I don’t think people understand how bad my ocd is

OCD affects everything in my life. Even this post. OCD is saying I’m trying to trigger people by posting this, and it can be convincing. Everything I do is laced with ocd. I can’t explain my symptoms well to my therapist because of ocd. There is compulsion on top of compulsion, combined obsessions, meta ocd, and more. I don’t know why I’m posting this. The point is that I feel I’ve tried hard to do ERP and can’t, because of how severe my symptoms are. I can’t easily explain it, but if someone was able to live as me for a day, they would understand. I tried meeting twice a week with an ocd specialist, and we got nowhere and didn’t even scratch the surface of the ocd. OCD is in my life all day every day. Different obsessions over and over again. I have tried a lot of medications and they have all done nothing (I’ve had no side effects from them either). I strongly think this is a very rare case where there is something neurobiologically that is preventing me from getting better. I am probably starting TMS this week which I hope does something. I think I may need surgery for this cause of how prevalent it is. Part of the reason I’m posting this is to keep ocd at bay. It is literally so bad that just to get through things, I have to sometimes do compulsions to be able to function at college/work, because I’m non functional without it. I try to limit compulsions, but when I need to do them to function and get through the day, sometimes I don’t have much of a choice. I hope I can find something that works

JS55555

Date posted: Yesterday

Hello! I am very sorry to hear that you are going through this. First of all, the sentiment about you being a different case that is untreatable is an extremely common sentiment expressed my many, including myself, and it is wrong. I believed that to be true for me. I had OCD mixed with Meta OCD at the same time. I had severe anxiety along with it and I couldn't do anything to help it. I now no longer qualify for an OCD diagnosis. I have recovered and live a normal life. If you need a way to describe it to people, it is chemically and and physically similar to how the brain reacts to being tied down to train tracks with a train coming. I think that two things are very important to remember here. The first one is that the goal of recovery work is to live your life more and more so over a period of time, the brain recognizes that it is overreacting and finally sends the signal to calm dowm (this can take quite a while). It is important to note that the definition of living your life in OCD treatment does not mean living with low anxiety. It means doing what you want to do. After you do that for a while, the anxiety lowers. So therefore, treatment should feel like you are breaking out of a cage a bit and doing what you deep down want to do in spite of the OCD. If it feels like you have to go into another cage to get out (a cage that looks similar but says this is where you must go if you want s good life), then that is Meta OCD. As for recovery duration, it can take a while. It took me months to get better. I find that OCD doesn't show much improvement right away when you push against it, but once it starts to crumble, it usually goes pretty fast. Also, remember is is about gradual reduction day by day, and not quitting cold turkey. Espically in the beginning, even delaying a compulsion for 45 seconds is a win.

JS55555

Date posted: Yesterday

To build on the Meta OCD thing, a good example is a TV show that triggers you but you really want to watch it. A typical OCD response would be to not watch it. A Meta OCD response would would be to try and soak in the trigger, possibly rewinding the tiigger to watch it enough times until it feels like you were thurough enough. A healthy treatment response would be to watch the show and just focus on the show. Not ruminating about the trigger, not constantly thinking about the fact that you have ocd. Just focus on the show. It can be difficult to focus on something not like OCD, and your mind will want to veer back to it. If it does, don't fret. Just recognize it and gently refocus back to the show. It is like driving a car. When you accidentally veer into the shoulder, you calmly veer back to the middle if the lane.

JS55555

Date posted: Yesterday

I was just thinking and another thing that you may want to look into is an Intensive Outpatient Program (IOP) or a Partial Hospitalization Program (PHP). PHP would entail going to a clinic for several hours per day so they can watch you and support you for a prolonged period of time intead of telling you want to do and you have to figure it out. As For IOP, it is a middle ground between regular therapy and PHP.

anonymous23635

Date posted: 21h

@JS55555 My therapist recommended a PHP at Roger’s, but my parents said I’m not doing it this summer (I’m 20, so they shouldn’t really be able to say that). I have to pay for it, and they won’t pay for it, so I can’t really afford it that much. My therapist and psychiatrist both recommended it though, and I feel like it could help

JS55555

Date posted: 15h

@anonymous23635 That's unfortunate. How much does it cost? Are there any therapists online or something that you could at least meet with more than twice a week?

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