- Username
- katietaylorsillygoose69
- Date posted
- 51w ago
OCD causes
curious—does OCD have to be something you are just born with or are there underlying causes which could either cause or worsen your case??
curious—does OCD have to be something you are just born with or are there underlying causes which could either cause or worsen your case??
I’m not sure if there’s any definitive research backing the origin of OCD itself, but I imagine that the ways our brains are structured play a factor into it. Similar to how depression can be a cause of neurological differences in the brain (a difficulty to produce happy chemicals), I think anxiety, OCD, and many other mental illnesses follow that same pattern. A propensity to misread threats and a difficulty in regulating mood. Environmental factors absolutely come into play, however. I was emotionally neglected for most of my life and raised to always be distrustful. It absolutely contributed to my OCD. My partner thinks that my upbringing is what CAUSED my OCD! Not quite sure on that, however, since I started experiencing symptoms at as young of an age as I can remember.
There is pandas, a weird name for developing OCD after having a strep infection. I have heard of head trama and genetics too. Bottom line erp can retrain your brain to recognize these thoughts and anxiety from these intrusive thoughts as false alarms that can be dismissed.
My psychiatrist told me it's biological and environmental. The book freedom from obsessive compulsive disorder by Jonathan Grayson tells you all. And it really give you a good understanding of erp.
Hello! I'm new here and new to OCD. My therapist suggested I might have OCD due to my tendency to ruminate endlessly on doubts and fears. These thoughts are indeed intrusive and I can't seem to stop them. The thing I'm kind of stuck on is that I can't see where the compulsions come in. Unless the thoughts themselves are compulsions. Can anyone relate to this?
Hey, I’ve been doing some research on OCD and think I may have it. I’m not 100% sure, but I have a lot of the symptoms. I want to get myself diagnosed, but my parents won’t let me. They agree that it’s very likely that I have OCD, but they think that if I try hard enough, I can get over it. I don’t know what to do anymore or if what I have even is OCD, and I want to be somewhat sure before a I do anything. Right now, I’m a junior in high school, but freshman year was when my “OCD” was the most severe. I think I had (and still do) the symmetry/order subtype and “just right” subtype. I was obsessed with writing things neatly to a point in which I kept forcing myself to erase and rewrite things until all the letters were straight and all the graphs were neatly drawn (typing wasn’t safe either because I use Notability and felt the need to align every text box and make them all the same length). Handwriting was especially a problem in calculus A, and it got to a point in which I couldn’t keep up with the notes, and the homework was taking hours a night because I was obsessed with making my work perfect. Needless to say, I didn’t get a good grade in calculus A and didn’t build a good foundation for future math classes. This makes me really sad because I was previously really good at math and had a bright future in the subject. Eventually, I just stopped trying in calculus A, but by then, I felt burnt out, couldn’t concentrate on anything, kept putting things off, and lost the ability to properly manage my time. I think it may have escalated to executive dysfunction at that point, and it carried over to all my other classes. As someone who was previously pretty productive and good at planning, this was a huge hit on my self-esteem. I was also obsessed with symmetry. If I touched one side of my body, I had to touch the other side in the exact same place. If I was coding something, I would have to evenly distribute touch across each key on the keyboard. It felt like everything was a heatmap, and the colors had to be kept in balance at all times. I also avoided odd numbers because they were considered “asymmetrical”. I was obsessed with routine and had to complete tasks in a certain way, a certain order, and a certain amount of time. Even something as small as combing my hair for five minutes instead of six caused me extreme distress. Writing one word that “sounded off” on an English paper left me unable to keep writing until I fixed it. I had to keep the sound of my phone at a certain volume (6 normally, 10 when exercising, and 12 when cleaning, divide everything by 2 when using a computer) and had to walk a round number (any number that ends in 0) of steps a day. I kid you not when I say that some days I woke up and didn’t want to live anymore. Sophomore year, my mental health improved and I probably seemed overly perfectionistic but not to a point of concern. However, this year, the handwriting issue relapsed in all its glory during physics, and I’m not able to keep up with notes or homework. I feel the same way that I did in calculus A, and I don’t want history to repeat itself. I want to ask my teacher to let me do my homework on paper rather than the iPad (it’s easier for me to write on paper due to increased friction), but I’m scared to ask because I don’t have a formal diagnosis. I don’t know what causes my behavior. I feel like if I can’t do things perfectly, no one will like me. I’ll lose all my friends, and no boy will ever want to go out with me. I know it’s irrational. Literally no one cares what my notes look like or how long I spend on each step of my morning routine or whatever, but I constantly feel like people are judging me and will hate me the second I mess up. There are two more times in my life that I can think of when I displayed symptoms of OCD, contamination OCD when I was 9 and pure/religious/magical thinking/health concern OCD (they all just kind morphed together) when I was 11. I can go into more detail if you wish. As of now, I just want to know my behavior sounds like OCD, and if so, how to more forward. If not, I would love to know what I do have and how to treat it. Thank you so much.
Just to preface this, I’d like to say that I in no way whatsoever intend to judge parents of ocd children or people with ocd that have children. I honestly mean no disrespect with this post, I just really don’t know what to think or do. I wish the best for all of your families, and for all of you struggling with ocd as well. Please don’t let my post influence how you think, all I need is advice if anyone can give me it. Feel free to skip if this is an uncomfortable topic for you. Thank you! I’ve had ocd since I was young, but I hadn’t started thinking about this until recently. I heard that you have a 15-20% chance of passing ocd down to your child. I used to be really uncomfortable at the thought of being pregnant and often had intrusive thoughts trying to convince me I somehow was. I finally got past this and began to look forward to being a mother someday, but now I don’t know. I can’t imagine not having kids, but I’m scared that they’ll have ocd like me. It’s not a crazy high percentage but it still scares me. On one hand I’m like hey, who better to help their kid if they have ocd than a mom who has ocd? But on the other I worry that if they have it, it could worse than mine and that they’ll have a really hard time dealing with it. I hate to say this but it feels a little bit selfish to want to have kids when there’s a chance they’ll get the same disorder I hate so much. Both me and my sister have ocd as well, so I’m scared it’s something that runs in my family. Any advice would be appreciated.
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