Any advice?

I’ve been getting a lot of anxiety and ruminating a lot about getting older and “wasting my youth”. I’m turning 21 in July and going into my final year of university in the fall. I’ve been doing a lot better with my ocd in the past few months and even got discharged from therapy with nocd! However I think this may be becoming obsessive and I don’t want to fall back into compulsive patterns so if anyone has any advice I’d really appreciate it. My biggest concern is that I’m wasting what are supposed to be the best years of my life and the time when I will be the prettiest. Due to my ocd and battling a chronic illness, my self confidence regarding my looks has been pretty low however it is a lot better now. I can’t help but obsess over the fact I’ve “wasted” the last few years with ocd (despite the fact that I never let ocd limit me from having fun). I’m scared of getting ugly and having wasted the time when I’m the prettiest hating the way I looked. I feel sad and anxious when I spend a day doing nothing, especially weekends, because I feel like I wasted it and should be out drinking or spending time with my friends. I keep checking people’s ages and seeing what they are doing to reassure myself that I won’t lose get old and boring. I think this anxiety is due to the fact that the “best years of my life” (aka university) are coming to an end soon and I feel like I didn’t enjoy them as much as I could’ve had I not been dealing with ocd. I know this sounds ridiculous given that getting older and graduating is inevitable but I really don’t want this to become a new obsession.

JSwizz

Date posted: 2y

I’ve had almost this exact same theme stuck in my head for over a year now to varying degrees. I’m 28 so a little older but same type of obsessions. What’s been helping me is resisting compulsions like google searching and things like that while also really trying to accept the uncertainty. So like there is a chance you could be “wasting your youth” and you have to rest and not freak out about that possibility. For me it’s been specifically the phrase “youth is wasted on the young” and whether or not that’s a true or false statement. And then googling it to try and prove it’s not true. All pointless of course so I’ve found it best to resist the urge to have that certainty and just live my life the way I normally would. Easier said than done but I’ve had OCD most of my life so I have some experience to fall back on. Even so the key is consistency cuz if I slack off and do a compulsion the anxiety comes flooding back. Hope that helps a little. Good to know I’m not the only one with this theme lol.

SparkleFish

Date posted: 2y

To me, one way to move forward into your values is to find ways to value “life after pretty”. What other things do you value in life besides appearances? Is it true you value appearance so much that, without it, life is “wasted”? I’m just giving you gentle questions for you to maybe journal on for yourself; you don’t have to tell me nor the peanut gallery :). But what *other* ways can your life grow and change and gain new meanings over the next years?

frankie!!

Date posted: 25w

idk what to do i’m freaking out (afterlife ocd)

i cannot go to therapy cause my parents don’t really “believe” in mental recovery, so i’d like to get some advices. i want these thoughts to leave my mind, i worry whether there is an afterlife or not, actually i believe in a material afterlife even tho i’m not religious but i obsessively think “will i get depressed/bored in a trillion years? will me and my bf break up in a trillion years? i love gifts, but in a trillion years i will have too much objects where do i put them??” and other extremely overwhelming thoughts like “i won’t remember this beautiful memory in a lot of years” and when i need to do something i ask myself "what's the point of this? will i remember this?" this is terrifying and i think about this every single moment with a lot of anxiety seems that a lot of people believe in reincarnation and that name is something you choose for yourself but this means that my mom is not my mom and she didn’t choose my name? please help me it’s difficult to react differently to these thoughts and don’t ruminate, i also have to study and this is so hard..i stayed home from school for 3 days because i was having panic attacks 24/7 and couldn’t study for tests, but i stopped with compulsions 5 days ago (aka searching answers about afterlife on reddit) and i feel like i’m way better, but i still have thoughts i mean, is this ocd? seems like im the only one i can't enjoy happy moments anymore and im scared, i often think that life is useless pointless and unfair, idk how 2 months ago i was able to live my life without thinking about the after..i only took my NOW life into consideration and had intrusive thoughts about my boyfriend..seems so weird to me now what i have to do? some techniques or idk? i never would have thought i would say this, but i miss ROCD, seems like my mental problems/ocd themes in this 3 years are only becoming worse and worse p.s. does drinking chamomile during the day and lemon balm at night help? cause i’m starting to drink this A LOT daily

Anonymous

Date posted: 16w

Fear of change

Hey fellow OCD warriors! Wanted to ask if anyone else’s OCD tends to latch onto change and catastrophize with all kinds of worst-case scenarios. There’s a lot going on in my life, and even though they are all exciting things that I truly want and am happy about, I’ve had moments of deep fear at so much change happening and even a sadness that I can only think is a kind of grief of entering a new stage of life/a new me and leaving the old one behind. I am in my mid-20s and a lot of this centers around nostalgia and fear and intrusive thoughts of changes like my parents getting older, myself aging, friendships growing apart leading to loneliness, etc. I know I need to treat it as any other OCD flare-up and do ERP, but it also feels different than other OCD themes because I feel blue and like existentially sad. Even as a young kid, I always hated change and the thought of growing up (even if exciting things were happening) - like I cried when I turned 10 because I was leaving the single digits behind forever! 🤦‍♀️ I feel like I’m preemptively mourning things like losing my parents or my health even though I am healthy and my parents are too. I don’t want to waste the time I have ruminating about the future. I haven’t heard this kind of theme mentioned a lot so just wanted to see if any others could relate.

This is me!

User type: OCD Conqueror

Date posted: 14w

Aging and death anxiety

I’ve been perturbed for a couple of months now with incessant thoughts about aging and dying. I really am not sure what to do. This feels like other OCD themes, but also really different, because this time, what I’m afraid of is sure to happen. I will either die, or age and then die. It’s been so difficult to enjoy anything lately. I just want to pull a blanket over my head and wait until death comes. Has anyone else felt this way? I feel quite alone. I am trying to enjoy life, but I just remember that it will all be gone in a flash. Nothing really seems to help me feel better. The only escape I have is in my dreams where I can fantasize about never aging or dying. Or at least being able to rewind the clock to have more time.

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