Reddit reviews Man Who Couldnt Stop

I'd skip theory books at the start, you'll have plenty of time to read them in depth. Go for books with personal accounts of something that inspires you or add up to you knowledge about a specific topic.

As for the book I recomend you The man who could not Stop: The Thruth About OCD by David Adam. You can get it here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Man-Who-Couldnt-Stop-Truth/dp/1447277686

Although Adam's a journalist I find his book quite rich in good information about Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Also, his personal account for the disorder is quite humanizing imho. I think it's a good book to understand better the disorder, but also how it is to cope with it. Give it a try!

I'm glad you found the information useful! Honestly, it sounds like when you gain full understanding of the nature of OCD, you'll feel much, MUCH better about yourself and your situation in general. It's rare that we can actually say 'you'll be pleasantly surprised!' in this community, but actually I think discovering the full truth about why OCD happens is going to be pleasant for you. You'll see how very common and explicable these thoughts are, and how they mean absolutely nothing negative about your personality at all (like I say, quite the opposite). You won't need to beat yourself up any longer or feel shame. There's nothing shameful about these thoughts. They're just a brain glitch that can be medically explained in a perfectly reasonable way (the neuroscience is quite fascinating, actually), and though they're terrifying to suffer from, they're in fact harmless. I hope you will work through any feelings of shame you have, and ultimately let go of them.

OCD is estimated to affect about 2% of the population, and the 'themes' we each get are often very similar, so there are probably several thousand people across the country experiencing unwanted OCD thoughts about harm, just as you did. And not a single one of them is going to act on these thoughts or become a criminal or a monster (or whatever else their OCD tricks them into believing). My own mother experienced horrifying OCD thoughts of stabbing me with a knife, when I was just a few days old, but since I now know OCD is harmless, I'm able to interpret that correctly and know that it doesn't say anything bad at all about her. If anything it's evidence that I was an extremely precious baby to her, and much loved, because OCD always attacks the things that are most precious and important to you. And thankfully she's felt able to be open about having these thoughts (OCD often runs in families, after all), after many years of keeping silent and treating it like a shameful secret. Her OCD thoughts were luckily just a temporary postnatal disorder and went away quickly, but still, there was no need for her to torment herself over these meaningless thoughts. It would be better to live in a world where we could all get proper help and information about mental disorders, so this doesn't happen.

And yes, I know several excellent book on this subject. Since it sounds like you'd benefit from reading the experiences of other sufferers and what themes of OCD they have, Lee Bauer's 'The Imp of the Mind' might help:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/cka/Imp-Mind-Exploring-Silent-Epidemic-Obsessive-Thoughts/0452283078/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1492079180&sr=8-1&keywords=the+imp+of+the+mind . It's a little out of date and lower on therapeutic techniques, but I'd still say it's one of the best for case studies and overall understanding. For better up-to-date therapeutic techniques on overcoming OCD, David Veale's 'Overcoming Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder' is one of the best, and for an accessible overview of the recent neuroscience, new treatments being developed, history and sociology of the disorder, David Adam's recent 'The Man Who Couldn't Stop' is excellent: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Man-Who-Couldnt-Stop-Truth/dp/1447277686/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1492080298&sr=1-1&keywords=the+man+who+couldn%27t+stop

I hope that you do find it healing to look back over your past and see how many behaviours stemmed from OCD. Please don't beat yourself up. Everyone here has been driven to do some utterly wacky things by their disorder, because at times we just. Could. NOT. Stop. Fearing the thoughts were true. I've said all kinds of bizarre things to friends and taken all manner of crazy out-of-character actions because of undiagnosed OCD. I'm lucky I only went undiagnosed for a year or two, so I'm far from the worst case. OCD can easily have you living in a tent in your back garden, naked and rubbing yourself with bleach, because it's got you convinced your entire house is 'contaminated'. The general public just has no idea how severe and convincing the delusions that OCD brings can be. And they are, to all intents and purposes, almost delusions. Usually a corner of your mind still remains rational and you're able to see that your fears are unreasonable, but the terror can be so overwhelming that you end up ACTING as if delusional anyway.

Hopefully you can seek treatment for the OCD and learn ways of managing it alongside the bipolar disorder now. All the best to you!