Going through a really stressful time right now. I am looking for a job, dealing with financial stress, I was in a minor car accident a week ago (no one was hurt), and I really haven’t been doing great emotionally or mentally since my grandpa passed away the end of last year. Does anyone have any tips for managing stress when you are dealing with a lot of life changes? I feel like it is sending my OCD into hyper drive, I fixate on every little thing, think about all the what ifs, and worry about every perceived mistake I make and how it is going to affect my situation. I feel like this is caused by all the stress and pressure that is on me right now. If anyone has any tips or forms of stress relief they find particularly effective that would be amazing.

I don’t even know where to start because there’s so much going on in my head and it feels like there’s so much evidence for every thought. Like my ocd feels like it doesn’t just have one specific theme it’s honestly every theme and it just switches throughout the day depending on the thoughts I have. This started all about a month ago, this whole ocd flare up. I’ve been diagnosed with ocd for about 3 years now and looking back on my childhood, I feel like I’ve had it for probably my entire life. My grandpa just recently died back in February and I feel like this whole ocd spiral is a result of dealing with grief especially because it didn’t even hit me for the whole month of April for some reason and things felt “normal”. But since this ocd flare up has started I’ve been constantly reviewing and revisiting my past, all my childhood memories and so many of them are terrifying which is weird because I never had a traumatic event hppen to me as a child. I feel like it’s always been “self-inflicted” trauma if that makes sense? My mind is telling me so many things related to so many topics like maybe I liked my family member as a kid and have just hid it to fit in with society? That my anxiety as a kid has caught up with me and I’m turning into a psychopath? That I’ve always been a creep and enjoyed looking at peoples privates or chests, etc but just ignored or allowed the thought this whole time. Also before this whole flare up I remember always feeling on autopilot and not really alive like everything I did I just felt numb about it. Which aids my ocd to tell me that these feelings are real and the thoughts are true and that I’m “waking up” or realizing or something. I haven’t felt such intense anxiety and distress since I was a kid and I didn’t even understand my own thoughts. It’s like I’m either hyper aware or totally unaware of what’s going on around me and it gets me thinking about my existence, personality, what my role in life is and like genuinely what I’m even doing in the moment like what’s the reason behind everything. I’m constantly questioning my intentions because I don’t know if they’re true or not and it’s like my ocd doesn’t even allow me to consider the thought it just jumps to conclusion. Like telling me I’m guilty before proven innocent. It honestly feels like so much at once to even simply call it ocd or anxiety because it feels like a crisis and any moment I could spiral and breakdown completely. Going to school everyday feeling like anytbing could trigger a panic attack at any moment makes me feel like I can’t be left alone with my thoughts. And like overall since I got down this rabbit hole, my first obsession was harm to myself, then it was harm to others specifically my family, then it was being a pervert or pedo, or being attracted or someone or something I shouldn’t be, which then makes me question my existence and who I am along with also being hyper aware of my facial movements like my eyebrows, nose, etc. Like why does ocd have to involve itself in every aspect of my life? It feels like there’s always something wrong that I need to fix.

I've been having a really tough time lately with a recent workplace interaction that occurrd today, and my mind just keeps replaying the events over and over. It feels like an endless loop, and I'm finding it incredibly hard to let go. I'm trying to figure out if this intense replaying is more about my OCD, or if it's a typical reaction to a stressful situation that's being amplified by my OCD tendencies. The specific details of the incident involve a colleague engaging in a racially insensitive discussion that I tried to disengage from. Despite my attempts to steer the conversation away and remove myself, the situation escalated with direct confrontation and accusations. This led to significant emotional distress for me. Later in the day, the same colleague misunderstood another conversation, making baseless accusations and publicly confronting me in a very aggressive way. I kept quiet throughout, just a bit of muttering. The emotional toll of these interactions has been immense. Now, my mind is stuck. I can't seem to stop dwelling on every word, every gesture, and every imagined alternative outcome. Hoping I'm not viewed as the "angry black woman" which is such an affair narrative why can't I state grievances of racism, without this narrative. * how do you manage the relentless replaying of stressful workplace interactions? What are your go-to coping mechanisms when your mind gets "stuck" on these loops? * Have you found any specific strategies helpful for navigating interpersonal conflicts at work when your OCD makes it difficult to process and move past them? * When you're feeling emotionally vulnerable due to work stress, what helps you prevent these situations from turning into prolonged rumination cycles? Any advice or shared experiences would be incredibly helpful. I'll be so grateful for any assistance. I just feel like I'm not good at life.

Hello everyone, I hope you are all doing well! I lost my dad yesterday and me having ocd since I was 7, it just skyrocketed. Yesterday it was difficult for sure, but I didn’t have any intrusive thoughts about self harm. It all happened suddenly when I was half asleep (trying to sleep even though it was really hard), were I feel as if a switch turned on in my brain and out of nowhere I started feeling angry. I recognised at that moment that I was not angry but that’s what my brain was telling me. And that’s when I had an intrusive thought of harming my mom came to my mind and immediately after that came the thought of harming myself. And it stuck. I know grief can make these themes pop up, but what if this is all real and not ocd? I’m scared. I acknowledge I don’t have thoughts in my head of planning to harm myself, it’s just a feeling that this is going to happen. Now letting my thoughts out brings me relief, even sometimes this intrusive thoughts bring me relief (that is very scary), but ocd makes me so pessimistic, and that I’m doomed in life and the sad life my dad had will also be mine as well. There are moments where I feel hope and relief, but it doesn’t last for long. As if I’m so so sure that this is going to happen. And me having magical thinking ocd doesn’t help either. Grief is hard, sometimes I cry, other times I laugh with my friends and family, but those moments I laugh is when I get terrified ( I read people who have made up the decision to (you know) are happy and laugh. Anyways, I’ve talked to my mom about it, she’s super supportive of me restarting therapy and even though she’s struggling with grief, she’s always there to listen to me and give me all the comfort I need. But I informed her about the thoughts the moment the popped up. Just so that she knows and can save me because I don’t trust myself at all. Sorry for this huge rumble, but I’d really appreciate your advice. I’m scared and so not ready to start therapy (at one hand I don’t want to, it feels such a chore, but I know I need to get help). I’m very pessimistic at the moment and I feel no one can convince me that I’ll get better. I think my future life, and it brings me this warm nice feeling and then it is followed by the thought that this will never happen. And because I have magical thinking ocd, and my uni exams have just started, I had this feeling that this exam season will be endless and it’s never going to end. Guess what, I’m probably going to just take one exam out of three (my mind is like you see, this thought and feeling came true) and that’s where I get super pessimistic. Okay, I’ll shut up for now, please give me some advice on how you try to manage your thoughts and what to do for now. Take care ❤️