I am currently unemployed, living with my parents and sister again as an adult and my father was abusive and volatile growing up. My sister took a bunch of pills two years ago and was admitted to a hospital for a while. She lived with me for a year, then lived abroad for a year and now we are both back with our parents. I don't think I ever fully recovered from her suicide attempt or from my childhood. I always felt it was my role to be the peace maker and keep the family together even though I am the youngest one in the family and that was a false responsibility I gave myself. My mom has compulsions and my dad is a hoarder so I think my heightened sense of responsibility and genetics could be factors with my ocd. I first showed signs of ocd when I was younger but didn't know that was what it was. I have used smoking weed as a form of stress relief however I never thought of it as self medicating because I would go several months without smoking and then when I was stressed I would smoke on and off for a month or so. I always thought that was due to external factors in my life and never habit forming or addictive. I never even started smoking weed until I was 22 and I am now in my late 20s. When having a stressful time the other week I started smoking again and the next morning it's like it set off this huge panic attack inside of me. All of my ptsd and fears/ obsessions came up to the surface like when you have food poisoning and your body is trying to expell toxins from your body. My death ocd, sexual thoughts ocd, and real ocd and then ptsd have been swirling around in my head nonstop since. Eventually my mom took me to patient first to get something to help me get through the day. They prescribed me attarax and I am taking 2-4 a day as need be since Monday. I also immediately started listening to the ocd stories podcast after googling intrusive thoughts and realized what was going on with me in terms of my fears and obsessions being heightened. My ocd has always bubbled under the surface but I've never had panic attacks and depression like this before. That's when I decided to try NOCD. I am still waiting to have my first session and I am trying to do things every day to give me hope and I am looking forward to my appointment. I feel like this house and my family are a big trigger for me, but I feel stuck and scared especially during covid-19 on how to get out of my situation. I guess I was hoping if anyone could provide me with some words of hope and encourangement in terms of the recovery process and battling multiple problems on top of ocd.

Hi I am new to this app and didnt know what else to turn to. My parents dont understand me at all.. my ocd or anything I go thru. I have almost 2 years clean from drugs, have extreme anxiety, and pretty severe OCD and trich. I am just having a really hard and traumatizing week. Two nights ago my freezer caught on fire( which I didnt even realize was a thing) and there was no one there to help me. I was frozen in shock and I just switched the breakers off until my apartment maintenece could help in the morning. Of course I didnt sleep bc I just kept thinking it was still going to catch fire. The power has gone off 3 times this week.. once while I had a cleaning service here to help me clean my apartment( which is a hard enough exposure for me anyway, to let other people in touching all my things especially during covid). The last thing is I have been worried for a while that there is something physically wrong with me (my dad is a physician and I have physical symptoms to back up this theory). I wont share my symptoms cuz that could take a while but as someone with Ocd you think are all of these symptoms real/fake and related/ unrelated issues that I should or shouldnt worry about. Well my concierge doctor called me with intensive lab results they did as a result of my worrying and it turns out my ANA is pretty high and she wants to refer me to a rheumatologist. ANA being high is the first sign of an autoimmune disease. She was trying to write my fatigue off as sleep apnea but they did find something pretty significant in my bloodwork. Im just really scared. This is too much for me to deal with and worry about. I just feel like shutting down, I cant deal with this all by myself. Any advice or just support? I do have an Ocd therapist, have been thru exposure therapy, and currently take meds for it.

Hey everyone. This is my first post here and it’s probably going to be a long one because I guess I feel comfortable enough to be open here. I need help. When I first got diagnosed with OCD, I figured it only impacted a small part of my life. I thought I was only affected with compulsions and obsessions that dealt with contamination, tangible perfectionism and the obvious intrusive thoughts and that’s it. Well, I’ve come to realize that most of my thinking has been impacted by OCD. At this point the only way to describe how it feels to me is a forest of thorny vines growing in place of my mind or maybe through and around my brain constantly growing every-time I give into this type of thinking (which is basically all the time because I wasn’t aware this was OCD). I’ve definitely felt it more recently, but I know it’s always been there from what I recall from past memories. I got diagnosed not so long ago with OCD and I was happy to because it explained this thing I knew was wrong with me but I didn’t know how much it will and has impacted me in the past. So, I think I’ve created a matrix in my mind or strengthened the OCD thought patterns because now I feel like my OCD impacts everything I do. And I guess I’m saying I need help here because maybe you guys will be able to see it, maybe validate me and point me where I can get help. I’ve been telling the people around me, I think my thinking is disordered and I need help but I don’t think they really understand the amount it’s affecting me or grasp what I meant when I say “I Need Help”. I did have a therapist before but because of a insurance change, she can’t work with me anymore and I’m not sure when I’ll get another (just to clarify). Back to the matter, the past couple of months I’ve been in my head just thinking and thinking. About everything. To the point where my head starts to hurt or until I feel sick of thinking about it but I can’t. I find that’s my obsessions and compulsions (other than the need for order [which can also be mental]) are very mentally based and I find myself ashamed of them so I hide them so maybe that’s why the people around me don’t feel my need for getting help as much as I do. Anyways, examples of this have been, -constantly thinking about what’s the purpose of all of life and the hidden messages in life -feeling like if I don’t do everything perfectly then what the point or being very mad at myself -being obsessed with how I present to the rest of the world sometimes even in close relationships -having calculated movements and actions (having to move my body a certain way or it doesn’t feel right) -obsessing over an absolute truth -questioning friendships and other relationships - obsessing over achievements or failures -obsessing over people -obsessing over decisions and outcomes because I want to make the perfect decisions I could go on and on but basically it’s just a lot of thinking and ruminating and obsessing to the point where people tell me I look like I’m some where else all the time. And I’ve started to feel like I find comfort in it now. I’m also diagnosed with depression and anxiety and I feel like it’s all just OCD. And same goes for my dissociation. I feel like they all root from my OCD. I’m so tired of feeling like this all the time and without my therapist I feel like I’m stuck here. I can’t make decisions, I’m never present, I can’t make or keep friendships/ relationships, everything impacts me deeply because I create a emotional obsession to it, I can’t just be without questioning everything and I’m constantly in my head. I’ve also started getting high all the time because I feel like it’s the only way to escape my brain but I’ve felt like it’s getting out of hand. I’m starting to lose in any type of hope of getting better. Does anyone have an advice for working on OCD by yourself or identifying when it’s OCD (especially mental obsessions and compulsions) so I can start to chip at this boulder that’s weighing down my life and energy?

I have had ocd my whole life… recently for the last year my ocd developed into harm ocd. Four years prior to meeting my husband, I was in an abusive relationship that left me with PTSD and trauma. I have had fears of hurting my husband for almost a year now. My ocd shows me images of me stabbing him or suffocating him. I have tried exposure therapy with an OCD therapist but recently she recommended that I try medication. I went to my PCP and tried Fluvoxamine with bad side effects of anxiety and paranoia (I am off of this now for at least two weeks). Now my ocd has “evolved” as I call it. I’m afraid of my husband poisoning my food, afraid of hurting my animals and the people I love and even now random strangers… all I feel everyday is fear and anxiety over doing something wrong. Today, my PCP called crisis on me as I expressed to him what I also did to my therapists (I’m transitioning to a weekly therapy instead of monthly with a new service) and I was placed in an in patient facility for a few hours before the psychiatrists discharged me. I still don’t know how to process this situation and have been on edge since returning home. I had ocd thoughts again tonight being worried about giving into the harm ocd thoughts and am now in a hotel room in order to feel safe (the OPPOSITE of what I should be doing, I know). Moral of the story is… I have gone through a lot in the past month and it has left me more broken and hurt then before I was on medication. Sorry for the novel to read but hopefully one day I will find relief.