PLEASE help. existential ocd is destroying me and it feels like my purpose in life is just gone. i find absolutely no joy in anything i do anymore because one day i will die. i’m agnostic and afraid. please help. i feel like i’m already dead. i feel so hopeless and pointless. every day all i do is go to zoom class and cry. sometimes i eat. sometimes i work out. i used to love to draw and play video games, they were my passion. learning and creating were also a huge passion of mine. but suddenly about 2 and a half weeks ago (jan 4th or 5th?) everything was just taken from me without warning. i feel purposeless. everything i do is a waste of time, because i will die someday. i feel worthless and all i do is cry. how do i get myself back? i feel like even if i get myself back, it’s pointless. if i’m happy, it’s pointless. because one day i’ll die and i don’t know if there’s anything after that. i’m soulless.

It feels like I’m lying to myself constantly and everyone. There feels like there is a weight on my heart from the moment I wake up till I go to sleep. I don’t want to be gay. Idk why it doesn’t register. Now everyone I see I have to see if I’m attracted to them. I see good looking men and I feel like I’m lying to myself that they are good looking, I see women and I see if im attracted to them. I look at everyone and I feel jealous. I want my fucking life back. But now my OCD (if this is even OCD) is telling me I was never happy and I was always suppressing my feelings of being gay. Why is this happening? Can OCD do this? I can’t enjoy anything ever.

I feel like I’ll never lead a normal life again with OCD, my thoughts have begun to be convince especially about POCD. I feel like so sad and down that this will be my life forever. I’ll never get to fall in love again without intrusive thoughts. I’ll never be worth falling in love with. I can never be intimate again. I’m just done, my life is over. I can’t even look at my nephew and niece anymore without the smile fading. It feels like I’m so nasty and then my brain convinces me this is how I feel. That there’s some part of me that is a p*do and that’s it. I’m a disgusting human being for that. I just feel hopeless

Looking back, I realize I’ve had OCD since I was 7. though I wasn’t diagnosed until I was 30. As a kid, I was consumed by fears I couldn’t explain: "What if God isn’t real? What happens when we die? How do I know I’m real?" These existential thoughts terrified me, and while everyone has them from time to time, I felt like they were consuming my life. By 12, I was having daily panic attacks about death and war, feeling untethered from reality as depersonalization and derealization set in. At 15, I turned to drinking, spending the next 15 years drunk, trying to escape my mind. I hated myself, struggled with my body, and my intrusive thoughts. Sobriety forced me to face it all head-on. In May 2022, I finally learned I had OCD. I remember the exact date: May 10th. Reading about it, I thought, "Oh my God, this is it. This explains everything." My main themes were existential OCD and self-harm intrusive thoughts. The self-harm fears were the hardest: "What if I kill myself? What if I lose control?" These thoughts terrified me because I didn’t want to die. ERP changed everything. At first, I thought, "You want me to confront my worst fears? Are you kidding me?" But ERP is gradual and done at your pace. My therapist taught me to lean into uncertainty instead of fighting it. She’d say, "Maybe you’ll kill yourself—who knows?" At first, it felt scary, but for OCD, it was freeing. Slowly, I realized my thoughts were just thoughts. ERP gave me my life back. I’m working again, I’m sober, and for the first time, I can imagine a future. If you’re scared to try ERP, I get it. But if you’re already living in fear, why not try a set of tools that can give you hope?