Please someone comment or advice(DESPERATE)

In the past 2-3 years ive been having extremely distressing thoughts that for a year(towards the beginning of when it started) made me have extreme panic attacks every day and I was extremely miserable 24/7. The thoughts relate to pure ocd and pocd. It happened literally out of no where one day and it hasnt stopped since(it has slowly tapered down or i just got used to it to an extent) I have a thought and i begin to feel overwhelmingly anxious and horrible in general. I begin to question myself as a person. Not sure if im something that I dont ever want to be in a trillion years but never able to truly answer myself. I spend every day an hour and a half minimum looking up ocd symptoms to alleviate the mental anguish and questioning im going through sometimes it can be as long as 4 hours. Im not sure if this is just extreme anxiety but it hasn't stopped for years. Strange thing though is sometimes the severity of my struggle gets extremely bad ranging from a day to a year at a time and then other times its less severe to where I dont feel like its taking over my life unless my trigger (if I really do have ocd) is reminded to me but no matter how severe it gets Its always lingering over the back of my shoulder and can show up at any time. One thing I can say is ive dealt with sever anxiety since I was thirteen to where I would have panic attacks every day (18 now, symptoms for ocd started at around 15) and the level of anxiety I have now related to what im experiencing now is on an unbelievably higher level than what I used to have. Is it possible I could have ocd? If it is possible, does it sound like mine is severe? Or on a lower more treatable level. Please help I dont want to live like this anymore

Lola3

Date posted: 16h

Wow this is very similar to my experience! I was also around 15 when I first started experiencing distressing thoughts and real event/false memories and Pure OCD (started developing only recently to POCD). I'm 18 now and it's still kicking my ass. I have always had OCD symptoms but I'd never had the Intrusive thought aspect. My gosh it hit me like a ton of bricks. Like you said I'd be okay sometimes and then other times...I would be sobbing, panicking, couldn't eat, sleep etc. Same with the feeling like you don't know yourself and questions your character, despite already knowing. Im also not diagnosed but hopefully I will be soon! Do you have a phychologist? I just started seeing one and hopefully that helps. Honestly the best way is when these thoughts come up don't engage with them. This is easier said than done, I know, but its so nessacary. Its gonna be so hard, to try to ignore them but you have to. My main 2 rules are do not seek reassurance from anywhere, and do not engage with the thought. You also don't want to avoid it. Sit with it, feel the discomfort, let your mind go to your darkest fear and let it pass. It's hard in the moment, but in the long run it will help so much. You should actively be doing ERP also, and doing small exposure exercises, slowly making them more challenging. I know this is so hard you, but im proud of you...I'm proud of us for pushing through. Since our experience are so similar I feel better knowing I'm not alone since it's hard. If you'd like I can chat more and give more tips and help, or if youd like to just vent. I feel like since our themes and situation are basically the same I might be able to help. Hope you feel better :)

peterbaloney

Date posted: 15h

Thank you so much for responding and taking the time to relate to me, and im so proud of you for being here while living with this constant mental burden. I know how extremely uncomfortable and distressing it can be. I also want to get diagnosed but im making sure to be careful that the person that I see is trained in my subtype of ocd because of how much pocd is stigmatized it can often be misdiagnosed an go untreated. Im going to try and attempt erp on my own in the mean time until I can find someone. I have done it in the past and yes I agree one of the things that can help it is treating it like any other thought and try not to avoid it so the thought doesnt have power over me. Surprisingly I have seen decent progress on my own compared to having panic attacks almost 24/7 in my room to still having extreme panic but being able to function better in my day to day life than I would have before. Thank you for responding. Let me know if you would also like to vent or just kinda chat over the topic. Once again thank you it means a lot

bruises

Date posted: 15h

If the thought is distressing and it keeps coming back then it is definitely OCD and Pure O can linger for a while. I have it for a year now and there was a point where POCD was manifesting itself very intensely which made me want to believe I was a yk but my OCD theme changed and now I don't have POCD and I realized it was all just the OCD and I was feeling anxious and guilty for no reason. Remind yourself that OCD attaches itself to what you value most and trust me if you feel anxious about your triggers that's a sign that you are not a p word, rather a very pure person who obviously wants to avoid this. If you feel that your OCD is making it feel hard or disabling to perform daily tasks then it is possible that it is somewhere from moderate to severe, however you shouldn't worry if it's treatable or not, since POCD is one of the most common subtypes of OCD and most therapists are trained to handle these cases. ❤️‍🩹

J.E

Date posted: 22w

Idk what to do at this point any tips help.

Hi I’m 17. My life since I was born has been full of exploring and tons and tons of hobbies. I have adhd. But about 1 year ago is when it kinda started or at least when I started to notice these thoughts and compulsions. I got in a relationship with my girlfriend. And about 2 weeks into that relationship my I started thinking “what if I don’t love her” and I didn’t even know that that’s what ocd was at the time and it ruined with gut wrenching anxiety for months. Then I started titling it as ocd. After we broke up I started to notice that my ocd was starting to flare up a lot. Like when I was snowboarding and normally when I was having the most fun is when I would ask myself things like “what if I hate this” “what if I’m not having fun” then I would try to feel if I was having fun. I would use chat gpt a lot to try and help it but it didn’t really help. I have lots of other ocd thoughts aswell but at the time this one really caused be anxiety and I just felt numb and I became not social. To this day I’m still not as social and I don’t feel like myself anymore. This is the opposite of who I was a year ago. Then I started questioning everything I do and people I love. So it feels like from the moment I wake up my mind just starts spiraling. I can’t seem to find peace or joy in anything anymore and I just feel like my life is going to continue like this and I’ll never be happy. I’ve accepted it at this point. I would love some help. I haven’t really told anyone I know so any tips would be appreciated. I’d be surprised if you even read this far haha. I’m also Christian and love to approach things from a Christian standpoint. I don’t want to sound like a baby who isn’t experiencing real ocd and it’s hard to put into words how much it affects me I just really hope yall understand and can help.

Aldxma.steph

Date posted: 21w

Hello everyone I need some advice

I don’t have an official OCD diagnosis, but I will be asking my doctor tomorrow if I can get referred to a psychiatrist to get an official diagnosis. The way I came to the conclusion that what I’m dealing with is OCD is because a month ago I just started having the most horrible disturbing intrusive thoughts that go against all my values and beliefs and attacking the stuff/people I care about the most. Mind you, I have never had anything like this happen in my life. I feel that I have always been someone with a peaceful mind and one of the worst intrusive thoughts I can ever remember having before this happened, was “what happens if I cut my finger right now” while I was cutting fruit. That’s pretty much it. After this whole horrible intrusive thought spiral started happening I was so scared because I have never had such awful intrusive thoughts like this that were the complete opposite of me, it just quite literally started out of NOWHERE, and that’s what was so scary and terrifying. It was like my whole life got turned upside down because of this and I’ve been mainly isolating in my room, feeling so much anxiety and dread and guilt/shame. I get four of the same thoughts and one intrusive image repeating over and over again even if I would not try to think about them, and it caused me so much distress and anxiety that I would be so anxious and cry everyday just thinking how I could ever possibly think such horrible intrusive thoughts like that. It’s caused me insomnia which I’ve never dealt with before and I went three days in a row without being able to sleep no matter how hard I tried (even while taking melatonin). Other days I struggle so much to fall asleep due to the intrusive thoughts being much more present at nighttime, and even when taking melatonin that doesn’t do anything because of my mind being so active and having so much anxiety. Is this what they call an OCD flare up? After constantly looking up all the symptoms of ocd (the more and lesser known ones alike), I noticed there were some symptoms of it that I displayed in childhood when the ocd could’ve been more dormant or mild you could say (skin picking), because once again I have never had such horrible intrusive thoughts like this out of nowhere and constantly repeating in my mind that felt like they were out of my control. I noticed that these intrusive thoughts started on the second day of my menstruation when I was in a lot of pain and was feeling very emotional/stressed. One of the things I’ve heard a lot is that during the menstruation cycle is when ocd flares can happen more often due to the increase in hormones during that time, and I wonder if that’s what happened to me? I’m also overall such a big over thinker and have been for as long as I can remember. I also have had anxiety and depression since middle school as well. Any insight would be very much appreciated 😭

Aldxma.steph

Date posted: 20w

Hello everyone I need some advice/insight please

I don’t have an official OCD diagnosis, but I will be asking my doctor tomorrow if I can get referred to a psychiatrist to get an official diagnosis. The way I came to the conclusion that what I’m dealing with is OCD is because a month and a half ago I just started having the most horrible disturbing intrusive thoughts that go against all my values and beliefs and attacking the stuff/people I care about the most out of absolutely NOWHERE. Mind you, I have never had anything like this happen in my life. I feel that I have always been someone with a peaceful mind and one of the worst intrusive thoughts I can ever remember having before this happened, was “what happens if I cut my finger right now” while I was cutting fruit. That’s pretty much it. After this whole horrible intrusive thought spiral started happening I was so scared because I have never had such awful intrusive thoughts like this that were the complete opposite of me, it just quite literally started out of NOWHERE, and that’s what was so scary and terrifying. It was like my whole life got turned upside down because of this and I’ve been mainly isolating in my room, feeling so much anxiety and dread and guilt/shame. I get four of the same thoughts and one intrusive image repeating over and over again even if I would not try to think about them, and it caused me so much distress and anxiety that I would be so anxious and cry everyday just thinking how I could ever possibly think such horrible intrusive thoughts like that. It’s caused me insomnia which I’ve never dealt with before and I went three days in a row without being able to sleep no matter how hard I tried (even while taking melatonin). Other days I struggle so much to fall asleep due to the intrusive thoughts being much more present at nighttime, and even when taking melatonin that doesn’t do anything because of my mind being so active and having so much anxiety. Is this what they call an OCD flare up? After constantly looking up all the symptoms of ocd (the more and lesser known ones alike), I noticed there were some symptoms of it that I displayed in childhood when the ocd could’ve been more dormant or mild you could say (skin picking), because once again I have never had such horrible intrusive thoughts like this out of nowhere and constantly repeating in my mind that felt like they were out of my control. I noticed that these intrusive thoughts started on the second day of my menstruation when I was in a lot of pain and was feeling very emotional/stressed. One of the things I’ve heard a lot is that during the menstruation cycle is when ocd flares can happen more often due to the increase in hormones during that time, and I wonder if that’s what happened to me? I’m also overall such a big over thinker and have been for as long as I can remember. I also have had anxiety and depression since middle school as well. Any insight would be very much appreciated 😭

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