- Date posted
- 4y
- Date posted
- 4y
I totally understand the part about therapy over the phone... it's hard to adjust to I can't Waugh for this all to be over so things can be more accessible! I'm sorry you're going through this :( we are here to support you!
- Date posted
- 4y
Totally hard to adjust. I can’t wait for all of this to be over as well. Thank you for your support🤍🤍
- Date posted
- 4y
I prefer face to face in a room too. My home isn’t the safest place to talk to a therapist. I got family who say they won’t try to listen in, but I know their curiosity is much more powerful than what they say. I have dark shit to talk to my therapist about, and I don’t want anyone else to listen in to anything I say. This quarantine will be the most toughest time for people with mental illness, and all we gotta do is try to help ourselves as much as we can to pull through this. Hopefully when the time comes, we can all to face to face therapy.
- Date posted
- 4y
Right! Like I definitely do not want my family to hear what I have to say! They don’t even know about my OCD I embarrassed to tell them. Quarantine has made everything worst mentally for sure, I’m gonna have to find ways to help myself because the phone therapy can’t even be an option for me.
- Date posted
- 4y
Hey man, I’m sorry you’re this deep in distress right now. I want to say that everyone messes up sometimes and falls into an old compulsion. It’s okay. Try again tomorrow. This disorder IS hell, so I’m definitely not ignoring that. And I know what you mean by looking back and feeling like nothing has changed. Try to take it day by day anyway. One battle at a time. And enjoy the parts of each day that you can to keep going. For insomnia, mine used to be so bad I would fall asleep at 7 AM. I fall asleep at 12 now, which is a bug improvement. There’s a lot of different strategies that might help if you want to hear them (besides meditation or meds bc that’s a given haha)
- Date posted
- 4y
Thank you for that. I always try to tell myself to take it one day at a time, because if not I’ll start worrying about the next few days and I’ll lose it from there. What else do you recommend for insomnia? Because seriously I hate being up at night not doing anything besides worrying. Sleep is like my only time off lol
- Date posted
- 4y
@nowsheindistress Sure thing! It might be long, srry I’ve tried a lot of different things , so YMMV. If you want supplements, valerian root is safe. Ofc supplements aren’t the first measure, but this one is noticeably calming and safer than the way people will use, say, weed to calm down. Try making a “resting” vs “sleeping” zone in your place. I realized that when I couldn’t sleep and wouldn’t get up from bed, I was starting to associate bed with pressure + stress. So now, I either use my couch, or rest with my head at the FOOT of my bed to chill first. These are zones where I can relax, but there’s no pressure to fall asleep. Once I’m almost sleep there, THEN I go to my actual bed. I know this sounds like a ritual but I’ve done it without it being an obsession. I find I can adapt it as needed to different places. I know intrusive thoughts are probably the root of losing sleep. Buy a journal and write all that stuff out. You can schedule 15 minutes to just write. The worries will still probably be there, but their weight will reduce. Also, consider avoiding tech for maybe for an hour before bed. Not because of the light, but because it’s easy to go down a rabbit hole online. If you read a book in that hour instead, it’s a lot less engaging and energetic than tech. TLDR: rest zone vs sleep zone, journal thoughts, no tech before bed, valerian root Remember you can’t force yourself to sleep (I wish). And you can’t control thoughts. But you can control making your environment encourage calming down.
- Date posted
- 4y
@rootytooty Thank you so much for this !!! Definitely going to be trying some of these things !!
- Date posted
- 4y
I’m sorry to hear that you’re feeling this way. I completely understand you about the phone therapy. In my case I started treatment with a new therapist and the next week of that a lockdown happened. Now with do therapy by phone. I going to be honest is not the same. But I don’t know what I would have done if it wasn’t for those phone treatments. They help me a lot! Game changer. My suggestion is to maybe reconsider the phone therapy as a positive option. Also meds help me a lot. I hope things get better.
- Date posted
- 4y
You are right, while I am against it, it could be a postive outlet for me. I just feel like I wouldn’t be listened to as much as I would be if the therapy were face to face, but idk. I’ll look into it. I’m glad to hear that you are doing well though and that phone therapy has helped ! 🤍🤍
Related posts
- Date posted
- 20w
Lately, my mood shifts so frequently. A couple of minutes ago, I got triggered and decided that instead of doing a compulsion, I'd write in my journal (since I haven't done that in a while). But after writing not even half a page... I'm okay? Well, sorta! 😭 I'm experiencing a resurgence in old obsessions, which is disappointing. A couple of weeks back, I was doing a lot better, but now it's just one thing after another. Really wish therapy was more affordable. I'm already seeing my psychiatrist, but she wants me to see a specialist as well. When I think about living with this for the rest of my life, I can get a little emotional. I know it'll get easier to manage as time passes, and it might not even affect me in the future, but right now...? It's a lot of work I'll need to do to overcome this. I'm willing to do it, but I get discouraged at times... But that's enough of my little vent! I hope anyone who reads this is doing okay. Hang in there 🤍
- "Pure" OCD
- False Memory OCD
- Young adults with OCD
- Mid-life adults with OCD
- Real Events OCD
- Older adults with OCD
- User type
- OCD Conqueror
- Date posted
- 15w
My ocd has been at an extreme all time high the past 2 weeks and I am in dire need of some relief. I’m not sleeping right anymore. for context: I live in the south and found a springtail on my sheets about 2 weeks ago. This was like 2 days before our bug guy came and sprayed (it’s a normal maintenance thing here) so it’s a common bug down here and I’ve found them all over different areas of the house before. Finding it in my bed sent me on a bit of a spiral bc I started to doubt if it even was a springtail and that i was wrong and that it was a bed bug, not trusting my brain. It was a bad, sleepless night and carried over continuing feelings. Typical ocd stuff. Well two days later, I’m a nurse and I had a patient that actually had bed bugs. This wasn’t the first day they were here and I did not see any myself but it still freaked me out. There had one 2 founds after visitors came the day before. Of course I wore PPE in the room (coveralls shoe covers and hair net) going in and took everything off before exiting the room. When I came home I stripped in my garage and bagged everything down to my shoes. Threw everything in the wash and did multiple cycles. There were no other steps I could take but I still had a terrible night. Hours of ruminating and going back and forth about tracing my tracks, thinking of new ways I could’ve taken one home with me. Just checking everything. I was already on a spiral from the springtail. Having two such back to back triggering events for me so closely related has made me deteriorate significantly. I was already doing bad with my normal OCD and starting therapy here. I obsess over the thought of having bedbugs constantly and haven’t been able to sleep. I am constantly checking my bed while in it and can’t settle down. My bed is heavy too and I keep hurting myself lifting my mattress to check. But I need to check. I’ve become obsessed. I check everything and go down Reddit rabbit holes looking for new things. And of course, I talk myself into it every time. I can’t take it anymore, it’s bleeding off into other parts of my life like friendship and marriage because I am so high anxiety right now. I need relief so bad. I’ve never felt this unstable to be honest. I feel like even someone without ocd would be really struggling with this topic, nevermind me, with ocd to a point where I just started treatment. These aren’t even my normal intrusive thoughts and compulsive acts. It’s just taken on a life in the last week and I can’t find any sign that it’s going to slow down. when I think rationally I know I did everything right to prevent but I can’t shake it. 💔
- Date posted
- 11w
(Long post warning) Hi, I’ve been struggling with severe OCD for six years now. it started in 2019 with my theme being getting sick/emetophobia. it devastated my life. I almost didn’t graduate high school from it. I remember washing my hands for three hours one day until they were nearly bloody while crying and asking why I could not stop doing it. I remember id have to write and rewrite sentences when I did my English homework and that’s why I nearly failed that class. I remember how I would spend up to thirty minutes to an hour pacing the halls of my apartment while my mom was asleep until I neutralized the thoughts about throwing up and I could finally go to bed. I don’t know when it happened, but my theme switched. Sometimes in late 2020 or early 2021, it switched to POCD. It started with a single thought, and I focused on it and it’s been my theme since then for four years. It has been absolutely destroying me. I feel so disgusted and lost and just tired. My compulsions are severe now. I thought they were bad before, but now they’re ten times worse. I can’t eat, drink, change my clothes, walk, or even do things on my phone normally. I’ve developed so many mental compulsions that it’s so intricate and complicated yet at the same time I’ve done them so much that they’ve become normal. An example I have is if im putting on a shirt and I have a “bad” thought, I have to take it off and put it back on two more times (that’ll make it 3 times I put the shirt back on - odd numbers are my safe number). I have to have a good thought on the third time otherwise I have to take it off and put it on two more times to make it five times I put on that shirt. If not that then I just put on a different shirt because the original is now tainted with my bad thought. I can’t open apps on my phone. It’s with the numbers again. If I open TikTok once while having a bad thought - I have to close it and open it two more times and so on. Sometimes I do it up to 30 times. So I just don’t do things usually. I don’t turn on the TV because I know I’ll redo it. I don’t open a book or grab it off my shelf because I’ll have to repeat the action. I can’t even lay in bed without getting up and redoing it even if im exhausted. I just feel so helpless. I don’t know what to do. I feel disgusting and even now my minds screaming at me that I am dirty and what I think is true. I just wish I was free of this, I wish I could just live my life. I’ve wasted hours and days because of my compulsions. I mask it so well around my friends. I don’t do them in front of anyone or I’ve learned to hide it well. But when im back home alone, it goes haywire. I just want to live again.
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