I broke down crying because my dad mentioned suicide. I mainly struggle with suicidal ocd, have been for about 9 months. Got diagnosed and started therapy in March and I feel like I’m slowly improving, but of course get moments here and there. Not medicating for now. Anyways, today was feeling pretty alright, thoughts more in the backseat, in a good mood, I was excited to go into the pool with my family and catch some sun, celebrate Father’s Day, etc. So my family and I are sitting together by having lunch and my dad is talking about this tooth pain he started having last night. He was saying that it was getting so bad to the point where you would do anything to stop it. My mom joker and said “oh I should hit you on the leg or something to distract you from the pain” and my dad said “I meant more like a bullet to the brain”.... That stopped me dead in my tracks and I felt panic and an emotional reaction coming up. I tried to ignore it but I couldn’t so I politely excused myself to the bathroom. My parents knew what happened (they’re aware of my theme), so I went to the bathroom and burst into tears. After a little I was able to collect myself, breathe, and join them saying to drop it and continue eating. Not gonna lie it shocked me a bit the reaction I had. But I HATED hearing that. It was too much and I wish he never said that.

Congrats on handing that so well and being able to return! I’m so sorry that OCD just doesn’t take a day off and that triggers can happen at always the worst time. Rooting for you!!!

i relate 100% omg. two of my triggers are mentions of suicide and mentions of drugs and especially being in high school, drugs are mentioned a lot and honestly i’ve been paralysed in fear say with my friends and none of them have noticed as they talk about it and it’s awful because you wonder what kind of person you are that you want to cry at the mention of weed. i also have a really strong response to caroline flack.

i totally get that and it’s unfortunate that it was your dad who triggered it because i know it’s 10x worse when someone you know triggers you. my brain started having an anxiety reaction to my mum because she was trying to help by saying all this stuff about suicide (in a sense of, you’re not alone) and it just made me feel worse. you’re not alone x

i’ve experienced something similar to this. for context, a good chunk of my ocd revolves around health - constantly believing that i’m ill or that i’ll become ill, and this can range from both physical and mental disorders. i’m more typically fixated on this one certain mental health disorder. it was at college in my psychology lesson and we were having to make a solid argument for how mental health disorders can be affected by nature/nurture. we all got allocated different ones, my group’s being depression, but it wasn’t until i heard the disorder i feared mentioned behind me that i started to panic. because i fear so much that i have or will eventually get the disorder, even hearing the word made me so nervous. it got to the point where i couldn’t focus on my work and i had to ask to leave the room. i started feeling so guilty because i believed i was such a horrible person for not even being able to hear the word of the disorder - why can’t i just educate myself peacefully? why does it have to be a fixation that i have? a lot of people who don’t have ocd don’t really understand that there are certain themes that can trigger somebody - it’s not just obsessively cleaning, and it’s not really just compulsions. we can become so afraid of something that even hearing it makes us emotionally react. i think it’s super important for people around to be educated, especially so ocd isn’t used as an adjective (because that’s rather infuriating ??). your emotional reaction, like mine too and everyone else that goes through this, was completely justified. through our recoveries we’re definitely going to have ups as well as downs. you’re not alone :)