Wondering if anyone is in the same boat… For a bit of background, I’m 21 now and am away at university and have finally taken the first steps towards getting mental health help, but I can’t help but wonder why none of my many signs of ocd were caught by those around me sooner 😕 Beginning at around the age of 8 years old (maybe even younger to be honest) I had a compulsion to step on cracks just the right way, if I didn’t step on the very middle of the crack I would stop, go back and do it over again. If I turned my head around once, I needed to do it on the other side to be even, same thing with bumping into doors or walls, if I did it to one arm I needed to go back and do it to the other for symmetry. At school during quizzes or assessments I was almost always the last one done as I would double check my answers 10-20 times as a compulsion. My biggest was and still is knocking on wood three times, at my worst I was doing this from 50-100 times a day. Needless to say some of these (plus many many more) were pretty obvious, and looking back now I’m just kind of frustrated that no adults noticed and, if they did, especially during my younger years, that therapy or ERP wasn’t considered or suggested. I’m in a place now where I’m finally able to seek out mental health support myself, however it’s just frustrating there’s a 7 month wait list at my school when this likely could’ve been addressed over a decade earlier 😔

I feel like in some ways receiving a diagnosis for OCD has in some ways made things worse. I’ve always had what I called “phases” throughout life, which I now know were ocd episodes, but I didn’t really make too much of them and even if it was over several long difficult months, they’d always seem to kind of just pass. Recently I’ve begun my worse flare up in the last few years and now that I’m older I seemed professional help which led to my diagnosis. This all sounds great of course but I can’t actually afford therapy right now so I kinda just have the diagnosis but not the support so now that I realize these phases are actually this incurable mental illness I just feel like I’ve lost all hope that I’ll ever be happy and I feel like I basically obsess about obsessing at this point and it just sucks. Has anyone else had this or a similar experience?

Hi I kept seeing this app on repeat on TikTok over and over and I thought I give it a shot. I have never been diagnosed with OCD but I know that I have it. I’m a young adult and I found out the first time I had OCD was watching lelelons truth video? I was 14 at the time She had to resist sitting back down in a chair after her having sat down she started having a mental break down when she was told to resist. That’s when I knew. It started with myself going up and down a staircase twice buckling unbuckling my seat belt everytime I’m in the car ect I have always been super anti social but trying my best I can socialize but my mind wants to make it sexual with family and friends ughhhh I hate it because that’s not me when I graduated thoughts of hurting my loved ones corrupted my mind I broke down outside of church one time asking if this was really me or not i question if I’m a good enough friend or person in this world to begin with thinking everyone is judging me so so close how can I make this situation better did I do something wrong I struggle with depression as well not to bad but it’s there I come from a loving family but broken as well i believe in god and my OCD makes me go often he’s not real that stuff isn’t real no one is there to save you the list goes on. Anyway I struggle a lot and I really hope that this will help me because I feel extremely hopeless. Lucky for me I do have the ability to seek therapy and I am excited. The only person I ever tell my thoughts to is God no other human has heard so I’m really really hoping this helps me out if your reading this thank you it means a lot because this is my first time ever admitting all this it’s a lot to take in I know and I hope you are ok and that you have a great night and know that we got this

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?