- Date posted
- 3y
Grief and OCD
Anyone else grieving a lost childhood due to OCD? Also grieving missed opportunities in college.
Anyone else grieving a lost childhood due to OCD? Also grieving missed opportunities in college.
Sure, for a bit. But if you grieve too long over something that can’t be changed, then the grief can become a victimhood mindset.
Big time, but for me it was my 20's. I'm 29 now. I had a very social time as a teenager, but my OCD flared up hard when I was around 17-19 and I couldn't do anything the same way. I feel pretty stunted by this illness. I feel like my living situation is still the exact same as when I was 17 in terms of my mom supporting me, not having a job, not knowing how to do adult things like taxes and whatever, still living at home. I often worry that I missed out on a lot and if I'm too old to do things, but that's a silly way for me to be. It's never too late to give your dreams a shot. Also, a bit silly, but something I hold onto: scientists have been able reverse aging in mice. So any time that was lost to OCD might not be as important if we all end up living longer with science. I may be nearly 30, but that doesn't mean my life is over. That doesn't mean that there aren't fun times to be had. I don't know what the future brings, but there is more out there for us to experience
This is great. Very encouraging. I am about the same age - turning 29 later this month. I haven’t had the luxury of not having to do adult things since I lost my mom when I was 22. My life was completely wrecked. But I feel like it is slowly being put back together. Thanks for the encouragement. :) it isn’t too late to not pursue your dreams like you said.
@Flamewheel I'm sorry to hear that about your mom. I'm glad things are slowly getting better though
I like to think that at least with what I’ve been going through all my life with OCD, I can eventually become an advocate and help others learn about OCD where I feel my network (including medical professionals, etc.) failed to see the red flags of my OCD. I want to tap into my purpose through pain, to help others! It’s also made me a much more empathetic person than I would have been if I never had OCD, so it makes me a more valuable mentor in my community. I like to see it that way. To grieve but also to not let it hold me down but rather to energize my “why” of why I want to work on recovery. :-)
Yes, but I grief this recent years of my life, what helps me is this phrase that Thanos said in the movie hahaha "As long as there are those that remember what was, there will always be those, that are unable to accept what can be. They will resist" Let's focus on what we have not in what we lost 💖
It’s nothing like the grief I felt over losing my mom. But I do think it’s healthy to feel the feelings, then move on.
Yes I was diagnosed at 7. I didn’t want to go trick or treating for years since I was scared I would be poisoned.
My last and almost life long theme/sub-theme largely subsided recently and my ocd felt like it wasn’t even an issue. Then I went on winter break from uni and being alone made my mind come up with a whole new topic to obsess over. TLDR on my fears, my advisor wouldn’t email me back for a while about signing up for classes so my mind started to worry “what if he doesn’t in time and you can’t enroll this semester and you lose this whole life you just built and all these new friends” So when that issue was resolved my mind found other scarier ways I could be uprooted from my current life and friends that I’ve grown so attached to. Then my mind remembered back when I was struggling with false memories and scrupulosity and I essentially made a post on a forum 2 and a half years ago saying I did something or was convinced I did something that I never actually did. Now I’ve been spiraling about someone finding it reporting me and I either get seen as a horrible person or arrested or something over something I never actually did but “admitted” to out of fear of going to hell. My mind won’t let it go and keeps finding new reasons for it to be “valid” “logical” or even inevitable. I feel like it’s just hanging over my head and I can never rest easy. Especially when I try to focus on my daily tasks or plan for the future I get this horrible flair up of “why plan for the future when this could come back in that future and you get uprooted from all of it” my mind won’t rest without certainty being uprooted won’t happen but certainty doesn’t exist, at least not with ocd. This sucks and I miss being care free.
Hi, I’m new here!! I’m praying I don’t get judged for this. But, back in late May of 2022 ( literally right before I graduated high school), I added this one random girl from my school on Snapchat. She posted something about a graduation party , so I swiped up on her story basically saying how I can’t believe we’re almost graduated. She replied and we had a really short and simple conversation. The next day ( i believe) , we started talking a lot , and I just so happened to see her at the highschool when we were grabbing our graduation outfits and doing the rehearsal. When I saw her irl, I kinda got turned off ( I heard she was kinda crazy) , and on top of that , she was a little ugly irl. I remember seeing her Snapchat bio , and she was close friends with my female cousin ( a year younger than me) , who I happened to experiment sexually with when I was 10-11 years old. I remember going to work later that day and having sort of a lightbulb flick thought ( it wasn’t a good thought though) , what if my cousin told her about what happened when we were younger? So I started to kind of panic and immediately distanced myself from that girl. I also experimented sexually with one of my female friends when I was 10-11 , and from that day onwards, I’ve been pretty much living in paranoia and a little bit of guilt about someone finding out and my life being ruined . On top of that, It’s gotten worse to now sometimes I wonder if a girl I added off of quick add ( Snapchat) is underage even if they told me they were 18+ or had 18 and above in their bio, and I get so much guilt and anxiety about that. I even had a quick thought last February on what if I did something inappropriate with my younger cousin when I was 15-16 but I just can’t exactly remember when it happened , and it still eats me alive when I think about it, because I don’t know if it happened or not. I’m sorry for the long vent, I just wish I felt normal again. No matter how much I try to do things that old me used to do, life always feels “ off”. I always kept the top part about when I was younger a secret up until early (ish ) 2024, then I vented to one of my best friends and he told me that that’s a normal thing to do at a young age. Since then, I have told multiple friends and they all say they did similar stuff, but my brain just can’t accept that. Please help me, I quite literally overthink everything nowadays. 2021 was the last full year that I felt normal ( coincidentally, the best year of my life so far) . It’s not just about sexual related things either, sometimes I’ll wonder if I messed up something at work or hit a car while driving/hit someone and drove off. I just wanna live my life how I was supposed to live it after highschool ( carefree and happy) before whatever it is ( I think it’s ocd) hit me unexpectedly. Thanks to anyone who read this , I just needed to pour it out regardless of how negative I felt typing this, I hope someone can relate , because I feel so alone in my head at times.
17f Just like the title says. I came to realization that I lost a whole year of life. I remembered my real event in the end of january of 2024. Since then my life has been a living hell. Also kinda made a couple new smaller events through this year. And I know I deserve it cause my event was actually bad. Even people without ocd on reddit agree it was bad. It's still ocd, but I deserve it probably. For this whole year I haven't had a day when I wouldn't think of it. It became my default state to constantly have it on my mind. I walked around, pretended to have fun, talked to people. Most of the time I wasn't really there, I was thinking about my event. My event haunts me when I'm awake, when I'm asleep. I spend this whole year either freaking out, being depressed, thinking on methods to off myself, ruminating, seeking reassurance or trying to distract myself with books, TV shows, social media or daydreaming. Literally barely engaged with reality. So it's so hard to believe a whole year passed... I can barely remember anything that happened during this year. I can't believe this is my life. Probably doesn't really matter cause I don't plan on staying there that long. There is no way I'm going to experience piece with myself. So I will be out in a year or so, since my plan requires some time. Finally will end it all. It just feels very weird. A whole year passed. I was so deep down in my head I didn't even notice. It's scary.
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