My Story as a Nurse

I feel like I'm up against an insurmountable mountain. I'm not new to OCD; I know I've had symptoms since at least the age of 8 (probably earlier to be honest, I just know things really took off when I was 8). I dealt with things with no outside help until I was 17, at which point I began seeing a therapist and began to take celexa. I stuck with that therapist for a couple more years before going about my life, though I continued to take the the celexa. Fast forward to 2018, age 29 - I once again began to see a therapist and had my meds adjusted once more, this time switching to Luvox. I also wound up switching therapists after a year or so, though not by choice - my therapist had a personal crisis come up that necessitated the switch. I still see the same therapist I switched to in 2019. Early 2020 brought with it a couple more med changes, going off the Luvox and onto Cymbalta and Intuniv due to concerns about previously undiagnosed ADHD. This was how things were for five years. I'm not going to say things were perfect- there were undoubtedly bumps in the road - but things felt doable, and I mostly found enjoyment in life. This came to a screeching halt recently. Again, as I said, there were bumps in the road. At first, I thought this was all that this was. When I spoke to my psychiatrist in early February, I started Ativan as I just wanted something to take the edge off a little bit. I also went off of Intuniv as we thought that might be contributing to things. It was Saturday, February 8th when things really started to go off the rails. My boyfriend and I were going on a short trip across the state. An intrusive thought popped up - What if I sleepwalked at the hotel and hurt or even killed my boyfriend? This fear stuck with me through the entire trip. I heaved a sigh of relief as we drove back. I'd soon be safe back at home and I'd put it all behind me. If only. On the ride home, my worries shifted to concerns that I would sleepwalk and do something to my parents, who I live with. I fretted for the majority of the trip back, already making up plans to research the subject and how unlikely it would be that something like that would happen, and I'd tell my parents for good measure. They, of course, assured me that I'd never sleepwalked in the past so it was unlikely I'd do so now. I should also note that this is not a new fear of mine, but one I experienced as early as elementary school, though it had essentially disappeared up until this point, decades later. If only it stopped there. I stopped taking the Ativan Sunday evening in the middle of the trip, my thought being that the Ativan might have contributed to this. My boyfriend, in fact, had a reaction years ago where Klonopin actually sent him into a panic, so it seemed possible that I might be experiencing some sort of paradoxical reaction. I also remained off of the Intuniv. Monday was the day I began experiencing loss of appetite. Monday was also the day when things really began to take off and my life began to truly feel like a waking nightmare. Another horrific image from my past reared it's ugly head - an image of my grabbing a knife from the kitchen and stabbing my mom. An image that has continued to haunt me since - and now its 2 weeks later. There's still a bit more to the story - The day after this began, I went to a local urgent care. I was now not only experiencing these horrible thoughts, but I could barely eat lunch, and my stomach was hurting. I also told my parents the latest turn in how things were going. From the urgent care, I was given a prescription for Omeprazole and Hydroxyzine. The following day, I went to my ordinary doctor's office, where the doctor suspected my increase in anxiety and the associated intrusive thoughts had to do with going off of the Intuniv I'd been taking for five years without tapering, and advised me to immediately resume the Intuniv. He also endorsed continuing the Hydroxyzine, which I was taking at night before bed at this point. I'd hoped that going back on the Intuniv would 'even things out' and I'd be back to normal in no time. The thoughts continued, unfortunately. I had an appointment with my therapist as well as my psychiatrist, who upped my dosage of Intuniv to 3mg instead of 2mg and advised on other medication options should this not help. Though I would like to see both of them more, it's difficult with my work schedule and their busy schedules to find time. As of right now, I'm seeing my therapist once every two weeks. My next appointment with her is this Wednesday. I've also made follow up appointments with my regular doctor's office. Last Wednesday (2/19), I had an appointment with an NP who advised I take the Hydroxyzine three times a day rather than just at bed time, so I've been doing that. I thought it might be helping the first time I took it in the afternoon, though this doesn't seem to be the case with subsequent dosages, unfortunately. I also see her again on Wednesday. I apologize for the long post, but I wanted to share how I got to this point. Things aren't great. I'm trying to enjoy life where I can - I recently played board games with my parents yesterday and went to a restaurant with my boyfriend the day before and felt almost normal, but even in those instances it felt like there was something lurking just beneath the surface. I'm going through life, but it feels like I'm barely surviving. I'm going to work but only because I think I'd be worse at home with absolutely no distractions. I wish there was a switch I could flip and things would be back to normal, where I didn't feel this way. In fact, more often that not, I want to be laying in bed asleep, because you can't think when you're asleep, and it feels like the only refuge at this point. It's hard because home was always my safe place, and my mom one of my safe people - and now this. Anyway, if you made it through this long post, thanks for reading. <3

Oh my god, where do I start? Trauma related OCD is the worst crap I've ever experienced in my life, hands down. It develops in some people after a traumatic experience. You can have both trauma related OCD and PTSD together or develop it after PTSD. Mine was like a transitionary phase and developed it after PTSD. I had every symptom of PTSD prior to this from witnessing a traumatic event which I will not go into detail about. But I will tell you how I went from PTSD to OCD and what I've experienced with all of this as some guy in their late 20s.  So, right after the traumatic event I developed poor concentration, reoccuring nightmares, fear, insomnia, restlessness, irritation, reoccurring thoughts about the event, forgetfulness and a faulty fight or flight response triggered by the thoughts. The freaking insomnia killed me for a year straight. Imagine going to sleep at 3 am and getting up at 7 am with a faulty fight or flight response kicking in right away for that whole entire day now. It felt like my body was boiling and radiating with the hottest energy you can imagine from my legs all the way up to my head. And I also felt weak, drunk and terribly lightheaded every single day. Rinse and repeat all of that for 1 year straight. Thank god that's over now. It was a damn nightmare of nightmares.  Most of those PTSD symptoms eventually disappeared but not all of them. I just found the will and mental strength in myself to let most of that PTSD crap go. But you know what happened pretty damn soon after that? It was all eventually replaced with trauma related OCD. It's like the PTSD evolved and didn't want me getting away so easily. For me, it's a mix of handwashing OCD and really bad somatic or sensorimotor OCD but that's not all. I also have distorted senses, bad forgetfulness, terrible concentration abilities, tension headaches and irritation every single day.  Here are some examples of what I go through; I'll turn the lights off, but my brain imagines the lights are on still. I'll stand there trying to process that the lights are off while fighting the distorted sense perception from my brain. So, I keep 'checking' to make sure the lights are indeed off. Not a good situation to be in. I have pretty much every somatic OCD symptom of breathing, swallowing, blinking, eye movements and most bodily functions. My brain's like telling me if you don't do it the 'right way' then I have to keep doing it until I feel like I did it the 'right way.' It's a 'feeling' issue, a really bad one I should say. All of this crap causes my fight or flight response to kick in, gives me some loss of sleep, irritation and mental agony. Also, if I 'feel' like I forgot to do something even though deep down I already know I did said thing, I feel compelled to do it again until that feeling subsides. It's like this, "I know I just did that but my brain wants me to feel like I didn't do it. Therefore, let's do it again." The handwashing is bad too. But I normally do it to 'feel good' about something in my head. Hence, the obsessive handwashing. The dfference between this OCD stuff and PTSD is that PTSD has you focused solely on the traumatic event while this OCD has me focused on many, many different compulsions which is much worse. One thing vs many compulsions? The latter is by far worse, trust me. Focusing on the compulsions screws up my ability to focus and think about what I'm doing at hand. If I ignore them, just imagine a tension headache with a really irritated hot spot forming in your head somewhere and coming in hard and fast. Now, I've successfully ignored many urges but... new ones just keep coming and forming. It's a constant battle. Every freaking day is a terrible battle with this stuff. If I slip up and let something become a compulsion and get out of hand, I fight it like fighting to the death and it then takes a while for me to climb back up out the hole I fell into. Once I'm out of the hole, the incessant battle of resisting continues. ​Here's some more weird things I do for example; basically, if I'm desperate to keep a compulsion away, I have to do other unrelated things a certain way or else I get the urge to go right back to doing said compulsion. And sometimes weird sensations, strain or pain I might feel while doing something throughout the day will alone trigger me to do an earlier compulsion. I also have to get a good night sleep after a battle with a compulsion. If I don't, that compulsion comes right back and I have to fight it the next day. It's a vicious cycle. I know, it's very screwed up. You don't have to tell me. I sometimes repeat myself over and over again out loud to make my brain "click" with what I'm saying. Now, this one started with the PTSD and I'm not sure if it's a cognitive and concentration issue or an OCD issue but it did actually get better over time thankfully. I hated that anyway. ​This is a glimpse of what I go through on a daily basis. And yeah, I do ERT all the time and it's not like a magic wand you can wave in the air and then everything's gone and back to normal. In my experience, it has worked for some things but other things, not so much. I've taken saffron, NAC, valerian root, passion flower, other supplements and other stuff to see if it would all help in some way. Saffron is touted as an SSRI equivalent but it did nothing for my OCD surprisingly except make me tired. I took it for a couple months and just hated the tired and drowsy feeling I got from it. The thing that actually worked somewhat for me is NAC. I took it for several months straight at a high dose and it actually altered my OCD behavior a little bit. I did 2600 MG of it everyday for several months. I stopped after a while because it really got my libido going. Yeah, won't go into that part. ​Anyway, I felt like I should share my story. As someone who's had the unfortunate pleasure of experiencing both PTSD and trauma related OCD, people truly do underestimate the terrible suffering that OCD can inflict on its victims. I don't believe an SSRI or any cognitive supplement will "fix" your OCD but I believe one can be liberated from it if they do resist the compulsions long enough to where their brain sort of very slowly recalibrates itself to be less OCD about things in the future. But it will take a lot of mental strength, will power and most of all, time. Distracting yourself and focusing on what makes you happy is very beneficial too and is honestly what helped me the most out of anything. Everyone's OCD is unique to themselves. What works for me might not work for you. What you are experiencing may not necessarily be the same as what I'm experiencing. For example, some people have terrible harm OCD where they are afraid of acting out on their thoughts. I cannot relate to that. But if any of you can relate to some degree with what I have, feel free to share. I'll give you some tips that I learned from my experience with all of this that helped me. But just remember, what works for me might not necessarily work for you. - Try to adopt an 'I don't care mentality' for your ocd rituals: Try to treat it as something that you refuse to have define you as a person and as if it's just nonsense that means nothing in the end. - Stop it in the initial stages: If you feel a compulsion coming on, I've found that ignoring it right then and there works the best. Even if you act on the compulsion once when it just starts, you have enough time to stop it right then and there still by ignoring it. My brain thinks that the compulsion was therefore not a compulsion and moves on to find sonething else to focus in on. Just rinse and repeat at that point then. - Distract yourself immediately: This is probably one of the best things I ever did to get control of my OCD. If your brain starts up right then and there about something OCD related, just immediately focus on something you like to do. - My 'leave it behind' method: Move away from the area where the compulsions are occurring and go to a different room. It helped me sort of refresh my mind and brain by going to a different area and I found that a lot of my compulsions no longer 'follow me' to that different room. I can then later return to the same room where it started and be fine again. - Go work out: Another great thing to boost your mental health and possibly rid your mind of OCD is working out whether that be hiking, the gym, jogging or simply taking a walk. It's really great for overall mental well being. It helped me a lot. I never was one to give up. I've been through hell for a while now. My conscience use to be stuck in this blackest of blackness, sort of like nothingness. But eventually it started becoming more clear and I was able to start seeing through and beyond this blackness. It's like pulling a large black curtain away which was obstructing your field of vision completely and seeing something on the other side. That's where I'm at right now. I see something but it's faint. I'm just glad that it's something though. I'm thankful for that. Peace.

I’ve come to a point in my life where I can be very happy. I have a safe environment, a loving community. Yknow I’ve really healed through or moved on from a traumatic past and as I say to my boyfriend from time to time like a broken record: I feel like nowadays the only thing bringing me stress or at times misery is myself. I am a fairly joyful person, when I’m comfortable I’m very goofy and like to sing dance and have fun. I find that I relate to so many amazing people I meet that are the nicest, most fun, elevating individuals, who also struggle with the hardest sometime debilitating things. It truly sucks because when I find those moments of peace I see the power of what an ocd mind could be as a person. We are people who may over analyze, but I myself also always find the good in people. And aye if in a moment I don’t think anything is doomly wrong and if I don’t try to understand it I may parish 😅 then that moment feels like the best one in the world. But on the other side of that when I’m not in a quiet mind moment and I’m left with myself to take control of what life in front of me looks like in or around me. I almost have been crumbling. Like I said at the beginning of this story here, the life around me is not so situationally stressful. And it’s also fairly simple. My boyfriend and I live together in a small cozy trailer with our two cats, he works full time very hard and I work part time where I spend as much time as I can working and then have a few days around the house. We’re saving for a home and are quite content with our lifestyle at the moment with work and being “lazy”, or resting and going out for fun now an then on our time off together. Most times though I do have day or two off during the week by myself, which usually goes one of only two ways. Like I said before I do like to work hard, especially now that I have a part time job that’s fairly easier than others I’ve had in the past. So I work 6-7 hours then drive home, air up my tires and wash my car sometimes because I like doing something after work while I still have energy.Or I go to the store. Come home make food, prolly nap and not really worry about too much because I’ve worked all day. But on my days off. I find myself waking up with a lot of anxiety. I usually fight it off by going back to sleep. But my OCD is heavily circled around shame. Even though I only sleep in till 10-11, 12-1 at the latest. I find myself thinking about how wrong (in nice terms) it is to do that. And the funny thing is the older I get (I’m a 21F). I’m not as pressured by this thought, even though it’s still stressful it literally just feels like a thought I can’t escape from. To put things in simple terms. I truly psycho analyze my actions breath by breath and my intrusive thoughts are critiquing those actions bit by bit. I’ve recently have started medication and it was a tremendous difference in the beginning and it helped me cope with the acceptance and letting go (f it or just care less) of those thoughts. But let’s say I forget to take it, or I wake up one morning by myself all day and I’m super tired or unmotivated. That day will feel truly debilitated. And now I’m definitely to the point where I’m battling that, but also have a thin vale behind that where I now know what is going on. And the thoughts are shameful for “not trying to get better or be better” Because I do Like I write a lot, and it truly is one of the best coping mechanisms for working through intrusive or obsessive compulsions. I could also write all day, and if I don’t listen to that ease of the anxiety from writing. And try to keep going the writing will turn into a compulsion itself I feel like I should not stop or critique it as well. But luckily I’ll hopefully find my place in explaining the cycle of what I do when my brain is very loud about things. The next time it’s too loud:)