- User type
- OCD Conqueror
- Date posted
- 1y
Help
Does anyone else find when a huge change happens in their life their ocd comes crawling in?
Does anyone else find when a huge change happens in their life their ocd comes crawling in?
That’s with all mental illnesses; higher the stress, the more likely your mental illness/es will likely act up. That’s why you need to use coping mechanisms and stay present to get over the hurtle.
Oh yeah it’s extremely normal! Expected, even! In fact, it was during a period of intense stress that OCD came back after years with almost no symptoms. It was so bad that I ended up getting therapy and diagnosed for the first time. So a good outcome in the end!
Yes. Even with stressors. I could be living the best life, OCD couldn’t even worry me. The moment something goes wrong, my anxiety and ocd flares up like crazy and i’m back at what feels like square 1
Yep - I just moved for a job and mine has been unbearable recently. Working on trying to settle back in with it being this intense.
Probably would if it ever truly fully left in the first place.
Yes!
Yea, absolutely. I heard this happens because you might feel like you don't have control in life, so EVERYTHING begins to feel out of control. That's what the OCD wants- control. And when you feel like you don't have any control in life because of a big change, your OCD wants you to find it in any amount you can 🥲 I wish i knew how to wrestle this issue, as i'm having kinda the same problem right now, but you're not alone ❤️🫂
Sometimes it is like that for me. Other times I notice that when I am really excited about something, like looking forward to a vacation or holiday, I tend to get really bad flare ups with my OCD
My last and almost life long theme/sub-theme largely subsided recently and my ocd felt like it wasn’t even an issue. Then I went on winter break from uni and being alone made my mind come up with a whole new topic to obsess over. TLDR on my fears, my advisor wouldn’t email me back for a while about signing up for classes so my mind started to worry “what if he doesn’t in time and you can’t enroll this semester and you lose this whole life you just built and all these new friends” So when that issue was resolved my mind found other scarier ways I could be uprooted from my current life and friends that I’ve grown so attached to. Then my mind remembered back when I was struggling with false memories and scrupulosity and I essentially made a post on a forum 2 and a half years ago saying I did something or was convinced I did something that I never actually did. Now I’ve been spiraling about someone finding it reporting me and I either get seen as a horrible person or arrested or something over something I never actually did but “admitted” to out of fear of going to hell. My mind won’t let it go and keeps finding new reasons for it to be “valid” “logical” or even inevitable. I feel like it’s just hanging over my head and I can never rest easy. Especially when I try to focus on my daily tasks or plan for the future I get this horrible flair up of “why plan for the future when this could come back in that future and you get uprooted from all of it” my mind won’t rest without certainty being uprooted won’t happen but certainty doesn’t exist, at least not with ocd. This sucks and I miss being care free.
Honestly ocd has been so tough these past months, like I wake up in the morning thinking I accidentally hurt my whole family and just don’t remember. And I start to question so much. And freak out thinking that I did. If anyone can relate I would love to hear from you ;) and any things that may helped you
Hey fellow OCD warriors! Wanted to ask if anyone else’s OCD tends to latch onto change and catastrophize with all kinds of worst-case scenarios. There’s a lot going on in my life, and even though they are all exciting things that I truly want and am happy about, I’ve had moments of deep fear at so much change happening and even a sadness that I can only think is a kind of grief of entering a new stage of life/a new me and leaving the old one behind. I am in my mid-20s and a lot of this centers around nostalgia and fear and intrusive thoughts of changes like my parents getting older, myself aging, friendships growing apart leading to loneliness, etc. I know I need to treat it as any other OCD flare-up and do ERP, but it also feels different than other OCD themes because I feel blue and like existentially sad. Even as a young kid, I always hated change and the thought of growing up (even if exciting things were happening) - like I cried when I turned 10 because I was leaving the single digits behind forever! 🤦♀️ I feel like I’m preemptively mourning things like losing my parents or my health even though I am healthy and my parents are too. I don’t want to waste the time I have ruminating about the future. I haven’t heard this kind of theme mentioned a lot so just wanted to see if any others could relate.
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