MY Healing Journey part 1

I just completed a check in with my therapist today so naturally I reflected on my journey with OCD. Summer/Fall of 2023 feels like a swath of darkness. Bombarded with horrible intrusive thoughts, I thought my life was over. I did not see the light at the end of the tunnel. I hated myself. Life lost meaning for me and it felt as if every hope and dream was shattered. Needless to say my life was lost to me during a time when I should have been enjoying it the most. I was post grad with a good job lined up. But none of it mattered- my mind was as broken. Thank God, I had some small voice in me that urged me forward and to get help. So I did. I felt so scared and unsure. Was I doing the wrong thing going to therapy? I was not. It was the best decision I made for myself. Fast forward to nearly two years later, my life couldn’t be more different. I see and feel the light. I have so much love and gratitude for myself and for everyone who helped me along the journey. My therapist, my family, all the brave content creators who openly speak about their experiences, no matter how taboo. I won’t lie, it was a lot of work. And I had to learn to be uncomfortable and deal with frustrations. I had to learn to trust myself. I still deal with sticky and intrusive thoughts but my response and my daily life despite them can not be more different. So I am here to be proof to you that there is so much hope. If you don’t have the little voice in you urging you forward, than I will be just that. Go to therapy, get help, put in the work. It is so worth it. Every time there is a setback, and there will be many, push through. Feel free to ask questions! But no reassurance will be given.

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:)

I am FINALLY starting to (somewhat) recover from this last existential spiral, which admittedly, was probably the cruelest my OCD has ever been to me. Only thanks to you all. You were all able to provide me with kindness, understanding and support… without the kind of reassurance that feeds OCD, of course. When I downloaded this app, I was genuinely terrified. I was so scared that I was permanently doomed to the endless whirlpool that is the thoughts produced by my own brain and that life as I knew it was over, that I would never be happy again. For anyone who might be feeling that way right now, your OCD is LYING to you! Whatever you may be going through, it CAN get better. As hard as it may be right now, HAVE FAITH! Get up and do that thing you want to do in spite of the fear and discomfort. Take the fear with you like a whiny, unwilling toddler and do it anyway. Watch the movie, read the book, order that takeout you’ve been craving, bake the cake, wash the dishes… Please do it anyway! It will be hard at first, I won’t lie. But the OCD part of your brain, like a toxic partner, WANTS to win. It wants you to give up on those things that you love, all those things that make you happy so that there’s no space for anything but itself. Don’t let it win. The more you push yourself, the more you rewire your brain to realize that as much as it may feel like, the obsession doesn’t matter! Thanks to you all, even without therapy (YET - I’m starting that journey on Tuesday because there’s still a lot to unpack, and I know that OCD won’t just magically go away), I was able to get a basic understanding of ERP and learning to sit with discomfort and how to live life in spite of it, rather than letting it take over my very being. So for that, I thank this community. I think I would be in a very different place right now if it weren’t for the people I’ve met here who truly understood my experiences. I hope you have a wonderful day. Please don’t give up. You deserve to be happy, no matter what your brain is telling you ❤️