- Date posted
- 22w
- Date posted
- 22w
Hi, I’m new to this app as well and o haven’t been officially diagnosed either. But I do know exactly what you mean, I’ve been holding off on certain things and activities that I enjoy because of my anxiety and OCD getting in the way. The mix of it and my procrastination issues aren’t the best, lol. But I know you can feel like you’re holding yourself back from feeling joy but also having fear creep in. I say just start. Start dabbling into your hobbies and surround yourself with things that bring you happiness and not things that trigger you. I hope this somewhat helped. Good luck on your journey. Best wishes!
- User type
- Therapist
- Date posted
- 22w
Sorry to hear you've been struggling with OCD and agoraphobia. While it would be great if everyone with OCD or an anxiety disorder could get access to ERP, you can still make progress doing ERP on your own, such as with the Jonathan Grayson book Freedom from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. You can also use the NOCD app for free, using tools such as the fear & response list, the exposure hierarchy, and the community page like you're doing here. You're brave for seeking help and trying to talk to people about what's going on! I hope that you can access treatment soon.
- Date posted
- 22w
Good job being brave and posting. 🙂 I just wanted to comment on decision making with something interesting I heard on a podcast this week. Basically she said, make the decision and THEN make it the right decision. Her point was that so many decisions could go either way—51 vs 49 percent. Choose a path and then make it a good one. I get so bogged down in making decisions that this advice seemed helpful to me. Just pick a thing and go for it…decide it’ll be good instead of bad. Who knows? Maybe it’ll work.
- Date posted
- 21w
@GhoulishFairy I’m not sure which podcast it was or if it was a YouTube video. Sorry about that. I haven’t exactly tried this method because I am usually weighing pros and cons for a long time before making a decision. But yesterday I made a decision pretty quickly about how I would spend my day and it worked out great. And I saw a post about not letting perfectionism stop your art and that made me think of this conversation. I think the exact words were, do sh*tty art. It made me laugh. Small steps. Tiny steps. Maybe just leaning in the direction we’d like to go. If we can do that, we’re making progress.
Related posts
- Date posted
- 24w
I’ve come to a point in my life where I can be very happy. I have a safe environment, a loving community. Yknow I’ve really healed through or moved on from a traumatic past and as I say to my boyfriend from time to time like a broken record: I feel like nowadays the only thing bringing me stress or at times misery is myself. I am a fairly joyful person, when I’m comfortable I’m very goofy and like to sing dance and have fun. I find that I relate to so many amazing people I meet that are the nicest, most fun, elevating individuals, who also struggle with the hardest sometime debilitating things. It truly sucks because when I find those moments of peace I see the power of what an ocd mind could be as a person. We are people who may over analyze, but I myself also always find the good in people. And aye if in a moment I don’t think anything is doomly wrong and if I don’t try to understand it I may parish 😅 then that moment feels like the best one in the world. But on the other side of that when I’m not in a quiet mind moment and I’m left with myself to take control of what life in front of me looks like in or around me. I almost have been crumbling. Like I said at the beginning of this story here, the life around me is not so situationally stressful. And it’s also fairly simple. My boyfriend and I live together in a small cozy trailer with our two cats, he works full time very hard and I work part time where I spend as much time as I can working and then have a few days around the house. We’re saving for a home and are quite content with our lifestyle at the moment with work and being “lazy”, or resting and going out for fun now an then on our time off together. Most times though I do have day or two off during the week by myself, which usually goes one of only two ways. Like I said before I do like to work hard, especially now that I have a part time job that’s fairly easier than others I’ve had in the past. So I work 6-7 hours then drive home, air up my tires and wash my car sometimes because I like doing something after work while I still have energy.Or I go to the store. Come home make food, prolly nap and not really worry about too much because I’ve worked all day. But on my days off. I find myself waking up with a lot of anxiety. I usually fight it off by going back to sleep. But my OCD is heavily circled around shame. Even though I only sleep in till 10-11, 12-1 at the latest. I find myself thinking about how wrong (in nice terms) it is to do that. And the funny thing is the older I get (I’m a 21F). I’m not as pressured by this thought, even though it’s still stressful it literally just feels like a thought I can’t escape from. To put things in simple terms. I truly psycho analyze my actions breath by breath and my intrusive thoughts are critiquing those actions bit by bit. I’ve recently have started medication and it was a tremendous difference in the beginning and it helped me cope with the acceptance and letting go (f it or just care less) of those thoughts. But let’s say I forget to take it, or I wake up one morning by myself all day and I’m super tired or unmotivated. That day will feel truly debilitated. And now I’m definitely to the point where I’m battling that, but also have a thin vale behind that where I now know what is going on. And the thoughts are shameful for “not trying to get better or be better” Because I do Like I write a lot, and it truly is one of the best coping mechanisms for working through intrusive or obsessive compulsions. I could also write all day, and if I don’t listen to that ease of the anxiety from writing. And try to keep going the writing will turn into a compulsion itself I feel like I should not stop or critique it as well. But luckily I’ll hopefully find my place in explaining the cycle of what I do when my brain is very loud about things. The next time it’s too loud:)
- Date posted
- 22w
I’m irrationally terrified of being found somehow by someone who knows me but I’m trying to post anyway. Not sure if I qualify as young adult or mid-life at this point because I’m about to be 30. Hi, I’m new here and I’m in the process of getting a diagnosis. I’m already diagnosed with autism, GAD, and probable ADHD, and I believe I’ve had varying subtypes of OCD since childhood. My worst OCD-related issue right now has been constant reassurance seeking. I’ve fallen into a trap of constantly doing it and without reassurance I’m terrified to make decisions in my new job. It’s causing me to ask too many questions I already know the answers to which makes me not look competent. Even though I’m somewhat experienced in my field of work, starting this new job has me feeling like I’m starting in the field all over again because I’m so bad these days with working independently since I can’t reassure myself that what I’m doing is correct. I’ve been stressed out of my mind and have come close to losing my job because the stress has exacerbated my autistic struggles such as meltdowns and social issues and I’m also battling the ADHD and GAD on top of it. I’ve also been pushing away people who are close to me with my reassurance seeking because I have problems with not being satisfied with any piece of advice or reassurance given to me by friends and family. They can say things will be okay a thousand times and even though I’m the one who asked I will fight them on it and I’m getting tired of my own difficult behavior and obsessive thoughts. I finally got into therapy again to try and save my job and my relationships from the clutches of my various mental illnesses and I’m just looking for community here.
- Date posted
- 18w
So I know I've talked about my fear of being hacked/watched without my knowledge and at the same time that same fear has also made me scared that i've said incriminating things or confessed to a crime I didn't commit out loud without realizing and that this person (who probably doesn't even exist) is going to use it against me in the future and ruin my life. To the point where I've covered all my device cameras. Yeah, I know. Incredibly outlandish. Anyways. The past few months it's just been my brain convincing me that my life is over or that it's going to end and not just end, but like I'm going to lose everyone that I love because of said "incriminating things" though I know I haven't done anything wrong. Of course, there's a part of me that realises that this is really unlikely because I'm not that important of a person for someone to lie in wait for decades and decide to ruin my life just because though I don't doubt that there are people like that out there (i really hope they're few and far between). However, there's another part of me that also really believes that this is all true. And sometimes I wonder if I'm going insane. Coupled with what I believe are false memories, the anxiety has been taxing every day. And I find it hard to sit with uncertainty because this worst case scenario terrifies me. I'm scared of being unloved and abandoned and also deathly afraid of being perceived as a bad person. And of course, also scared of being a bad person and my brain is convinced that I must be. Anyways. Who knows. Maybe. Maybe not. I wanted to share because I know that OCD or I guess any kind of mental illness (whatever it is I'm suffering from if it isn't OCD) likes to convince us that our fears are too niche and that this worry wouldn't be present if it wasn't real. OCD likes to use that as proof. I've learnt though that there are many people like me on this app, and even though it's still scary, it makes me feel less alone. It can be very tiring and honestly sometimes I ask myself how I'm still here even though it's been a few months and some people on here have experienced episodes like this for years or even decades. I keep hoping I'll wake up one day and it will be like this never happened. If you've taken the time to read this incredibly long waffle session of mine that's more like a drawn-pit diary entry, thank you. And if you feel comfortable with sharing, please do :)
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