*venting* I’m so tired of life. I just woke up, and I feel like going back to bed and sleep until this nightmare passes. This week has been one of the hardest of my life. I don’t think I can face another day of intrusive thoughts, fear, anxiety. I need some moments of relief, but there are none. I wanna have a life again. Anxiety and obsessive thoughts have killed my social life, my ambitions and desires, my happiness. I’ve been fighting for the past 6 months for nothing. I don’t see any improvement. I’m on day 3 of Lexapro and of course i can’t tell if it’s gonna work for me or not. I’m on the first stages of ERP therapy and I still haven’t got any assigned homework to work on, which I really need because I need to feel like I’m doing SOMETHING to help myself with ocd and Gad. I just hope someone could just take out whatever part of my brain isn’t working properly and replace it with a new piece. I don’t wanna feel like a burden to my family or boyfriend anymore. I can’t believe all the damage that I’m causing. I don’t know what to do with all this self hate. I don’t know where to turn to. I seem to have all the help that one could need - therapy, medication, support system. Yet I feel like I can’t spend another day living like this.

I’ve never been the type of person to open up about myself but these last 3 months have been the hardest, worst time of my life. I’m 16 years old, and I’ve been anxious and had anxiety my whole life. Over the last couple years I’ve learned how to cope with my anxiety and be a happy person. But one night in January, i was watching random videos on YouTube, and a video about serial killers came on. I’ve always been interested in crime shows/documentaries, so I didn’t think twice before deciding to click on it. In the middle of the video I had this intrusive thought that said “why do people murder loved ones or innocent people” and “what does it feel like to kill somebody” I am not aggressive, or have ever caused harm, but these thoughts scared me to death. I felt a instant shock of anxiety and panic immediately. I thought something was wrong with me. I turned my phone off and went to bed hoping the next day I would forget about it. Unfortunately I never forgot about the thoughts, and still have intrusive thoughts that affect my day to day life. I feel so hopeless, even after seeing a therapist, and being on Prozac for 5 weeks I don’t feel a difference. Every time I try to be positive and tell myself “they’re just thoughts” ocd tells me, “yeah sure, but what if you did these things”? “What if you WANT to do these things”? I stress that I might actually want to do these horrible things secretly and am convinced that one day I will commit these crimes. I don’t know what to do anymore, I feel so hopeless, and even being around my girlfriend who used to bring me so much joy, I still can’t be my regular self. Please I feel so hopeless and sad I can’t even do the things I used to enjoy, remembering I have these thoughts is with me 24/7 from the second I wake up to the second I fall asleep. Anybody have advice? Sorry for the rant I just needed to get this off my chest. I just want to be normal again and enjoy being around my family and my girlfriend again

I need a space to breathe and rant and get stuff off my chest so this is what I’m using this for now. I hate being angry. I hate it so much cause I always feel like I have less control over my thoughts and feelings and it makes me feel like I have no control over possible actions etc. which makes it really hard with harm ocd. But it feels like an endless loop, because my ocd is so frustrating it makes me angry, and that makes me feel less in control, so the circle continues. It sucks feeling like if anyone knew what it looked like sometimes inside your head, maybe they wouldn’t love you and they wouldn’t see you the same way. I feel so lonely and hollow that days. I have so many “friends” but they all make me feel more lonely, cause everything is so superficial and pointless and sitting with them just makes me feel like I need to withdraw deeper into myself because they don’t get it and they don’t really want to get it or care. I want to scream and cry cause I can’t control anything. I can’t stop the people I love from dying one day, I cant stop time, and I can’t keep things the same forever. I’m so tired of doubting everything about myself. Am I a pedophile? Am I a danger to my loved ones? Am I psychotic? Ya da ya da ya da. This endless anxiety I have it feels like it’s slowly killing me and it’s making me depressed. I can’t sleep. I haven’t slept for two nights and I mean like at all. I forget to eat I get so anxious and either way I sometimes feel so nauseous I don’t want to eat. My family doesn’t really get it, to them ocd is always just an excuse, or it’s for drama. I have tried to ease myself into the idea that maybe everything is chaos. Bad things happen to good people everything has an end, etc. it’s much easier said than done. If life is an ever changing stormy sea of waves than I’m barely clinging onto anything.

it angers me beyond belief that this is my brain, I’m fucking sick and tired of going through this shit alone or burdening my parents with my panic, I do all the dam ERP in the world and this panic still ain’t stopping, I’m fucking through with this shit, I hear people all the time say your not trying hard enough or ERP takes time, well I’ve been doing ERP my whole fucking 22 years of being on this planet and the panic hasn’t stopped, and yes I’ve been to about 20 therapists, I probably have a file on me as big as a dissertation about all my dam thoughts, I’ve seen many psychiatrists, been on many meds, tried to start TMS, couldn’t go through with it because of my thoughts, I can barely blink without my thoughts screaming at me like a drill instructor, I’m socially isolated because the pandemic and I’m losing hope, all anyone tells me is your not trying hard enough with ERP, or your improving, without any evidence to back up said claim when in fact the opposite is true, I’ve declined. I’m trying so fucking hard just to wake up, I’m sorry, I really am, but this is just unreasonable, you wouldn’t go up to a cancer patient and say work harder, put me on the right meds or give me euthanasia because it’s not ok how the system treats people with OCD