Teenager with ocd

I’ve been where you are, and it has gotten way more manageable for me definitely way better than I was a couple of years or even months ago. I didn't even start therapy until recently, and I definitely wish I’d gotten help earlier. There will still be days where you struggle, and I’m not 100% there yet, and I definitely agree some methods don’t work but now that I've started therapy and know to try not to entertain my thoughts, it’s helped me function way better.

Make sure you get a therapist who specializes in ERP. I went to a talk therapist for like 8 years and if anything she made my OCD worse. Best of luck on your journey. I just started getting proper treatment, and I see a lot of hope for the future.

When I was 14, I started having sentences in my head that repeated themselves over and over and over and over and over, every waking minute of the day. It was like having a record that was always repeating. These sentences were very scary, and I was always trying to fix them. When I was a young adult, I had a relapse of the OCD. And everything got so much worse. Not only did I have sentences, but I had over 150 "rules" a day. I felt like if I broke the rules, terrible things were going to happen. In the middle of my first job,there was a really special point in my life where God stepped in. I've been getting better from the OCD, little by little, every day since then. And I have learned so much. One thing that I learned was that the thoughts don't mean anything. Even though I felt like I was having the worst thoughts, it was a relief to know that the thoughts were just MEANINGLESS . In fact, we need to learn to allow the thoughts to run freely through our heads. We shouldn't try to stop them. We shouldn't try to fix them. When we try to stop them, they only get worse! I remember the first day I allowed the thoughts to run freely through my head, without fixing them. It was the gateway for much deeper healing in my life. -------------------------- So, let's fast-forward to where you are with religious OCD and POCD. The first thing you have to learn, is to allow the thoughts to be in your head, without being afraid of them. Remember, you don't have to give them any meaning. My therapist from NOCD explained it like this: Imagine a tree planted by a river. The leaves fall off the tree and float down the river. You notice the leaves falling, but you don't do anything about them. You just allow them to come and then float away. The same is true with the intrusive thoughts. You need to allow them to be in your head. Don't try to fight them off. Don't try to stop them. It doesn't matter if the thoughts are scary or disgusting or taboo. It doesn't matter what the thoughts are. The POC thoughts are just the same as the contamination thoughts or religious thoughts. They are all the same, and they don't matter. IN OTHER WORDS, your job is to allow the thoughts (without trying to fix them), and to just ignore them. Ignore the thoughts, while you go about your life. You can do the dishes with the thoughts in the background. You can walk the dog with the thoughts in the background. You can watch movies with the thoughts in the background. You don't have to be afraid of the thoughts. The more you give the thoughts meaning, the worse they get. However, if you assign no meaning to them, they start to fade. ----------------------- I'm here to listen if you want to talk!! I know how much suffering the OCD can cause. And I wouldn't wish that on anybody. It's so important to understand how the OCD works and how you can respond to it. Life gets so much better for you!!!! But if you don't have a good therapist, sometimes they can even make things worse. OCD is hard for people to understand. It takes very specific treatment. If you don't have good advice about it, you might not get better. So it's important to go to good sources with someone who really understand OCD and how to treat it.

I’m 19 and I was diagnosed with OCD when I was 9 and I struggled for a really long time with religious OCD. It was hard at first but ERP as terrifying as it can be sometimes was super great for me, it really helped me work through some of my biggest and most feared compulsions and obsessions