Generational OCD

A rant. I’ve held such a grudge since finding out ocd goes back generations, I mean WAY back in my family and NO ONE seems to have done anything to help themselves before me, everyone I’ve talked to in my family either have brushed it off (do their compulsions or self soothed and had addiction problems, or worse) even at the expense of anyone around them, total disregard to how it affects the people in their life. It pisses me off so much because if I’d been helped with this in childhood or saw examples of how to deal with anxiety maybe it wouldn’t have spread like cancer into adulthood and I’d just be better at dealing with it than I am. It’s like I know how much it sucks but like wtf no one wanted to feel better. I don’t understand and it makes me mad when I think about it. Like as a kid dealing with your parent having a massive ocd flare up and they just are like haha it’s just my ocd is so fucked up. It was actually traumatizing, gave me trust issues and never feeling “safe”. And yet at the same time I guess its helped me to heal my own ocd flare ups because it helps me to think about how my actions could cause chaos in my own family now. Idk I guess this coulda been a journal entry but here I am.

Danie-Rae

Date posted: 15h

I think the older generations were never truly diagnosed with it bc the doctors didn’t realize it wasn’t just anxiety. They maybe couldn’t get the right help and some in denial. It took me forever to get a therapist to diagnose me and I knew I had it as a teen but it wasn’t talked about as much then. I was textbook OCD yet constantly told I’m just anxious and/or a hypochondriac bc I “thought” I had OCD…

workingonthings

Date posted: 15h

@Danie-Rae That makes sense and I definitely understand that perspective as well. I guess my frustration really comes from a parent would do crazy shit and then be like “ohh haha sorry that’s just my ocd” but never do anything to alter their behaviors and just ask for forgiveness when what they did repeatedly affected me and my living environment. When I started to show signs of having ocd as a teen I was taught to hide my behavior because people would “think something was wrong with me”. So the fact ocd was known as something that ran in the family but I was never had real understanding of what I was experiencing, and thought if I tried to seek help I’d ruin my life, leading to not having a real diagnosis until my early 30s. Idk I just wish I’d had some support earlier on and some tools to help me through my 20s when I was feeling really hopeless and alone. This community has been really helpful. But I’m looking forward to having actual therapy and learn more.

workingonthings

Date posted: 14h

@Danie-Rae I think the grudge comes from like no one talking about it, it having taken a toll so much on these older generations that they decided to rely heavily on pills or alcohol (and for several people in my family leading to really sad consequences) at some point I’d just think that if they went through their parents doing those things that you’d want to try something different and try as hard as possible to not pass those traits onto their kids or not have kids at all, or to find tools that helped outside of self soothing and pretending nothing was wrong just to “look normal” masking forever I has been exhausting for me, they must be so over it.

mjabel25

Date posted: 17h

Same in my family. So many memebers have it (or really bad mental health in general) and they just pushed it away and made it seem like they were “weird”.

workingonthings

Date posted: 17h

@mjabel25 This! I’m sorry first off that you also had to go through it. I’ve experienced with my own ocd that pushing it away has just caused me more anxiety and more compulsive behavior and I just want to feel better!

workingonthings

Date posted: 17h

@mjabel25 I just don’t understand why if they know how tough it is to live with why they’d want their own kids to also go through life like this without giving them help or tools to deal!

mjabel25

Date posted: 17h

@workingonthings I know. My parents (mostly my Mom) just doesn’t want to talk about it at all, so I can’t even bring up that I’m crying because my ocd is bad

workingonthings

Date posted: 17h

@mjabel25 I’m so sorry you’re also dealing with the same things! Hugs to you and I hope it gets better!

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