My daughter who has religious and contamination ocd is asking to be excused from a a family vacation because she will not be able to eat or sleep or do anything. Nor will she be able to sleep in her bed when we return. Should I let her stay with grandma while the rest of the family goes on the trip? Should I make her go with us even though she will be miserable and make her siblings miserable through her behavior? Such a difficult decision! She is 14 years old and refuses to actively participate in therapy. She said she like her life the way it is and is fine with the restrictions she has placed on herself. My thinking is that if she goes and sees how much fun everyone is having she might start to realize she has a problem and cooperate more with treatment. Any suggestions are greatly appreciate! Thank you!

Hello! I am really looking for some advice. I have been struggling with OCD for a few years now and it drastically affects my daily life. I am going to give a quick run through of my OCD, and then the current situation I am in now. So for almost 2 years now my most prominent themes of OCD have been getting sick with the stomach bug (emetaphobia) and watching someone die/ having to see large amount of blood or do CPR on someone (I just graduated nursing school). Last year I stopped eating out, wouldn’t touch any of my food with my hands, would wash my hands until they bleed every day, bleached everything I touched when I was in public etc… I would have these major panic attacks all the time and the thought of getting sick hasn’t left my head 24/7 for 2 years. I was unable to complete my nursing school clinicals due to panic attacks each time I was at the hospital afraid someone would die and get these terrible images in my head. I didn’t sleep ever, barely graduated. I did ERP after school and was able to make up the clinical days I missed. Got to a point where I was eating again, felt like I was able to get my hands clean just by washing them. I have been doing exposures every day, and have accepted that getting sick will probably happen at one point and I am okay with it as long as I am at home when it happens. So locking myself in my apartment for 48hr every time after I could have been exposed to the stomach bug is major progress for me and I have been overall doing much better. Fast forward to now: It’s time for me to start my new job on a med/surg floor in a hospital. This week I have made it through a few days of orientation with panic attacks day and night but I am doing it even though I am petrified. I don’t feel ready for this big of a step, being exposed to both of my biggest fears constantly. Today at orientation the girl sitting next to me told me she had been vomiting all day, and continued to run out of the room a vomit the rest of the day. I now am 90% sure I am going to get sick and feel as if I would rather die than continue this amount of stress and anxiety I have felt from just a few days of being on the job. This is my BIGGEST fear and it’s coming true and I don’t know if it’s worth putting myself through this every day at work to just be having constant panic attacks and be miserable. I know with OCD you have to face your fears but I have been pushing myself and trying so hard and I don’t feel like it’s worth it to work this job. I would also feel incredibly guilty for quitting on the first week, but there are a million other nursing jobs that are not in a hospital. I think this is too big of a step for me right now but I wanted to see what others think. Any advice at all is so appreciated!

Last night I was staying at my boyfriend’s house and couldn’t sleep. I felt like i desperately needed to go back to my parents and clean and organize my room. This has happened a few times before when I was staying at his place. Since then he’s been very upset with me. Does anyone else’s partner do this? Any advice? It’s been hard. He’s made me feel so shameful for having OCD. As if it’s not tough enough /:

My mom will sit and listen to me for quite a while, but she interrupts a lot and gets angry/upset. While I appreciate her passion, it's often stressful. Every time I come to her, if I even *mention* OCD, she gets frustrated and says, "Everyone deals with these issues, you know. It doesn't mean it's OCD." And I repeat, "I'm not saying my issues are unique — I'm saying the way I respond to them is a problem." But she just shakes her head and says, "Okay, I need to get back to my day." Full context, I'm an adult, and I live with my boyfriend, but I'm staying at my mom's for the next month. After living away from home for years, I went back to living with her during the pandemic, and I only recently left to live with him. Honestly, I think living with her for so long in my adulthood really messed with me and made me feel like a teenager all over again. I feel like my mental growth is stunted, and that's part of why my OCD is so bad lately. Not blaming, just noticing. She doesn't seem to understand how relieving the OCD diagnosis has been for me, because it explains so so so many things I've struggled with for years, and it's exciting to have more resources that can help me. But I think she sees it as me finding an excuse to *not* work on myself, which is just untrue. I'm not going to let OCD hold me back or use it as an excuse, but I'm also not going to pretend it's not a problem when I know it is — I was even diagnosed through NOCD. The whole point being to fix it, not use it as a crutch. When I have an issue, it's unbearable. Any issue, big or small, feels just the same. I feel a sinking feeling, my mind races, my heart beats out of my chest. I end up running to my support systems, crying, ruminating for days on end. Then, months later, the same exact issue can feel like nothing anymore, because it's no longer an obsession. I'm sure everyone deals with issues in a similar way, but I *know* there is something specific and debilitating going on with me. This is reassurance seeking, but in the face of being told I'm making a big deal out of nothing, can someone diagnosed with OCD tell me if they relate to the specific intensity of these feelings??