I wanna know if anyone can relate. My family doesn't think my depression or OCD is real. They haven't said it in that many words but they've said along the lines of 'you just need to shake yourself and you'll be fine'. BUT I have my boyfriend who listens, who seems to care and I am very happy I have him but I just feel like I'm a tremendous burden on him. I don't have many friends and any friends I do have are always busy, are work friends who don't care or are only friends with me because of my boyfriend. I feel weak and lonely. I need to know what to do.

Hello dear friends. I hadn't been on this app for a while, I've been getting by. Today I just need to vent and to feel validated and understood. I have OCD, I consider myself in permanent recovery. It is an everyday job. I am ina relationship with a wonderful guy. I deeply love and care about him, but he doesn't understand anything about OCD. I've explained it to him a million times. I've directed him to online resources. I've talked him through what to do to help me get out of a loop without giving me reassurance. And yet, he never knows what to say or do when an episode appears. It is tiring to pull myself out of the loop and then having yo explain to him what just happened to me, over and over again. I think, in general, he lacks empathy for other people's feelings, but, when it comes to me, I can see that he tries but achieves nothing. I think I don't have ROCD, I have diverse thoughts. But the last few weeks this thought got into my mind: what if he has met someone else and they are texting each other and flirting and he's gonna leave me? (He left his girl to start a new relationship with me). And he are apart due to the covid-19 epidemic, so we didn't see each other almost at all during last year. Of course, I had been able to keep this particular thought to myself, buy yesterday, it just came out of my mind after him not picking up the phone. He was in shock. He reacted defensively (which I completely understand), replied that he had nothing to explain to me as to why he couldn't answer the phone when I called him and that we was surprised that I asked him such a thing (if the reason why he didn't answer me was that he was talking to someone else). I knew it was just an OCD thought of mine, but I just couldn't keep it to myself any longer. Of course, I apologized to him and had to explain it had been an OCD thought. He was supporting and understanding and told me everything was ok and to forget about it. This morning I feel sad that he couldn't recognize this for what it was despite all the explaining I have done. I have dealt with my ocd on my own, despite being in a relationship. I just needed to vent and would like to read your thoughts about this whole thing. Thank you in advance for reading and replying.

I’m fairly new to treating my OCD and have felt crazy for most of my life. It didn’t help that no one in my life truly understood OCD and always said I was being dramatic. I very recently (within the past few months) finally got diagnosed with OCD and my whole life started to make sense. However, I recently opened up to someone I really believed I trusted about the intrusive thoughts I have and now feel worse than I ever have before. They essentially called me a psychopath and said they are worried for the people around me. Even though I would and could never hurt anyone. I’ve never felt more alone and broken in my life. I already try very hard to hide my OCD and everything associated with it because no one in my life understands so it’s been easier to deal with it myself than listen to everyone say whatever they have to say about my situation. After what happened today I’m even more inclined to just keep it to myself. I don’t know what I’m expecting from writing this but I figure this is the best place to write what I’m feeling. Going through OCD is hard enough on it’s own. But when people are telling you they think you’re a danger to society and are crazy because of your intrusive thoughts it really hurts. I’m just tired.

Hi All, How do people in this community deal with having no one to talk to when needing to cope with depression or anxiety? I’ve tried talking to my family and friends, but they’re all sick and tired of me and my OCD. Every time I try to bring up my concerns, they just shut me down with “Stop the OCD!”, “Go away!”, or just ignore me completely. I know this support group exists for this, but realistically, I can’t come here every time I have something I want to talk about. I’m not sure what else to try, I’ve lost all my friends and now losing family members. I’ve even tried warning them “what I’m about to say is triggering” but that just makes it worse.