Does anybody have OCD about being depressed, even though you’re not? Like you’re scared of being depressed?

The existential thoughts are so weird. Like I’ll have a completely normal thought about something and then I’ll get a jolt of existential anxiety over how weird it is that thing I thought about even exists. Very strange and hard to pinpoint

hey @anndroow and @puppychino ! had i only known a year ago that a bunch of people had almost the exact copy of my own experience: fear of depression and suicide, used to love daydreaminh, reflecting on life, reading about philosophy/psychology but now cant without panicking. and we’ve all been very happy, upbeat people in love with life and ourselves! @puppychino as far as erp, it can be a little tricky. i feel with existential ocd, the thoughts are endless. sometimes i wont even notice the intrusive thoughts because the existential stuff comes in a steady wave. i think the best way is to pull the problems by the root. take the fears that set off all of the existential thoughts, and go around singing a song that maybe goes like “life has no meaning, my life will never be the same, i’ll never be happy etc” or write down your worst nightmares in a diary as if it had actually happened now. i generally think that the reason behind ocd is trust issues within yourself, and “accepting certainty” isnt really the main goal. all of these things that we worry we may do, they are all actions you can take, ones that you have power to control. so the certainty lies within yourself. but to know and accept that, we gotta fix some old self image issues, and work on some deeeeeep rooted insecurities. for me, i’ll sometimes have an epiphany of some sort that in an instant invalidates ALL of my worries, and i’ll be my old self just right then and there. you gotta activate that!

soooo much!! this has been my most prominent obsession for a year!!! after months of ongoing stress, i felt depersonalised (didnt know what that was back then, so i was worried) and then at my most vulnerable state, while also concerned about not beinh my usual happy self, i stumbled upon news that two famous people had committed suicide. long story short, i ended up reading about it, found out (dont know how i didnt know this before) that anxiety could lead straight to depression. i got really scared that this could happen to me and maybe if what i was feelinh was that, and yeah. here we are. and because of this obsession, i get aggressive intrusive thoughts about suicide. not nice :(

I was the EXACT same. I was considered the deep and wise one in my friend group and I was always super positive about life and the meaning behind it all. OCD messed that up for me but hopefully some day I'll be back to myself and be able to have deep conversations again and daydream without OCD chiming in.

ocd can only hit you where it hurts the most! but in the same way, your ocd themes also pinpoint your strenghts and what will NOT happen. pedophilia ocd? you wont harm kids. religious ocd? you wont do blasphemous things or not have a strong faith. suicidal ocd? you wont commit suicide or become depressed. relationship ocd? you love them!

My biggest fear surrounding suicide is "what if my mom dies some day and I just don't see a point anymore and I commit suicide". My mom is my closest person in my life, so the thought of losing her is unthinkable. I'm also usually very optimistic about life, and find the good in hard times. And yes, when my fear of suicide theme developed, i felt the need to be SURE of my "purpose" in life so I could know I would never commit suicide. This led to existential OCD, feeling the need to know the "point" of everything. When I couldnt find a concrete answer other than just philosophical views, it made me panic even more and ended up making things seem dull and meaningless like you described above. For example, I'd be about to do something simple I enjoy like drawing, and something in my head would say "well what's the point of that" and make me analyze it to its core. It's hard because existential obsessions can be found in every little thing. And like you said, this made my fear of depression so much worse because I'd think "this is what a depressed person must do/think".

@anna yes!! I'd watch a normal, light hearted TV show and every part of it would spark some deep discussion in my head about the "point" or the human condition in general. It's calmed down since I started trying to just ignore the thoughts and not engage in the analysis portion. But, I still have the thoughts pop into my head sometime. I'm always confused how it's considered an intrusive thought since it feels like me coming up with the question

You will! You still enjoy those things deep down, OCD is just tricking you into fearing them

at least we’re not alone!

All the time!!

Completely

That and if and when I'll have another panic attack, that was so scary! When the ocd first hit me with harm thoughts I went into a sever depression, it was literally the worst time of my life. I do worry that I'm not fully recovered from it but I know I'm way better then I was.

@anna, my story is basically exactly the same. The depersonalization, the famous people suicides, the fear of depression and the intrusive suicide thoughts. I'm sorry you have had to deal with this as well but it's calming to hear someone else has had the same issue

@Francis I've had that as well in the past, and off and on recently. A fear that I'll become depressed or develop a mental illness that causes me to do what those people did

Thanks for replying! I actually have existential thoughts that really play into the depression stuff. Thoughts like “life is meaningless, what’s the point, etc”

yes yes yes to all of that!!

and i really have no idea how to explain to people that the existential stuff really just exist whenever i exist. anything i do makes me go all ocd. i remember when the ocd was just days old, i would sit in my couch all stiff and mortified, just trying to watch friends on tv, but everything that happened in the show freaked me out. literally, just the characters, living their life, whether it was a big job thinh or just having a small discussion about which movie was better. it just freaked me out so much. i remember i’d just got off from school and summer vacation was about to start, and i enjoyed zero seconds of that whole summer. so mortified!! i even dropped out of a school that my old self wouldve loved, but the existential ocd tot triggered so hard that i would run out on the street to cry in class when we were taught about tortured artists and their work

Yeah exactly. For me harm ocd, existential thoughts, and fear of depression really play off each other.

i havent really found any specific erp exercises, but ive found that jokingly agreeing to any “ew” kind of thought you have really just makes the seriousness and fear go away. like say you get the thought “its all meaningless, i should just end it” think back “totes! yeah, hate this life! yikes! gonna go and end it all after lunch!” and then just leave it there. but mainly, i think with existential ocd u just kind of gotta start existing, and not paying attention to the thoughts. they really suck, i know. but keep doing what non-ocd you would do. i still have the existential ocd, but im completely able to watch tv again, im more out and partying again and im able to discuss serious stuff again. still freaks me out a little, but you just gotta keep acting like its not there, at all

@Francis, yes! Completely! It's very hard to explain to others too. I'll feel dumb for how I got into some complex rumination stemming from something so simple most of the time

@allissaa, keeping myself occupied seems to work the best for the existential stuff. It’s usually the worst for me when I’m sitting at work bored just thinking about the future

omg you guys, im so happy (not that you feel this way obviously) that you guys know this struggle too! i feel that a lot of people with existential ocd have that stuff where they question if they’re actually existing or not, where as im at that horrible state of endlessly fighting off dark, answerless philosophical questions. and the thing about endlessly ruminating about an objects existence, oh my! ive smoked cigarettes for a long time, and suddenly smoking a cigarette felt like a whole new world to me. i thought about cigarettes way too hard. and yeah, about the tv shows, i would try and filter everythinh, so i wouldnt watch anything with something “depressing” or too existentially burdeninh in it. but that was barely possible!

Yes I agree existential ocd seems underrepresented. There’s not as many resources for it as other obsessions. It also seems to be a transition obsession for a lot of people, like it’s not their main obsession, but it directly leads into obsessions like harm, depression, religious, etc.

like, in some sense, the fact that you have ocd about those specific things pinpoint that its the opposite of the intrusive thoughts. so the only thing you can really do is lean back and trust yourself

Yes, that's so true! It's always the opposite of what you really want/think/will do

This conversation was awesome, I've never related so much to another person's obsessions

I get the same thing as you guys except with intrusive thoughts about harming others. News stories about depressed people that commit mass shootings stress me out a lot.

Basically, I avoid the news at all costs (which probably isn't good? I'll have to ask my therapist lol). It's hard when something big like a mass shooting happens because there's no avoiding it

i spoke to a girl on instagram about this too. she too was soooo afraid of beinh depressed and committing suicide, either becoming it in the future, or, actually already beinh depressed and just super much in denial. same for me. and yeah, the intrusive thoughts that dress up as your own, wanted thoughts. i guess it happens to me because im usually very much in love with life and myself, including the struggles. so depression and suicide is not something that would happen to me, and i would never go down the giving up road. the 4-5 psychologists ive met this past year because of my ocd, all of them have told me that because of my way of dealing with things usually and my way of just being, its in a sense impossible for me to become depressed. but ocd likes to poke at your most beloved strengths and sides. for me, that is my “jolliness” and optimism. do you have existential ocd too, @alissaa ? like thoughts and obsessions that make everything seem dull and meaningless, very contrary to what you actually think and believe, which also worsens your worries about depression? and just generally taking away your usual joy in life.

@Francis yes those! ughh gosh, they suck! and you feel completely the opposite, im like “everythinh matters!!”

@anna ^^^

Have you found a way of coping with the existential portion of it yet?? For me that's the one that always seems to linger around and it's hard to find info out there about ERP for that theme. My therapist knows I've dealt with it but we haven't gone into treatment for that specifically yet

Haha I like the jokingly agreeing back to it idea I'm gonna try that! I feel like you now in the way that I can go out again and live my life normally, but I still have a hard time talking about the serious stuff. Did your existential ocd ever lead to religious OCD? For me it turned into questioning the existence of God/validity of every religion, and then once I settled on Christianity being what I believe (and always did pre-OCD), I started having religious scrupulosity where you feel like you have to do every part of religion perfectly and have blasphemous thoughts. Awesome. It's calmed down now as well, but I still struggle to have a super healthy relationship with religion or with talking about religion

Also, I went through the "do I exist" phase at one point as well. Do I exist, do other people exist, is this all a "simulation" Etc. It sucked lol. I wish existential OCD was talked about more, it seems to be a theme that is never really talked about

It was so hard, because at that point I had no clue that what I was dealing with was OCD, so I always thought I was crazy. Until all of my googling led me to an article about OCD, thank god. And then I finally was able to learn about it and get a proper ocd therapist.

and as it is with ocd, it targets dreams, core beliefs, joys in life but also your interests/the things you love doing! before ocd i would be so happy and content just sitting still, daydreaming and reflecting on life and all of its wonders, and you could call it some kind of pocket philosophy. but the philosophy in my mind right now is NOT something i wanna think about. and its even harder to do what i love doing to combat anxiety/ocd, because those are tied by the ocd! i love super deep talks/discussions about feelings, life and all of that, i love daydreaming and i love readinh about psychology!! all nearly impossible

if i was religious, im pretty sure the existential stuff wouldve shifted over to religious ocd too. but im not really religious

@Francis you're right about it being a transition obsession, I can see that!

Hi @alissaa and @anna banana. I share many of the intrusive thoughts you’ve written about here. I’ve also always loved philosophy and been a voracious reader, but the existential ocd has been so, so hard to deal with—mostly because I used to love thinking about all this stuff, but now it brings me panic. I can get caught in a thought about death—and why any of us should do anything at all if there’s nothing beyond death—and be immobilized and weeping for hours because I don’t want to feel that way and I cant feel normal. @alissaa, for me too it’s also gotten really tangled with religious ocd, so that it’s even hard to know how to treat/tackle each of them. I don’t have physical compulsions, but the ruminating is exhausting and I can’t break out of it. Do either of you have suggestions about how to address this theme as part of ERP?

Guys, you are explaining exactly what I’ve suffered the past 4 months. Even though my therapist asserts I’m not in depression I’ve been sure that I am since have ruminated all these thoughts about life’s meaning. This is so messed up. But you’re not alone and it feels better to see that OCD can actually play with you this way too, seems like there’s no limits. However, I’m starting to see the light and I know it’s possible to recover from this even if it could feel like life is over. We just have to stay strong and let it take the time it takes. Love to you all ❤️

Thank you for your advice @anna banana. I really appreciate it and will start working on some of these.

Thanks for the advice @anna banana also, what are some epiphanies you had to make yourself feel better?

currently reading this 5 years later & even though y’all might not see this i have never felt so understood 😭🦋❤️ i have always loved life so much and i had these EXACT SAME THEMES fear of depression, fear of su!cide, fear of life being meaningless and that LEADING to me wanting to commit su!cide etc. all because i genuinely love life and couldnt bear anything taking it away. Hope you all are doing so well now and just know you helped someone have a MAJOR breakthrough, i havent felt like i could handle this for 9 months❤️❤️