Fighting compulsions is soooooo hard. I find myself constantly and aimlessly posting on Reddit to get reassurance on a situation when I already know the answer. A lot of things im realizing is literally my own imagination that I’m making into a reality when it’s not real and I HATE it. 😭

Sorry, I know I keep posting on here but it’s like a diary for me. The people on here seem to be the only people that understand what I’m going through. With my obsession about death, the afterlife, and whether or not there is a God, I’ve been going crazy with the compulsions lately. My brain keeps saying things like “If [insert random insignificant event, ex: a red car drives by] within the next 30 seconds, it‘s a sign from God that he is real.” Or there’s the ruminating, where I try to comfort myself by saying that there has to be a God, and that we have to have a greater purpose, and I’ll think about it for hours. I know it’s illogical and ridiculous but regardless it’s absolutely dreadful to feel this way. I have hope after seeing some people say they’ve learned to cope with and have recovered from that feeling of existential dread and the compulsions that can come with it and still be able to find joy in their lives. I hope that soon I can find that joy again. The past three days I’ve lived in a constant state of anxiety and misery. I’ve completely lost my appetite and I physically have to force myself to eat (and I’m a big binge eater that only recently went into recovery for BED so that’s saying a LOT.) The only time I feel at peace is literally when I’m sleeping, or those rare fleeting moments where I somehow am not thinking about it. I haven’t really felt any emotions in depth except for this feeling of utter hopelessness. I hope I can move past this, find comfort in restoring my relationship with religion again without using it as a compulsion, and just live my life accepting that there are some things we’ll simply never know without letting it ruin my life.

I have really started to take control of my compulsions and im starting to string together better days! Still not great days or even good, but they are better!!! I have controlled my outward compulsions (googling, research, reassurance, checking) the past couple of days and felt the positive impact of that. But unfortunately, I am realizing that the rumination is still constant. My sexuality and relationship are the only two things constantly on my brain, and if they aren’t I freak out and wonder why im not thinking about them! Anyone have any advice on how to deal with the rumination. Sometimes I don’t even notice im doing it, but it’s taking up 90% of my day. Once I start to tackle this I think I may make some real big progress! Hope everyone is fighting today! ❤️

I sometimes see posts on here of people saying their OCD fears becoming true and it’s so so triggering for me. It makes me question if I ever had OCD and if I’m just faking it. I’ve tried to accept that my fear was real. Okay? Before I knew this was OCD, I really TRIED to accept it as a part of myself because I figured if I was even having those thoughts, it must be true. But in reality it just made me feel worse in the end. It wasn’t until several hours/few days after accepting the thoughts as true did I realize they were not and how uncomfortable it made me identifying with them that way, so eventually I went back into the rumination cycle. And I’ve done this multiple times. No matter how much I’ve accepted it as real, I never come to a conclusion in the end and I just get 10x more miserable. And I am still so scared of my fear coming true as those peoples did. But I know that’s what we all fear, otherwise we wouldn’t be here. And with a new fear I just developed, (all in the realm of the same theme) I’ve also tried to accept it as real when I felt SUPER convinced and even though it felt excruciatingly real, there was a part of me that couldn’t fully believe it, because I just know viscerally that it’s not. But the feeling of it being real is just too powerful and it overmastered any ounce of insight I had left. It wasn’t until my OCD spike calmed down when I was able to see through the viel. I hate this. I have no desire to do anything that my thoughts tell me. I know what I want to be, want to do, and it’s the opposite of those OCD thoughts. But these triggering posts won’t leave. (Not really the publishers fault, it’s my ritual that I engage in). They make me come all back to square one (if I wasn’t there already) and question if I’m using this as an excuse. I don’t want to do what my OCD tells me to do, but my brain just spits, “you’re just convincing yourself you don’t want this!” as it so often now does. I’m so tired. Please give me my old self back. Please give me 100% certainty that none of this is real and my fears are not at all based in reality. My brain cannot accept uncertainty and will not leave me alone. My brain is raged and powerless without knowing why, and spiels that anger back on me to get a reaction, and when it gets what it wants, the cycle continues. And goes way longer than I had bargained for :(