Its no use anymore?

I'm trying to find motivation, inspiration, a reason to start and get better. But everything I think of just gets shot down instantly in my head. Also, I've had so many bad experiences with professionals inside the healthcare system, not just for mental health but also physical health, that it has made me very critical of it, and as a consequence, I feel like OCD therapy is just rubbish. I feel my belief in healthcare has been stripped away, and therefore I don't feel anything can help me anymore. I'm bound to be walking with this forever. Throw in a lot of existential, meta, and nihilistic OCD views, and you have got my current situation. I have been thinking of maybe joining a church and becoming religious, maybe that will give me meaning? I hate that I don't find the meaning anymore from my 2 kids and wife, what is wrong with me? Been battling this disorder for 10 years now, but I feel it has come to the point where it has given me the ultimate insight, one that has shown me that I can never get out of it again because getting out of my current state is just something we as a society seem to think is normal. Who knows what is really normal? What if being anxious and passive and nihilistic is actually what we should be like? Another problem I'm facing is that I feel I've reached a point where I've tried everything and exhausted all knowledge, making it impossible to return to my unknowing self. I also have the idea or feeling that I've reached a state where I can no longer get enough motivation to make something of myself. I don't even know why I'm posting this message or doing anything at all. I think somewhere I hope that it can still go away or that things will get better. Even as I'm writing this right now, those doubtful thoughts are immediately surfacing again. Then I immediately feel feelings but also thoughts, and also just a kind of presence that says it doesn't matter and that everything is meaningless anyway, and that I know the truth of the universe and where the universe is just that nothing matters and that everything is flat, tasteless, and has no added value. All these thoughts keep going through my head.

ScuderiaAlpha

User type: OCD Conqueror

Date posted: 43w

Oh man Existential OCD can be such a pain! I get you totally with the “everything gets shot down in my head” because OCD says “well what’s the point if there’s no meaning to life” or “If I can’t find out the meaning of the universe what’s the point?”. And OCD also makes it feel like you don’t want to get better because not thinking about these things just seems like ignorance with a sense of “how did I not think about this before!”. Good news is that actually this is highly treatable and for me was actually the easiest of my themes to beat. I promise you I had ALL the same thoughts. The way I beat this is pretty simple: I refused to answer OCDs questions about the meaning of life or the universe. You might think they matter, but that’s really OCDs greatest trick with this theme. It tries to convince you that you need to solve all these thoughts but you really don’t. Now this is easier said than done but here’s what I would do: Anytime you get a thought about the meaning of life and the universe, try and answer it with a response like: “Yep can’t wait to never figure out why we’re all here on earth, why the universe exists or why anything”. “I can’t wait to never know why I’m doing what I’m doing!” “Yep I guess life has no meaning that’s so cool thanks brain!” “Yep this task has no meaning but im gonna do it anyway!” Overtime your brain will learn that these existential questions just don’t matter. And when I say that you can beat this theme, I was literally in your position and now the thoughts don’t cross my mind. Be careful of your compulsions too. When you said “maybe if I joined a church I could extract meaning”, I mean do that if you really would like to and its something that really interests you but if that’s just an attempt to gain some sort of answer to your thoughts, it’s compulsive and only would make it worse. With this theme anything you do to try and answer or gain certainty on the meaning of life or anything like that is compulsive. The crux is this. Just stop playing ball with OCDs questions about the meaning of life because they really don’t matter. It will get better but only if you refuse to stop answering them or trying to ruminate and gain certainty. Hope this helps :)

djflorio

User type: OCD Conqueror

Date posted: 43w

I definitely hear you. I feel like I could have written this exact post a few years ago. On the OCD side of things I agree with ScuderiaAlpha's response. I'd urge you to find any ounce of trust you can for therapeutic approaches like ERP, and really give them a shot. If nothing else, learning about the obsessive/compulsive cycle and how to treat it can really take the edge off the spiral of existential thinking. I'm very hesitant to try to "push" any religious or philosophical views on anyone, but if you're really stuck in the pit of nihilism and feel like you need some guidance to gain your footing, I can say that Buddhism has been extremely helpful for me personally. As someone who became rather averse to religion by my early 20's due to a pretty rocky Catholic upbringing, I was always drawn to Buddhism's pragmatism. At its core, it's more of a philosophy than a religion (people mistakenly think that Buddhists "worship" the Buddha, or pray to some Buddhist "gods," but that's not the case). Much of what it teaches is extremely consistent with modern psychiatry and neuroscience, and it obviously places heavy emphasis on mindfulness and meditation, which does wonders for OCD in my experience. In fact, there is a teaching in Buddhism (the Acintita Sutta) that quite literally points out how pondering unanswerable existential questions, like the true meaning of existence or WHY we're all here, is unwise and leads to confusion rather than enlightenment. The philosophy is all about accepting the reality that we're in, however it came to be, and what we can do to end the cycle of suffering. Your mileage may vary of course, but wanted to give my two cents since you seem to be in a very similar spot as I used to be.

user23456789

Date posted: 14w

How are you now

mandiocd

Date posted: 21w

Existential ocd help please.

m at the point where every night I contemplate going to the ER for my terrible thoughts. For the past 2.5 years I’ve been struggling with extremely bad existential ocd/nihilism. One day I woke up and had a nihilistic thought and since that day I’ve had severe nihilistic and suicidal thoughts. I truly don’t wanna do anything because in the end we die. In the end life is meaningless because we die. I feel almost delusional bc these thoughts feel true. Anything I do my brain goes “why are you doing this? It’s not gonna matter” I’m getting married in June and I don’t feel anything. I don’t wanna do anything. I don’t care to. I have to quit my RN job at the hospital because of this terrible theme. I don’t see a point in anything. Life doesn’t make sense. Death terrifies me. And life feels meaningless. My life is ruined. I hate ocd I hate it.

Existential OCD

Anonymous

Date posted: 17w

10 years in.

Hey folks, I know I shouldn’t post here and I know what I’m looking for when I do but I just feel so at a loss and OCD is playing the old trick of telling me I don’t have it which I guess is what it’s been doing for a while. My OCD started with a health obsession when I was 12 (I’m 22 now) but went away after a couple of months but didn’t present itself again until I was 17. I thought I had a degenerative disease and struggled with that day in and day out until I eventually accepted that I was going to die and made peace with it and then of course I kept living. OCD was pretty quiet for a few months after that. It would show itself when I had headaches and random aches and pains but it never hooked me as bad. Quite funny actually but I had a weird thing for a couple of months where every time I would go out for a drink I thought I’d wet myself so I’d stand in the bathroom for like 20-30 minutes at a time and that was multiple times across the night. Then in 2021, the theme shifted. I remember it distinctly, I was just lying in bed and a question appeared and that was it. My anxiety was really bad for about a year and then I met my girlfriend and we started dating. OCD went quiet until she moved to another city for university and I started to worry she was being unfaithful or didn’t love me anymore and things like that. With that obsession it kind of came to a head where I realised I either had to fully trust everything despite any doubt I felt or I’d lose her and so it just eventually started to pass. I’ve had a few occasions where I question my love for her and that really hurts because I’m pretty sure I’d be lost without her. That comes and goes though and it usually has to do with a general numbness that I feel after an OCD spike. The theme from 2021 (which I won’t say because I’m somehow worried that someone I know will see this and I will definitely wonder if people near me have seen this post despite it being pretty closed off.) never left but I was somehow able to put it to the back of my mind and get to a point where I was okay. I got a new job in 2024 at a point where I maybe was not ready. New place, new people and for the first 2 months or so it was fine. I even saw some potential triggers before they happened and did my best to ignore them. I got really drunk on a staff night out and when I woke up a lot of what ifs filled my head and I’ve been on my back since then. That brings us to now, my OCD has been pretty bad for about a year now but the weird part (and what I’m making this post about I guess) is that it feels different this time. I know that’s a super common phrase for people with OCD that therapists hear all the time and I have actually taken that piece of information as reassurance a few times over the years but it’s true. I feel so much more confused. I can’t even really explain it. It feels like my brain doesn’t engage or deny the obsession the same way as it used to and of course that makes me believe it’s real and I never actually had OCD. Instead, I’m left with thoughts that don’t give me that sharp feeling of anxiety that they used to and instead just leave me feeling super low and often angry just wishing it would go away. I think it’s probably because I’ve been at this for so long and had the same theme for years and so I’ve in a way habituated to the anxiety and that’s what rationally makes sense to me but like you all know, you can’t reason with this thing. It’s like it gives me just enough anxiety and depression to keep me on the hook and make it feel real but not enough send me into panic like it used to. I used to lie in bed, unable to get up and wishing that I was dead. I guess that now because I don’t feel that way, at least most of the time, my ocd is using that as a way to tell me I never really had it. Also I think I used to rely so heavily on reassurance but now know that I shouldn’t have it I try to avoid it. Without it though, it all feels real and I feel like eventually I will lose myself fully and that’s a fear that makes me feel unfathomably hopeless and makes me dread the future when I used to have dreams and hopes for myself that I looked forward to fulfilling. I don’t want to be big-headed, I just genuinely feel like I could’ve had a really great life and that’s gone now because of this thing. Anyway I just wanted to kind of use this post to get my head straight and map out something that I couldn’t quite explain effectively in therapy. I appreciate everyone who sees this but ask not to give me reassurance, I know we all empathise with each other but I’ve been at this long enough to know that it does none of us any good. I hope everyone is doing well, keep your head up. They tell me there’s a light at the end of this tunnel.

Anonymous

Date posted: 16w

Feel lost and without hope

I dont know what to do anymore. I think Ive had the 'pure O' version of OCD for more than ten years. I feel like so much of my life has been wasted from this disease. For the longest time I just tried to ignore the intrusive thoughts, and push them off as anxiety, and basically dissociated for years of my life. Feels like Ive just been on autopilot and a shell of myself for nearly 15 years. Its actually hard to even imagine of all the experiences, emotions, connections with others, and personal growth that Ive missed out on- if I do, I think it would be too much to handle. I think Ive even forgot and dont even know at this point what it is to live a normal life and experience positive emotions. Now that I sought treatment for it specifically, it feels like it's gotten worse. Like by acknowledging that part of myself, suddenly added focus just makes it more real and in the forefront now. I wonder if I am actually going insane. Will not go into details for reassurance but the thoughts just rip my soul out. Its so difficult as well because I will get random 'clarity moments' throughout the day where I feel like Ive solved something, then get completely derailed by another OCD thought stream and forget everything. It feels like Im just on a merry-go-round of hell, not going anywhere thinking I am at times.

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