you spend your whole life creating values ​​and following them without any doubt that you are a good person, and then you are diagnosed with ocd, you start to doubt everything, literally everything, you don't recognize yourself anymore, you are afraid of yourself, you suffer from being in your own mind, you are afraid to approach people, and no one sees it, it's a pain that no one can feel for you, no one can take away from you, it's incredibly exhausting

I feel like I’ve lost who I am , even since my depression and ocd started. I don’t even know what I like anymore:(( I doubt everything I think and it’s so draining because I just want to feel like my old self again😭 I feel like I have no motivation to get better which is bothering me so much because I want too but something is holding me back from doing what I need to do :/ with all my thoughts and doubts , I feel like I can’t trust myself . I don’t know if I’m the only one that feels this much pain

I hate the way ocd has completely messed up my brain, I struggle to tell the difference between an intrusive though and a regular one, I have really bad issues with morality and I feel as if my brain can no longer tell what is and isn't right and I can't tell if I'm over reacting about situations and I end up feeling stuck in a loop of wondering if I'm a bad person and trying to look at a situation rationally and not knowing if that's even possible with the state of my mind, I feel like none of my thoughts are actually mine. I hate it and I wish I could feel in control of my thoughts even for just a day, just to know what it's like. I've had ocd symptoms since I was about 9-10 so i feel like I've never really know a life without it. I just wish I could live out my teenage years like anyone else my age. I can hardly engage with my hobbies and passions and I don't know what to do about it. I can't go to therapy or get medication because I'm not even diagnosed, I just feel trapped. I'm only a teenager, like I said, I don't want to live my entire life like this.

If you are anything like me (and most of you are, because let’s face it, we are all on this chat), you have OCD. Real OCD, not the organisation, matching colours everyone thinks it is. Real OCD. I’ve always known I was different, known that my brain does some waking things and deep down, I’ve always known I’ve had OCD. But there is just something that changes when you finally get the diagnosis. It makes more sense, you have an explanation for your behaviours. So naturally I told my friends. When they ask why I had to stop and step four times on a tile I said ‘oh, I have OCD’. I finally had a word, a tangible concept that I could explain to people. But nobody warned me about the massive misconceptions about OCD. Instead of support or acceptance, my friends seemed to question the diagnosis saying ‘that’s not ocd, don’t you just like things organised?’. And no matter how much I explain it they don’t seem to get it. And that’s the part that feels so cruel. I go through hell in my head and it can all be reduced to a phrase of ‘oh, aren’t you organised’. So please be careful out there you guys, and if someone try’s to downplay your experience, know that you are valid and that what you are going through is probably something that they could never handle. It’s a lesson that took me time to learn, but it’s important because our experience matters. Our real experience.