Hey guys! Trigger warning because I don’t want anyone to read this and adopt a new intrusive thought! So I’ve been struggling recently with something that seems pretty unique, and I could really use any help I can get with this thought. Basically, a little while back, I all of a sudden had this thought that nothing matters, because at the end of the day, we are all going to die anyways. Since then, any time I start getting really excited or if I start feeling depressed about something, that intrusive thought pops into my head. It tells me that there’s no point in feeling anything deeply because it’s not a big deal and life is short. I know some people might say this is a good way to look at things that stress you out, but it’s really really starting to affect me in the realm of things that make me happy too. I’ll get excited to move in with my bf, and then this thought pops in intrusively and I immediately feel nothing now. I’m struggling to start my schoolwork that I was looking forward to doing well on because this way of thinking tells me it doesn’t even matter to finish my degree and be passionate about it, because I’m just going to die someday and this doesn’t matter. The things that made me excited before, now don’t simply because of this very thought. Not to be dramatic, but this one thought has changed my entire mindset and is literally changing my life. I really really really need help with this. It’s causing me not to feel like I used to, and I’m scared for how the rest of my life will feel now that I’ve adopted this intrusive thought.😢

m at the point where every night I contemplate going to the ER for my terrible thoughts. For the past 2.5 years I’ve been struggling with extremely bad existential ocd/nihilism. One day I woke up and had a nihilistic thought and since that day I’ve had severe nihilistic and suicidal thoughts. I truly don’t wanna do anything because in the end we die. In the end life is meaningless because we die. I feel almost delusional bc these thoughts feel true. Anything I do my brain goes “why are you doing this? It’s not gonna matter” I’m getting married in June and I don’t feel anything. I don’t wanna do anything. I don’t care to. I have to quit my RN job at the hospital because of this terrible theme. I don’t see a point in anything. Life doesn’t make sense. Death terrifies me. And life feels meaningless. My life is ruined. I hate ocd I hate it.

the concept of death & existence is ruining my life rn 😭 im losing so much sleep. i try to close my eyes & all my brain wants to do is try to wrap itself around the idea of what not existing feels like & i get this sinking feeling that grows & grows until my eyes snap open & i have to go back on my phone to distract myself until im literally too exhausted to keep my head up & my body forces me to sleep. it makes having the motivation to do anything hard because all i can think is "it wont matter when i die". it sucks because i know that having MORE in my life might actually improve this, im 21 unemployed still living at home with ASD & i know once i have a job that will definitely give me more to focus on & other stresses to have lol, but i feel like im stuck in the endless cycle of "not having a life makes me worried im wasting my life & itll all be over so fast" & then "being so stressed about my life & time passing is exhausting & makes it too hard to find the motivation to do anything other than sit here" & repeat. spirituality is hard because i like thinking that way, like afterlife & shit, but i worry that im just "in denial" & using it as an unhealthy coping mechanism that leads to magical thinking thoughts. then its like i have some sort of meta ocd spiral obsessing over if what im doing is bad & unhealthy for my ocd or not. i LIKE being spiritual but im worrying im hurting myself & doing a compulsion thinking that way. it also doesnt help that religious spaces have hurt & traumatized so many people & im terrified of being apart of a "delusional" community that spreads a false narrative & attacks anyone that doesnt agree with them. i know i am not like that but i worry im still apart of the problem even thinking this way. at the end of the day no one knows the truth, no one knows what happens after death. im just struggling to sit with the uncertainty. it is so late rn idk of any of my words make sense lol

At first, it just started as harmless questions, curiously exploring the universe and what life and death mean as a human. Then it became an obsession about death and the afterlife. I’m a Catholic-turned-agnostic who recently took an interest in religion again, trying to redevelop a relationship with God without letting the fear of not being good enough and possibly going to Hell taking over me. Instead, my brain latched onto the possibility that there is no God, that there’s eternal nothingness after the short time we have here on earth and that everything means nothing. My love for my friends and family. My desire to achieve my goals, and to be happy for the people I love achieving theirs. I’m haunted by the feeling that it will all be for nothing, that I will never be reunited with those that I love, that the people I love who have passed on have ceased to exist and one day, so will I and everyone else. I can’t function now. I’ve made myself physically ill over this. I’ve lost my appetite. As someone who once took pride in how much love I have for my job as a daycare teacher, I come into work and feel numb. I go home and feel numb. I’ve obsessively started telling the people in my life how much I love and appreciate them because for the past three days, I’ve been sick thinking about how one day, either I’ll leave them or they’ll leave me. It feels like nothing matters. It feels like everything is in vain. I’ve tried so hard to reframe my mindset, to rewire my brain to not think that way. I’ve tried ERP techniques of allowing myself to sit with the discomfort that the fear brings. To try and desensitize myself to this fear. Nothing seems to work. I’m so lost. I’ve been this way for three days, with yesterday and today being worse than the day it started. It’s like the obsession is morphing into depression in a way. I’m scared I’ll never feel enjoyment in any form again. I don’t know what to do anymore.