Just wanted to vent a little bit. My OCD has come back terribly in the past few days. I feel like whenever I start talking to a girl I like, my HOCD and ROCD ramps up. I’m getting to the point where I don’t even want to talk to anyone, female or male. I don’t know what to do. Nobody around me even understands what I’m going through or treats it like it’s not a big deal. I have a young daughter and I feel like I can’t take care of her. I can’t hold a job, a relationship, friendship or anything else of value. I can’t afford a therapist and I’m slowly starting to lose my drive to live and I don’t know what to do. Any advice ?

I’ve recently been struggling a lot with OCD. I have had OCD for a long time I just didn’t realize it until more recently. About seven months ago I developed panic attacks one day randomly at work. I thought I was having a heart attack and went to the hospital where they told me it was just a panic attack and I assumed I would snap out and be better within a few days. However it didn’t. Here’s where it gets scary, I was staying at my then boyfriends house while dealing with blurry vision, anxiety attacks everyday, and more (unsure of what was going on). But at some point I saw my bfs (pew pew 🔫) on his table and it sent me into an anxiety attack after sudden thoughts that I was going to hurt myself with it. I begged him to put it away when I’m not looking so I didn’t know where he put it. He did. These thoughts lasted for about four days but began to go away. (I thought that was it and I would be back to normal). Unfortunately though I ended up moving back in with my family when we couldn’t get my panic attacks under control in time for me to get back to work and pay bills. However, coming home brought up a lot of trauma from when I was kid. My anxiety got worse but I didn’t have those thoughts again. About two and half months ago though, I got sick and went to the hospital where they gave me steroid pills and a steroid shot but sent me into some kind of psychiatric event. Ever since then though, I have been suffering from harm OCD, I have had moments of intense anger that I usually have to completely walk away and go on my own because of how intense they are, and it feels like it’s getting worse. Today I felt fine until about and hour and half ago where I started to dwell on the fact that my suicidal thought was influenced by my OCD and at the moment my OCD is at the worst it’s been. This caused me to get suddenly really depressed and I started crying thinking about how I can’t handle this. I then saw a post talking about how suicide rates are high for people with this form of OCD and it made me question if I am mentally strong enough to pull through this. I fear that at times I’m getting worse. I have good days but I have a lot of bad days. Unfortunately this sent me into such a bad panic attack I went over to my nanas crying about how I can’t deal with this. I took a 0.25 mg Xanax which helped calm down the panic attack portion of it but my brain is still uncomfortably active. I guess I just need hope. I’m so saddened by this. It’s like my life took a total 360 in 10 months and got even worse since the steroid shot. Idk what to do about it. I can’t stop the spiral. I talk to two different therapist weekly and start more next week, making it 5 times a week. I feel no improvements…

(Long post warning) Hi, I’ve been struggling with severe OCD for six years now. it started in 2019 with my theme being getting sick/emetophobia. it devastated my life. I almost didn’t graduate high school from it. I remember washing my hands for three hours one day until they were nearly bloody while crying and asking why I could not stop doing it. I remember id have to write and rewrite sentences when I did my English homework and that’s why I nearly failed that class. I remember how I would spend up to thirty minutes to an hour pacing the halls of my apartment while my mom was asleep until I neutralized the thoughts about throwing up and I could finally go to bed. I don’t know when it happened, but my theme switched. Sometimes in late 2020 or early 2021, it switched to POCD. It started with a single thought, and I focused on it and it’s been my theme since then for four years. It has been absolutely destroying me. I feel so disgusted and lost and just tired. My compulsions are severe now. I thought they were bad before, but now they’re ten times worse. I can’t eat, drink, change my clothes, walk, or even do things on my phone normally. I’ve developed so many mental compulsions that it’s so intricate and complicated yet at the same time I’ve done them so much that they’ve become normal. An example I have is if im putting on a shirt and I have a “bad” thought, I have to take it off and put it back on two more times (that’ll make it 3 times I put the shirt back on - odd numbers are my safe number). I have to have a good thought on the third time otherwise I have to take it off and put it on two more times to make it five times I put on that shirt. If not that then I just put on a different shirt because the original is now tainted with my bad thought. I can’t open apps on my phone. It’s with the numbers again. If I open TikTok once while having a bad thought - I have to close it and open it two more times and so on. Sometimes I do it up to 30 times. So I just don’t do things usually. I don’t turn on the TV because I know I’ll redo it. I don’t open a book or grab it off my shelf because I’ll have to repeat the action. I can’t even lay in bed without getting up and redoing it even if im exhausted. I just feel so helpless. I don’t know what to do. I feel disgusting and even now my minds screaming at me that I am dirty and what I think is true. I just wish I was free of this, I wish I could just live my life. I’ve wasted hours and days because of my compulsions. I mask it so well around my friends. I don’t do them in front of anyone or I’ve learned to hide it well. But when im back home alone, it goes haywire. I just want to live again.

Life has been so tough for me lately. I’ve been stuck in an OCD spiral since last December. Most of my fears come from incidentally causing harm to my family or others. I feel like every action is a moral conflict, or that any time I make a bad decision, act out of frustration, or self indulge in anything, I’m debating about whether I’m an awful person who doesn’t care about my kids, my wife, or other people. I’m a stay at home parent currently, and all three of my kids are neurodivergent, with my youngest being on the spectrum. My youngest is nonverbal, so my OCD loves to manipulate that, making it hard to know if my son is happy, sad, upset, etc. Always feeling like I’m worried I’ll make too many mistakes as a parent. That any time I lose my cool, it means I’m just this awful person and parent. I’m burnt out from the stress currently, so I always feel on edge, which makes it harder to have the mental power to resist compulsions. I am in OCD therapy, which has helped. But every time I feel like I’m taking steps in the right direction I get sucked back in. Every time I resist compulsions, I’m triggered almost immediately after. Because I’m a stay at home parent, and a lot of my triggers and themes involve harm to others, particularly my family, it’s just trigger after trigger after trigger. My wife is exhausted from my mental health, which just adds to the guilt I already feel. I hate that my mental health is affecting everyone, and it only reinforces the idea that I’m causing harm or suffering to those around me. I just need a break. I cannot keep living my life this way. This is the worst my OCD has been, and I feel so traumatized from all the days and hours I’ve spent feeling like I’m at my limit. Thanks for reading. Feel free to respond if you can relate. Just needed to vent.