Hi! I feel like I have no one close to me that is around my age that has ocd!! So I just wanted to know some more people who have ocd! I’m Kay from the US! I’m 18 and am going to college and just applied for honors! I am getting a degree to teach kindergarten and also am wanting to get a second degree, either to become a math professor or a dermatologist one day! I have had different types of ocd but for the past few months, it has been scrupulously, and I have been fully diagnosed and am using lexapro, and want to start therapy after everything is safe to do again!! Comment and let me know some stuff about you!

Hey girl I'm 22 but have had it since highschool although it went away a bit after I moved out of my mom's and came back so much worse after an abusive ex. Not sure what subtypes I have since I don't know the subtypes. All I know for sure is that I have contamination. I have a lot of other symptoms that I'm sure belong to subtypes i just don't know them yet! Also in college fourth year! Congrats on honors!

Hey Kate! I’m a college student as well and would love to talk with you if you have any questions about managing school with ocd. I’ve struggled with scrupulosity and other forms of pure o, but am work on it, just like you!

One of the areas that my perfectionism OCD affected me when I was around your age was constantly obsessing about getting good grades in school and college to the point I often re-read book assignments by re-reading individual sentences and paragraphs over and over and over again for fear that I might have missed something very important. I did the same when writing term papers by re-writing over and over again. During exams, a test might normally take me and most people maybe an hour, I would use the full 2 hours going over every question to make sure that I did not misread a question and answer incorrectly and also to ensure that I did not select an unintended answer. I did the same at work. It's a very emotionally exhaustive way to live. The underlying fear was that I would fail a class, people would think that I was stupid, my family would be disappointed, and I would end up not graduating, never get a good job, and either be living at home or on some form of public assistance all of which would be very humiliating to me personally. That's just a general overview. The same mindset has affected me in other ways. But, I have had some of the more standard compulsions such as tapping or blinking a certain number of times to prevent something bad happening, avoiding "bad" numbers, apologizing to God if I heard someone else utter blasphemous words or phrases, etc. There have been so many over the years that I do not remember all of the different manifestations. What has helped me immensely is ERP, mindfulness, and having more self-compassion. You will learn those things as well in therapy.

Kate, welcome to the group! You must be excited about beginning your college career in the fall. Will you be attending a larger university or a smaller one? I must say that your educational aspirations run a pretty wide range (nothing wrong with that, of course) from kindergarten teacher to dermatology. The type of OCD that I have experienced over the years is perfectionism or just right, symmetrical, good and bad numbers, and compulsive tics when I was very young around 7-8 years old. There have been other manifestations, but those are the primary ones. I am excited for you that you will be receiving treatment at a young age so that you can live life as it should be, to the very fullest!

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How long has this been happening?

ERP will help a lot. Are you using an OCD specialist when it is safer to do so?