peachbud
- Date posted
- 3y
Maria ElainaMaria Elaina
- Date posted
- 3y
I’m so sorry you’re experiencing this. Please know that you are not alone and there is hope. If you don’t have an ERP therapist I recommend starting as soon as you can! Take a deep breath and remember to relinquish control
JB1020JB1020
- Date posted
- 3y
It feels awful at the bottom. Try to give yourself some credit - you are under a lot of stress and anxiety and yet still waking up each day. Things can and will get better. Remember the last time you felt OK, or had a spark of joy, or were optimistic about your condition - you can feel like that again. My freshman year of college I had a stretch of 24/7 anxiety - going to bed with it, waking up with it. I went to see a therapist at school and had an awful intrusive thought and blacked out the whole experience. I transferred schools, I moved back home. It felt like rock bottom. I am 31 now and so much better. You can be too. Get a therapist who can do exposure therapy with you if you're diagnosed OCD. Good luck.
George24George24
- Date posted
- 3y
Hang in there go to therapy and reach out it seems scary but someone can help also YouTube has a lot of tools to help in the meanwhile you can be better
jello86jello86
- Date posted
- 3y
Hi there 💙 These are hard feelings to have for anybody, but I remember how much harder it was to deal with when I was young. Try to trust in the hope that the more you learn about your problems, the more you try to get better, and the more you get help from others/therapists, the more likely it is you’re going to feel better. I was feeling a lot of that inescapable pain type of feeling last night myself. I find that when things are really bad it sometimes helps me to try to find something that will completely engage my attention and give me a little space from the thoughts—for example, I watch tv and okay sudoku at the same time, or go for a walk and listen to music, or I talk to someone on the phone about THEIR day not mine. You have to just find what works for you. Distraction isn’t a permanent fix but it often gives a bit of relief when things are unbearable. Because it’s easy to think that when things are bad you need to think about them more to address it, but stepping away is usually better.
jello86jello86
- Date posted
- 3y
Also, it sounds like you’re not struggling with just OCD, but also low moods and “emotion regulation” difficulty, intense emotions, maybe depression, etc. I struggle with those things too. Recently it really helps me to see a psychiatrist and get a mood stabilizer medication. An antidepressant might also help. But when you’re struggling with intense sadness and dread instead of just compulsions, and you need to calm down for a second because it’s just too intense, I’d recommend a therapy called Dialectical Behavior Therapy. It’s designed for people who are dealing with really overwhelming emotions or suicidal thoughts. You can read about the skills it teaches online even if you can’t see a therapist. I’d recommend googling “DBT distress tolerance skills.” You can also buy the DBT workbook. I also liked Marsha Linehans memoir, she made DBT and used to be suicidal herself.
Related posts
oopiedoop
- Date posted
- 17w
tw for talk abt death
the concept of death & existence is ruining my life rn 😭 im losing so much sleep. i try to close my eyes & all my brain wants to do is try to wrap itself around the idea of what not existing feels like & i get this sinking feeling that grows & grows until my eyes snap open & i have to go back on my phone to distract myself until im literally too exhausted to keep my head up & my body forces me to sleep. it makes having the motivation to do anything hard because all i can think is "it wont matter when i die". it sucks because i know that having MORE in my life might actually improve this, im 21 unemployed still living at home with ASD & i know once i have a job that will definitely give me more to focus on & other stresses to have lol, but i feel like im stuck in the endless cycle of "not having a life makes me worried im wasting my life & itll all be over so fast" & then "being so stressed about my life & time passing is exhausting & makes it too hard to find the motivation to do anything other than sit here" & repeat. spirituality is hard because i like thinking that way, like afterlife & shit, but i worry that im just "in denial" & using it as an unhealthy coping mechanism that leads to magical thinking thoughts. then its like i have some sort of meta ocd spiral obsessing over if what im doing is bad & unhealthy for my ocd or not. i LIKE being spiritual but im worrying im hurting myself & doing a compulsion thinking that way. it also doesnt help that religious spaces have hurt & traumatized so many people & im terrified of being apart of a "delusional" community that spreads a false narrative & attacks anyone that doesnt agree with them. i know i am not like that but i worry im still apart of the problem even thinking this way. at the end of the day no one knows the truth, no one knows what happens after death. im just struggling to sit with the uncertainty. it is so late rn idk of any of my words make sense lol
mariahlexie
- Date posted
- 16w
Thoughts about what comes after death taking over
At first, it just started as harmless questions, curiously exploring the universe and what life and death mean as a human. Then it became an obsession about death and the afterlife. I’m a Catholic-turned-agnostic who recently took an interest in religion again, trying to redevelop a relationship with God without letting the fear of not being good enough and possibly going to Hell taking over me. Instead, my brain latched onto the possibility that there is no God, that there’s eternal nothingness after the short time we have here on earth and that everything means nothing. My love for my friends and family. My desire to achieve my goals, and to be happy for the people I love achieving theirs. I’m haunted by the feeling that it will all be for nothing, that I will never be reunited with those that I love, that the people I love who have passed on have ceased to exist and one day, so will I and everyone else. I can’t function now. I’ve made myself physically ill over this. I’ve lost my appetite. As someone who once took pride in how much love I have for my job as a daycare teacher, I come into work and feel numb. I go home and feel numb. I’ve obsessively started telling the people in my life how much I love and appreciate them because for the past three days, I’ve been sick thinking about how one day, either I’ll leave them or they’ll leave me. It feels like nothing matters. It feels like everything is in vain. I’ve tried so hard to reframe my mindset, to rewire my brain to not think that way. I’ve tried ERP techniques of allowing myself to sit with the discomfort that the fear brings. To try and desensitize myself to this fear. Nothing seems to work. I’m so lost. I’ve been this way for three days, with yesterday and today being worse than the day it started. It’s like the obsession is morphing into depression in a way. I’m scared I’ll never feel enjoyment in any form again. I don’t know what to do anymore.
mandiocd
- Date posted
- 13w
Please help existential ocd
Existential ocd is deeply affecting me. A lot of people say death is equally as meaningless, I do agree, however, if life is mostly suffering and anxiety to me, then death is not as equally meaningless. It seems logical. I have severe ocd and my life is just suffering, so if life is meaningless, it’s logical for me to not see a reason to keep going. I’m not necessarily depressed. Just incredibly aware of how pointless this all is? There’s no end goal to any of this. It baffles me of how people can care about money and materialistic things, because what’s the point? You’ll die in the end and nothing will matter. ****please please please do not tell me to get into religion I’m begging you****
Be a part of the largest OCD Community
Share your thoughts so the Community can respond