- Date posted
- 3y
Grief and OCD
My aunt passed away recently. I was very close with her and it was unexpected, relative to her general health just earlier this year. My heart feels broken and I can feel my OCD coming back which causes more stress. I can't tell if I'm avoiding the pain because it's a normal part of grief or if it's my OCD. I feel the urge to grieve "correctly" and be there for everyone else but then will burn out and need to isolate and ignore everyone because I'm afraid if I engage too much or not enough or not the "right way" when I feel depleted, that I will mess up myself or upset them or ruin the relationship. The pressure from OCD is so strong yet I'm still attempting to do my ERP though everything feels really horrible and out of whack, space like, because of the grief. Then I spiral, questioning that, as well, and if it's the grief or maybe the OCD is "finally making me insane". We have been clearing out my aunt's house and it's been a positive experience with my family, but it's been increasingly hard to see her items changed or adjusted or cleared. Some of this seems normal but I know the strength for which I feel it at times is OCD because I find myself close to panic each day we are done because essentially it's like 7 or 8 hours of exposures. Now I find intrusive suicidal thoughts coming back, depression (which seems normal for grief but exacerbates the OCD sometimes) and other intrusive thoughts involving my aunt or my cats and life and death. I feel like I'm going to fall apart and my body aches from carrying the stress. Anyway I'm just feeling horrible now that the intrusive thoughts are coming back more and everything is so out of whack, I don't understand the point of anything so doing ERP for this feels impossible or daunting or like such a minor thing to accomplish when I have so much else to do and already overloaded emotionally and mentally. Thank you for listening I just had to share.