Someone in my family committed suicide a long time ago. She struggled with schizophrenia and depression, and died by intentional overdose of her depression medication. Because of this, I associate medication with suicide and really struggle with the idea of taking meds for my OCD. I know meds aren’t completely necessary for recovery, but I’m sure they would be helpful if I could get over this very strong association. I’m always so scared I’m going to end up like her. Any advice or does anyone else also struggle with suicide trauma?

I went to talk to a psychiatrist based off my Nocd therapists recommendation. I had a very hard week beforehand where I had anxiety so bad I couldn't leave my bed. It seems like once I get my period my anxiety and everything dissipated some so I talked to the psychiatrist. Anyways, I was immediately put off by her because she told me she didn't have any information on me included in the referral for one reason or another. So I had to basically "fill her in" on my life story. I have anxiety disorder, panic disorder, OCD and PTSD. I told her these things and how hard the last week had been. She started asking questions like I had bipolar disorder, which I don't have. She then wanted me to take buspar and Zoloft TOGETHER daily. I know for a fact you never start two medications daily at once. You don't know which one is causing symptoms if you do. So I immediately didn't like that. I asked her about Zoloft specifically daily because it is an SSRI what I should do if it gave me thoughts of harm for myself. She told me "just go to the hospital".... Now, I don't wanna say that was the worst possible thing she could have said to me, but it was. Because now my OCD is spiraling that just my general harm OCD thoughts are enough to mean I need to go to the hospital. It had been 2 days and I cannot stop obsessing that maybe I'm depressed or suicidal because of this. I know I don't want anything to happen to me. I love my family and my friends. I am scared of death. But the thought is sticky and it's been so, so frustrating. My anxiety has been so frustrating. I feel so lost and like nothing I'm trying to fix my issues is working very well. NOCD therapy has been one of the only things to help in the long term, but I still get terrified of certain obsessions like suicide. I don't really know what to do, if anyone has any advice or any personal experience that may help, anything would be nice right now. I've felt so lost trying to figure it all out.

I’ve been through a lot of trauma the past few months and years and had an anxiety breakthrough where I can’t stop having panic and anxiety attacks. I used to be a horror movie addict and one night during an anxiety attack my brain went “Kill your sister” My sister is my whole world. It all went downhill from there. I can’t even be around her when were home alone anymore. Every single day since then my brain is trying to tell me a bunch of different ways to harm her. Its getting to a point where its involving others now. “Kill your sister.” “What if you finally go back to your boyfriends house and kill his family?” “What if you kill mom?” “Kill that lady walking down the aisle at work.” “What if you killed yourself?” “You’re a bad person for thinking all of this.” “You shouldn’t be allowed to sleep, eat or relax. Bad people don’t get to do those things.” “These thoughts are in your head 24/7 because you WANT to do these things!” Its causing me so much anxiety and racing thoughts and I don’t want to become anymore depressed. SSRIs dont work. My doctor wants me to go on antipsychotics but I’m afraid to and I feel like I don’t actually need them and it will cause more damage. My goal is to become the person I was before all of this. Not to change completely. I tried buspirone once and I stopped due to increased health anxiety and often found myself saying “remember when you wanted to kill your sister?” and then brushing it off. It helped in some sort of way. I was only on it for a week. My whole life has changed since then. I dont go to my boyfriends house anymore, I dont see my friends, I can’t play video games anymore. All I do is ruminate and I cant stop. I cant even hold a conversation anymore. The compulsions are horrible. I’m so scared that theres no coming back from this. Its all adding to the anxiety that I don’t want to become severe depression. I just want to be me again. I’m starting off ERP and if it doesn’t work I dont know what to do. Can someone please tell me they have been through similar and have gotten better. I just need to save my life. Its getting to a point where this is convincing me this is all real and its going to happen and that im gonna become a psychopath. Its been going on for 3 months. I used to be so bubbly and happy!! (I am not schizoaffective)

I’ve recently been struggling a lot with OCD. I have had OCD for a long time I just didn’t realize it until more recently. About seven months ago I developed panic attacks one day randomly at work. I thought I was having a heart attack and went to the hospital where they told me it was just a panic attack and I assumed I would snap out and be better within a few days. However it didn’t. Here’s where it gets scary, I was staying at my then boyfriends house while dealing with blurry vision, anxiety attacks everyday, and more (unsure of what was going on). But at some point I saw my bfs (pew pew 🔫) on his table and it sent me into an anxiety attack after sudden thoughts that I was going to hurt myself with it. I begged him to put it away when I’m not looking so I didn’t know where he put it. He did. These thoughts lasted for about four days but began to go away. (I thought that was it and I would be back to normal). Unfortunately though I ended up moving back in with my family when we couldn’t get my panic attacks under control in time for me to get back to work and pay bills. However, coming home brought up a lot of trauma from when I was kid. My anxiety got worse but I didn’t have those thoughts again. About two and half months ago though, I got sick and went to the hospital where they gave me steroid pills and a steroid shot but sent me into some kind of psychiatric event. Ever since then though, I have been suffering from harm OCD, I have had moments of intense anger that I usually have to completely walk away and go on my own because of how intense they are, and it feels like it’s getting worse. Today I felt fine until about and hour and half ago where I started to dwell on the fact that my suicidal thought was influenced by my OCD and at the moment my OCD is at the worst it’s been. This caused me to get suddenly really depressed and I started crying thinking about how I can’t handle this. I then saw a post talking about how suicide rates are high for people with this form of OCD and it made me question if I am mentally strong enough to pull through this. I fear that at times I’m getting worse. I have good days but I have a lot of bad days. Unfortunately this sent me into such a bad panic attack I went over to my nanas crying about how I can’t deal with this. I took a 0.25 mg Xanax which helped calm down the panic attack portion of it but my brain is still uncomfortably active. I guess I just need hope. I’m so saddened by this. It’s like my life took a total 360 in 10 months and got even worse since the steroid shot. Idk what to do about it. I can’t stop the spiral. I talk to two different therapist weekly and start more next week, making it 5 times a week. I feel no improvements…