it angers me beyond belief that this is my brain, I’m fucking sick and tired of going through this shit alone or burdening my parents with my panic, I do all the dam ERP in the world and this panic still ain’t stopping, I’m fucking through with this shit, I hear people all the time say your not trying hard enough or ERP takes time, well I’ve been doing ERP my whole fucking 22 years of being on this planet and the panic hasn’t stopped, and yes I’ve been to about 20 therapists, I probably have a file on me as big as a dissertation about all my dam thoughts, I’ve seen many psychiatrists, been on many meds, tried to start TMS, couldn’t go through with it because of my thoughts, I can barely blink without my thoughts screaming at me like a drill instructor, I’m socially isolated because the pandemic and I’m losing hope, all anyone tells me is your not trying hard enough with ERP, or your improving, without any evidence to back up said claim when in fact the opposite is true, I’ve declined. I’m trying so fucking hard just to wake up, I’m sorry, I really am, but this is just unreasonable, you wouldn’t go up to a cancer patient and say work harder, put me on the right meds or give me euthanasia because it’s not ok how the system treats people with OCD

Totally with you. Just like with cancer, I believe there is different severities of OCD. Mine is so bad it’s to the point where everything triggers me and ERP is hard to complete. It’s a struggle getting out of bed and even working from home. This illness is the absolute worst. And you may think I’m just writing back to your post just to do so but deep down I want you to know, I am there for you as is the rest of this community. Hang in there and try your best.

Fuck ocd You’re not defined by your thoughts. Ocd / intrusive thoughts and nice planned/unplanned thoughts merge into each other and they slip in and out the mind like crazy and they can cause you to doubt, be feared, and compulsivey do mental checking like think of disgusting horrible thoughts to “see your reaction” or to question or move them aside. It can give you false feelings/ urges that are FALSE because they give you more anxiety. Pleasant feelings will give you more prolonged goodness and happiness. I have ocd. It’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. I still obsess every day but I’m trying to do better and you are too. You are doing the right thing by seeking help and fighting through this. I’m rooting for you stay strong bro.

Dude! I feel ya! Seems like for me , everytime I'm breaking thru, I sabotage it, with another thought of, wow. I'm so glad I'm not thinking about that anymore... then BAM in my face it starts all over. .. then I get sent down another rabbit hole, self analyzing, self absorbed in my thoughts. I was told to take 5HTP. Just started, so I have no idea if that will take the edge off or not. ... what is TMS. ?

Oh yeah... its really something that no one else can understand until they've been thru it. There's no one else in my family that has what I have, so they can't relate. So i just dangle out there wondering. Why me!!!

The struggle is real

OCD and depression. It’s like you are walking around lifeless. Waiting for night to come so you can just sleep.

It really is so fucking hard. I’m sorry therapy didn’t work for you. I am hoping it works for me. I have seen some progress with more minor obsessions but the big ones still make me defecate my pants, and I am struggling to see progress. I was anything but determined a year ago, but now I am determined to figure this out. I am 25 and have gone through all this blind until I discovered it could be OCD. I have really heavily considered suicide in the past few years. I have found reasons to live and I don’t want to do that anymore (though I think about it in my worst slumps), but there were times when it felt like only a matter of when. OCD sucks to say the least. You kind of touch on something that is a feature of a lot of human problems which is that they are self-reifying. For instance, poor people have fewer means to become not-poor than not-poor people do. The answer in very external cases like that might seem something like people with greater means helping them, which may still require that the poor take some agency, but still there is a substantial external component to intuitive solutions like that (leaving behind the economics of it). With mental health disorders, it’s unfortunately not that way. They are internal. No medication or surgery available can restructure your brain in such a way as to not make you have OCD. They, at best, mitigate the symptoms. So it’s really just out of necessity that it relies on the agency of the person with OCD. It isn’t the mental health professional’s fault. But of course, people with OCD have limited agency and a limited sense of what agency they do have. It feels weird to ask these people to do things to fix their own problem right? It can seem cruel to place responsibility in the hands of the sufferer for something they didn’t choose to suffer through. They’re going through enough. We need to remember that we ask things of OCD sufferers such as ourselves because no one else has access to the problem. If you want to dress it up a little, we’re not the archvillain threatening the peace of the land, we’re the chosen one prophecied to save it (that metaphor is fucking stupid, I know, but for some reason it has some saliance for me). Some people take that to mean it’s our fault, but it’s never ever our fault that we suffer from something we didn’t choose. It’s just that all mental health professionals can do is give you some meds and tell you some things which research has shown can help you recover, may be keep you accountable to them. But everyone is different and some people really do struggle with ERP. And even some people who do well with ERP may find certain themes harder to deal with. Sometimes it requires the intervention of other kinds of therapy. I would at least urge you to entertain that it is possible, if only merely possible, that there is something out there for you. I say this not really knowing your ERP history, but I would simply ask you not to completely discard the possibility of it working for you when you figure out what that missing ingredient is. It might be ACT or mindfulness; it might be religion; it might be a different or more complicated diagnosis; it might be focusing on eliminating mental compulsions rather than just physical. I hope this doesn’t sound condescending. You may have tried all these things and I’ll believe you if you say they haven’t worked for you. At least, I try to keep some hope ERP will work for me.

I feel like a zombie every day. It's the worse esp. When people wanna have a convo, and the OCD brain is like. NOPE, you can't think right now, cause I'm large and in charge.. hurry say something and answer them and Get back to your desk and fret. Ugh.