- Date posted
- 3y
- Date posted
- 3y
I can so relate to all of this! I have pure o and major avoidance compulsions as well. I have had thoughts of making people sick. Its hard when someone you love doesn't understand or support you. But you are not alone. Do you have a therapist that understands OCD and specializes in ERP? It has made a huge difference for me. ERP is hard and terrifying, but it does work. Even if your husband doesn't support you or understand. All of us here do! We are here for you.
- Date posted
- 3y
So sorry to hear. Are you in therapy? Seek help. Can you show him some website with info about OCD? "When a family member has OCD" is a great book. But if he dont want to understand at allš¢ its hard, but you are still responsible for how you handle your suffering, you can learn, and you can practice exposures, I hope you'll find a therapist, and maybe you can find support in a friend or another relative.
- Date posted
- 3y
I do have a therapist but idk if she's licensed in ocd stuff. We've talked about it but I've also gone through some big personal traumas in the past year and we talk mostly about that. She tends to focus more on the anxiety. But we've done some erp therapy but it seemed to make my ocd all I'd think about. Like it was running my whole life in a different way. So I avoid. I don't go to therapy much anymore. I stopped erp. And it got better for awhile thinking I could control my own life but it's come back stronger and more frequently than ever. I never even told my therapist about the poisoning thoughts bc I didn't want her to have child services take my children away. (Can they do that?) So it's mostly my fault therapy wasn't working bc I wasn't completely honest with her about how bad it is. My husband is a good man. He really is one of the good ones. He just doesn't experience any mental illness so if I even bring up mine he thinks I'm just making excuses. It's tough. I just want there to be a way I can make him understand so he can be in it with me and for me instead of feeling like we're against each other with it.
- Date posted
- 3y
Ok...I think its important to be honest with the therapist. Can you seek put to find a therapist with OCD competence? You have to make decisions about how to manage life with this condition. OCD doesnt get over by itself. If your husband is a good one, thats great! Show him some good website with info. Buy Jon Hershfileds book for relatives. Go to therapy again. The worst thing we can do is to let time pass and just think about what to do...There is hope for you! Take care.
- Date posted
- 3y
ERP is definitely not fun or easy, but it does work. They cannot take your children away because of a thought. There is a big difference between having an intrusive thought and intention. Everyone has intrusive thoughts. The problem is not the thought. The real problem is the weight and meaning we give the thought. One of my major themes were harm and suicide OCD. I was terrified to tell my therapist about some of my intrusive thoughts. I thought for sure I was going to end up in jail or involuntarily committed to a psych ward. Her expression didn't even change. I guarantee you a therapist that understands OCD has heard it all before. They won't be shocked by anything you tell them. Recovery is possible. But it takes time and a lot of hard work. If you aren't willing to do the work, then nothing will change. OCD is a chronic condition. It won't just go away on its own. Believe me, I know. I lived with OCD for over 30 years because I didn't know I had it. OCD wasn't even on my radar until last month. You can never get back the time OCD has taken from you. But you can make a decision to not allow it to take any more time from you. ERP is the best treatment for OCD.
Related posts
- Date posted
- 23w
Posting here for the first time, please be gentle, not sure if this is applicable! I definitely struggle with reassurance-seeking especially when it comes to real events, but over time have found ways to self regulate and use self-guided therapy apps and worksheets to help fight any challenging thoughts as they come up throughout the day. There are a few times when Iām unable to do the work myself and donāt feel as emotionally strong, which I feel is reasonable considering how exhausting my symptoms can be (for clarification, I am diagnosed with anxiety but not OCD, although I fear all signs lead me here). Only on the extremely difficult days, Iāll ask my partner for reassurance (he is aware of my tendencies and is quite patient) but he has his own baggage, and having a partner asking for reassurance can be triggering for him, as he was accused of several negative things in his last relationship. He quickly gets overwhelmed with me and feels that I donāt trust him. He is convinced that is the motive of my reassurance seeking. Today in particular, I woke up from a nightmare that reminded me of a past event. After struggling with it myself all day I brought it up in the evening to try and get some help, and did bring it up three times after that. I am always soft and gentle when I ask for help, and even asked for a lighthearted āpinky promiseā, which actually seemed to bother him. I understand that itās not his position to emotionally support me whatsoever and that reassurance seeking can become harmful to the both of us, but for the one-off days where I am having a really difficult time, I feel extremely unsupported by him. For context, my partner has broken my trust before. My thoughts took off during that time. Itās been a few months since then, and me openly seeking reassurance from him is not a frequent occurrence, since Iāve started my self-help. I actually feel Iāve come a long way but I do have days like today that set me back. I love and trust him with all my heart, but man does my inner monologue make me work for it. I just donāt know how to get him to understand that itās me having to work for it, not him. Unfortunately from the way he reacts, Iāve grown to feel unsupported by him, and am now rarely emotionally vulnerable with him. I am curious if there are any suggestions on helping him help me in a sense.. I donāt know how to get him to understand that it has nothing to do with a lack of trust. I have briefly opened up to him about my strong intrusive thoughts and figured it would help him understand a bit better but I donāt know what to do. I want to add: I have tried talking to him about how I felt unsupported. He just tells me he feels accused and would be supporting me at his own expense. He has even told me that I shouldnāt talk to him about these things, even though the thoughts I struggle with are directly related to events in our relationship. I really canāt seem to get through to him.
- Date posted
- 21w
Please if someone can reply! I really just need someone to talk to. I donāt even know how to control my OCD. It honestly feels like itās controlling me. Everyday my mind focuses on every bodily sensation I have and itās like a broken record player, I have horrible health anxiety and my OCD just makes it worst just thinking about it everyday. It feels like everyone who I explain it to looks at me like Iām stupid/crazy. I use to be much more tame with my OCD, I use to eat things without worry, now I canāt even touch things I use to eat without worrying that Iāll get an allergic reaction (despite eating them BEFORE,,,but my mind tells me otherwise) and omg worrying about heart attacks, pulmonary issues..and I couldnāt even enjoy my own childās birth because my mind was on high alert thinking I would hemorrhage any second or develop pre-E (complications of postpartum) I was miserable for the first couple of months of my babyās life and I didnāt know what to do. And now, Iām pregnant with my second (4wks) and all the OCD thoughts and anxiety is coming back at me and I have no one to talk to, I feel lonely. And even if I considered taking a pill, Iād worry about being allergic to it and refusing to take it. I ruin everything for everyone. I remember I ate out one night and I started to think āyouāre gonna pass out! Youāre gonna pass out! (Without ever passing out before) and I had to leave! I feel like I ruin the mood for everyone when I donāt even try to, and I hate it.
- Date posted
- 14w
My husband told me recently he was going to hang out with a local friend he often goes to see. It got very late and I heard nothing from him. Tried calling and texting. Stayed up all night thinking maybe he was dead or injured. Logged into our cell phone account to see if I could find any recent location and discovered he had talked to someone on the phone that night but he was like 2 hours away from home at that time. And also saw a phone number he was spending hours on the phone with every day. I had been confronting him about his secrecy prior to that and he kept telling me it was this friend or that friend, or he was just taking the dog on a long walk or having a fire out back. He finally called me back in the morning and I yelled at him. He told me he was randomly with two friends from longer ago and had gotten drunk and passed out, and hadn't told me about these plans because I had a heart surgery a few weeks prior and health concerns and he didn't want to stress me out. He told me the phone number was a girl that he related to on trauma factors and that he views like a little sister. He said he didn't tell me because he was caught up in his trauma spilling of events he didn't share with a single person since they occurred to him 35 years ago, due to feelings of shame and anger, and that he thought I would view it as emotional cheating. I told him it really could be viewed as emotional cheating and in principle, honesty shouldn't be dependent upon the outcome... lying isn't justified because I would be upset by the truth. Since then, he's been more open with me and tells me when that girl is calling, talks to me about their conversations, answers her calls when I'm present. I talked to him about boundaries and things I'm uncomfortable with or bothered by and he changes those things. Especially because I have trauma from an emotionally abusive ex, having him lie to me when I directly questioned him about what I was perceiving or experiencing and telling me those experiences weren't real, when they actually WERE real, has really messed me up. Now when he wants to hang out with a friend, I don't trust it. But I'm handling these feelings in destructive OCD ways. I spend literally the entire time he's gone thinking and thinking and thinking about what if he's lying or what he might be doing instead of what he said. I call and text him intermittently and feel like all of my obsessive thoughts are confirmed if he doesn't answer right away. I'm always checking the phone history. The driving toll history. Scrutinizing everything. I cannot get out of this mindset. It's like this horrible mixture of emotional flashbacks and OCD. I don't want to live like this. I want to work on my relationship in productive ways. I want to be able to use my own time while my husband is gone. Even if he lied to me and is somewhere other than he said, I don't want to lie in bed just thinking and thinking and thinking for entire days and nights. I'm not sure what I'm really asking here. This is just the only place where I feel like I can share this without people thinking "wow she's crazy".
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