My biggest fear right now is not getting better and rhats so scary. I dont want death to be "my only way out" I hate this so so much. Please if any one has advice pls do give because i feel hopeless. I want to live again. The overwhelming amount of fear anxiety i get every day is just too much. Please help.
I know ocd really feels like a trap you will never get out of but that is not true. Please look up ERP and how not to do compulsions so you can slowly heal. You can get better but your going have work on your ocd and learn how to treat it to get relief from ocd.you can do it , stay strong
i’ve been there too. it does get better, but you have to put in the work of using ERP techniques to reduce compulsions.
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I welcomed the panic attacks in erp. Took my fear of them away eventually
Thank you so so much im genuinely amazed by the kindness here 😭 (i just joined nocd yesterday) I hope things get better for you too
I know that feeling. What are your options for recovering?
I try ERP but i think I've resisted it too long that i literally have panic attacks when doing so which is really terrfying for me. And as for acceptance i feel like im going against everything i belive in by accepting the thoughts it feel so wrong and i fear getting punished for it
@glittlegelpen Have you been trained by a therapist to do erp at all? It's not so much accepting the thoughts and then contents, at the same time not denying them. It's more or less accepting their existence and allowing to be. Welcoming them, even jokingly. Instesd of that maybe, maybe not approach which is popular there may be others that suit you more bssed on your personality. For me it was more like "thanks for coming. yeah, yeah, sure, sure cmon in and do your thing" and then just focus on other things more interesting or let your attention fade out like if you were listening to someone boring.
@Wolfram Thank you i will try this more!!
@glittlegelpen Hope it works and if it doesn't, there may be another approach more suitable for you. Stay strong 💪
@glittlegelpen Some good advice here from Wolfram. There were a couple of tricks I learned to deal with compulsions that helped a lot. One was delaying the compulsion. This could be even for just 30 seconds, don’t ruminate or check, just sit there with the uncomfortable thought and say ok, the thought is here and I don’t have to do anything about it. Then make the time interval longer. At the stage where I tried this, I found that I would delay compulsions, and then go on with an activity and complete forget I was ruminating, thus skipping the compulsion stage. Another one was what Wolfram described, treating the thoughts with a light hearted attitude. Sometimes when POCD thoughts would arise I would just think, yeah, that’s a great thought, thank you, brain, for that thought, or in a sarcastic tone, yeah that’s totally going to happen I would totally do that, then go about my day. At the beginning this is hard, but you will become more and more comfortable with it. This principles took me from being consumed with anxiety every waking moment of my life to being virtually symptom free, though still being cognizant of OCD though processes.
@Lgpuc Thank you truly i will try my best!! It is scary but its can be done and needs to be done. Thank you
so since mid december i’ve been feeling like this , well first in mid december I’ve started feeling anxiety like normal, normal as in physical things like feeling like im going to pass out, shaking, chest pain, etc. but then it got worse , then it turned into more of mind stuff like feeling not real , feeling weird like idk. my mind is always runningg like on over drive, like looking back at myself that doesn’t seem like me. like idk. i can’t stand to look at myself anymore bc it doesn’t feel like me. i can’t be alone , when i think about to it makes it sm worse. but how do i stop thinking ab it? or make it better. i’m scared it’s gonna get worse. like i can’t even do my makeup anymore bc i think something bad will happen. i can’t go certain places , like stay the night bc i think something bad is gonna happen.
I’ve been through a lot of trauma the past few months and years and had an anxiety breakthrough where I can’t stop having panic and anxiety attacks. I used to be a horror movie addict and one night during an anxiety attack my brain went “Kill your sister” My sister is my whole world. It all went downhill from there. I can’t even be around her when were home alone anymore. Every single day since then my brain is trying to tell me a bunch of different ways to harm her. Its getting to a point where its involving others now. “Kill your sister.” “What if you finally go back to your boyfriends house and kill his family?” “What if you kill mom?” “Kill that lady walking down the aisle at work.” “What if you killed yourself?” “You’re a bad person for thinking all of this.” “You shouldn’t be allowed to sleep, eat or relax. Bad people don’t get to do those things.” “These thoughts are in your head 24/7 because you WANT to do these things!” Its causing me so much anxiety and racing thoughts and I don’t want to become anymore depressed. SSRIs dont work. My doctor wants me to go on antipsychotics but I’m afraid to and I feel like I don’t actually need them and it will cause more damage. My goal is to become the person I was before all of this. Not to change completely. I tried buspirone once and I stopped due to increased health anxiety and often found myself saying “remember when you wanted to kill your sister?” and then brushing it off. It helped in some sort of way. I was only on it for a week. My whole life has changed since then. I dont go to my boyfriends house anymore, I dont see my friends, I can’t play video games anymore. All I do is ruminate and I cant stop. I cant even hold a conversation anymore. The compulsions are horrible. I’m so scared that theres no coming back from this. Its all adding to the anxiety that I don’t want to become severe depression. I just want to be me again. I’m starting off ERP and if it doesn’t work I dont know what to do. Can someone please tell me they have been through similar and have gotten better. I just need to save my life. Its getting to a point where this is convincing me this is all real and its going to happen and that im gonna become a psychopath. Its been going on for 3 months. I used to be so bubbly and happy!! (I am not schizoaffective)
i want to get this out of the way; i’m not suicidal. i’m a 17 y/o guy whose been living with OCD for what i assume is most of my life despite only getting the diagnoses last year. i’ve been hustling on despite my mental health really consuming my life to moments in time where i question my sanity and self control. it’s the lack of control that really kills me with this disorder. each day i wake up, it’s the same persistent reminders; it’s the same meaningless conversations replaying; it’s the same small rituals that just barely let me breathe before the thoughts return. nothing i do is gonna stop that unbearable monogamy where i have to sit back and let my eyes be peeled open; i don’t know how to live with that. no pill has worked on me, and any response i give the thoughts just make them worse. right now i’m trying to just sit through it and not care. don’t let it effect me emotionally; try not to feel the discomfort. then it starts to manifest into physical pain where i feel the bones of my chest have this pressure—like staples entering them at the rhythm of a heart beat. i’m getting though this, but i’m not enjoying my life when doing so. i don’t know if i have a future where it isn’t just this repeating through the process of each day. i don’t want to spend the rest of my life avoiding the one thing i’m supposed to have control over. i also don’t want to drown my days in self medicating or get addicted doing so—like i already am. i don’t see the way to make this life of mine work, especially given how much i don’t have to do deal with at my age. of course that will come to. look, i’m not at risk; i really don’t want in anyway to die despite being basically hopeless. i’m numb to the pain of it, i don’t feel anything in my desire to escape these cycles, i just need an out. i’m not seeing a way to move forward. i’m willing to hear anything.
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