How do you explain your daily torment to your spouse in a way they'll understand? I have pure o and huge avoidance behaviors. My husband thinks I'm lazy or I feel too much or I overcomplicate everything. He tells me I'm negative and I always think the worst and I'm exhausting. :( I wish more than anything he understood that I procrastinate making dinner bc I picture poisoning my whole family and it scares me so much that I just order take out again. Or I ask him to clean my daughters ear piercings bc I pick at my own skin and if I touch her ears she'll get a horrible infection and get septic and die bc I touched her newly pierced ears (even with the alcohol stuff). Or I lay around playing games on my phone because I need distractions to numb out so I don't think about hurting anyone or cheating on him. How do you say that to the father of your kids without him trying to take them away from you? He doesn't even believe in mental illness. He sees it as weakness. :( Any help would be awesome bc I don't know what to do.

I’m so sorry you’re going through this. Don’t ever believe, even for a second, that you’re mental health concerns isn’t valid because it is and your husband is unfortunately being incredibly unsupportive during your time of need. The best advice I can give you is to try and educate him, but you mentioned that he doesn’t consider mental health as a real illness and sees it as a weakness. Please don’t buy into his words. You’re stronger than this and deserve support. I’m sorry I give you much more advice.

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.

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 all😢 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.

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.