I got ocd when I was younger I had alot of rituals they took me hours to do I was riteing and reriteing my homework and going over letters and words and counting and getting that just rite feeling I was also confused on wat was going on wit me I didn’t even understand ocd myself and as all of y’all no some of your ocd ppl can’t see even if they do it doesn’t compare to wats going on mentally so at 1 point when I was younger things were getting worse 1 of the things I struggled wit that was more noticeable that burdened others in my house was takeing 2 hour showers I was doing rituals and getting that just rite feeling and counting and it took me 2 hours to shower and that mite sound relaxing to normal ppl but the water was ice cold I couldn’t just stop and wait for the water to warm up to continue I was stuck in ocd cold water for 2 hours I was scared I was confused I had to plan my life round these 2 hour showers so that ment getting up earlier staying home more spending the entire day getting ready for school I was less motivated to get up and go to school cause I dreaded getting ready and showering not only were the showers takeing long but dressing and doing my hair and other things took even longer so it was takeing me hours to get ready 2 of hose hours was just spent showering things were so hard for me my mom washed my hair for me and my face I stopped brushing my teeth though cause I felt like I could t ask someone to help me brush my teeth to and then avoiding it for so long it became a frear for me if I brushed my teeth something would happen i would try to find ways round not being able to brush them like useing mouth wash and useing baking soda on a qtip but nothing really lasted I was embarrassed to tell anyone plus noone noticed that I wasn’t brushing my teeth cause noones realy round when your doing that and noone new that I was takeing along time to dress and shower and noticeing the wierd rituals even when I gotten better like things not takeing as long I was still doing the rituals I was just able to do them and move on they were like a habit I had to do a certain way but ppl weren’t in the shower watching me and they weren’t standing there while I dressed to notice I was doing rituals still the only thing ppl would notice is if I was takeing a realy long time doing something and if like me takeing 2 hours showers kept others from getting in the bathroom to get ready themselves so the only thing ppl noticed was stuff that interfered wit there life so the first time I got help my parents admitted me into parkridge valley hospital were we all thought they would help me the next day shower time came round and I told them I took 2 hour showers that I couldn’t do it in the time frame they were giveing us patients they all yelled at me told me that’s rediculous I can’t take 2 hour showers there as if I was wanting to take 2 hour showers standing in ice cold water but I was a kid I didn’t understand my ocd at that time but I had this mental hospital doctors yelling at me for my mental illness something I new I didn’t want to do something invisible makeing me stay in the shower and do wat I was doing I thought maybe I’m makeing excuses for myself maybe I can make myself stop showering then I would panick thinking bout not doing rituals being forced to shower normal even rite now typeing this I’m panicking it’s so scary and everyone wit ocd understands the force behind there ocd it’s invisible but strong I was so scared I tried telling them I have ocd that I’m here cause I was showering for 2 hours and needed help to stop like this is the reason I’m here but they were just yelling at me and threatening me and then they punished me for 2 weeks they made me sit in the hallway on the cold tile floor everyday all day they brought my food up to me I wasn’t allowed to tlk to anyone there were a few other misbehaved kids that would get in trouble but we weren’t allowed to tlk I literally sat there just starring my legs and butt started to hurt from sitting cross legged on the cold tile floor for 2 weeks everday I woke up I had to go straight to the hallway and sit if I didn’t take a short shower so that’s wat I did everyday for 2 weeks everday that shower time came round they would yell at me it got worse and worse as the days passed they threatened me that if I didn’t take a shower they would have someone come out me in the shower I not only was being punished but I was being threatened everyday and now that I’m older and have dealt wit abusive bf I no that wat they were doing was abuse they were scareing me everyday I was so scared I can’t even explain I was already sick I was already struggling that’s the reason I was at the hospital and they were trying to threaten the ocd out of me I still can’t understand wat they didn’t just help they had to of been able to do something for me to help me shower like do exposure and response therapy at the time I had no idea that ocd therpay existed I thought it was all medication and regular therpay I had no idea till a couple months ago that ocd is so hard to treat and that there’s help out there spacifically for ocd but surely a mental hospital new bout ocd and new ways to treat it besides scareing me I myself didn’t understand my ocd and thought maybe they just don’t understand it but every week all of us patients had to individualy see the doctor when I saw her she asked me spacific questions bout ocd she new bout rituals and counting and all kinds of ocd stuff that I actually related to and in that moment I new they understood ocd they new it was an illness they new it was sever and they still had those ppl punish me by sitting me in the hallways for 2 weeks I can’t even explain the fear and horribleness of sitting on that fuckign floor scared to death at 15 years old I thought I was actually a uncooperative kid I thought my ocd was makeing me a horrible kid I believed that for many years to and again I’ve been in abusive relationships now and the trauma revolved round mental and verbal abuse is real and it stays wit you it causes ptsd those ppl remind me of abusive exs I’m scared of going to mental hospitals going to doctors and therapists getting on medications I’m scared there gonna do that to me I just panick everytime I get close to getting help I’m scared and the hospital wasn’t the only thing that happened to me so many ppl punished me and gaslit me doctors and therapists were rude and dismissed me and just a couple months ago when a huge ocd trigger happened in my home that affected my contamination ocd I tried getting help again so for 2 months I’ve called my insurance I’ve called inpatient and outpatient places I called and emailed so many ppl and therapists and none of them accept my insurance I’m already on ssi and make 500 something dollars a month I’ve already been struggling for years wit my ocd I no I need help and couldn’t even get it I was doing research on ocd and learned bout exposure and response therpay I learned that there’s ocd hospitals and ocd doctors and ocd therapists I learned that ocd is hard to treat that not all doctors understand ocd all they can do is prescribe medications and regular therapists can’t help that none of the professionals I had seen for the past 15 years that I trusted to help me get better were even helping me they were just giveing me medications that they themselevs didn’t understand ocd and the different kinds of ocd and the cripppling anxiety and panick attacks that come wit it and all the mental shit that goes on when haveing ocd when doing ocd stuff so much mental shit goes on invisible shit in your brain that exhausts you and stresses you out even just sitting can look like sitting but someone wit ocd could be doing mental rituals and haveing intrusive thoughts and raceing thoughts that just sitting is exhausting but that my life shouldn’t of gone the way it did just cause these ppl were ignorant I have no childhood no friends no Partys no school memories no work memories like I’ve not lived a normal life I don’t shower normal I don’t dress normal I don’t do alot of things normal I’ve had to plan my life round my ocd I have to get rest to be able to deal wit my ocd I’ve just struggled and tried getting help from ppl who shouldn’t of been allowed to treat me and shouldn’t of been allowed to do wat they did to me and cause me more trauma and stress now I’m here still suffering and dealing wit everything I’ve been threw and trying to understand the reason these doctors aren’t trained to understand and treat ocd properly and that if they can’t help to refer them to an ocd doctor it should be illegal to treat patients and not inform them of the ocd help that’s out there I’ve had my life ruined by these doctors that have just waisted my time and caused me more issues all I want is help I want medications prescribed by an ocd doctor I want therpay from an ocd therapist I want to get better I want a fucking xanex.

I’ve recently been struggling a lot with OCD. I have had OCD for a long time I just didn’t realize it until more recently. About seven months ago I developed panic attacks one day randomly at work. I thought I was having a heart attack and went to the hospital where they told me it was just a panic attack and I assumed I would snap out and be better within a few days. However it didn’t. Here’s where it gets scary, I was staying at my then boyfriends house while dealing with blurry vision, anxiety attacks everyday, and more (unsure of what was going on). But at some point I saw my bfs (pew pew 🔫) on his table and it sent me into an anxiety attack after sudden thoughts that I was going to hurt myself with it. I begged him to put it away when I’m not looking so I didn’t know where he put it. He did. These thoughts lasted for about four days but began to go away. (I thought that was it and I would be back to normal). Unfortunately though I ended up moving back in with my family when we couldn’t get my panic attacks under control in time for me to get back to work and pay bills. However, coming home brought up a lot of trauma from when I was kid. My anxiety got worse but I didn’t have those thoughts again. About two and half months ago though, I got sick and went to the hospital where they gave me steroid pills and a steroid shot but sent me into some kind of psychiatric event. Ever since then though, I have been suffering from harm OCD, I have had moments of intense anger that I usually have to completely walk away and go on my own because of how intense they are, and it feels like it’s getting worse. Today I felt fine until about and hour and half ago where I started to dwell on the fact that my suicidal thought was influenced by my OCD and at the moment my OCD is at the worst it’s been. This caused me to get suddenly really depressed and I started crying thinking about how I can’t handle this. I then saw a post talking about how suicide rates are high for people with this form of OCD and it made me question if I am mentally strong enough to pull through this. I fear that at times I’m getting worse. I have good days but I have a lot of bad days. Unfortunately this sent me into such a bad panic attack I went over to my nanas crying about how I can’t deal with this. I took a 0.25 mg Xanax which helped calm down the panic attack portion of it but my brain is still uncomfortably active. I guess I just need hope. I’m so saddened by this. It’s like my life took a total 360 in 10 months and got even worse since the steroid shot. Idk what to do about it. I can’t stop the spiral. I talk to two different therapist weekly and start more next week, making it 5 times a week. I feel no improvements…

(Long post warning) Hi, I’ve been struggling with severe OCD for six years now. it started in 2019 with my theme being getting sick/emetophobia. it devastated my life. I almost didn’t graduate high school from it. I remember washing my hands for three hours one day until they were nearly bloody while crying and asking why I could not stop doing it. I remember id have to write and rewrite sentences when I did my English homework and that’s why I nearly failed that class. I remember how I would spend up to thirty minutes to an hour pacing the halls of my apartment while my mom was asleep until I neutralized the thoughts about throwing up and I could finally go to bed. I don’t know when it happened, but my theme switched. Sometimes in late 2020 or early 2021, it switched to POCD. It started with a single thought, and I focused on it and it’s been my theme since then for four years. It has been absolutely destroying me. I feel so disgusted and lost and just tired. My compulsions are severe now. I thought they were bad before, but now they’re ten times worse. I can’t eat, drink, change my clothes, walk, or even do things on my phone normally. I’ve developed so many mental compulsions that it’s so intricate and complicated yet at the same time I’ve done them so much that they’ve become normal. An example I have is if im putting on a shirt and I have a “bad” thought, I have to take it off and put it back on two more times (that’ll make it 3 times I put the shirt back on - odd numbers are my safe number). I have to have a good thought on the third time otherwise I have to take it off and put it on two more times to make it five times I put on that shirt. If not that then I just put on a different shirt because the original is now tainted with my bad thought. I can’t open apps on my phone. It’s with the numbers again. If I open TikTok once while having a bad thought - I have to close it and open it two more times and so on. Sometimes I do it up to 30 times. So I just don’t do things usually. I don’t turn on the TV because I know I’ll redo it. I don’t open a book or grab it off my shelf because I’ll have to repeat the action. I can’t even lay in bed without getting up and redoing it even if im exhausted. I just feel so helpless. I don’t know what to do. I feel disgusting and even now my minds screaming at me that I am dirty and what I think is true. I just wish I was free of this, I wish I could just live my life. I’ve wasted hours and days because of my compulsions. I mask it so well around my friends. I don’t do them in front of anyone or I’ve learned to hide it well. But when im back home alone, it goes haywire. I just want to live again.

i am new to thinking about OCD - keep that in mind when reading. for a very long time without realizing it i obsessed over what mental health issues i had even though i wanted to stop and i never came across OCD. i think i eventually came to a subconscious decision to stop thinking about mental health issues after a very long time but it came back in an abusive relationship where i am pretty sure they have OCD even more severe than me. i think they misdiagnosed themselves with BPD and they are just very traumatized and have OCD about rejection and many other things but it could be both. they convinced me that i had BPD and i still do not know about that and i want to stop caring about that because my obvious OCD and PTSD are bigger problems. they intentionally hurt me a few times - this was because they convinced themselves that they had DID and everything they did was just another person doing that and i tried to help them resolve their mental health issues. this eventually worked as they now recognize that they did not have did and they are genuinely sorry and genuinely understand how damaging it was for them to hurt me and them have them be the only person that comforts me. it is extremely difficult to get comfort from other people except them and i am obsessed with trying to process emotions from repeated damage they have caused me over a 8 month lifespan. i was trying to say "its okay" to myself or tell myself that they truly didnt mean it afterwards and im attempting to stop that. the thoughts keep popping up. i was taking a long break where i only communicated to them through a mediator (my partner is now being very respectful) and i felt like i was truly healing but a few days ago i thought about if i have ocd or not and it made me realize that i was entirely dependent on them for comfort and i miss that love feeling i want nothing except that love feeling back without the abuse. this made me spiral horribly and i begged the mediator to let me talk to them and then i started talking to them for a few days, regardless of how understanding and kind they were they still made me feel like i need to puke because of how bad i felt for them and how much pain is associated with them. i started actually dissociating a few days ago which they did a lot. things feel blurry just like how they described. i think i needed to do it in order to talk to them for an extended period. i ended up helping them by telling them about ocd even though im tired of helping them through everything and having them rely on me i just wanted to give them the tools to feel good but it made me feel terrible because i always used to help them and then feel bad and it made me throw up after i wanted to take a break. i was healing and talking to them set me back really far - i learned a lot about how they feel about this and i learned a lot about why i do this in the first place but it hurts so much and i cant let myself talk to them again. i keep trying to process my ptsd when the memories come back and constant dissociation is making it harder i hope that ends soon. im worrying that im suppressing my emotions all of the time because they thought that was why they originally thought i was feeling bad and not the trauma. i am trying to seek a psychiatrist and therapy soon but i am reliant on my mom for that and i dont know what to do or if shes going to do something thats good for me. im excited to see the psychiatrist though. im 17. i am at the point now where i just want to stop having the highs and the lows and just be neutral all the time but its so hard to break out of these patterns. its really hard to sleep enough. genuinely any advice for any information i have provided would be appreciated no matter how small