Trigger Warning My theme that I struggle with most is that I am developing schizophrenia. I wanted to share this anecdote with everyone in case someone is dealing with family/friends who do not understand what it is like to have OCD. One of the most effective ways for me to manage my OCD is to use humor to deal with it. Often times I will make jokes about it and recently a family member said, “you like having OCD, if you didn’t, you wouldn’t talk about it so much”. What he does not understand is that on the days I am able to laugh at my OCD I am so grateful because on other days all I want to do is lay in bed and worry about having schizophrenia. I didn’t know how to reply to that in the moment, but I want to say to him now is that the reason I make jokes about it is because some days it feels so real and I spend my day: Keeping track of every car in the rear view mirror to make sure that they are actually there and not hallucinations. Plugging my ears with my fingers to make sure that I am not hearing voices. Telling myself that if I have to carry a tray without dropping it to prove I do not have schizophrenia. Going over in my mind overtime I misspeak to try and figure out if it was just a mistake or if it was because I was going crazy and was speaking nonsense. Being very careful while typing because if I make a mistake it might mean I have schizophrenia. Lying in bed until five in the morning reading about schizophrenia. Thinking that if I can’t fall asleep by a certain time it means that my sleep schedule is being affected by schizophrenia. Trying to not look at any buildings where a person with schizophrenia may be treated. Constantly checking my emotions to see if I have them or if I lost them because I might have schizophrenia. Frantically searching for a sound that I heard to make sure it wasn’t a hallucination. Searching for something I may have seen out of the corner of my eye because it might have been a hallucination. Thinking that every time I have an itch it’s actually a tactile hallucination Spending hours thinking about wanting to die if I was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Putting my ear on machinery to make sure that I didn’t think that it was talking to me. Everyday looking up percentages and data and calculating them over and over again to calculate the likelihood that I will develop schizophrenia. Spend my day thinking if I actually am enjoying my activates or if I’m faking it because I actually have schizophrenia. Convincing myself that my food is poisoned because that is what a schizophrenic would think. Going over common schizophrenic delusions and checking to see if I believe them too. I am sure that a lot of people in this group struggle with this theme. Even though a lot of people think that OCD is just washing your hands a lot or organizing, know that I know how you feel and I have gotten through the worst of it.

My last and almost life long theme/sub-theme largely subsided recently and my ocd felt like it wasn’t even an issue. Then I went on winter break from uni and being alone made my mind come up with a whole new topic to obsess over. TLDR on my fears, my advisor wouldn’t email me back for a while about signing up for classes so my mind started to worry “what if he doesn’t in time and you can’t enroll this semester and you lose this whole life you just built and all these new friends” So when that issue was resolved my mind found other scarier ways I could be uprooted from my current life and friends that I’ve grown so attached to. Then my mind remembered back when I was struggling with false memories and scrupulosity and I essentially made a post on a forum 2 and a half years ago saying I did something or was convinced I did something that I never actually did. Now I’ve been spiraling about someone finding it reporting me and I either get seen as a horrible person or arrested or something over something I never actually did but “admitted” to out of fear of going to hell. My mind won’t let it go and keeps finding new reasons for it to be “valid” “logical” or even inevitable. I feel like it’s just hanging over my head and I can never rest easy. Especially when I try to focus on my daily tasks or plan for the future I get this horrible flair up of “why plan for the future when this could come back in that future and you get uprooted from all of it” my mind won’t rest without certainty being uprooted won’t happen but certainty doesn’t exist, at least not with ocd. This sucks and I miss being care free.

back in october i made my first post about my specific type of ocd, how it mixes in with my day to day and how i “deal” with it. i talked about the starting point, how it gradually got worse, and then how it was going just a few months ago. i always think it’s insane how much can change in just the course of a small to a large amount of time. right now, i honestly feel like garbage. to be quite sincere i really want to give up, i’m barely holding on by a thread. and if i cut that thread, i really doubt anyone would care. i’ve never considered myself to be a suicidal person, and i still don’t consider myself that right now. it just gets to a point where it’s just, a lot to deal with. i don’t really enjoy things a lot nowadays. sure i have good days like everyone does, like today, when i was just enjoying my day without worries. but then it all comes crawling back twice as bad the following days. i take online college so i’m usually just stuck at home most of the time. but, when i do decide to actually go out and leave my house, my ocd just explodes because i have this whole routine i need to do or else i feel like i’ll contaminate wherever i end up going. i’m not going to go really deep into my compulsions because it’s hard enough to live with them, much more having to type them all out in detail. but when i go out my compulsions go from wiping down all my stuff i’m going to use after showering, to washing my clothes/cleaning the washer + dryer. i also have separate things (or two of the same thing) i use specifically in my house, and items i use when going out. such as shampoo/body wash, deodorant, lotion, hair curler, etc. as if that’s not draining enough, i also feel the need to fast a couple days prior to any plan i make because i’ve forced myself to believe i need to feel empty in order to be clean. i’m not sure if that’s my past eating disorder talking, or my ocd, but my brain can’t help but think any food in my house is utterly and completely contaminated. i’m so tired of this feeling, feeling like nothing will ever be clean again. feeling like my ocd is trapped in my childhood home. feeling that wave of diseases rushing through my veins the moment i step foot into what’s supposed to be “home”. and i’m so scared of therapy because what if i do get healed, and then everything comes rushing back the second i step into my room. i’m planning on moving somewhere far from my current house in this next coming year, so sometimes i feel like just waiting it out. but it’s insufferable when going to hangout with someone. i miss my friends, my family, and my partner. it’s crazy to me that i’m dealing with all this at the young age of 18 but, i’m sure lots of people have it way worse. i just want to find a way out, any possible way. but i keep pushing myself deeper and deeper that when i finally find a way, it will no longer exist.

Looking back, I realize I’ve had OCD since I was 7. though I wasn’t diagnosed until I was 30. As a kid, I was consumed by fears I couldn’t explain: "What if God isn’t real? What happens when we die? How do I know I’m real?" These existential thoughts terrified me, and while everyone has them from time to time, I felt like they were consuming my life. By 12, I was having daily panic attacks about death and war, feeling untethered from reality as depersonalization and derealization set in. At 15, I turned to drinking, spending the next 15 years drunk, trying to escape my mind. I hated myself, struggled with my body, and my intrusive thoughts. Sobriety forced me to face it all head-on. In May 2022, I finally learned I had OCD. I remember the exact date: May 10th. Reading about it, I thought, "Oh my God, this is it. This explains everything." My main themes were existential OCD and self-harm intrusive thoughts. The self-harm fears were the hardest: "What if I kill myself? What if I lose control?" These thoughts terrified me because I didn’t want to die. ERP changed everything. At first, I thought, "You want me to confront my worst fears? Are you kidding me?" But ERP is gradual and done at your pace. My therapist taught me to lean into uncertainty instead of fighting it. She’d say, "Maybe you’ll kill yourself—who knows?" At first, it felt scary, but for OCD, it was freeing. Slowly, I realized my thoughts were just thoughts. ERP gave me my life back. I’m working again, I’m sober, and for the first time, I can imagine a future. If you’re scared to try ERP, I get it. But if you’re already living in fear, why not try a set of tools that can give you hope?