I have a biopsy in a weeks time and have contamination ocd. I have what I consider a valid concern around getting sick right now. I've been having pain in my neck and chest since April. Through a series of delayed tests because of the pandemic, we discovered a large mass growing on my thyroid. Obviously cancer crosses my mind a lot. My biopsy is next week but I have been waiting quite a while for it due to backlogs from the pandemic. My fear is that if I even so much as catch a cold, I wont be let in for my biopsy because those symptoms are likened to covid. And I would have to wait months more for a new biopsy scheduling once again due to the pandemic. My parents came for a visit today and I asked them to please wear masks. This is the first time I have asked them to do that but because I feel the utmost need to stay healthy I requested it. They got really angry with me and told me they had brought coffee they wanted to drink because so they could t wear masks. I compromised and said well, like at a restaurant, dont wear it while you are drinking coffee, but wear it otherwise. When we got in the yard, they sat their with their coffees, not drinking, and not wearing the mask either. Unmasked, my father started to yell at me that my ocd was too much, the mask makes him feel like hes in a cage, and that he just wanted to drink his coffee. I was very very hurt, started crying and demanded they leave. I really cannot handle unmasked shouting since shouting sends droplets further. My mum had already gone before I even asked because she could tell the visit was heading south, but my dad yelled at me unmasked for quite a while until I gave up and went in the house. They then left. I think my ocd about the germs will kick in tonight or tomorrow but the hardest thing right now is the absolute disregard for my biopsy appointment. If things had been the other way, and my dad had been sick for months with an appointment coming up, and we went over there unmasked and yelling they would have been livid. He gets offended that I treat everyone including them as if they might have covid. I dont understand the offense. It's not like a stigma....no onecatches covid by doing something disgusting. It just happens if we are out in public and unlucky enough to be by someone who is contagious. I feel so deeply hurt that his coffee trumped my biopsy that I have been waiting months and months for and if I even get the sniffles, I could face waiting months and months longer for. It truly truly hurts me. I'm not seeking reassurance about.illness, but I didnt think I was being that unreasonable. Just last week we had an unmasked visit. I never ask.them for masks. Just this once since this is such an important appointment for me and in a pandemic, a hospital wont let me in if I have new symptoms of even a cold. Why is a coffee so much more important than that? I'm their only daughter and a mask and coffee really made them fly off the handle. Was I so wrong to ask for that? It really seems reasonable to me given the circumstances.

I had blood work done for a test I was having a couple weeks ago. The phlebotomist hit my vein weird, my arm bled a lot, but eventually stopped. My arm is still sore several days later. The following week I had my bronchoscopy. The nurse used the same arm that was already sore to put in the IV for the meds. My arm started hurting, swelling and burning. I told her it hurt really bad but she ignored me; then I was out. It’s been a week and my arm still hurts, and my veins are tight and hard. Couple that with the white stuff all over my face, that nobody from the care team bothered to wipe off- which I didn’t know about until my husband asked me what it was, I got harm from my OCD! At first I chalked it up to the white stuff on my face was bad bedside manners. Now, I keep thinking that my doctors and everyone associated with the clinics are trying to harm me. This morning I had an incident with the fryer oven while toasting my bagel. I asked my husband about it and he says he didn’t notice anything. I was down to the last few bites of my bagel, and suddenly started feeling loopy. I spit it out and threw the rest away. After sitting awhile thinking of the doctors and phlebotomist etc… it dawned on me that it was my OCD telling me people were trying to harm me. I don’t know how to get over the fact that my arm hurts really bad and my doctor completely ignores my health concerns. I’ve been nauseous for the past two weeks or so - there is definitely something wrong! I think when they find out that you have OCD and/or Anxiety, they treat you differently, as if you’re making up the symptoms. I most certainly haven’t felt heard! My husband always says, what’s wrong now? It’s such a horrible feeling to hear him say that. Is this what you call Harm? Or is it associated with Harm? I’m not sure if this is triggering or not. I hope not.

My mom will sit and listen to me for quite a while, but she interrupts a lot and gets angry/upset. While I appreciate her passion, it's often stressful. Every time I come to her, if I even *mention* OCD, she gets frustrated and says, "Everyone deals with these issues, you know. It doesn't mean it's OCD." And I repeat, "I'm not saying my issues are unique — I'm saying the way I respond to them is a problem." But she just shakes her head and says, "Okay, I need to get back to my day." Full context, I'm an adult, and I live with my boyfriend, but I'm staying at my mom's for the next month. After living away from home for years, I went back to living with her during the pandemic, and I only recently left to live with him. Honestly, I think living with her for so long in my adulthood really messed with me and made me feel like a teenager all over again. I feel like my mental growth is stunted, and that's part of why my OCD is so bad lately. Not blaming, just noticing. She doesn't seem to understand how relieving the OCD diagnosis has been for me, because it explains so so so many things I've struggled with for years, and it's exciting to have more resources that can help me. But I think she sees it as me finding an excuse to *not* work on myself, which is just untrue. I'm not going to let OCD hold me back or use it as an excuse, but I'm also not going to pretend it's not a problem when I know it is — I was even diagnosed through NOCD. The whole point being to fix it, not use it as a crutch. When I have an issue, it's unbearable. Any issue, big or small, feels just the same. I feel a sinking feeling, my mind races, my heart beats out of my chest. I end up running to my support systems, crying, ruminating for days on end. Then, months later, the same exact issue can feel like nothing anymore, because it's no longer an obsession. I'm sure everyone deals with issues in a similar way, but I *know* there is something specific and debilitating going on with me. This is reassurance seeking, but in the face of being told I'm making a big deal out of nothing, can someone diagnosed with OCD tell me if they relate to the specific intensity of these feelings??

Hi, I feel so creepy with losing connection with one of my closest people in my life, my two daughters who grew up with me during the years I was hiding my ocd. I feel they are seeing me as a narcissistic person instead of taking in consideration that I collapsed in the last part of their teenage years due to so severe ocd that I took my self out of the home to "protect them" ad I was convinced people would be damaged if they came close to me. Also that I never considered me as valuable to them. I felt sorry for them that I were their mother during their entire childhood. In their teenage years I was not available, drowning my self in work avoiding by all costs my compulsive thoughts and the horror I was dealing with. Today they see me as a mother who left them, not taking care of them and only thinking about my self. They never sat down with me after the diagnosis was clear in 2023, and they took.active distance to me in 2018. They sometimes talk to me, like once a year, in Christmas at my parents house, but never take initiative to have contact. I can't deal with it on an emotional level, I feel totally numbed. I love them more than anything in the world and did everything I could since they where born up to the time when my ocd really started to take a toll on me and I withdraw more and more from the familiy. I don't know how to handle because it seems that they think I am a mother who doesn't care or did care, but my ocd is ignored and it feels as if they see it as an excuse for bad behavior. I don't know, it's my guessing. I am not trying to make them change any of their ideas about their childhood and the needs I could not meet. I am so sorry about it. What I can't understand is that they refuse to deal with the fact that I been ill. We are a big resourceful family, but this part of my ocd is hidden back my role as the creative, crazy black sheep, and on top of it all I have somehow succeeded in my profession at the years where I "disappeared ", so it makes it even harder to explain that I spent between 4 and 24 hours on my ocd each day. It's just that I was running my own business which required me and just me as the producer of my product . If I did not function some days or weeks no-one knew as long as I delivered what I was suppose to. In the end I didn't do that either, but for long time I managed against all odds and the he'll of my horrible pure ocd. Anyone who can relate I appreciate all kinds of responses to this. I didn't even speak with my daughters on my birthday or theirs. They don't want to talk to me. For a while I thought things was better, but then it suddenly became worse after a dinner in my parents home when the family was gathered. I don't have any clue about why and then they said through my father and mother that they don't want to talk with me. If I had been held hostage by a gerilja in a jungle for ten years and suddenly was released to come home after ten years, everyone would be happy on my behalf. This is how it feels to have got treatment for my ocd, which wad undiagnosed for 28 years. I have a new life already, just 2 and a half years in to treatment. But I lost my children. It feels so painful that I can't feel it. And I wish they could know the truth about my story.