I’m so scared. My OCD is getting worse and worse and I’m just contributing to it by doing compulsions at every turn. It’s a vicious cycle. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to dig myself out of this hole. I’m terrified of living, but I’m not ready to die. But, I’m even more terrified to push through with treatment. I don’t believe I’m strong enough, at least not right now. And never mind how bad my depression plays into all of this. I’ve expended every resource of support: therapy, medication, family, friends, pastor. I know it’s down to me, but I can’t do this. I feel so sick and that my mind won’t be able to handle it. I keep reading how people with OCD get to the point where they’ve had enough or hit “rock bottom” so to speak and push through. I think I hit “rock bottom” but I feel weaker then ever. Anyone been here and gone through treatment and made it out the other end? How on earth did you do it?

(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 always worry that my OCD is treatment resistant? No matter how much ERP Ive been doing for the past decade or so, I somehow am met with my themes again, sometimes coming back tenfold. Maybe I’m doing ERP wrong. Maybe I have something worse than OCD. I just have so many obsessions and themes and feel my avoidant behaviors trying to kick in no matter how much I try to resist. I’m exhausted…and it sucks. Even my sister told me “some people are not meant to overcome hurdles because God wants them to be stronger” referring to me. Now I feel like my OCD is impossible to get over. I don’t want to be strong, I want to be at peace. I’m not even religious and this is getting to my head and I’m spiraling. I can’t afford to be on medication or go to therapy. I’m struggling so hard.

How to deal with OCD when you’re dissociating and numb and it’s going from ROCD, existential to how you hate yourself, to your whole life story trauma flooding, to retroactive jealousy, to how you never anointed to much, to how it’s hard for you to love people and not scrutinize, to how you never really did much on your own and always needed help and attention, to how you’re scared of death, to how you’re scared of abandonment and being alone, to saying if you don’t fix all these at once you’ll lose your relationship (I have CPTSD and there’s a push pull and I never had a chance to fix it) and I try to control everything. And I realize it. And it’s going on about how adulting is scary. About how I try to work and the. Quit because I’m afraid of opinions. About how I hoard. About how everything in life seems senseless. About how I can’t connect. About how I people please and about how I’m selfish. About how nothing will ever be perfect. I’m not joking when every second of my day is a FLOOD of thoughts and it’s been 46 days like this after one thought I tried to sit with spiraled me into a dissociative shutdown. I’ve had bad OCD all my life but as I got older more and more fears piled up. And my trauma is so bad. And so loud. The OCD is so bad. There’s nothing in life I don’t fear. And everything feels like a threat to me. His past. Him. And how I don’t want anyone else but my brain won’t stop ripping him apart. How “no one” will be good enough for my perfectionistic mind. I truly don’t know how the absolute fuck to get over something this severe. And I have horrific self worth issues. Bad. Like zero self worth. boundaries. Anything. I never had skills. And idk how to explain to my family how bad this OCD is. I run to my mom like a scared child. But even she can’t give me comfort because I’m in hell. And I always wanted people to help me fix things and now that I’m trapped in my own mind I can’t. I’m scared. Shitless.