I am having the worst time. Its been just over a year and at this point I dont know if I have OCD, ADHD, anxiety or depression or anything else developing. All these things overlap one another and one moment i fixate on “that was an ADHD moment” “this is my intrusive thought/urge moment” “im feeling positive thoughts right now so i must be going through a mania” “i just over spent and wanna run from my problems” My life is chaotic, I fall asleep easily but staying awake and 3 am wake up calls is not fun. I do know that I want to get better. I want that positive glow! I dont want to feel like a stranger in my body anymore. I struggle right now as I hug my teddy in bed (years im 34 and snuggle a teddy haha), but one day I want and will look back and think dame that was a rough journey! You made it! 💚💜

i’ve been dealing with SOCD for 5 years and truly believe it has altered my life completely😀. i haven’t been properly diagnosed but the child therapist I had when i was in hs kind of hinted to me i had something more than just plain anxiety. i’ve also dealt with intrusive thoughts all throughout my childhood and as my family life got worse my anxiety got worse annnd i started getting more and more thoughts that wouldn’t leave me. I remember spending months not swallowing right and practically starving myself bc i kept thinking i was going to choke. i also rmbr spending months worrying ab death and dying EVERYDAY. it woke up with horrible anxiety and it was all i could think about. i can still rmbr sitting in my grandpas chair and just staring off and thinking “im going to die one day” “idk what’s going to happen” “is god real” “i don’t want to die” “what if there is no heaven” and so on. when the socd thoughts started i was 15. i searched around online for help and found reddit and i was like “omg yes finally people who understand and are going through EXACTLY what im going through.” finding that community and this app has helped me so much. anyway i had such a horrible time during my teenage years bc of all the intrusive thoughts about my sexuality, my relationship (glad that’s over), and some other things here and there. i was so so depressed and i felt no one around me understood how fucking awful i felt. i woke up everyday anxious, depressed, numb, and exhausted. when i started college i told my old therapist that even tho im extremely afraid of death i just didnt like living. i would cry in my car before class and just sob ab how awful i felt. although my mental health has gotten SO much better as time went on and the thoughts haven’t been as frequent im definitely not doing well. i am literally stuck. i’m still in college but i don’t know what to do with myself. those years of anxiety and depression have left me STUCK. im so much happier? and i can manage the thoughts way better but i don’t want to do anything. i only talk to 2 friends (literally lost so many great friendships), i RARELY drive bc im afraid ill die in a car crash (only to school and back), i don’t go out, i don’t ask for help at school, i avoid conversations, i avoid ppl in general, i don’t put in that much effort into school, i don’t have hobbies, i don’t want to do anything, i literally have the worst social anxiety now, im afraid of everything. i feel like the only reason im “ok” now is bc i’ve avoided literally everything. i’ve basically spent three years of my life doing nothing. i’m not happy with where i am in my life but im so scared to do anything. i miss who i was before all of this. i’ve been dealing with anxiety all my life and ik my childhood and early teen years made me like this. i didn’t know how to deal with the things i went through/saw as a little kid and i guess everything exploded in my teen years. but i want to be better i want to start LIVING. i’m definitely happier than before but im not living. what frustrates me is i refuse to do anything about it. i know a big reason why i don’t experience as many intrusive thoughts is bc i avoid everything 😭. ik what i have to do to get better and turn my life around BUT I WONT DO ANYTHING. idk how to explain this but its not laziness i feel like my body is exhausted. i think im just so traumatized from feeling so fucking horrible for so many years i just shut down ykwim?? i don’t have any libido, i don’t find ppl attractive, i can’t get myself to do the things im interested in (so many books r piled on my floor), i rot all day, i push off my responsibilities till the last minute, i can’t even get myself to go on a small walk. i don’t know where i was going w this but if someone who’s going through the same thing sees this ur not alone. i just needed to get this out. hopefully one day things will get better.

I want to get thought this weird horrible period, it has been horrible. I am doubting everything. I’m not diagnosed but when I look at my past I’ve always been horribly anxious and worrying about health, death and basically everything while suffering from major a lot of insecurities stemming from bullying and lately a lack of intimacy with my partner, Every time I think I’m on the way out, or see some light at the end of the tunnel my mind always pulls me back in. It’s torture. I’ve always been insecure about how I look and I find myself comparing myself at other males and it’s made my self esteem on the floor. I have a girlfriend and prior to this we had a future planned and talked about kids (we’re still young, but it felt so real), this all began to bubble when we stopped being intimate and the loss of my job. I don’t know anymore how to move on, every day feels like a chore. The intrusive thoughts telling me I’m in denial, constantly thinking about men I’ve felt insecure about their looks compared to mine wishing I looked like them plaguing my mind. The false attractions, prior to this i was comfortable in acknowledging good looking men. However now my mind takes this as evidence, every single thing in my past seems like some form of evidence. Not having male friends, the comparisons, being questioned about my sexuality from siblings. I’m sorry if this is reassurance, I am just needing to get some things of my chest. Every time I think about my first real attraction or girls I found pretty/attractive or I liked my mind is like your in denial and then I feel horrible about thinking those thoughts as I have my girlfriend. I miss just being with my girlfriend and not having these thoughts and feeling horrible. I feel like a fraud and a horrible partner. I’ve tried to accept maybe, maybe not, but something always comes back. These 4 months have been terrible. I want to sleep without horrible dreams, I want to eat. I want to feel like myself again. Thank you to anyone who reads this. Hope you’re strong too.

So... I understand my anxiety but not OCD. I understand both but not in "my born this way world." I have done a lifetime of teaching myself I'm weird, goofy and different from the average accepted societal person. Why: because I've been teased and bullied all my life for not fitting the script. I have chose to be a survivor and not a victim because be a victim SUCKS! to me. Its a black hole that your cant alwaus climb out of, it leaves you dependant on someone happening by and someone that has a caring soul. In my world you're F'd if you wait for the latter version. So I mentally wired my brain to love me, accept those differences and pat yourself on the back for it. I learned to celebrate it and be happy with it. I nutired it and made it the beast that it is today. So if I truly have OCD, I literally, intentionally and purposely created it wishing me unknowing that it was not good. So, after all these years, the Corporate world says No. We do not have to allow this? I have never known it to harm or hurt anyone. So it's difficult to connect the problem? Anyhow, now I have learn, redefine and understand ME from a entirely new perspective. And that is my initial struggle, the other struggles, the other stuff, I have being dealing with and its nothing new to me. Buy telling self that it's a mis-fire is strange and hard for me to accept? It confuses me still. I have always seen OCD as a autistic behavior. I did not then and still do not perceive autism as a mis-fire or something wrong or unacceptable? Still this pwrplex me. When in school I studied mental health and deep dived. I enjoyed it, learning it. I guess I don't view mental health as psychotic or crazy. Maybe because I grew up in a home of an X military father who had flash backs a lot and we just played the parts until it wasn't fun anymore and my older siblings and mother got tired of dealing with it. I never felt afraid or threaten, just accept that is how he was. Every now and then he would start playing out a experience. I am a curious individual so I thought it was quite interesting to know what happened. Otherwise, he sit quiet all dad, like no one else was there and chain smoke one cigarette after the other. I remember my mom complaining that his cigarette then next his cartoon of cigarettes cost as must as the food they had to keep in the house. I thought it was an exaggeration until I good older and understood it from an adult point of view. I think when it first click, I was outside play tag. hide and seek or something. Me and a another girl run under the window he usually sits at to low smoke out of. We run through all pile of cigarette butts and she said, "dang, where did all these cigarette buds come from, it's like a gigantic ashtray. In that moment, I didn't know. But when I looked up I realized that was my dad's window. I think that was the first time I realized how much he was smoking and why my mom had said that years ago. Anueay, I do understanding the behavior of a persistent, uncontrolled behavior that does not cause a resolve but instead increases the non-productive obsession that you're reacting to which creates the necessity of a compulsion help you deal, cope, or adapt in a way you can tolerate it. This increases the stress responds, the anxieties and/or flight or flight chemicals that are being produced. We react mentally and order to feel "ok," we have developed something that make us feel safe, better, or accepting of whatever our minds are telling us that is wrong, cannot do, or adding shit that is not necessarily true. Hear, if I have intrusive thoughts most of the time they are true. I go into a response of anger, then protection. Then the replay keeps me stuck because i have been forced outside of my safw zone or my protection has being tampered with of something that makes me feel feel the andrinaline is neex becauseI about to go to battle by all means necessary. I think that is how it is happening for me. Anything else is not connecting? My broken trust bonds => morphed into F it just don't trist nobody. There is no benefit of doubt. Let them prove they can be trusted until they can not. But... ? I say what is wrong with that? It has always washed away the BS people that I don't want to be bothered by. That works for me???... Yes, of course, when I was young trust issues did interfere with things that it should not have. But I have learned to reconcile that with observation and analyzing my environment and the action of one's words versus their behavior. And now at my age today, IJDG2Fs if I can't trust you or not because I only deal with people as associates and it doesn't matter anymore. Now this pattern of thinking and believing may be all wrong but I have lived life my entire life in survival mode some say. And that adrenaline that is full in me, I have conclude, is my lifeline, my saving grace and why I have never been able to reduce the heighten response in me. I think, still learning... TBC But I'm open, I am here, and trying to rewire this "new" beast that is my bestfriend. When that Counselor helped me to understand that my intenssity of surviving has created this flight of fight heighten energy = anxiety. I had never viewed it to be the problem yet instead my personal instinctive ALARM. A protective system. This is throwing me off. Really off. Then there are some that keeps telling me anxiety is my fearing... what? No. I have literally not feared much of anything. A man once said to me, that I had a God complex. I said, No, Sir. I do not believe I am better or above anyone. I'm sorry that my confidence in my own self makes you feel uncomfortable. My cheerleader- motivation toward self has nothing to do with you persinally or any other person. Its what I do to keep pushing and NOYB. It's for me only. Please stop inserting yourself, I am not responsible for how you feel when I use my motivated confidence to get through shit. Please excuse yourself from my chapters. Anyway... Why do I say this. My protective energy... because I grew up rough, I've learned to protect self. I know I said I believe in a Higher Power, but when you are young, and about without parents. You tend to say to yourself, Well God ain't here, so what are you going to do? You can't wait for that pie to fall from the sky or you will die. Are you ready to die? And of course, I'd say to myself, "Not today." So, you then use that fight or flight as your strength to help save yourself, adapt and do shit yourself. No disrepect. Whatever it takes until that Higher Power say you're fine now. Relax. Vicious i was, I learned to hard way. And don't regret it. 🤷🏽‍♀️ I guess I'm here to learn how to be delicate and soft. He'll idk. Night, Nighy. Psss ... I had something else to say but it went in another direction. OCD ... ADHD ... 🤷🏽‍♀️