death and dying ocd

I recently learned that the situation I am in could indicate a form of OCD, so I’m writing this wondering if that seems accurate based on the description I wrote. Basically, I spend a large amount of my time worrying about my loved ones or myself dying. I find myself keeping everything that connects to a memory with someone I love. I’m obsessed with taking photos, and not in the way that people my age are because they want to post on instagram or something, it’s because I’m constantly worried about wishing I had more physical evidence of a relationship if I were to lose that person. Whenever I have a happy moment with somoene, my brain jumps to “you’ll want to remember this if they die” or “make sure you write this down/ take a photo so you can look back at it if something happens”. I’ll look through photos with my loved ones and decide which one I would make the wallpaper on my phone if they died. I don’t even intend to make that decision, it just kind of happens. I have awful thoughts and images pop into my brain of the people I love being dead and thinking about what I would do if that actually happened, or how I would care for my loved ones if they lost someone important to them. I just feel like I’m constantly preparing for another loss and setting myself up to be left with lots of photos and other things just in case. I lost my best friend to cancer a few years ago, and I never dealt with this before that, so I think it’s all in response to that trauma. I get stressed when I know I took a photo with someone but they didn’t send it to me and worry I forgot to write down something that happened with a loved one that was important to me. I give handwritten notes and photos of us to people I love very often because I imagine they’d be important to them if something happened to me. I check my pulse and lymph nodes often and spend time googling or stressing about symptoms I have that could lead to something being wrong with me because I’m so scared all the time of getting sick and dying. Could I have OCD?

LenaForever

Date posted: 1y

Definitely seems like ocd to me. I had a similar theme where I would test to see how I would feel if someone around me died, and if I didn’t feel “right” I’d panic. It started to feeling like I had already grieved everyone I loved and I was just empty. It’s okay though, I promise. Trauma can also cause OCD flare ups, and OCD tends to affect the things that you care about the most.

Liz ♥️

Date posted: 10h

What do I do with my OCD health anxiety over my 3 year old daughter? Every illness she gets I worry it’s some sort of cancer - I google all cancer symptoms and know practically all of them by heart. I don’t need to learn anymore signs But I need to stop. I’ve brought her to the doctors twice last week over a virus (I think it’s a virus) I think of her dying and it brings me to tears and idk how to overcome this specific OCD fear. Facing it as in being exposed to it sounds awful but I need a solution. I can’t go on like this, it’s bad for my marriage, my daughter and my 5 year old son. Any suggestions?

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