A new way of Life

(Long read) hello everyone. i was out of the country for about 3-4 months and traveling. my ocd was not that bad at all and I was able to handle it even if it came up. on my way back home, it immediately started. i have learned how to handle it better, but i am more sad and just “awaiting” for something bad to happen. for example, i have sexual themed ocd. pocd and family related stuff, and also my ocd targeted my pets for about a year and it manifested into compulsions that disturbed me and made me not want to be around my cats. now that i am around my cats, i feel like “what if i harm them or do something bad?” or “what if you do those weird compulsions that happened before?” , when i look back on the compulsions that happened, it doesn’t feel like me and it was clearly driven by ocd, but it makes me worry i am just a sick person. i know myself and i know im not, but i had such a weird childhood and then ocd from 15 years old and up. so when these weird compulsions had happened , whether it was for the pet ocd theme or pocd or the family ocd, it feels like some sort of proof. anyways, i feel a bit for content with myself but i know how real ocd can feel and i just remember feeling so hopeless and suici da l, i just don’t want to go through that again. i take a more spiritual route of life and healing, and i wonder if anyone has some deep spiritual warmups or practices i could do to maybe open up my mind more? maybe to realize this is all in the mind? but also to not fight it… Not fight it meaning not let it take over my life. i racked up so much debt in therapy and i truly think i can get through this alone i just need a bit of help. but i dunno. any advice would help! thanks everyone ☀️

So... I understand my anxiety but not OCD. I understand both but not in "my born this way world." I have done a lifetime of teaching myself I'm weird, goofy and different from the average accepted societal person. Why: because I've been teased and bullied all my life for not fitting the script. I have chose to be a survivor and not a victim because be a victim SUCKS! to me. Its a black hole that your cant alwaus climb out of, it leaves you dependant on someone happening by and someone that has a caring soul. In my world you're F'd if you wait for the latter version. So I mentally wired my brain to love me, accept those differences and pat yourself on the back for it. I learned to celebrate it and be happy with it. I nutired it and made it the beast that it is today. So if I truly have OCD, I literally, intentionally and purposely created it wishing me unknowing that it was not good. So, after all these years, the Corporate world says No. We do not have to allow this? I have never known it to harm or hurt anyone. So it's difficult to connect the problem? Anyhow, now I have learn, redefine and understand ME from a entirely new perspective. And that is my initial struggle, the other struggles, the other stuff, I have being dealing with and its nothing new to me. Buy telling self that it's a mis-fire is strange and hard for me to accept? It confuses me still. I have always seen OCD as a autistic behavior. I did not then and still do not perceive autism as a mis-fire or something wrong or unacceptable? Still this pwrplex me. When in school I studied mental health and deep dived. I enjoyed it, learning it. I guess I don't view mental health as psychotic or crazy. Maybe because I grew up in a home of an X military father who had flash backs a lot and we just played the parts until it wasn't fun anymore and my older siblings and mother got tired of dealing with it. I never felt afraid or threaten, just accept that is how he was. Every now and then he would start playing out a experience. I am a curious individual so I thought it was quite interesting to know what happened. Otherwise, he sit quiet all dad, like no one else was there and chain smoke one cigarette after the other. I remember my mom complaining that his cigarette then next his cartoon of cigarettes cost as must as the food they had to keep in the house. I thought it was an exaggeration until I good older and understood it from an adult point of view. I think when it first click, I was outside play tag. hide and seek or something. Me and a another girl run under the window he usually sits at to low smoke out of. We run through all pile of cigarette butts and she said, "dang, where did all these cigarette buds come from, it's like a gigantic ashtray. In that moment, I didn't know. But when I looked up I realized that was my dad's window. I think that was the first time I realized how much he was smoking and why my mom had said that years ago. Anueay, I do understanding the behavior of a persistent, uncontrolled behavior that does not cause a resolve but instead increases the non-productive obsession that you're reacting to which creates the necessity of a compulsion help you deal, cope, or adapt in a way you can tolerate it. This increases the stress responds, the anxieties and/or flight or flight chemicals that are being produced. We react mentally and order to feel "ok," we have developed something that make us feel safe, better, or accepting of whatever our minds are telling us that is wrong, cannot do, or adding shit that is not necessarily true. Hear, if I have intrusive thoughts most of the time they are true. I go into a response of anger, then protection. Then the replay keeps me stuck because i have been forced outside of my safw zone or my protection has being tampered with of something that makes me feel feel the andrinaline is neex becauseI about to go to battle by all means necessary. I think that is how it is happening for me. Anything else is not connecting? My broken trust bonds => morphed into F it just don't trist nobody. There is no benefit of doubt. Let them prove they can be trusted until they can not. But... ? I say what is wrong with that? It has always washed away the BS people that I don't want to be bothered by. That works for me???... Yes, of course, when I was young trust issues did interfere with things that it should not have. But I have learned to reconcile that with observation and analyzing my environment and the action of one's words versus their behavior. And now at my age today, IJDG2Fs if I can't trust you or not because I only deal with people as associates and it doesn't matter anymore. Now this pattern of thinking and believing may be all wrong but I have lived life my entire life in survival mode some say. And that adrenaline that is full in me, I have conclude, is my lifeline, my saving grace and why I have never been able to reduce the heighten response in me. I think, still learning... TBC But I'm open, I am here, and trying to rewire this "new" beast that is my bestfriend. When that Counselor helped me to understand that my intenssity of surviving has created this flight of fight heighten energy = anxiety. I had never viewed it to be the problem yet instead my personal instinctive ALARM. A protective system. This is throwing me off. Really off. Then there are some that keeps telling me anxiety is my fearing... what? No. I have literally not feared much of anything. A man once said to me, that I had a God complex. I said, No, Sir. I do not believe I am better or above anyone. I'm sorry that my confidence in my own self makes you feel uncomfortable. My cheerleader- motivation toward self has nothing to do with you persinally or any other person. Its what I do to keep pushing and NOYB. It's for me only. Please stop inserting yourself, I am not responsible for how you feel when I use my motivated confidence to get through shit. Please excuse yourself from my chapters. Anyway... Why do I say this. My protective energy... because I grew up rough, I've learned to protect self. I know I said I believe in a Higher Power, but when you are young, and about without parents. You tend to say to yourself, Well God ain't here, so what are you going to do? You can't wait for that pie to fall from the sky or you will die. Are you ready to die? And of course, I'd say to myself, "Not today." So, you then use that fight or flight as your strength to help save yourself, adapt and do shit yourself. No disrepect. Whatever it takes until that Higher Power say you're fine now. Relax. Vicious i was, I learned to hard way. And don't regret it. 🤷🏽‍♀️ I guess I'm here to learn how to be delicate and soft. He'll idk. Night, Nighy. Psss ... I had something else to say but it went in another direction. OCD ... ADHD ... 🤷🏽‍♀️

Hey y’all just wanted to share some stuff I feel has been helping me a lot as of lately. I been thinking a lot about my mental wellness in relation to physical wellness as I tend to have chronic pain and wonder how much of my anxious panicked tension is a factor because I also have a weird hip issue that moslty comes from skateboarding when I was young. A big thing that always drew my attention is my mobility and movement that i feel like can be easily overlooked because i am a bit hypermobile. So I’ve always experimented with different ways of managing the dysfunction because there are good days of feeling a lot more physically capable and slight better range of motion/movement where im reminded that there is definitely pain/discomfort that can be alleviated. Now to also bring up that I’ve been recovering from severe OCD for the last about 2 years(undiagnosed since a child) and facing a lot of things no doubt since than, tons of improvement after being able to identify the cause(want to point out I’m self diagnosed still, I try to implement the gold standard of ERP myself as much as I can along with other therapy practices but obviously understand that professional help ultimately is the best thing I can do, no health insurance/poor). Still in recovery no doubt but yea i really can say I’ve been doing a lot better with my OCD. So now going back to the chronic pain I also want to mention the way I’ve noticed my breathing that also feels as though it can be shallow in relation to the previous mentioned dysfunction that leads for me to have chronic pain. So now getting to the things that have helped me, one is understanding the role the psoas plays into your physical sort of biomechanics and then the way it is connected to our emotional responses, as it is known as the fight flight or freeze muscle. The way we can hold so much stress in our body can really wreak havoc, and the more I learn and understand myself and OCD the more it’s like I unpack to to the extent how much it’s completely taken over so much of me. I just started to notice this year how hypervigilant I am, and having Pure O I sort of end up feelin as though even in my own mind I am hypervigilant just scared of the intrusive thoughts/doubts worries and even when they aren’t present just on edge ready to fight back against it at any given moment. It makes so much sense why I ended up with insane amount of tension in my left psoas muscle and then that causing me to also build tension in surrounding areas of that muscle. Finding some chronic pain relief thru identifying where the heavy tension is around the psoas area and massaging it, hitting the trigger points to release the muscle has had so much relief and it really is also just giving me a sense of mental well being that truly is just great. I’ve always struggled with meditation but I’m also realizing how hard it can be when muscles are constantly in fight/flight/freeze mode. Mindful breathing along with the massage/trigger point relief is the first time I actually felt the air I was breathing pass through my body in a way that just made sense. Like as if some parts of my body haven’t had air pass in ages, and really feeling in tune with my senses and the room I was in. My body really is just used to being fearful, and I’ve tried to find ways of relieving the tension but with time and just kind of listening to my body, trying to learn about different ways of rehabilitating these types of chronic pain, mindfulness, mindful breathing, along with the different therapeutic tools for ocd I actually am starting to really let go of things and not have my body in constant fear/panic mode because speaking for most people whose OCD has gotten so severe, there really is a sort of trauma from having to deal with how bad it can get which your body keeps track of. Still continuing this journey recovering, and I hope y’all are also continuing !!