- Date posted
- 3y
- User type
- NOCD Alumni
- Date posted
- 3y
Hello Emma! I know that this theme can seem so heart wrenching and tiring. Hang in there because there is HOPE! Are you currently practicing ERP? If you do not have a therapist NOCD can help. They helped get me out of my bed and out of being stuck in my house and into the world functioning again. There are also great groups NOCD offers and I find it so helpful to relate to other people with the same OCD struggles as me. Let me know if I can help and check out NOCD or have your parents check them out since you are 17. Good luck!
- Date posted
- 3y
Thank you!!
- Date posted
- 3y
Hi , I’m so sorry you’re dealing with it I currently am to and it’s awful so exhausting like you said I hope the best for us and everyone else ❤️
- User type
- OCD Conqueror
- Date posted
- 3y
Hi Emma. You are so right that dealing with OCD is exhausting, and it is very natural to want it to stop. I have had OCD for many years, and through ERP therapy, I have been able to retrain my brain on how to treat intrusive thoughts when they enter into my mind. I am able to accept the thoughts, and do nothing with them, i.e., no compulsions. That does not mean I do not feel anxiety, I do, but I do not allow OCD to be in charge. If you are able to do ERP therapy, that is the gold standard for treatment. I will also emphasize that compulsions will only make the OCD STRONGER. Yes, it may help in the short term, but doing a compulsion tells the brain that the intrusive thought is important - when in reality it is a false alarm. I hope this helps. Please feel free to respond if you need some clarification.
- Date posted
- 3y
I have done ERP and it has definetly helped in the past but it seems to come back eventually anyways
- User type
- OCD Conqueror
- Date posted
- 3y
@Emma17 I would encourage you to Continue to do erp. OCD is manageable not curable.
- User type
- NOCD Alumni
- Date posted
- 3y
@Emma17 - It is recommended to do a scheduled ERP daily even when in recovery and to continue to do response prevention- no compulsions anytime you are triggered to maintain your recovery. So I encourage you to think of some ERP you have done in the past or come up with some new ones you think you can handle and give it a go.
Related posts
- Date posted
- 25w
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.
- Date posted
- 21w
(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.
- Date posted
- 21w
I’m so sad all the time and struggle with s*icidal ideation because of my ocd,I think about it all the time I’m in so much pain and therapy isn’t helping.
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