I have been in treatment for OCD ever since i was diagnosed with it about a year and a half ago and my OCD improved massively before having a major relapse just under a year ago. My OCD is now so complex that my CAMHS team can’t help me and so they have referred me to a specialist OCD team in one of the most famous psychiatric hospitals in the UK. I’m not sure that this new treatment is going to work and although i know it’s too early to tell as i am only going to start it soon (roughly a month or two) but my OCD has me very tightly and i know with certainty that i will not be ready to engage in treatment when that time comes around. My OCD stops me from being able to speak or even move/blink/breathe on bad days when i am in treatment (i can usually talk and move in every other situations apart from when with mental health professionals or talking about my mental health with any sort of adult). Does anyone have any tips to helping me be able to engage as currently it seems impossible and does anyone have any ideas of what i can do/what will be done with me when my 12 week treatment with these specialist is up (that i’ve been waiting for for 6 months) if this doesn’t work? My OCD also effects my life in such a massive way it has led me to develop depression and an eating disorder and have struggled with suicide attempts etc so it is important i am treated. Thank you

i want to get this out of the way; i’m not suicidal. i’m a 17 y/o guy whose been living with OCD for what i assume is most of my life despite only getting the diagnoses last year. i’ve been hustling on despite my mental health really consuming my life to moments in time where i question my sanity and self control. it’s the lack of control that really kills me with this disorder. each day i wake up, it’s the same persistent reminders; it’s the same meaningless conversations replaying; it’s the same small rituals that just barely let me breathe before the thoughts return. nothing i do is gonna stop that unbearable monogamy where i have to sit back and let my eyes be peeled open; i don’t know how to live with that. no pill has worked on me, and any response i give the thoughts just make them worse. right now i’m trying to just sit through it and not care. don’t let it effect me emotionally; try not to feel the discomfort. then it starts to manifest into physical pain where i feel the bones of my chest have this pressure—like staples entering them at the rhythm of a heart beat. i’m getting though this, but i’m not enjoying my life when doing so. i don’t know if i have a future where it isn’t just this repeating through the process of each day. i don’t want to spend the rest of my life avoiding the one thing i’m supposed to have control over. i also don’t want to drown my days in self medicating or get addicted doing so—like i already am. i don’t see the way to make this life of mine work, especially given how much i don’t have to do deal with at my age. of course that will come to. look, i’m not at risk; i really don’t want in anyway to die despite being basically hopeless. i’m numb to the pain of it, i don’t feel anything in my desire to escape these cycles, i just need an out. i’m not seeing a way to move forward. i’m willing to hear anything.

(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 have been stuck for 2 months now. I have so much consuming anxiety all day everyday. I can’t take these thoughts and feelings. I took leave at work because I couldn’t even function there. Everyday I wake up in the same nightmare. I tried therapy last month and felt like we got no where. My family is just fed up with me and keeps saying I’m not trying to help myself. It’s feels like this is never going to end. I feel paralyzed, if I’m not doing a compulsion it feels like my thoughts might happen. I wish there was somewhere I could go right now to get the help I need. Ocd is so hard and idk how to stop this endless loop. Now that I’m not working I’m home all day everyday. I’ve reached out to Rogers for residential treatment, waiting for a response. Can anyone relate to feeling this way. It’s 24/7 for me and I’m so terrified my life will be like this forever….