My Story

To start off, I have not been professionally diagnosed with OCD as of this entry, but I have MANY symptoms that align with different subtypes of OCD. After looking into OCD, I can recall multiple things in life that are affected by my OCD aligning behaviors. The first time I remember having a big episode was when I was around seven years old. I don’t remember every detail of it, but I remember the horrible anxiety and looping thoughts that came with it. I had stolen a $1 pack of hair ties from a Save-A-Lot when I went grocery shopping with my mother. After getting home, I felt so disgusted and guilty about it that I hid under my bed having a breakdown for hours. I had convinced myself that I just committed one of the worst sins to be and that I just booked a one way ticket to hell. This thought and the feeling that came with it left me unable to function, but I was scared to tell my mother that I stole. Eventually, the crushing weight of my soul’s fate won, and I told my mother what I had done and why I was so scared. I don’t remember how the situation resolved, but I believe my mother was able to convince me I wasn’t going to hell for it as long as I asked for forgiveness. Ever since then, I would get intrusive thoughts about disappointing God every so often. Usually, I was able to talk myself out of obsessing over it, or I would distract myself from it. That was until I turned 14. Now, this episode didn’t really “feel” like an episode at the time. I didn’t have the insane impending doom or constant panic that wouldn’t calm down for days to weeks at a time. In this episode, I hyper-focused on my faith and being a better Christian. That sounds like a good thing, right? Well, of course it is… except my brain took the opportunity to create some compulsions and mental obsessions. I remember I became terrified of cussing or “being mean” to anyone, because I was fearful of upsetting God by being such a sinner. Now looking back, I realize the urge to do better should have came from a place of conviction and love for God, but it mostly came from guilt and fear. Time went on and I slowly fell back into my “normal” every day ways. I actually had reached the point, after a couple years, of doubting that God was real. I became agnostic and went on with my life doing typical teenager things, until another crisis came when I was around 17 years old. This one did have a specific trigger, which was an intense car accident. I was on the way home from school in the wintertime, I believe November. I was pushing 80mph, driving like an idiotic teenager, when I hit something in the road that caused my tires to pop. I had lost control completely and football spiraled into the woods for about 30 yards. It looked very bad, but I somehow walked out of it without even a scratch. This absolutely petrified me, and I went into another existential spiral. It started with me refusing to leave my house because I was convinced something would essentially fall from the sky and kill me if I left the house. After obsessing over that for awhile, it spiraled into thinking about what happens when we die and if we really just dissipate into nothingness, or if we do go to an afterlife that lasts forever and ever and ever. Both sounded terrifying to me because I couldn’t accept just becoming nothing, but I was also fearful of existing forever, because I was worried I would do something bad in the afterlife to make God mad and I would be sent to hell. At this point, my parents attempted to take me to a therapist. I’m not sure if she was attempting ERP, but she didn’t make what was happening clear, so I was terrified. She had me put on some headphones while playing a noise and she told me to think about my fear as intensely as I could, which freaked me out badly since I didn’t understand what ERP therapy was (if that’s what she was trying). Anyways, I never went back to her and decided to just rot on the couch watching Netflix to avoid any thoughts, until one day my brother helped break the cycle. He walked in the house, looked at me and said, “You’re so fat you’re going to have a heart attack. You’re coming to the gym with me.” To which I did, and after a few days of exercising I felt much better and shifted all my focus onto the gym. This episode lasted for less than a month, I believe. All was well with that for a few years. Then, here it all came back about two years ago, and I believe I was around 23 or 24 years old. This was also in the wintertime. Once again, the terrifying thought of “what happens when I die?” came back for me. It had me distressed almost 24/7 to where I felt shaky and anxious all the time. I could barely function. I tried seeking therapy and the person I talked to said “have you tried just not thinking about it?” which irritated me very much, as the problem wouldn’t have existed if I could have simply done that. I believe around this time I was diagnosed with bipolar, but I feel as if it was a misdiagnoses due to the lack of evaluation. My doctor attempted to put me on antipsychotics, which just made me feel horrible. I stopped taking those or talking to anyone and decided screw it, I’ll try to handle it myself. This was when I started confiding in my brother and his wife, and they reopened the door to God for me. I started reading the Bible with them and going to church with them, and I had realized that God wants you to come to him out of love and not fear/guilt. A lot of things I was taught improperly at a young age had been corrected through this journey, and I felt as if I really understood the love and peace that comes with a relationship with God. After a few weeks to a month, I was coming out of this episode since returning to my beliefs as a Christian had given me peace. This episode lasted for a little less than two months, I believe. All was well and I was living my life in peace, but slowly started drifting away from reading my Bible and going to church, so bam, here we are now. I’m now 26 years old and I’m in another existential/religious crisis. This one started at the beginning of November. I had been vaping for a while but suddenly I got this thought stuck in the back of my head that my next hit could be my last, because I could get popcorn lung and die. This freaked me out enough to make me cold-turkey quit vaping. Well, a couple days later I started having extreme anxiety with chest pain and arm pain so I was convinced I was having a heart attack. I went to the ER, and all my scans and tests were normal. I followed up with my doctor and all my labs were normal other than slightly elevated cholesterol and low vitamin D. I was hoping this would make me snap out of it, but then my brain caught the thought of “what if I die in my sleep and my 4 year old son is stuck here with my dead body for days at a time until someone notices I haven’t shown up to work or taken him to his dad’s?” And I completely lost it with this thought. I was petrified to go to sleep, and it was even worse on the nights I had my son. I became terrified of sleeping, which has resulted in me sleeping less even though I’m already struggling on 3rd shift. This spiral went on for about two weeks when the religion based intrusive thoughts started. My brother was watching a sermon while I was at his house, and a statement the preacher made had triggered me to think I wasn’t bearing enough fruits as a Christian, so God was going to write my name out of the book of life. So, I was spiraling on both of those thoughts for a while. I have since gotten the religion one to slow down, but the fear of dying in my sleep had spiraled into general fear of dying young, or even at all. I was feeling a tiny bit better when I saw my doctor and he prescribed me adderall and buspar. One day after starting the adderall, I started my period for the first time in five months, and I feel like that combo completely ruined what progress I had made. Now I’m stuck in a place where my brain is telling me “you’re gonna die anyways, whether it’s tomorrow or in 60 years, you’re going to die so everything is pointless and you might as well give up and sit here rotting in thought until that day comes.” I HATE this thought. I don’t want to feel like life is meaningless and pointless, but my brain is keeping me imprisoned. I’m at the point where I can’t eat, sleep, or even function half the time. I’m stuck in a never ending panic attack and it WON’T STOP. I stopped taking the adderall a few days ago but had to go to the ER because the panic would not stop. They gave me an Ativan, which helped for a few hours, but the panic had come back by the next day. They’ve prescribed me some other stuff to start soon, and some hydroxyzine for immediate relief. The hydroxyzine isn’t really doing much so I’ve just been stuck in a state of panic. I’m terrified to be alone so I’ve been staying with my dad and his wife. I tried to sleep at home alone today and woke up after just three hours freaking out. I’m now at work, planning to leave early at 10pm and I’m so exhausted from not being able to sleep or eat. I will probably go back to my dad’s house in hopes that my body feels safe enough to get at least SOME sleep. I don’t know if it’s the exhaustion, but I’m feeling extra discouraged today, feeling that there’s not a way out of feeling like this. I feel so stuck and miserable and I hate it so much. I cannot stand being stuck in a constant and never-ending panic, but my body just won’t give me a break. Also, the intrusive thoughts have me slightly scared to try the new medication I got today, so that sucks. So, yeah, that’s where it’s all started and where I am with it right now. I have other symptoms of other subtypes, but nothing that’s completely taken over my ability to function in the way the existential and religious thoughts have.