- Date posted
- 4y
- Date posted
- 4y
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
- 4y
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.
- Date posted
- 4y
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
- 4y
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
- 4y
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
- 19w
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".
- User type
- OCD Conqueror
- Date posted
- 14w
How do you tell friends and family about ocd? Like it makes me so anxious and I feel like such a terrible person. A lot of my intrusive thoughts are on my kids. And I hate every single thing that comes into my head.
- Date posted
- 12w
Life has been so tough for me lately. I’ve been stuck in an OCD spiral since last December. Most of my fears come from incidentally causing harm to my family or others. I feel like every action is a moral conflict, or that any time I make a bad decision, act out of frustration, or self indulge in anything, I’m debating about whether I’m an awful person who doesn’t care about my kids, my wife, or other people. I’m a stay at home parent currently, and all three of my kids are neurodivergent, with my youngest being on the spectrum. My youngest is nonverbal, so my OCD loves to manipulate that, making it hard to know if my son is happy, sad, upset, etc. Always feeling like I’m worried I’ll make too many mistakes as a parent. That any time I lose my cool, it means I’m just this awful person and parent. I’m burnt out from the stress currently, so I always feel on edge, which makes it harder to have the mental power to resist compulsions. I am in OCD therapy, which has helped. But every time I feel like I’m taking steps in the right direction I get sucked back in. Every time I resist compulsions, I’m triggered almost immediately after. Because I’m a stay at home parent, and a lot of my triggers and themes involve harm to others, particularly my family, it’s just trigger after trigger after trigger. My wife is exhausted from my mental health, which just adds to the guilt I already feel. I hate that my mental health is affecting everyone, and it only reinforces the idea that I’m causing harm or suffering to those around me. I just need a break. I cannot keep living my life this way. This is the worst my OCD has been, and I feel so traumatized from all the days and hours I’ve spent feeling like I’m at my limit. Thanks for reading. Feel free to respond if you can relate. Just needed to vent.
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