Family doesn't understand OCD.

Hi everyone, I’m reaching out for support. Right now I feel like OCD is “winning” in my life and I feel suffocated and alone. This is my story and I would love any support, guidance, or advice. Long post, but I appreciate anyone that reads it. I’m a 28 year old Muslim middle eastern woman. My family immigrated to Canada when I was a kid. I’ve never been very religious but I consider myself a believer. I also believe that religion is extremely personal and that my relationship with God is mine only. My faith hasn’t always been strong, it goes up and down. My family, although not super religious, has always valued tradition and my parents have always wanted me to marry someone Muslim and Arab. They are very adamant about that and very against mixing with other cultures and faiths. My father passed sway in my early twenties, and I’ve always struggled with doing things that he wouldn’t approve of and having him be disappointed or ashamed of me. I was very close to my dad - his death was really traumatic and I miss him everyday. I am in a relationship with a kind, caring man who loves me and takes care of me. We were friends first and I tried to not let things progress past friendship because I knew my family would never approve. But eventually we both confessed feelings and that led us to a relationship. He makes me happy and has healed many things in me that were wounded from past relationships. He’s Punjabi Sikh, so our cultures and faiths are different. He is not religious at all. When we first started talking about dating, he said to me that if he had to do an Islamic marriage to be with me that he would do it. If that’s what it took to be with me, he’d do it. That for me was the push I needed to go for it, and let myself get into a relationship with my friend and now lover. He even says that he’s open to our kids learning Islam. He just wants our kids to also learn about where he comes from, of course. I knew that my family wouldn’t approve, but having the Islamic marriage would be extremely important to maybe eventually have them accept my decision. My boyfriend has always been aware of my OCD and is always willing to do whatever it takes to support me. As we’ve navigated dating and being in a relationship we’ve had some challenges with my ROCD, and we’re actively working on it with exposure therapy. We’ve also had general relationship obstacles that we’re learning to work through, like communication and having different love languages. I tend to be anxiously attached and I get panic attacks when I think I’m losing people close to me. So even just the idea of a break up makes me feel sick. In all honesty, being in a relationship has been really hard on my mental health. My therapist says it’s like being in constant exposure- which can be exhausting (I always have the thought “being single is so much easier because there’s way less triggers” but I don’t want to believe that or let it dictate my life). My big struggles right now are guilt from hiding my relationship from my family, and dealing with constant ROCD intrusive thoughts like: “is he the one? You want someone from your own culture, your mom is right, this is never going to work and you’re going to be unhappy and divorced. You don’t want to mix cultures, you’re going to hate it, stop pretending to be open to it… your aunts and uncles are going to disapprove and cut you off, you’re going to be judged by everyone, your kids are going to be so confused about their identity, travelling back home is going to be so weird and not the same, so you should break up with him”. Often, this causes me to “test” the relationship or look for problems and create arguments. It’s a toxic cycle, and I’m so ashamed of it. I also often struggle with thoughts like “you’re lying to yourself, you want someone from your culture, you’re a bad person for leading him on, you’re a liar”…. “You did this to yourself by dating outside your culture”. Ultimately, I feel torn. How am I meant to know if I actually want to be in this relationship or if I want to do what my family approves of (and what would be easier)? How do I manage the thoughts that tell me opposing things? I have frequent panic attacks and when things are bad, they happen daily and are very debilitating. This is where I’m at right now, and this is the part that terrifies me. I don’t want to be stuck like this. I don’t want to lose my boyfriend. That thought terrifies me and I don’t think I can handle that. He means so much to me. I also don’t want to be suffocated by thoughts - if I have them every day first thing in the morning, does that mean I need to listen to them? I’m struggling so much and I feel so hopeless. I wouldn’t wish these feelings on anybody, ever. I want to feel at ease, more than anything.

Hi ❤️ I’m really struggling right now I’m in my sophomore year of Highschool and I’ve finally started planning or thinking abt my future (for context I was extremely depressed and suicidal from 6-9th grade) After conquering my depression this is a huge leap for me and I’m proud of myself ❤️ But there’s something still holding me down :( and I’m not sure what to do anymore that thing is OCD. Since 6th grade I have had strong and invasive intrusive thoughts all the time they scare me so bad and make me feel as though I’m not even real anymore :( I’m sick of taking the time to do ridiculous compulsions to rid or ease these thoughts it’s a waste of time and energy and it hurts me so bad I feel like I will never get to just live my life without this :( How can I plan my future when I can’t even find myself in this mess of anxiety 💔 I’m so tired of fighting my mental health it’s been years from anxiety attacks to sh to survived suicide attempts (I got help dw❤️‍🩹) and recovery there. Just to be thrown into a storm of awful scary sickening thoughts day and night-when can I just be a normal teenager and possibly a happy adult? How do I conquer this so I can love myself to the fullest and live my life free and happy? :( ❤️❤️‍🩹 I’m so scared to talk to my parents about it I’m ashamed of my thoughts and every time I bring it up they just say I shouldn’t be diagnosing myself or it’s just ADHD. It really really hurts me they have no idea how awful this feels and it makes me feel so alone sometimes 💔

Hi, I feel so creepy with losing connection with one of my closest people in my life, my two daughters who grew up with me during the years I was hiding my ocd. I feel they are seeing me as a narcissistic person instead of taking in consideration that I collapsed in the last part of their teenage years due to so severe ocd that I took my self out of the home to "protect them" ad I was convinced people would be damaged if they came close to me. Also that I never considered me as valuable to them. I felt sorry for them that I were their mother during their entire childhood. In their teenage years I was not available, drowning my self in work avoiding by all costs my compulsive thoughts and the horror I was dealing with. Today they see me as a mother who left them, not taking care of them and only thinking about my self. They never sat down with me after the diagnosis was clear in 2023, and they took.active distance to me in 2018. They sometimes talk to me, like once a year, in Christmas at my parents house, but never take initiative to have contact. I can't deal with it on an emotional level, I feel totally numbed. I love them more than anything in the world and did everything I could since they where born up to the time when my ocd really started to take a toll on me and I withdraw more and more from the familiy. I don't know how to handle because it seems that they think I am a mother who doesn't care or did care, but my ocd is ignored and it feels as if they see it as an excuse for bad behavior. I don't know, it's my guessing. I am not trying to make them change any of their ideas about their childhood and the needs I could not meet. I am so sorry about it. What I can't understand is that they refuse to deal with the fact that I been ill. We are a big resourceful family, but this part of my ocd is hidden back my role as the creative, crazy black sheep, and on top of it all I have somehow succeeded in my profession at the years where I "disappeared ", so it makes it even harder to explain that I spent between 4 and 24 hours on my ocd each day. It's just that I was running my own business which required me and just me as the producer of my product . If I did not function some days or weeks no-one knew as long as I delivered what I was suppose to. In the end I didn't do that either, but for long time I managed against all odds and the he'll of my horrible pure ocd. Anyone who can relate I appreciate all kinds of responses to this. I didn't even speak with my daughters on my birthday or theirs. They don't want to talk to me. For a while I thought things was better, but then it suddenly became worse after a dinner in my parents home when the family was gathered. I don't have any clue about why and then they said through my father and mother that they don't want to talk with me. If I had been held hostage by a gerilja in a jungle for ten years and suddenly was released to come home after ten years, everyone would be happy on my behalf. This is how it feels to have got treatment for my ocd, which wad undiagnosed for 28 years. I have a new life already, just 2 and a half years in to treatment. But I lost my children. It feels so painful that I can't feel it. And I wish they could know the truth about my story.