid the soap in their house, so that she could only access it when she went to the toilet.
This helped to ease her symptoms, but when she was 14, she developed religious OCD, and would have to kiss every statue of Mary and Jesus in her house before going out.
Daniela says she gets constant intrusive thoughts and doesn’t know what’s real or made up in her head(Image: Daniela Barroso© SWNS)
She said: “It got to the point where if I left the house and forgot my AirPods or something, I couldn’t go back inside, because it would take me 20 minutes to kiss all of the statues.”
Eventually, her mum placed all of the statues in a box and hid them from Daniela, but she then developed an extreme hatred of the numbers three and six.
“I saw them as devil numbers; I worked in a supermarket, and I couldn’t go down aisle three or aisle six,” she said.
At age 18, in October 2022, she was put on sertraline, and in December 2022, she began having CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy), and exposure therapy, which really helped her symptoms.
“The therapist would make me go down aisle three; it really helped,” she said.
After just three months, in February 2023, the sessions, which were paid for by her work, stopped, and she also stopped taking her medication, as it was giving her migraines.
This caused her condition to deteriorate again, and she began to smoke and drink heavily, because this caused her symptoms to calm down.
In November 2024, Daniela said that out of nowhere “everything came crashing down” and she began having constant intrusive thoughts and would text her friends all the time to ask them if she had said or done something wrong.
Her symptoms became so unbearable that she began to self-harm, and she attempted to take her own life. She dropped out of university in December 2024, moving back in with her parents and became unable to leave the house.
Doctors put Daniela on different antidepressants, which she said did nothing to help her condition.
“I was just taking a pill and hoping that I would magically wake up one day and be normal again,” she said.
Throughout 2025, her symptoms worsened to the point where her mum had to stand outside the toilet to make sure Daniela didn’t do anything ‘bad’ whilst she was alone.
“I couldn’t do anything myself. I couldn’t cook a meal because I would convince myself I’d put bleach on my food, or I’d sat on it, so I had to put it all in the bin,” she said.
Daniela’s OCD has caused a massive strain in her relationships with family and friends and has left her unable to sleep, as she is convinced she will sleepwalk in the night and do something terrible.
“I feel like I don’t have a personality anymore because this has taken over my whole life,” she said.
She is currently on the NHS waiting list for more therapy, but hasn’t heard anything since November.