- Username
- Hopeismyhealing&DeathismyRevealing
- Date posted
- 2y ago
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.
Thank you so much for being there for me, I’m so sorry you’re also suffering with a very severe case of ocd. I’m here for you to
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. ?
TMS is Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, they put a cap on your head and it buzzes. It’s supposed to narrow in on the part of the brain with thoughts and slow it or stop the bad thoughts, it might be very beneficial I just was to scared to do it. Thanks so much for the nice comment I’m sorry your struggling also
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
Yes indeed
OCD and depression. It’s like you are walking around lifeless. Waiting for night to come so you can just sleep.
Exactly, I just want to sleep it’s exactly what it’s like
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.
Thanks for the nuanced response, based on my post and as you astoutly mentioned, I am warren down to say the least, I appreciate the advise however and I hope your ocd thoughts don’t torment you as do mine, as I’ve aluded to. One thing that I believe I’m learning is that we’re all different and we may need different approaches. Anyway thank you and I wish you peace
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.
I totally get where your coming from, the zombie feeling with ocd is strong, it takes over so many facets of life
*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 don’t know if I’m ever going to get better, if I’m ever going to feel good, if I’m ever going to be able to carry on with this 10 years down the road. It’s torture with no exit, for me recently. Every time I bring up my OCD around family, they get annoyed. I can’t go to friends because it has only been of temporary relief. I am literally tearing up as I write this. I’m afraid I’m so close to convincing myself of the horrible lies my OCD has been telling me. I just can’t, I don’t know if there’s anyone or thing that can make me feel better. It’s been like lifting gigantic boulder up a steep mountain the entire day—and I could be crushed by it if not careful. If there is a god, why must he put me through this? I have already been through some many enough hard times in life, this OCD has only magnified any insecurities, anxieties, feeling of loneliness, self hate, and negative emotions.
I’ve been feeling extremely depressed because of my existential OCD. Even when i think of recovery and therapy, i feel like “what point is there in going back to how it was, or finding joy in things” there are moments when I do get happy and in those moments a thought pops up like “what even is anything” “what is existence” or “is death even real” and i’m also getting intrusive thoughts regarding my own consciousness which also gets very weird. All of this is accompanied by dissociation and apocalyptic feelings. It’s been 2 months since my ocd relapse. I have gotten better but when i acknowledge my progress, once again i feel like there’s no point. these thoughts/ feelings don’t feel like OCD but as if i’ve discovered some truth of life and now nothing will be the same. I haven’t started ERP yet, my therapist and i are currently more focused on ACT, acceptance and commitment (which is often given along side ERP) I will start ERP soon but i think all i’ll be focusing on is how dumb it is, and i know it’s not but it feels like i’m convinced it isn’t gonna work. I know this is classic OCD but it feels like this. I also deal with hyperawareness ocd (thinking about thinking taking place) and it makes me feel like there’s somebody in my head when, it’s quite literally my own inner voice that i’m sort of producing (?) I feel like it wouldn’t let me focus during erp and it all just feels so hopeless. I’m a minor and my parents are against medication and they talk about it like it’s the worst thing in the world which has heightened my fear of meds. I’m so sad and done with all this
Share your thoughts so the Community can respond