a new perspective

A reflection I never saw myself being able to write✨ One year ago today, I was spiraling for a second time because I wasn’t sure what was happening to me, again. Getting through it once was doable but twice? I truly thought I was losing my mind. OCD wasn’t just a shadow in the background — it was a loud, relentless voice narrating fear, doubt, and compulsions into every corner of my life. I couldn’t trust my thoughts, couldn’t rest in silence. I was questioning everything. I was exhausted coasting through the motions of life trying to survive every minute of every day. But today — I’m here. Still imperfect, still human, but finally free in a way I didn’t think was possible. I got here by learning the hardest, most empowering lesson of my life: I had to stop depending on anyone else to pull me out. I had to stop outsourcing my safety, my certainty, my worth. I had to become the person I could rely on — not in a cold, lonely way, but in the most solid, liberating way possible. You see, healing didn’t come when others gave me reassurance — it came when I stopped needing it. When I realized no one could fight the war in my mind for me. It had to be me. Not because others didn’t care — but because I had to be the one to stop running from fear. I had to choose courage over comfort, again and again. And boy was that rough. But I did. Through therapy, I retrained my brain. (Shout out to Casey Knight🙏🏼) I stopped dancing to OCD’s obsessive rhythm and started rewriting the song. And yeah — the beat dropped a few times. But I kept moving forward. Slowly, I started turning my mind into a place I wanted to live in. I made it beautiful. Not by forcing positive thoughts, but by planting seeds of truth: 🌱 Not every thought deserves attention. 🌱 Discomfort doesn’t mean danger. 🌱 Uncertainty is not the enemy — it’s just part of being alive. I started treating my mind like a garden instead of a battlefield. I let go of perfection and started watering what was real, what was kind, what was mine. And let’s be honest — there were still a few weeds. (Hello, OCD — always trying to “check in.” ) Because healing isn’t linear, I still have days where I feel back to square one, but it’s a day, not a week, month, or another year of surrendering. But here’s the “punny” truth: OCD tried to check me, but I checked myself — with compassion, courage, & a whole lot of practice. To anyone still caught in the spiral — I want you to know: you are not broken. You don’t need to wait for someone else to save you. No else will. The strength you’re looking for? It’s already in you. It might be buried under fear, doubt, and rumination, but it’s there — patient and unbreakable. Start small. Start scared. Just start. Because when you stop relying on the world to reassure you, and start trusting your own ability to face uncertainty, you get something even better than comfort — you get freedom, resilience, power & SO much more. You don’t have to control every thought/urge to have a beautiful mind. You just have to stop believing every thought/urge is the truth. You don’t have to be fearless , you just have to act in spite of fear. You are not crazy You are not a monster You are not evil You are human You are capable And if OCD ever tries to take over again, just smile and say, “Nice try. But not today.” — Someone who came back to life, one brave thought at a time 🧡

i figured it’s better to reach out than to keep this buried. if you have anything—resources, insights, advice—that could help me, please send it my way. anything that might bring clarity, support, or even the smallest sense of direction would mean a lot. diagnosed Borderline w/ OCD July 29th i haven’t written in quite some time. journaling, once a refuge, became a mirror i no longer wished to face—each entry echoing the same obsessions, amplifying them, feeding their rhythm. i lost the spontaneity, the irregular cadence that once made expression feel free. instead, it became a ritual of rumination. recently, i’ve begun making small, deliberate changes—adjustments wherever i feel the pull. i’m starting to understand that who i am is an ever-shifting convergence of thought and temperament. my personality isn’t fixed; it’s a reflection of my internal weather. tracking my moods has helped illuminate certain patterns, revealing how my triggers unfold—but pinpointing those triggers remains elusive. the inconsistency, that quiet turbulence within, makes it difficult. there’s always a friction between my need for comfort and my hunger for transformation. i’ve always judged that contradiction in others—yet here i am, mirroring it. i’ve slowly dismantled many of my defenses, not out of strength, but out of exhaustion. in surrendering control, i’ve made room for meaning. for once, i’m not chasing perfection—I’m chasing something that feels true. psychology is calling to me. it feels like a path that might finally align with the way i think and feel. i’m changing schools, moving in with my father for a while. i need distance from this space that has become both a sanctuary and a cell. my environment dictates so much of my being. that’s how i know: if i can shift the world around me, i can begin to reshape the world within. i’m tired of this ache, this heaviness that keeps finding me no matter where i go. there’s still a part of me that longs to disappear into it—to wrap myself in the numbness, to retreat into that dark shell i’ve outgrown but never quite left behind. but i know now that denying my humanity only deepens my suffering. this endless attempt to regulate every thought, every impulse—it’s tearing me apart in slow, invisible ways. each obsession is a tiny collapse. i pray for the still moments, the ones where i’m not paying for the chaos inside me. i want to take responsibility, i truly do, but none of this feels like something i chose. i didn’t ask for this. i never would have. nothing so far has brought me the fulfillment i crave. i need to rebuild—to design a life rooted in stability, in truth. but it’s hard when i wake up feeling like a different version of myself every day, like i’m holding court with a rotating cast of souls, each demanding a different truth. i hope therapy can help me unburden all of this. i want more than survival. i want peace. i want joy. i want to be loved in a way that doesn’t feel conditional, and i want to love back without the fear that i’m incapable of giving what i receive. i want to be able to hold my instability in my hands and say: i am not afraid of you anymore. but that courage flickers. depending on my mood, my willingness to change rises and falls like a tide. i remain, at my core, a frightened child—haunted by the same small, inconsequential fears. i don’t know why i want to live, and that unsettles me. i don’t know why i long for connection, and that unsettles me too. i just want to emerge from this with something real, something that belongs wholly to me. i’m tired of being fragmented. i’m tired of being stuck in this cycle of becoming and unraveling. i want to belong to myself. i just don’t know what that truly means.

What are mistakes? I have a set of values. My speech or actions contradict those values. I feel deep remorse and disappointment in myself afterwards. Logically, it would make sense to truly feel the remorse, let it impact you, and say, “I wish I didn’t do that. I wish it didn’t happen. Not because it would relieve the guilt I feel now, but because it was genuinely wrong.” Where people go wrong is forgetting the “I”. After stating this, they’ll go back to feeling that remorse, and beat themselves up because they identify with the version of them that’s actively making the mistake. But the very fact those sentences exist from the mouth of that person shows that who they are in this moment isn’t who they were then. The “I” in the statement. Who is that referring to? Certainly not the person before the mistake. If it was, the mistake wouldn’t have happened. So, if you’re now someone else, that wouldn’t do those things, why are you putting yourself down as if you’re still that person? Are those “I”s in the statement nobody? But maybe you knew it was wrong when you were doing it! If you knew the extent to which it was actually harmful, you still wouldn’t have done it. You had the knowledge of it being wrong, but there wasn’t emotion involved. Remorse associates feeling with that knowledge. You begin to feel empathetic for whoever you harmed. This empathy, when felt healthily, and not ignored- is a tool. It’s so that next time you’re in that situation you can feel the effect you’ll have on the person and not do it. Empathy creates the opportunity for you to learn and become more emotionally intelligent, sensitive, and moral. I’ve used this tool all wrong. Feeling bad for what you’ve done is an opportunity. It allows you to grow and become more empathetic. It allows you to change who you are by saying “I…” Imagine if you didn’t feel remorse. How would you ever learn? That would be worse. Thank God for remorse Remorse should be used wisely. To allow for genuine moments of growth, to come back when placed in the same situation again. When the lesson is learnt, remorse has served its purpose. Any further berating serves no positive cause. It can only be used as an excuse. “I’m so bad, there’s no hope for me to be good”. I learnt this idea from Rabbi Akiva T. Maybe there’s a chemical imbalance which causes you to ruminate on your mistakes. Whatever it is, guilt is not meant to be a punishment. It’s a tool. When you regret what you’ve done, you literally become a different person. The you that understands what you understand now simply wouldn’t have made that mistake. Tests are your desire to do something v.s your knowledge that it’s wrong. Remorse allows you to empower the latter for future situations. Sometimes we cling to self deprecation. That's all we know. You can’t just rip it out. It’ll show itself from time to time. Just know that’s a force of habit. Your true essence is still good. The truths are still true. You’re. Not. A. Bad. Person. All I know is that the “me” right now does the right thing. Don’t let remorse hold you back from changing the world. Use it like the tool it is, then let it go. If it comes back, wave at it. Smile. “You helped me, you’ve served your purpose.” Don’t let the growth go unused. Don’t let it be for nothing. Use the new, sensitive you to bring good to those around you. Don’t let the remorse hold back the good that came from it. You’re free. You’re weightless. You can change the world for the better. So do it :)