I can't stop crying. Everything in my life is difficult, and my OCD isn't making anything easier. My life feels like a constant battle, and I can't even find refuge in my own mind. Why can't my mind be my safe place? Why is it my biggest bully and enemy? I simply crave peace. I simply want to live a normal life, and think in a “normal” way like everyone else
Hey I’m in the same place rn too and I understand how painful this is. It’s scary when your mind tries to convince you of the worst things. We in this together
I’m sorry you’re feeling this way, I actually am experiencing the exact same kind of situation rn, crying and ocd intensifying the already overwhelming feeling of anxiety. I understand your struggle, you’re not alone.
It feels like a never ending struggle for sure. But if I step back from the situation at hand and look at the bigger picture, in the longer term I realize my life isn’t a never ending battle. There are many moments that are good and give me hope. I know OCD tells me that my life will never get better, that I will always struggle and be miserable. It beats me over the head with demeaning, demoralizing talk. Sometimes I do feel better even if not what I deem to be as good as I want. Sometimes I stop and catch myself and realize Hey. I am laughing and smiling and feeling hopeful. The catch is I hear a voice that says I can do it. If I just figure this out this time I can make this misery disappear and I will be ok. I won’t have to fight with myself anymore. Life will be so good I will feel so good. And then I hear No You can have a few good days but it won’t last. You can feel good for 3or 4 days if you are lucky and then you HAVE to get down in the muck again. You won’t ever be fixed like other people are. So it’s a little while on the up swing and then down you go. So cruel So brutal. I look at other people and I catch myself taking inventory. He doesn’t look tired like me. She seems so comfortable and at ease. They have it so together. It’s all OCD playing with my mind. I don’t believe anyone on this beautiful Earth has life wrapped up in a nice bow. Yes some people may have an easier time than me but there are plenty of people who have it worse. What I am trying to say is if I don’t love myself, if you don’t love yourself then who will. I believe as long as there is life there is hope. I believe the good Lord loves us and cares about us and will walk through this life with us if we let Him. I am 76 years old and I have always had this difficulty in my life and I would imagine though I don’t know for sure that I will leave this lovely world never having attained an OCD free life. I know you are suffering,some more than me and perhaps some less than me. But I do know one thing for sure. Life is worth the battle. You are worth the fight. So when OCD hits you hard and knocks you down I hope you will be able with practice to save a little corner of your mind and heart and soul for HOPE. Tell OCD it might get some of you but not all of you. Don’t give it that satisfaction.
Never feels like I can fully put my mind to rest. The problem with OCD for me is once I'm over one worry there's another buried deep into my mind that I'm not fully over. The two events I'm not completely over is when I tried to help a 17 year old with POCD when I was 19 and the topics unfortunately were detailed and even then I explained to them I wasn't comfortable with talking to them. I guess I just had a hard time saying no to someone needing help but it eventually made me so uncomfortable that I stopped talking with them altogether at some point. Then the other thing is being so worried that I committed a crime because my elbow touched someone's behind when I didn't want that to happen at all. I didn't want to listen to my OCD by saying move my arm or something horrible is going to happen so I didn't and then something bad actually did happen. I thought it would just be a light touch while zipping a bag up but then it was worse than I ever wanted it to be and it was so awkward and I hated it. I feel like I just won't be able to get back to the way I was before OCD started all of this. Aside from that I've just had extreme health anxiety but am too afraid to reach out to a PCP even though I need to. Something deep down is telling me I should do this but I'm just so anxious and embarrassed about sharing things to them. I can't even enjoy the things I used to do because this is constantly just messing up my life. I'm hoping I get a start of positivity next time I see my therapist. This just sucks. Feels like others around me are doing so much better than I am and I'm just kind of stuck on these same problems and feeling absolute shame and guilt from the past over and over again. I'm just so sick of dealing with this every single day so I just use escape whenever I can. Even that doesn't really work. I just wish I could go back in time.
I’m definitely having an episode right now. A few times I’ve thought about coming onto this app and writing something but then I spiral further and further and I forget about anything except what’s triggering me. Then I think about this app again and intend to write a post… but again I’m spiraling too hard to focus on anything else. But I finally ended up here because I got an email from NOCD. I opened it and read about someone who ‘overcame their OCD.’ It made me spiral harder, because I genuinely don’t understand how someone can control this. How do I stop? How do I silence my brain? I was told to sit with my thoughts and not try to divert them, but if I do that I have an extreme episode so bad that I feel disconnected from myself. I looked at myself in the mirror and it felt like my eyes were seeing someone standing in front of me and not my reflection. It scares me to think that I will be experiencing these episodes forever. I literally just put my phone down twice because I thought my cat was choking to death because he had a hairball (he’s fine) I just feel like I can’t see a way out of this. It’s not curable, and I don’t understand how someone can ‘conquer’ something that feels so out of control Obviously it’s possible, but unfortunately that reassurance doesn’t always break through the most awful thoughts Sometimes there’s nothing that can make me calm down, I just have to ride it out I hope there’s never a day where it’s so out of control that I can’t keep it in at work, and I ruin my own life by having a severe panic attack while I’m there and being fired. If I had the type of episodes at work that I have consistently at home, I would be so humiliated. It scares me. I’m trying so hard to be normal like everyone else. I just want to be happy. I just want to live.
I hate the way ocd has completely messed up my brain, I struggle to tell the difference between an intrusive though and a regular one, I have really bad issues with morality and I feel as if my brain can no longer tell what is and isn't right and I can't tell if I'm over reacting about situations and I end up feeling stuck in a loop of wondering if I'm a bad person and trying to look at a situation rationally and not knowing if that's even possible with the state of my mind, I feel like none of my thoughts are actually mine. I hate it and I wish I could feel in control of my thoughts even for just a day, just to know what it's like. I've had ocd symptoms since I was about 9-10 so i feel like I've never really know a life without it. I just wish I could live out my teenage years like anyone else my age. I can hardly engage with my hobbies and passions and I don't know what to do about it. I can't go to therapy or get medication because I'm not even diagnosed, I just feel trapped. I'm only a teenager, like I said, I don't want to live my entire life like this.
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