I have struggled with ocd since I was about 12. I am now almost 23. I just started going to therapy early this year, received a diagnosis (even though I already knew), and started on medication to manage my ocd combined with therapy. I stopped going to my therapist (who was practicing emdr) and felt good on my medication. Then I felt so good that I was a bit lax on my meds and definitely missed a couple of days. Now I feel like I've completely spiraled. I feel anxious 65% of the day. I don't even know what is triggering me half the time. I feel like I'm just in a never ending cycle of anxiety, panic, and depression. My ocd symptoms are clawing back. Its like I can feel them. I can feel the voice that tells me that the people I care about are going to die if I use that fork or touch something wrong. I'm becoming late and rushed for things again because I have to go in and out of my house several times. Sometimes I can rationalize and be mindful like I was working on in my therapy but its like a black hole feeling that just makes me want to cry. I don't like using the word crazy but I feel like that right now. On the plus side, I had a really great meeting for a potential job yesterday so I am trying to focus on the positives and get back to a regular med schedule. I'm calling my therapist to book in an appointment tomorrow.

I’m new to treatment and only realized I have OCD a few months ago. I went through a tough and abusive marriage and ended up getting divorced. I had my first panic attack several years ago and ended up needing to go on Lexapro. This helped me significantly and allowed me to leave my partner. Several years later and I decided to stop Lexapro because I thought I was good to go. I’m in a very healthy relationship, have a great job, friends/family, go to the gym and have a wonderful life. It’s been about a year off the meds and I’ve had some panic, but I’ve been able to manage it. For some reason, the last three weeks has been really difficult for me. I have different spirals and different thought processes: what if I’m schizophrenic? What if I have a deeper mental disorder? What if I hurt someone? What if I need to leave my partner? What if I end up becoming so depressed that I end up hurting myself? My brain just goes from one what if to the next and once I conquer one, the next one pops up with even more intensity. I started taking NAC and inositol and I’m taking saffron during the day because I really don’t wanna go on back on medication but sometimes my thoughts scare me and I’m convinced that I’m not gonna get better and I know that’s just the OCD loop, but I’m wondering if this resonates with anyone else!

I'm struggling with a lot of doubts today, but trying the best I can to keep on living my life 🥲 I'm on 150mg of Sertraline right now, and honestly, I'm feeling a lot better than before. Do I still get triggered? Yes! But I'm handling it easier. The only issue is, I feel like I'm obsessing over recovering? Not if I'm doing it "right," but more so getting to a point where I feel "perfect." That's not possible, I know. Even before OCD spiraled out of control, I struggled with other issues on a daily basis. But life felt simpler back then, and I didn't have this magical (and annoying) ability to remember every single bad thing that's ever happened to me or every single intrusive thought I've ever had in extreme detail 😭 Whenever I'm feeling okay, I can not help but think, "Remember how bad it was (insert time-frame)?" And then my mind zip zaps through every instance I've ever felt anxiety, like...? I don't even know if it's me doing this or if its OCD, but it frustrates me so, so much when it happens. Anyway, that's all for now... If anyone can relate, we're in this together 🤍 Hang in there!

I’ve recently been struggling a lot with OCD. I have had OCD for a long time I just didn’t realize it until more recently. About seven months ago I developed panic attacks one day randomly at work. I thought I was having a heart attack and went to the hospital where they told me it was just a panic attack and I assumed I would snap out and be better within a few days. However it didn’t. Here’s where it gets scary, I was staying at my then boyfriends house while dealing with blurry vision, anxiety attacks everyday, and more (unsure of what was going on). But at some point I saw my bfs (pew pew 🔫) on his table and it sent me into an anxiety attack after sudden thoughts that I was going to hurt myself with it. I begged him to put it away when I’m not looking so I didn’t know where he put it. He did. These thoughts lasted for about four days but began to go away. (I thought that was it and I would be back to normal). Unfortunately though I ended up moving back in with my family when we couldn’t get my panic attacks under control in time for me to get back to work and pay bills. However, coming home brought up a lot of trauma from when I was kid. My anxiety got worse but I didn’t have those thoughts again. About two and half months ago though, I got sick and went to the hospital where they gave me steroid pills and a steroid shot but sent me into some kind of psychiatric event. Ever since then though, I have been suffering from harm OCD, I have had moments of intense anger that I usually have to completely walk away and go on my own because of how intense they are, and it feels like it’s getting worse. Today I felt fine until about and hour and half ago where I started to dwell on the fact that my suicidal thought was influenced by my OCD and at the moment my OCD is at the worst it’s been. This caused me to get suddenly really depressed and I started crying thinking about how I can’t handle this. I then saw a post talking about how suicide rates are high for people with this form of OCD and it made me question if I am mentally strong enough to pull through this. I fear that at times I’m getting worse. I have good days but I have a lot of bad days. Unfortunately this sent me into such a bad panic attack I went over to my nanas crying about how I can’t deal with this. I took a 0.25 mg Xanax which helped calm down the panic attack portion of it but my brain is still uncomfortably active. I guess I just need hope. I’m so saddened by this. It’s like my life took a total 360 in 10 months and got even worse since the steroid shot. Idk what to do about it. I can’t stop the spiral. I talk to two different therapist weekly and start more next week, making it 5 times a week. I feel no improvements…