My next project I’m working on for myself: saying “no” to others and setting limits on people walking over me. I am a HUGE people pleaser. It was actually part of my treatment because I wouldn’t be able to speak my mind. At my worst I was about to pass out but couldn’t suggest to the group that I needed to sit down. I have come a LONG way. But lately, now that I live in New York City and have people that want to come visit (which I LOVE!) A few friends will drag me around because I can’t say “no” One friend came to visit this week while I have 10 pages of my thesis due on Monday. She promised she wouldn’t interrupt. She comes and after a fun full day and seeing Jimmy Fallon, she wanted to smoke a cigarette. (I don’t smoke) She asked if I would come with her first before going to write my paper. (She knows school is my biggest struggle with my OCD) I hesitate and say “I really need to write my paper” (yay me!) but then she gets annoyed and says “I’m afraid security will say something and I can’t do it alone with my anxiety” I really wanted to say “What about my anxiety? I can’t go down. It’s as simple as that. Either you go by yourself or you’re not smoking. I’m not going to just stand outside” But I didn’t. I told her security wouldn’t say anything. They have your ID. But she said she can’t do it. And what do I do? I say “fine” go out with her. She then asks if it’s fine if she smokes a 2nd cigarette, which I say fine even though I was shocked she would make me wait even longer. We go upstairs and I have a very mini meltdown alone in my room because of my anxiety on my paper because now 1.5 hours went by. I have another friend who makes excuses to have things go her way, and I just don’t have it in me to say “well, I guess you won’t come to visit then because I can’t do that” I don’t see her often because of this fact. I don’t understand how people are just inconsiderate and disregard people who are already going out of their way to make them happy. Having it happen twice this week, I’m done being pushed around. At least in theory I am. We’ll see how I do saying “no” ? Sorry for the mini rant! My next post should actually be helpful. I’m going to post some of the material I received from treatment on my blog and post the link if anyone wants it ???

LONG VENT POST: This is my second post of the day. Seriously, I am SO sorry. I have therapy tomorrow, I promise I will shut up after this lmao. Anyway, for Memorial Day weekend, I spent it at my aunt/uncles vacation house. Fortunately it wasn’t a big crowd - just my mom, grandmother, aunt, uncle and I. For context, I come from a pretty big family, and I am the youngest of 7 cousins and a younger sister to two brothers. All my cousins are in their early to mid 20’s, each very successful in school and their careers. My half brother is 29, and absolutely crushing it. My full brother is turning 23, he’s also doing amazing with school. I just turned 20 in April, I feel very lost. I know I want to be a forensic psychiatrist one day, and that I want my PhD. I want to be the best therapist I can be, but the fact that I barely get by with ocd/adhd has been discouraging me, so I currently feel like a flop. Anyway though, spending time with my aunts/uncles/cousins/grandparents triggers my ocd the most, as majority of them can be on the judgmental side. ESPECIALLY my aunt, she’s on my moms side, and she and my mom are total opposites. My aunts a very calculated, straightforward, logical, stern, sassy buisnesswoman. She’s successful, but lacks a lot of understanding and can be so cold and just mean. My moms a kindergarten teacher in a struggling community, and she’s always thinking about others before herself, extremely emotional, caring, but neglects her own needs a lot. They’re sisters, and they bump heads a ton. My aunt and all of her kids aren’t neurodivergent. They simply don’t understand mental health. My mom does, thank god. My aunt and uncle think that if a kid is having a psychotic break, then that kid should be kicked out of the house and not helped at all. My mom and I entirely disagree with this idea, and that someone clearly mentally suffering NEEDS mental health help asap, and they need to be home. The streets are the last place someone suffering should be. While we were vacationing at the house, my mom argued about this with my uncle. I was asleep, thank god, but I seriously hate having people in my family like this. I can never tell them about me having ocd, they’ll think it’s just an “excuse” for not getting things done, or just me trying to feel special. The reality is, they don’t get it. My full brother went through the worst psychotic break a few years ago. It lasted two years on and off due to bipolar disorder, but thank god he got himself help and he’s doing absolutely amazing now. He’s frustrated and embarassed with himself but now he’s on track, and as I said, crushing it with school. But the entire time he was going through this, my aunt and uncle just didn’t understand. To keep it short, they thought his mental problems were behavioral, and that he’s a “crazy” kid. The reality is, he was coping with the loss of his childhood best friend and our other uncle who was like a second father figure to us. He had manic episodes from the grief and self medicating with drugs and alcohol. This was all the while Covid was happening and he was a freshman at a college states away. He was so vunerable. I’m saying all this because, well, how am I to seriously be forward about my mental struggles when they couldn’t even show the slightest amount of empathy to my brother, who was struggling, so much more intensely than me? I’m quiet at family gatherings when they’re around for this exact reason. I have so much resentment toward them for it. I try to avoid them when I can, because I love them, I just hate their actions/views. What do you guys do with these kinds of people?

Hi. I'm just sort of feeling kind of shitty and in moments like these I tend to swing to one extreme or the other, like methodicially and intensely trying to pull apart every piece of what I am feeling and why, determine what is a "real" problem and what is just a bad mood, and take action to "fix" myself, the problem, or ensure that future me will fix it by setting reminders, planning, or just generally freaking out lol. That can all be a bit compulsive, but I don't want to do my other thing, which is just aggressively ignore or try to deny my feelings because they are "not real" or I just need to "let them go". But I'm feeling a little frozen in my fears so I am hoping de-tangling it a bit in words here will be a good middle ground. I'm about to be a senior in college, and I live in the city where my school is. I haven't seen my family for a bit and I am currently spending a weekend with them at the beach. Today was just kind of rough and has made the past, present, and future collide in my head, fanning fears of both external problems and the fear of fear itself, the fear of OCD spirals. I want to more specically describe the problems I have been having since starting college, but I guess for getting through today that isn't really the point. I guess just....I've been trying to create a life for myself and become someone who is strong enough to live it. I have ADHD and OCD and sometimes it just feels like half my energy goes to functioning through that, and the other half goes to resisting the OCD-urge to spiral about the future, to fear I'll let my life fall apart or won't be able to fix the normal, big and small problems life brings. Today has just felt.....hard. I ate something that made me really sick last night, and I didn't take my normal dose of Adderall today or yesterday which can just make me sort of sleepy. On both phsyical counts, I think I'm fine and don't really feel bad anymore, it just sort of triggered some overthinking. I feel scared that feeling kind of tired has/will effect my ability to enjoy what is supposed to be a relaxing time, or that I won't' have as much energy as I should to do things with my family and will disspoint them. I'm scared that the journey back to the city tomorrow will be chaotic and awful, and that when I return I will continue to make mistakes that put me in negative cycles. Strangely, I'm kind of aware that all of these concerns are either possibly not going to happen, or are just things I definetely cannot do anything about right now. I'm just sort of...frustrated that I can't easily shove away worries I know to be "illogical" and deeply afraid of spiraling deeper. All of these different things overlapping right now just sort of make me feel like I've failed. Failed to.....I don't know, resist compulsions and get over them faster, accomplish things in life and school faster/more, be less socially anxious. Failed to get on the right track, to make any kind of progress. Strangely, a lot of the discomfort I'm feeling in this moment indirectly sort of comes from things I am doing "right", to break cycles. I didn't bring my meds because I want to work on the discomfort I feel with spending time without the goal of productivity, I don't have an exact plan for everything I need to do and I have not psyched myself up to tackled my most urgent goals when I get home because I've also been working on finding ways of doing uncomfortable things that don't involve motivating myself through terror when I can't do anything about it. I'm letting myself take time to cry about all these feelings and write this out here because I don't want to deny myself what I need to get better because I feel like I shouldn't need it. I'm hoping, in a way, even the shitty day I've had today is a sign of progress, my OCD desperately seeking a host in fear of fear because I am beating other compulsions. I think there's also something to be said for the unserious but still powerful issue of just fucking being on vacation with your extended family. Like....its hard to take a moment to cry it out or calm yourself down when you're sharing a bedroom with your mom and sister. I'm feeling glad I'm going home tomorrow, scared of how I might feel when I do, and I guess....fearful of what it means that I wasn't "able" to enjoy myself for the whole time I was here. But those feelings do feel much more distant, after writing this. The time will pass and I will go home regardless. When I get home, maybe I will make "better" choices or be "stronger", maybe I will dig a deep hole for myself. Either way, that's not my burden right now or today. I've tried that method and it didn't get me what I want.

Rant :3 I’ve been doing very very well for myself managing my ocd on my own with erp. I used to be very reactive and give into compulsions. With time, i’ve been resisting the urges to perform compulsions. The more they come up the easier the answers come to me about how I should go about reacting or confronting something I’m facing that isn’t performing compulsions. I’m more in tune with my values and I have more structure around being the healthy person I want to be. That being said ….. 😵‍💫 This week (specifically yesterday) I gave into my compulsions. My bf and I like to give each other silly “what would you do” scenarios. Some are silly and some require a little more thinking because the answer would reflect our values and beliefs. We started off our conversation on the phone being silly and joking. Then I was like hmmm what makes you jealous! And he gives me some examples but for some reason I register his answers as like…not “good enough”? He’s not the jealous type to begin with and I learn that it’s a healthy trait to have as it would make him confident in himself and our relationship. But I’m getting intrusive thoughts that him not being jealous or having a bigger reaction to some scenarios it means he doesn’t care about me or love me that much. I know better than to believe the thoughts but I’m searching for reassurance that he cares about me so I’m giving him more hypothetical scenarios. The more scenarios I gave him, he gave me answers that didn’t validate my intrusive thoughts that him not being jealous/having a bigger reaction= him not caring about me or loving me that much. I got more frustrated and I got snarky or like snappy towards him. To me, his answers that were healthy, not blown out, and not extremely reactive wasn’t enough. I felt like his method on going about the situations (in a healthy way mind you) wasn’t validating my (unhealthy) thoughts. I felt bad for being snappy at him. During our call I was being annoying and doubling down on statements that I didn’t even agree with just to make him upset or frustrated, for the sake of being an opposite to him, brushing it off by saying I’m only joking and pointing a finger back at him. I don’t know why I did that. Like why I decided to bully him/ why I wanted to hurt his feelings. I’m getting over a toxic habit I had where if someone hurt me or disrespected me I felt like I had to give it back or give it even worse. I would do this with my intrusive thoughts and apologize later because of this trait. Maybe it was that toxic behavior coming through. Mayhaps it was also a way to see if he’d still love me, give me reassurance and stay with me if I put him in a position where I’m not being nice or respecting him so it could show how much he’d want to be with me. I knew that the idea of being jealous or having extreme reactive behavior isn’t healthy but I still wanted reassurance regarding that concept anyway. Grrrr >:l. I also apologized and asked if he was okay before we went to bed. He’s fine and not upset with me but I just didn’t like how I was putting him in a corner with these scenarios and called his healthy answers boring because it wasn’t what my intrusive thoughts wanted to hear for validation😵‍💫 I don’t want to ruminate on why I bullied him but I also don’t want it to happen again. Like last week we hung out and in the middle of us chilling in his room I didn’t want to be around him and everything he did annoyed me. The feeling passed after a couple minutes but it was weird as it hasn’t happened before or at least to that degree. This feeling was like a repulse. It felt different than just me being overstimulated and wanting space. Weird. Anyway that’s my rant. Having a fine evening ^v^ hope you angels are too🤍🪽