What comes first ocd or Anxiety

So I’ve been struggling to write this down. The truth about OCD is that it sucks. I get weird thoughts and they stick. And because I can’t confirm their weird thoughts i get stuck in a cycle of rumination. That’s my compulsion. I avoid people and situations because I think I’m a bad person. Which ultimately drove me into depression and more. The verdict is this: you can’t make a thought go away. You can accept it as a thought even if you feel doubt about accepting it and letting it be there. Fake it till you make it. I’m faking it everyday and I’ve grown so much since staring my exposure therapies. Don’t avoid your exposures. They become so easy like water. The hardest part is starting. Rumination is a choice - believe it or not. I go, wait a minute wait a minute, I don’t want to keep figuring this out. And I feel the train tracks move and my mind goes else where. This is with therapy. This is with holding on to my last string of hope. And to make this easier for all of you. I’m a mother. My ocd has made my life harder because I have a tiny human who relies on me. I had a horrible childhood with the main billion still in my life. I’ve accepted it. Accept and move on. Work out for 5 min a day. Buy a new gym outfit that makes u feel hot!! Eat something different like a good quality chocolate bar ( a piece ) enjoy it!!!! Chew it slowly. Drink some water. Listen to your heart not your OCD . We don’t need compulsions, you will get there and one day believe it. Live with ocd like you don’t care! You’ve gotten this far. Rewrite your story this year. Start again everyday. And take it day by day… Build your peace and remember, nobody has the motivation to get out of bed, it’s about building good habits and discipline. Start preparing your meals for thanksgiving. Give charity, pray to god once a day. Tell him your letting him take over. Now get up and , 1,2, ready set GO.

Hey everyone! I’m new here and thought that it might help to get my OCD story off my chest. My intrusive thoughts are so bad that I never want to talk about them to anyone so maybe that’s why I’m here. When I was 13 my grandma was in the hospital. She was my best friend in the whole world. I imagined so much life with her. I remember pulling into the hospital one day with my Dad and immediately knocking on “wood” (the car door) to help put me at ease about my grandmas health before going in. I knocked on wood because everyone knows that’s what you do when you don’t want something to happen. I didn’t want anything bad to happen to her so bad that all I could think about in that moment was something bad happening. So I knocked on wood. It made me feel better so I kept doing it whenever I had bad thoughts. But then it going confusing. If this was helping ease these thoughts, why was I starting to have these thoughts more frequently? 13 year old me didn’t understand what I was doing or why these bad thoughts started. It had got so bad that I was knocking on wood every second of the day, every surface I came across that felt right, and if I didn’t I would force myself to turn around and touch that surface. I would have to knock on wood 8 times every single time but the 7 would have two knocks because the word 7 have two syllables. But then the 8 times wouldn’t be enough, I still wouldn’t feel satisfied so I would do it again and again and again until my entire day was overpowered by intrusive thoughts or knocking on wood. My family and friends started to notice, asking why I do it. I would always avoid the question or make a joke out of it because I couldn’t tell them these terrible thoughts I was having. I was so deeply afraid of something bad happening to the people I love the most or myself that it was debilitating. A couple years later I noticed how bad it had gotten and wanted a change. So I forced myself to stop knocking. I would tell myself angrily that nothing bad would happen if I don’t knock. It took me a lot of convincing and small steps to realize this, but it worked. I got better. I went to the doctors office at about 15 and told them everything. How I did this but how I solved this. They told me it takes great mental strength to be able to fight something in your brain like that. I have always been so mentally strong but hearing them say that made me feel so much better. And I was better. For years. Yea I went through times when it was bad again but it was so much better. The past couple years it has gotten worse again. I noticed that it gets worse when my anxiety about things is higher. New changes, new people, new things. Now, at 21 I won’t let myself get back to the point I was when I was 13, but recently I can’t seem to keep the intrusive thoughts out. I am so terrified of myself or someone else getting hurt of getting older that I put the whole toll on myself. I am so so so happy with my life right now that I don’t want anything to change. That is why it’s been so bad recently. Life is amazing which is why I only want it to get better and I’m so scared something might get in the way of that. I realized after talking to my friends that I never want to say my intrusive thoughts out-loud because I believe strongly in speaking things into existence so I only speak good things out loud. That’s how I’ve always been. But when I talked with my friend she said she’s the opposite, she says the bad things out loud because then you jinx them and they won’t happen. Her saying that gave me a little peace because it made me realize that it’s okay to get these things off my chest and that saying these things out loud isn’t so serious, it’s not life or death like I thought it was. Honestly, the weight of getting my story off my chest has already helped me feel a little lighter of a load on myself.

I just am so sick of constantly battling my mind it’s so fucking annoying like what’s even the point of spending anymore time on earth if non existence is preferable to existence. I’ve been diagnosed with OCD but more obsessions than compulsions it’s really more of a mental fight than anything psychical although I do have a bit of that contamination OCD. I’ve tried the SSRIs and I would 100% reccomend them to anyone who has OCD but it feels like there are too many triggers that force me back into that intrusive thought loop which is just hellish. Its really hard to imagine any sort of torture that could be worse than those thought loops genuinely hard to conceive of any torture even physically that could be worse than that. I have actually been doing much better recently but I really just can’t conceive of going back into another one of those fucking miserable intrusive thought loops again like I see the symptoms coming back and the feeling that I get before the intrusive thoughts start really really piling in has come back again. Idk just thought I should share my experience like anyone else who has this mental condition I feel really sorry for. Here’s something that I read I feel like was really important that I wanted to share with anyone else who has OCD “You are a sensitive person, so altruistic that you get worried by even having bad thoughts. Learn to be a bit more selfish, and fight for your own happiness. You truly deserve it!”