This post is just serving as a journal entry for me, so don’t feel the need to respond, but if you do, thank you! Today was an incredibly difficult day, I have into compulsions again, I hate when I do, my brain convinces me that it’ll help me but it leaves me feeling like absolute garbage. Today was a bad day, even though my mom didn’t go to work today, which usually makes me happy because them I’m not home alone all day. She was taking care of my step dad, he had really bad heart burn last night and apparently couldn’t breathe, I think it’s called GERD, but he seems better today, but most of her attention was focused on making sure he was okay. I hate how selfish I feel, even though he actually needed help and watched today, I was still wanting to talk with my mom and have her attention. I hate OCD, I used to be able to just hangout in my room all day and not have to constantly be around my mom. But my anxiety has been flaring so much. POCD, Real Event, and False Memory are a horrible combination. I’m still terrified of what I saw weeks ago earlier in November. It’s left me mortified and scarred. No amount of reassurance has been able to help me, not from the suicide hotline, not from my mom, and not from my friends. I feel horrible and don’t know how I’m going to make until the end of the month. I just need to wait until January 1st before my insurance can cover any therapy sessions, so I have to wait. I’m looking into making a session with a general therapist just so I have someone to talk to this month. My past decisions, from when I was younger are haunting me, and again, reassurance has stopped working. I’m at a point where I feel like I’m ready to give up. But I could never put more pain into my moms heart. I wish I had someone in real life to talk to about OCD, someone who actually has it themselves and understands the pain that comes with it. I feel so alone, but I also really feel as if I don’t deserve help. I still want to isolate from the world, or banish myself from society as a whole. And as much as I know how cheesy or ridiculous that sounds, it’s the only thing that seems to make sense to me. I’m tired of compulsions, they don’t reduce my anxiety at all, maybe they did before, but now it just seems like these compulsions are self destructive and it’s my brain wanting to punish or destroy me. I’ve lost all motivation to do anything, I can’t even do chores without feeling incredibly torn down and defeated, I just sit around all day ruminating, or scrolling mindlessly through social media to just distract myself, I do nothing productive. This semester is almost over, so at least that weight will be lifted a little bit. I’m just done. Hopefully tomorrow’s journal entry is a little bit more brighter or hopeful, but I doubt it. I suppose these journal entries mainly serve just to let my thoughts out, and maybe read back on them someday to remember or for whatever reason I’ll need them. I’m gonna go take out my trash bins and then get into bed, everyone is asleep right now and it’s barely about to be 10 here. I feel like such scum and waste of time.

*venting* I’m so tired of life. I just woke up, and I feel like going back to bed and sleep until this nightmare passes. This week has been one of the hardest of my life. I don’t think I can face another day of intrusive thoughts, fear, anxiety. I need some moments of relief, but there are none. I wanna have a life again. Anxiety and obsessive thoughts have killed my social life, my ambitions and desires, my happiness. I’ve been fighting for the past 6 months for nothing. I don’t see any improvement. I’m on day 3 of Lexapro and of course i can’t tell if it’s gonna work for me or not. I’m on the first stages of ERP therapy and I still haven’t got any assigned homework to work on, which I really need because I need to feel like I’m doing SOMETHING to help myself with ocd and Gad. I just hope someone could just take out whatever part of my brain isn’t working properly and replace it with a new piece. I don’t wanna feel like a burden to my family or boyfriend anymore. I can’t believe all the damage that I’m causing. I don’t know what to do with all this self hate. I don’t know where to turn to. I seem to have all the help that one could need - therapy, medication, support system. Yet I feel like I can’t spend another day living like this.

I feel like my thoughts have been getting worse and I ruminate a lot. This morning I told myself I wasn’t going to let the thoughts get to me but it’s hard. Than the anxiety kicks in and my heart starts racing so fast and I just have these intrusive thoughts. And I don’t want to do the things I normally do to feel better but I feel like I don’t do my compulsion I will end up doing what my intrusive thoughts are and it scares me. I just don’t know what to do anymore. I’m so scared. I want to get out of this cycle but I lack discipline and strength. I don’t know if I’ll ever get out of this. I want to get better but I can’t seem to ignore the thoughts or the feelings. I wish I could be like some of the people on here who can discipline and know thoughts are thoughts. I’m just so weak minded. It’s so hard, I want my life back before I had all these disgusting thoughts. I want me back and I don’t know if I ever will. I’m scared that erp won’t work for me. I’m just so pessimistic. I’m scared of doing erp and coming out of it realizing I am those things. Everyday I wake up it’s like I’m trying to survive. I worry about when night comes and what will happen if I sleep and if I’ll be able to get sleep. I worry about waking and waking up to me checking to make sure everyone in my house is okay. To make sure I didn’t do thoughts that I had about my family members. I feel guilty being around my family members because of the thoughts I have about them. I’m afraid of being alone with them for too long because I’m scared that the anxiety will get to me and I’ll do something disgusting. I just don’t understand why this happened to me and why I have to suffer. Everyday is a constant battle. I just want to give up or just move away. Maybe even get up start a new life where I just live alone and don’t hurt nobody. This is so hard and I hate it so much. If you read my rant, thank you💗.

I’ve struggled for POCD for years, since I was 17 and I’m 22 now, about to be 23. I had other obsessions, HOCD being the second worst, but now even that doesn’t bother me anymore. When I developed POCD it was a very traumatizing day. I was just figuring out that I had OCD and researching pure O OCD and saw POCD listed underneath the types of obsessions. I was so freaked out by the possibility of that that I developed it. I ended up spiraling into a panic attack and watched videos on YouTube that had children in them in order to try and prove that I didn’t have POCD. But of course that just made it worse. I went to therapy and did ERT which made it a lot better, but even back then I was still uncomfortable talking about my groinal responses and false attraction responses so I don’t think I fully treated it. I was able to be fine for a long time, years, of me being able to be okay with dealing with POCD even when It popped up. It mainly only bothered me when I saw children in media for some reason but not in real life. Now it’s just both Oh and I’ve been a summer camp counselor since I was 15, so I’ve worked with kids every summer. I think POCD is especially difficult for me because I’ve always enjoyed working with kids and it deeply scared me.😭 It wasn’t until last summer that I started to notice it being more difficult to deal with again. Then I went through a rough patch in my life and since then it’s been way worse on and off again. I will go through the motions of feeling like “okay I’m just gonna think maybe, maybe not. I don’t care, I know myself so I’ll be fine. I’m a great person. I can handle this.” To something actually triggering me and me feeling this intense and gripping feeling of anxiety, like a sinking pit in my stomach and then it’s so hard to turn away from. I’ve tried doing ERT on my own but as soon as I stop I always feel like I move backwards. I just don’t know if I can ever move past this like I have with my other obsessions…it is so haunting and has traumatized me more than once. I’m working on seeing an OCD therapist, most likely through the NOCD app. So I am planning to do that as soon as I can, I just feel so frustrated right now…I’ve kept being triggered the past 2 weeks and I just want it to leave me alone. I don’t want to think about these things. I just want to focus on living my life. It’s so annoying and awful, and it makes me feel sick and so uncomfortable. It’s like telling someone to stop but they won’t; my brain just won’t stop even though I want it to. And my intrusive thoughts are paired with images, so it’s also like having something awful shoved in my face that I can’t turn away from because it’s in my mind. I just really felt the need to vent some of my feelings out…I’ve been going through a rough time again, had a lot of stress over college exams & projects, had a misunderstanding with my partner, got a random tooth pain, and also got screwed over on said project by my team members giving me awful scores for no reason. So yeah it’s just been rough 😔I will be going to the dentist soon. Ugh just so many bad things are happening and OCD just makes it feel worse. Sometimes I think what if the universe is punishing me for having POCD? Then I try to remember to be kind to myself instead. If you’re dealing with this you’re not alone ❤️