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
mariahlexie
- Date posted
- 25w
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
- 22w
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****
beloiter
- Date posted
- 21w
how do i survive this?
i want to get this out of the way; i’m not suicidal. i’m a 17 y/o guy whose been living with OCD for what i assume is most of my life despite only getting the diagnoses last year. i’ve been hustling on despite my mental health really consuming my life to moments in time where i question my sanity and self control. it’s the lack of control that really kills me with this disorder. each day i wake up, it’s the same persistent reminders; it’s the same meaningless conversations replaying; it’s the same small rituals that just barely let me breathe before the thoughts return. nothing i do is gonna stop that unbearable monogamy where i have to sit back and let my eyes be peeled open; i don’t know how to live with that. no pill has worked on me, and any response i give the thoughts just make them worse. right now i’m trying to just sit through it and not care. don’t let it effect me emotionally; try not to feel the discomfort. then it starts to manifest into physical pain where i feel the bones of my chest have this pressure—like staples entering them at the rhythm of a heart beat. i’m getting though this, but i’m not enjoying my life when doing so. i don’t know if i have a future where it isn’t just this repeating through the process of each day. i don’t want to spend the rest of my life avoiding the one thing i’m supposed to have control over. i also don’t want to drown my days in self medicating or get addicted doing so—like i already am. i don’t see the way to make this life of mine work, especially given how much i don’t have to do deal with at my age. of course that will come to. look, i’m not at risk; i really don’t want in anyway to die despite being basically hopeless. i’m numb to the pain of it, i don’t feel anything in my desire to escape these cycles, i just need an out. i’m not seeing a way to move forward. i’m willing to hear anything.
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