- Date posted
- 43w ago
Waves
Anyone else’s OCD come in waves? That’s the only way I can describe it. I’m doing good in therapy for a few weeks, and then all of a sudden it gets really bad, with no apparent trigger?
Anyone else’s OCD come in waves? That’s the only way I can describe it. I’m doing good in therapy for a few weeks, and then all of a sudden it gets really bad, with no apparent trigger?
I understand your struggle. It’s good to see you are having good weeks. Congratulations on your victories 👍. There are different reasons that ocd can spike and be harder to deal with. When ocd does spike and is harder to deal with remember it’s not like we are back to square 1 in those hard times. When ocd spikes and is harder to deal with we use the tools we learned and we can get better at showing ocd how irrelevant it is.
Very much so! At my worst I was stuck in patterns and it felt like it never ended. When I started to go to therapy I started getting better at coping and it felt more like waves. Some years are even better than others for me now but the amount of support and information now coming out about it. Has been helping a lot and I personally am starting to feel normal again.
Omg me too! For some reason having what I call an “ocd flare up” (interesting to see others use that term) this flare up is much worse than my original symptoms 😭 it’s also strange that happened after I had a really good session with ocd therapist and shared with my mom that I feel I’m on the way to recovery. I felt so much better. The darkness of my thoughts were more of a memory not my reality. Then wham! Something triggered me and I’m right back to where I started! Is that why? Cause I was feeling relief and my cruel brain was like “oh no… you’re not getting better quite yet” how cruel! I hate this!! 😡 this is why my fear is never getting well cause my brain will always pick a different trigger as soon as I heal from the previous trigger.
@jojohunt Me too! It usually happens after a session. My therapist told me it’s probably because we revisit all the thoughts and have to discuss them, and there fresh in my mind!
I’m wondering if this has happened to anyone else… I’m 28 years old. I was diagnosed with OCD when I was very young and it took a while, but I overcame it. I haven’t had any compulsions in 20 years. I’ve had some horrible things happen in the past, but nothing brought back my OCD. The only thing I struggle with is overthinking and making decisions. Im about to take a sabbatical from my work for a year to travel because the last year of my life has been by far the happiest and most confident iv ever been. I went to see a therapist a couple weeks ago who was an OCD specialist, I just wanted some tips and tricks for decision-making while I’m on my trip. She warned me that my OCD might get worse before it gets better, but I thought that she just meant with decision-making and overthinking. They have this program set out that I didn’t really wanna do but she told me it works really well so I decided to try it. It’s two sessions a week and the first two sessions were sort of just talking about my old OCD and doing questionnaires. I really related to some of the questionnaire questions, and the therapist was actively telling me that I definitely had OCD the whole time which made me feel bad. After our second session, my OCD came back full swing like when I was a child. I cant stop thinking about doing compulsions every waking second. It’s been two weeks. I’ve been to her several times and nothing is helping, I’m resisting the urge to do compulsions as much as I can and I feel like I’m fighting for my life. Nothing is helping and I’m burning out. I wake up and cry everyday because of how uncomfortable and out of control I feel. I never thought this would happen and im so mad at myself for ruining my trip. I feel like I’ve ruined my life tbh and even if I do get better, I’m always gonna be bothered by the constant fear that even at the highest and most happy points in my life it could just come back at any second with no warning signs.. I thought I knew how to deal with it and had the tools, but nothing is working this time and its ruining my life. Today I asked about cancelling my trip altogether, and I might be going on medical leave. Has this happened to anybody and do you have any tips for me?
I feel like in some ways receiving a diagnosis for OCD has in some ways made things worse. I’ve always had what I called “phases” throughout life, which I now know were ocd episodes, but I didn’t really make too much of them and even if it was over several long difficult months, they’d always seem to kind of just pass. Recently I’ve begun my worse flare up in the last few years and now that I’m older I seemed professional help which led to my diagnosis. This all sounds great of course but I can’t actually afford therapy right now so I kinda just have the diagnosis but not the support so now that I realize these phases are actually this incurable mental illness I just feel like I’ve lost all hope that I’ll ever be happy and I feel like I basically obsess about obsessing at this point and it just sucks. Has anyone else had this or a similar experience?
Does anyone like go through waves. Your mind is super silent maybe a couple of thoughts but you are able to brush it off? But then out of nowhere your mind just starts rushing with every thought? If so, how do you cope with this? It drains me.
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