- Date posted
- 19h
Newbie (bee?) here!
Hi, all. I am new here. My name is Bee. After a long period of physical illness that involved some intense suffering at times, I began to develop severe OCD symptoms about four months ago. I have struggled with depression and anxiety in the past, some of it serious business, but all of that truly felt like a walk in the park compared to this. I am suffering from obsessive and intrusive thoughts about religion, to start with. Some days I pray for hours, other days for less time, but every day I wake up praying now when I did not used to, begging for mercy and forgiveness. I feel obsessed with how I don't know if God is real or not and how I will go to hell for doubting. I also feel obsessed with needing to find the correct religion and change my entire life and become a different person and become pure and devout. This can cause intense terror for me and I can spend hours obsessing over this. Last month I had about four days where I wouldn't get out of bed except to drink milk and water and pray. I have also developed a fear I have forgotten something life-altering. The subject can change, some themes are persistent and more distressing than others, all of them are upsetting. I replay memories for hours and hours and try to retrace movements. I have no evidence for any of these quite frankly whacky and paranoid thoughts and have even disproven some of my obsession points, yet new ones keep cropping up. After suffering for months in silence, I finally revealed to my family what was going on. One person was initially understanding and supportive. The other two basically thought I needed to get over it and stop being crazy. I feel my one supportive person ran out of patience pretty fast, which is understandable considering how crazy-making this all is. I feel I am not taking very good care of myself (lost about five pounds in a week from stress) and am considering inpatient in a couple of weeks if things do not begin to improve. I can certainly say my outlook has dimmed to where I can barely see a glimmer in the dark. I am really struggling with the level of fear and uncertainty I am experiencing. I feel if I could have some relief from this and think more rationally, I would be in a better place. Anyway, I just wanted to say hello to this community and thank you for reading. I am not looking for reassurance. However, any similar experiences/insight would be appreciated. Thank you -- hope everyone is safe and well.