Three months ago I tried to quit my career because of my OCD. I was under a huge amount of stress and it broke me. I work in healthcare and I began to get extreme anxiety and ocd about my job. I became terrified of making a mistake that could possibly harm a patient. I’m great at my job, but my OCD convinced me that I would make a mistake and someone would die because of me. It got so bad that I would redo things and check things 6 or 7 times and still feel like I did them wrong. There were many times that I called into work and had someone check something again for me. A few times, I even drove back to work to check something again. It was insane and debilitating. It became impossible to do my job. I tried to quit because I felt that I hit a point where I was actually causing patient harm by delaying care due to my obsessive checking. I basically had a mental breakdown in my supervisors office when I gave her my notice. Luckily She is amazing and talked me into taking a leave instead of quitting. My therapist had suggested it too, but I was in such a dark place that I felt like giving up completely. Luckily I listened and I took the leave. It ended up being three months. It was the worst three months of my life. For those three months, I adjusted medications with a psychiatrist and I went to therapy weekly. I have a horrible sensitivity to SSRIs. They make me manic. Every time I tried one before, I’d not sleep for three straight days, be physically unable eat, and be severely agitated until it wore off. So I started a medication to prevent that first, then started on a tiny dose of Zoloft. I increased the Zoloft weekly until I hit max dose. Even with the tiny increases, I still had 3 days of severe anxiety and agitation each time, but I knew if I just got through those days, eventually my body would get used to it and I’d feel better. It was hard. So hard. But I was desperate for anything to make me feel better. I was so severely depressed because I felt like my life was falling apart and that I was throwing away a career that I worked so hard for. I also had a lot of other really hard things going on in my life too. There were a lot of days where I wanted to give up. Some days I’d be just so damn tired of fighting. It felt like I’d never feel okay again. I had days where I was definitely suicidal. But I pushed through it. I went to therapy. I did everything I was told. Finally after three months and LOTS of medication adjustments (including a last minute addition of Abilify which I swear changed my life) and therapy, I feel okay. Good even. I’m even back at my job. I still occasionally have OCD thoughts and anxiety over making mistakes but it’s definitely more manageable now. I’m happy and smiling again (I swear I didn’t smile for like 7 months). Life is better. It can get better. You just have to keep fighting. I know it’s hard. Believe me. But i promise it’s possible.

I’m so glad you were able to get through it too! And yes, most people are more understanding than we realize. My therapist told my many times that I’d “be surprised how many people go through this.” People just aren’t open about it because it’s shameful. Which is why I try to be an open book. I’ve told everyone who asked why I took time off. I say it lightly and even make jokes about my “mental breakdown” and when they ask me why I do things a certain way I laugh and say “oh you know, I have OCD”. Not to completely make light of the situation, but I want to treat it like it’s normal so other people going through similar things feel better about it.

You and me are on the same meds, except I’m also on abilify. (Med buddies). Abilify may have caused weight gain for me, but I’ve always been overweight so it’s hard to tell if it was the medicine or just me. Or both.

I’m on 2 mg of abilify once a day. I haven’t noticed any weight gain yet, but I haven’t been on it very long. Honestly I’ll take the weight gain over the severe OCD and depression I had. But also, my psychiatrist said since I’m on such a low dose it shouldn’t cause weight gain.

@alyssaw13 I take 300 mg of gabapentin twice a day to prevent the mania that SSRIs cause me. If you don’t have that issue (which I assume you don’t since you’re already on so much Zoloft) you probably won’t need that. But I take 100 mg of Zoloft twice a day, 2 mg of abilify once a day, and 2 mg of guanfacine at night if I’m too anxious to sleep. The klanopin is much stronger that guanfacine tho lol

The Zoloft definitely helped me but the abilify made the biggest difference. From my understanding it just “embellishes” the Zoloft.

Thank you!

Thank you! I wanted to share my story because I know when I was in my darkest moments, It would have helped to know things would get better. And yes, my supervisor really is amazing. She even checked in on me frequently and constantly told me if I needed anything to let her know. It was great to have that support when I felt like I was a burden to them. I mean I peaced out for three months in the middle of a pandemic ?

@alyssaw13 Amazing! Supervisors should strive to be like that. I got fired when my mental health started interfering with my work.

@Nikki1809 I honestly hid it for a long time. It was only recently that it got bad enough for people to start to notice. But even then they were just kind of like “why is she stressed over something so little?” and “she’s acting kind of weird”. Once I hit a point where I felt that it was actually affecting my ability to do my job, that’s when I tried to quit. I recommend looking into your rights with FMLA and ADA accommodations. OCD and anxiety is covered by those. So they can’t fire you if you apply for them.

@alyssaw13 Yeah. I think the main problem was I wasn’t getting to work on time and I worked with kids and we needed to maintain a certain ratio of adults to kids at all times.

@Nikki1809 Aaah. I see. That’s hard. I’m sorry that happened to you.

@alyssaw13 Yeah. It sucks. But it’s good to hear that not all job places are like that.