Anyone willing to share how debilitating their OCD has been? 1. Able to work? 2. Consider yourself miserable? I haven’t been able to work three years and have been occasionally suicidal many many years
I'm on leave for my job cause of it and I feel like I might never be able to go back or function normally and it causes me even more stress, I really do feel miserable and like my life is forever going to be focused on this thought
It also triggers my suicidal/harm ocd, where I feel like I'm going to accidentally or subconsciously harm myself or worse cause of the thoughts even though I don't want to:(
@Anonymous You’re not alone. It sounds fucking crazy but please look up Chris Palmer Keto diet. Harvard and Stanford in these few months is researching keto and finding for some reason it’s healing bipolar and schizophrenia often. Trying it for OCD, some small benefit but it’s not even been two weeks yet. But I can feel a trajectory. I really mean it. I hate quack science and fad diets but take a look. If it’s between suicide or trying it, like my situation, I decided to do it. I can live without sugar and without bread and brains. I can’t stand OCD at this level anymore
@Anonymous I'm not fully understanding the Chris Palmer thing. Is it a diet that's supposed to help OCD? Sorry, but I'm having a hard time focusing lately
Unfortunately, OCD can definitely be a very crippling depressive disorder. I’ve been working on treating my OCD and I’m doing a lot better but I definitely am still struggling but ,I highly recommend looking up how to treat your OCD and as you slowly get relief from your OCD , I cannot tell you the relief that you will feel. OCD is treatable, but alot of work and takes time. I’m sorry you feel this way. OCD truly is terrible. At one point I had harm OCD and thought I was a horrible monster that was going to try to kill my family. I was able to treat it and get better and so can you. Please keep trying to push through don’t let OCD get the best of you. 
Do you think it's treatable with every theme? I have the worst 😔
1. I am able to hold a job, yes. 2. Yes I am miserable
I am disabled with OCD. Can't work and hardly function on a daily basis. I have no idea how I'm going to start working again. It seems impossible, but the funds are running low and my marriage is suffering bc of all this. It's become a hell like no other! I'm so scared and don't know how to fix my life right now
@Speckles So sorry.. had a note about keto above. Not the fad diet. Sounds wild but it’s slightly helping me a week and a half in. Last ditch effort. But lots of people online saying it helped their OCD and new research at Harvard and Stanford recently , take a look
@Anonymous I will look into that. Thank you!! I can use all the help that's out there.
@Speckles Good luck, hope it might be a fit for you.
Yes I do think all ocd regardless or theme or obsession or amount is treatable . there are a lot of studies that show that OCD is very treatable but it will take a lot of work and  time and patience and  and dedication to treat it.  As you continue to learn how to properly manage OCD and treat it you will find it easier to work on different themes of ocd . I do not have as many things as you, but I have a couple.  You’d be surprised how much all of OCD has in common, regardless of what the obsession or theme is. Please continue to treat it and you will get better but it’s gonna take time and you might go a little backwards in the process. It’s not a linear process but it is a very doable. you have to keep trying until you get better. I’m rooting for you :)
Thank you... I'm so desperate now. I really am hoping to get help soon, so I can beat this thing!
@Speckles Ocd is hard but you will get better just keep going.
I’ve recently been struggling a lot with OCD. I have had OCD for a long time I just didn’t realize it until more recently. About seven months ago I developed panic attacks one day randomly at work. I thought I was having a heart attack and went to the hospital where they told me it was just a panic attack and I assumed I would snap out and be better within a few days. However it didn’t. Here’s where it gets scary, I was staying at my then boyfriends house while dealing with blurry vision, anxiety attacks everyday, and more (unsure of what was going on). But at some point I saw my bfs (pew pew 🔫) on his table and it sent me into an anxiety attack after sudden thoughts that I was going to hurt myself with it. I begged him to put it away when I’m not looking so I didn’t know where he put it. He did. These thoughts lasted for about four days but began to go away. (I thought that was it and I would be back to normal). Unfortunately though I ended up moving back in with my family when we couldn’t get my panic attacks under control in time for me to get back to work and pay bills. However, coming home brought up a lot of trauma from when I was kid. My anxiety got worse but I didn’t have those thoughts again. About two and half months ago though, I got sick and went to the hospital where they gave me steroid pills and a steroid shot but sent me into some kind of psychiatric event. Ever since then though, I have been suffering from harm OCD, I have had moments of intense anger that I usually have to completely walk away and go on my own because of how intense they are, and it feels like it’s getting worse. Today I felt fine until about and hour and half ago where I started to dwell on the fact that my suicidal thought was influenced by my OCD and at the moment my OCD is at the worst it’s been. This caused me to get suddenly really depressed and I started crying thinking about how I can’t handle this. I then saw a post talking about how suicide rates are high for people with this form of OCD and it made me question if I am mentally strong enough to pull through this. I fear that at times I’m getting worse. I have good days but I have a lot of bad days. Unfortunately this sent me into such a bad panic attack I went over to my nanas crying about how I can’t deal with this. I took a 0.25 mg Xanax which helped calm down the panic attack portion of it but my brain is still uncomfortably active. I guess I just need hope. I’m so saddened by this. It’s like my life took a total 360 in 10 months and got even worse since the steroid shot. Idk what to do about it. I can’t stop the spiral. I talk to two different therapist weekly and start more next week, making it 5 times a week. I feel no improvements…
(Long post warning) Hi, I’ve been struggling with severe OCD for six years now. it started in 2019 with my theme being getting sick/emetophobia. it devastated my life. I almost didn’t graduate high school from it. I remember washing my hands for three hours one day until they were nearly bloody while crying and asking why I could not stop doing it. I remember id have to write and rewrite sentences when I did my English homework and that’s why I nearly failed that class. I remember how I would spend up to thirty minutes to an hour pacing the halls of my apartment while my mom was asleep until I neutralized the thoughts about throwing up and I could finally go to bed. I don’t know when it happened, but my theme switched. Sometimes in late 2020 or early 2021, it switched to POCD. It started with a single thought, and I focused on it and it’s been my theme since then for four years. It has been absolutely destroying me. I feel so disgusted and lost and just tired. My compulsions are severe now. I thought they were bad before, but now they’re ten times worse. I can’t eat, drink, change my clothes, walk, or even do things on my phone normally. I’ve developed so many mental compulsions that it’s so intricate and complicated yet at the same time I’ve done them so much that they’ve become normal. An example I have is if im putting on a shirt and I have a “bad” thought, I have to take it off and put it back on two more times (that’ll make it 3 times I put the shirt back on - odd numbers are my safe number). I have to have a good thought on the third time otherwise I have to take it off and put it on two more times to make it five times I put on that shirt. If not that then I just put on a different shirt because the original is now tainted with my bad thought. I can’t open apps on my phone. It’s with the numbers again. If I open TikTok once while having a bad thought - I have to close it and open it two more times and so on. Sometimes I do it up to 30 times. So I just don’t do things usually. I don’t turn on the TV because I know I’ll redo it. I don’t open a book or grab it off my shelf because I’ll have to repeat the action. I can’t even lay in bed without getting up and redoing it even if im exhausted. I just feel so helpless. I don’t know what to do. I feel disgusting and even now my minds screaming at me that I am dirty and what I think is true. I just wish I was free of this, I wish I could just live my life. I’ve wasted hours and days because of my compulsions. I mask it so well around my friends. I don’t do them in front of anyone or I’ve learned to hide it well. But when im back home alone, it goes haywire. I just want to live again.
I feel like legit everything I do revolves around an ocd theme. So I feel like a lost cause because I’m so obsessive. I don’t even know what it would be like to have free flowing thoughts, not have (literally), every ocd theme, not to feel anxious, not to search for worry or feel jealous or paranoid, no counting. This disorder truly sucks. I also wonder how long it would take for me to succeed with ERP therapy if I did it.
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