Unrelated

Hello dear friends. I hadn't been on this app for a while, I've been getting by. Today I just need to vent and to feel validated and understood. I have OCD, I consider myself in permanent recovery. It is an everyday job. I am ina relationship with a wonderful guy. I deeply love and care about him, but he doesn't understand anything about OCD. I've explained it to him a million times. I've directed him to online resources. I've talked him through what to do to help me get out of a loop without giving me reassurance. And yet, he never knows what to say or do when an episode appears. It is tiring to pull myself out of the loop and then having yo explain to him what just happened to me, over and over again. I think, in general, he lacks empathy for other people's feelings, but, when it comes to me, I can see that he tries but achieves nothing. I think I don't have ROCD, I have diverse thoughts. But the last few weeks this thought got into my mind: what if he has met someone else and they are texting each other and flirting and he's gonna leave me? (He left his girl to start a new relationship with me). And he are apart due to the covid-19 epidemic, so we didn't see each other almost at all during last year. Of course, I had been able to keep this particular thought to myself, buy yesterday, it just came out of my mind after him not picking up the phone. He was in shock. He reacted defensively (which I completely understand), replied that he had nothing to explain to me as to why he couldn't answer the phone when I called him and that we was surprised that I asked him such a thing (if the reason why he didn't answer me was that he was talking to someone else). I knew it was just an OCD thought of mine, but I just couldn't keep it to myself any longer. Of course, I apologized to him and had to explain it had been an OCD thought. He was supporting and understanding and told me everything was ok and to forget about it. This morning I feel sad that he couldn't recognize this for what it was despite all the explaining I have done. I have dealt with my ocd on my own, despite being in a relationship. I just needed to vent and would like to read your thoughts about this whole thing. Thank you in advance for reading and replying.

I’m fairly new to treating my OCD and have felt crazy for most of my life. It didn’t help that no one in my life truly understood OCD and always said I was being dramatic. I very recently (within the past few months) finally got diagnosed with OCD and my whole life started to make sense. However, I recently opened up to someone I really believed I trusted about the intrusive thoughts I have and now feel worse than I ever have before. They essentially called me a psychopath and said they are worried for the people around me. Even though I would and could never hurt anyone. I’ve never felt more alone and broken in my life. I already try very hard to hide my OCD and everything associated with it because no one in my life understands so it’s been easier to deal with it myself than listen to everyone say whatever they have to say about my situation. After what happened today I’m even more inclined to just keep it to myself. I don’t know what I’m expecting from writing this but I figure this is the best place to write what I’m feeling. Going through OCD is hard enough on it’s own. But when people are telling you they think you’re a danger to society and are crazy because of your intrusive thoughts it really hurts. I’m just tired.

I’ve struggled for POCD for years, since I was 17 and I’m 22 now, about to be 23. I had other obsessions, HOCD being the second worst, but now even that doesn’t bother me anymore. When I developed POCD it was a very traumatizing day. I was just figuring out that I had OCD and researching pure O OCD and saw POCD listed underneath the types of obsessions. I was so freaked out by the possibility of that that I developed it. I ended up spiraling into a panic attack and watched videos on YouTube that had children in them in order to try and prove that I didn’t have POCD. But of course that just made it worse. I went to therapy and did ERT which made it a lot better, but even back then I was still uncomfortable talking about my groinal responses and false attraction responses so I don’t think I fully treated it. I was able to be fine for a long time, years, of me being able to be okay with dealing with POCD even when It popped up. It mainly only bothered me when I saw children in media for some reason but not in real life. Now it’s just both Oh and I’ve been a summer camp counselor since I was 15, so I’ve worked with kids every summer. I think POCD is especially difficult for me because I’ve always enjoyed working with kids and it deeply scared me.😭 It wasn’t until last summer that I started to notice it being more difficult to deal with again. Then I went through a rough patch in my life and since then it’s been way worse on and off again. I will go through the motions of feeling like “okay I’m just gonna think maybe, maybe not. I don’t care, I know myself so I’ll be fine. I’m a great person. I can handle this.” To something actually triggering me and me feeling this intense and gripping feeling of anxiety, like a sinking pit in my stomach and then it’s so hard to turn away from. I’ve tried doing ERT on my own but as soon as I stop I always feel like I move backwards. I just don’t know if I can ever move past this like I have with my other obsessions…it is so haunting and has traumatized me more than once. I’m working on seeing an OCD therapist, most likely through the NOCD app. So I am planning to do that as soon as I can, I just feel so frustrated right now…I’ve kept being triggered the past 2 weeks and I just want it to leave me alone. I don’t want to think about these things. I just want to focus on living my life. It’s so annoying and awful, and it makes me feel sick and so uncomfortable. It’s like telling someone to stop but they won’t; my brain just won’t stop even though I want it to. And my intrusive thoughts are paired with images, so it’s also like having something awful shoved in my face that I can’t turn away from because it’s in my mind. I just really felt the need to vent some of my feelings out…I’ve been going through a rough time again, had a lot of stress over college exams & projects, had a misunderstanding with my partner, got a random tooth pain, and also got screwed over on said project by my team members giving me awful scores for no reason. So yeah it’s just been rough 😔I will be going to the dentist soon. Ugh just so many bad things are happening and OCD just makes it feel worse. Sometimes I think what if the universe is punishing me for having POCD? Then I try to remember to be kind to myself instead. If you’re dealing with this you’re not alone ❤️