- Date posted
- 2y
It has been a year
It has been over a year since I took off college to work on my OCD and I still am not really feeling ready to go back. I feel stuck
It has been over a year since I took off college to work on my OCD and I still am not really feeling ready to go back. I feel stuck
I’m in the same boat. I did school for a year, couldn’t do it anymore and dropped out. Took a year off. Tried to do school again for a year, couldn’t get myself to do anything. Didn’t have the motivation. College is not for everyone. Just reading something would make me extremely anxious and make my OCD worse. And also my OCD would make it hard for me to do schoolwork. Don’t beat yourself up for it. Take your time to get better and get busy doing stuff you enjoy. Maybe get a job doing something you like so you feel like you’re accomplishing something and also making money. Or just take some classes doing something that takes your mind off things. Whatever you feel comfortable with! Good luck and I hope you feel better. Give yourself some time and you’ll figure it out.
I don't want to disappoint you just telling my story. 5 years ago I left a PhD program for the same reason. Know I wish I had never done that.
Don't let OCD stop you from achieving your goals. I know it's hard, but you don't want to look back and see that this preventes you from living a fulfilling life. In fact, isolating yourself from these things may make OCD harder to break from since you've shown it that it can tell you how to live your life.
It's been five years since I quit high school to work on my mental health. The best thing I found to do is to find a way to start slow and do a little bit of course work to keep yourself busy/distract yourself from your OCD. It can feel good to accomplish a worksheet, or finish a chapter in a textbook. I found it also helps to look at where your education could get you. Be excited by the cool things you could learn and contribute to. But most of all, just take a deep breath, practice self-care and keep yourself busy.
Did you do ERP therapy? What’s your values?
Yes, I am currently in ERP therapy. I guess I don't fully understand the second question.
Often times I find myself spiraling out in the morning about all sorts of things. When I try and catch myself and figure out what I am obsessing over it’s like it goes away. I haven’t moved. I have been sitting frozen on the floor because I can’t go to work because I am behind on work and I hate being late and I hate being messy but I am frequently late and my room is cluttered and full of stuff. I want to be good and move and go to work but I don’t know what is coming today and I hate my job so I know I will get bored and when I have nothing to keep me busy and engaged I like start thinking and taking an inventory of what is going on and then I will feel a sensation and what is the sensation? How did it happen? And I know that I will pick up the bad emotions in the office and get contaminated, I was really worried about things like this as a kid too I cried because I had to touch dirt in kindergarten. I know I am this way and I have been this way for a while but at the same time I think I might just be normal and like I don’t know why I get stuck in thinking like this. Then I begin to doubt that OCD is real because everyone has a brain with wiring and everyone gets stuck in thought sometimes. I feel disabled from whatever this is because I am stuck. I literally cannot move because I don’t know what’s wrong and I know I have to go to work even though I feel like every moment I spend there is making everything worse because other people are so stressed and I get it from them. And I don’t feel ready because I just feel off and something is wrong and I just don’t know what to do because if it’s OCD or not OCD everything anyone knows about me is coming from me and I worry that I am often masking all the thinking I’m doing because thinking all the time is rude and inconsiderate and inconvenient for those around me, but I can’t stop. I just don’t feel right, right now - and I want to know WHY?? Why is everything off all the time? How do I even know that I am not making up the experience of OCD in my head to cover up something really wrong with me and now I am taking on the symptoms of OCD like an actress, because this could be something that I can latch onto as a final hope for explaining why I am stuck. So stuck so deeply and terribly stuck sitting on my floor next to my bed just scrolling to avoid thinking because any time I start thinking I am left with no answers or help or anything just this swirly feeling. I know I am trying, maybe not my best, but as much as I possibly can. I want to be a Special Education Teacher but I have so much so so so much doubt and uncertainty about every decision I make and everything I know that I can’t get there right now. I can’t do anything right now until it feels ok and then I will. It never feels ok. I know I have to be ok not feeling ok about it. I can be unsure and still be ok. I know it’s just my thinking and my body but I just can’t get past this feeling. And then I know that because I can calm myself and be ok even though I spent 2 hours of my life today already feeling stuck and spinning around and around and around in my head - I don’t feel sure about my OCD and I think it’s a bit of a scam made up by people to cultivate pathology around deep human thought because one day I might figure it out and we all think a lot.
im seeing everyone getting accepted by their colleges and im having a really hard time not comparing myself. I feel like my pure ocd has taken up my life and I wish my mind let me believe that I could work hard enough for these universities that I wanted to apply to. I feel so much embarrassment and shame in myself for having to stay in my hometown while everyone goes away to college. I can’t blame everything on my ocd, im still having a hard time accepting that I have it, I just wish I was better
I had avoided a lot with school specifically, but I did do it in other areas of life as well. School for some reason has been the biggest trigger that sends me into avoidance and it has been for the longest time. Does anybody relate? If so, what did you do to help besides therapy? In high school I used to sit in the bathroom stalls for hours so I could avoid going to classes. I was struggling to keep up because my OCD makes me perfect my school work so much so to the point where I’d never turn it in because I’d never be satisfied with what I’d produce. I’d get so incredibly frustrated with myself and the fact that I could never meet my own standards, never mind the rubrics given. I took ages analyzing all my writing, all my answers, all my google slides and I burnt myself out. So I stopped trying. I stopped turning in work because I’d never be satisfied. I’d cry because I felt I wasn’t good enough. Then I’d be missing assignments, getting them done but not submitting them because I was too ashamed. So, I avoided classes because I’d be in trouble or be called out for not getting anything done. Unfortunately this habit bled into my first year of college last year, and OCD coupled up with depression, made going to the dining hall and attending classes even worse. So I avoided it all together. It’s so hard being a freshman in college, so so hard. I unfortunately failed out of that school but I tried to medically withdraw either semester. No, I wasn’t partying, or drinking or smoking or hanging with the wrong people. I was a college freshman struggling with ocd and depression. I’m trying to not make excuses for myself either because I’m well aware this is my fault and I’m trying to reverse it now at community college. Right now I’m trying to get those Fs turned into Ws from my old school so I can fix my gpa. I want to transfer, I want to be a forensic psychologist, I want to be independent, I want to be ok. It’s gonna take me so long to transfer from community college but that’s on me. I’m willing to put in the work. I’m so embarassed, please help me.
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