- Username
- Hl6
- Date posted
- 5y ago
Thank you guys for sharing. It’s great to know I’m not alone. You are all so brave for continually fighting. It’s so nice that even though our stories my be different we can still relate to each other.
Symptoms started probably around 10 with an obsession with computers. Then it morphed into an obsession about having health issues. I was diagnosed and hospitalised at 13 when my theme had changed to contamination and I talked about killing myself. I stayed at the hospital for 3 weeks. For the next 4 years no symptom. Then at age 17 it came back with HOCD but nobody had told me OCD was for life so I had HOCD undiagnosed for 7 years. Then it got diagnosed and just diagnosing it made it disappear (WTF!) Now I'm 33 and I've been struggling with relationship OCD for 4 years. I obsess over partner's flaws. I've been doing ERP for about a year and I'm making progress but no breakthrough yet. OCD is still a major disruption in my life, though I function normally.
I did read your journey and appreciate you sharing. Figured it wouldnt be fair to post mine if i didnt read yours. My journey started mainly when i was 21 (24 now) . I was with my friend and i started saying this phrase ( satan cant win, Yeshua is my lord and savior) i had no idea why at first but it got worse and i told my bro i think im saying this protect against something. About 6 months went by and it stopped comepletely. A year later i was about to lay down and a harmful thought came at me... and i was like what just happened. Scared i walked out of my house to look around and get fresh air but it wouldnt shake. I went to work that night and would stare off and just constantly think and worry. I asked my brotha to eat with me and talked to him and after that i battled for about 7 months before getting help. after the first therapist, the second help amazingly, almost completely better in 5 visits... a year later up to now it hit again and have not been able to shake it. It hurts a lot and sucks i cry nearly everyday and hide everyday. But something in me fights everyday and i know i am stronger and i dont give up. We are all strong
I have OCD since I was around 7, it hasn’t been diagnosed at that time because of the symptoms. I had a lot of sexual intrusive thoughts that made me suffer a lot as a kid, and I’d always go tell my parents to relief the anxiety, though it was really stressful to tell them cause I thought i was doing something wrong. Years went by and when I had those fluctuating symptoms of washing hands and etc. but nothing really serious, as I got older sometimes I’d think that I, maybe, was lesbian and I ruminated about it but eventually I’d forget. When I turned 18 my mind just blew up. I became depressed and OCD worsened in a way that I had to seek for a psychologist and a psychiatrist as soon as I could. Since everything would happen only in my mind (avoid looking at women and child, for example) it wasn’t easy to detect it was OCD. Since then I’ve been battling OCD, now the theme that bothers me the most is contamination, it drives me crazy, but I know we’ll all get over this!
I was diagnosed at 18 right before graduation. I did poorly in school bc I would question everything and spend way too much on certain things. I was misdiagnosed with generalized anxiety and impulse control bc I did not open up about my anxiety. I kept my obsessions hidden because I thought I was a shitty person for having them. I began using alcohol and my prescription meds to relieve the pain. Little did I know that was a compulsion. My parents threatened me to getting sent me boarding school. We resolved this issue and I saw a new therapist and still my same psychiatrist. Im writer and paper was my only way to express my guilt and intrusions knowing I wouldn’t be judged. I told my therapist I liked to write and she told me to share something. It took me awhile but through the process she saw how much I would get fixated on certain people and situations. Fearing I would loose them or hurt them. So I asked so much reassurance. Questioned literary anything a guy who I was involved with and try to analyze it. She thought it was best if I went to my psychiatrist for a true diagnosis. I confessed everything I feared telling again about fear of harming people that I was act in destructive ways bc I was terrified those were my conscience thoughts. My parents took me to two other psychologist and psychiatrist and make sure I had the right diagnosis. They all came back the same. Now I’m college student who is a college tutor who realizes these are just thoughts and I decide if I want them to effect me or not everyday
How has everyone else's OCD progressed throughout their lives? Has everyone else always had severe OCD or did you live regular lives beforehand and encounter one point where it went from 0 to 100. Where are you now in your OCD Journey? I'm very curious as to everyone else's stories and have left mine below if you’d like to read it. From what I can remember, I went relatively undisturbed by OCD the majority of my middle/late childhood, only having about 1-3 thoughts a year that weren't super bothersome but did create a level of distress uncomparable to regular intrusive thoughts. They were mainly about my health and about my parents safety & wellbeing. The earliest memory about my OCD that really stood out was back in 5th Grade, when I hit my head on a swing set and immediately began reciting every moment leading up to injury as well as every math equation I knew to make sure my memory was still intact. The greater part of my adolescence was essentially the same and resembled what I believed to be a normal life, just with a couple of OCD thoughts sprinkled throughout it. I was able to function pretty well albeit depressed and somewhat anxious. It wasn't until I was close to my highschool graduation that I experienced the worst panic attack(at the time) at the idea that I would hurt my parents. It was so distressing because the thought felt so loud that I believed it was genuine which only caused more distress. I was so scared that I would act on the thought that I discarded all of my sharp objects and locked myself in my room. That was my first ever severe reaction I experienced due to OCD and was back in May of this year. I actually learned what OCD was the same night and realized that many of my newly found fears including mold growing in my walls and my parents disliking me were also caused by the OCD. Unfortunately learning that it was probably OCD wasn't enough to quell my fear and I engaged in a bunch of compulsions in the months to come, worsening my OCD In the process. June was alright. July was worse(I only had like three topics for obsessions which sounds great now). Late July-Early August was my tipping point . Things went from worse to profoundly terrible in a short period. I found this app late August which was great because I had grown exhausted. September was pretty bad but not as bad as August. Now it's October and life is somewhat good now. I've become more knowledgeable of OCD (big thanks to this app and my therapist) but I'm very far from done. There's still this looming sense of anxiety that follows me everywhere. I have like 20 obsessions now, some being larger and scarier than others but those smaller ones are still apparent. But, the fear has decreased as well as the mental compulsions that came with it. My mind is quieter now. However the anxiety has stayed the same. My heart still drops whenever my worst obsession is triggered. Headaches, brain fog, sweating, rapid heart rate, sense of being paralyzed, racing mind are commonplace in my life but I've learned to sit with the physical discomfort (not that it makes it any less terrifying). Anyways, I'm here now which is cool. I’d like to listen to others' experiences to get a better understanding of OCD and maybe feel a bit less alone. feel free to ask any questions.
I want to heart about your OCD story. Please use this comment section as a safe space where we can all share our struggles, and find those who relate to us. I’ll go first. When I was 13 years old, I went through one of the toughest years of my life. It was awful. My anxiety was on full and my depression followed wherever I went. I started to do compulsions then. Checking, double checking, triple checking. Whether it was an email, an essay I wrote, the lock, the hair straighter etc etc etc. I used to seek reassurance from someone, who is to this day my best friend. I was so embarrassed when I would do it, but I felt like I had to. I would cry myself to sleep. I didn’t know I had OCD. When I was 16 and learning about mental illnesses in class, I remember listening to a group presentation on OCD. From there, I knew what was wrong with me. My OCD died down when I was 14, yet I vividly remembered the struggle. At 18 years old, right after graduating high school (just recently), my OCD came back at full force. It seems like it accompanies my anxiety when it reaches a level beyond the scale. Every morning I wake up, and I’m scared to go about my day. Whether I’m reading, driving, painting, talking or anything, I’m constantly scared of what my OCD will do. I’m scared of my own brain. I hope we can all someday think of OCD as just a memory. Thank you. ❤️
Hey everyone! I’m new here and thought that it might help to get my OCD story off my chest. My intrusive thoughts are so bad that I never want to talk about them to anyone so maybe that’s why I’m here. When I was 13 my grandma was in the hospital. She was my best friend in the whole world. I imagined so much life with her. I remember pulling into the hospital one day with my Dad and immediately knocking on “wood” (the car door) to help put me at ease about my grandmas health before going in. I knocked on wood because everyone knows that’s what you do when you don’t want something to happen. I didn’t want anything bad to happen to her so bad that all I could think about in that moment was something bad happening. So I knocked on wood. It made me feel better so I kept doing it whenever I had bad thoughts. But then it going confusing. If this was helping ease these thoughts, why was I starting to have these thoughts more frequently? 13 year old me didn’t understand what I was doing or why these bad thoughts started. It had got so bad that I was knocking on wood every second of the day, every surface I came across that felt right, and if I didn’t I would force myself to turn around and touch that surface. I would have to knock on wood 8 times every single time but the 7 would have two knocks because the word 7 have two syllables. But then the 8 times wouldn’t be enough, I still wouldn’t feel satisfied so I would do it again and again and again until my entire day was overpowered by intrusive thoughts or knocking on wood. My family and friends started to notice, asking why I do it. I would always avoid the question or make a joke out of it because I couldn’t tell them these terrible thoughts I was having. I was so deeply afraid of something bad happening to the people I love the most or myself that it was debilitating. A couple years later I noticed how bad it had gotten and wanted a change. So I forced myself to stop knocking. I would tell myself angrily that nothing bad would happen if I don’t knock. It took me a lot of convincing and small steps to realize this, but it worked. I got better. I went to the doctors office at about 15 and told them everything. How I did this but how I solved this. They told me it takes great mental strength to be able to fight something in your brain like that. I have always been so mentally strong but hearing them say that made me feel so much better. And I was better. For years. Yea I went through times when it was bad again but it was so much better. The past couple years it has gotten worse again. I noticed that it gets worse when my anxiety about things is higher. New changes, new people, new things. Now, at 21 I won’t let myself get back to the point I was when I was 13, but recently I can’t seem to keep the intrusive thoughts out. I am so terrified of myself or someone else getting hurt of getting older that I put the whole toll on myself. I am so so so happy with my life right now that I don’t want anything to change. That is why it’s been so bad recently. Life is amazing which is why I only want it to get better and I’m so scared something might get in the way of that. I realized after talking to my friends that I never want to say my intrusive thoughts out-loud because I believe strongly in speaking things into existence so I only speak good things out loud. That’s how I’ve always been. But when I talked with my friend she said she’s the opposite, she says the bad things out loud because then you jinx them and they won’t happen. Her saying that gave me a little peace because it made me realize that it’s okay to get these things off my chest and that saying these things out loud isn’t so serious, it’s not life or death like I thought it was. Honestly, the weight of getting my story off my chest has already helped me feel a little lighter of a load on myself.
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