I really hope someone can give me some words of advice on this topic as I’m really struggling. After having a conversation about suicide, it triggered me thinking ‘what if I kill myself’ ‘what if I get depressed and kill myself’. The next day and still today I have symptoms of depression. I feel emotionless and numb and everything that used to make me happy now doesn’t. I never was depressed I’ve always had ocd but I’ve still managed to be happy and this only started two days ago after the suicide conversation which I think triggered ocd on this theme. I keep thinking no this is real I’m really depressed and I’ll never be happy again and I’m going to kill myself. Can anyone please relate and offer some advice I don’t know if this is normal and how to get over it :(

I can somewhat empathise because I’ve had an episode regarding existence and derealisation where I had obsessions like this and they still pass through my mind from time to time. Firstly, I would highly recommend you speak to somebody. Whether that be a parent, therapist, friend, counsellor - just tell someone that you’re having this obsession. I say this because with an obsession like this it’s better to be on the safe side and have someone watching out for you. Not only will it make you feel better but just in case the obsession starts to overwhelm you, you have someone to turn to help you in that situation. Secondly, once you’ve spoken to someone, I would say the next thing to do is try to realise this is your OCD. However you do it, distance yourself from the thoughts and realise you’re obsessing over them because you’re scared of them. Once you’ve done this, try to let the thoughts just pass in and out of your headspace. Maybe in a safe place, expose yourself to the thoughts to try and reduce anxiety. Throughout this process, try to avoid engaging in OCD thought patterns. So when you’re about to go down an OCD thought path (I can identify this quite easily, let me know if you want some help with this), take a mental step back and choose not to go down that path. It’s sort of like “I could go down that thought path, but that’s OCD, so I’m not going to”. After while you’ll get used to it and your mind will do it almost automatically. Hopefully this helps to reduce your anxiety and allow you to move on ?

It’s a bit different with your obsession but it’s sort of the foundation of OCD. We look for confirmation all the time. We need to work towards being able to accept that you can’t get 100% confirmation about everything and that’s ok. I can try to explain it more if you want?

I understand that too. I have times also when I just feel numb and depressed. My therapist told me that I’ve just got to try and accept the feeling. Accept that in that moment you feel down and depressed and be ok with that. Try to take a mental step back and observe your emotions, thoughts feelings. As for your boyfriend, you say he’s really supportive when it comes to OCD so maybe tell him that you are struggling to feel happy because of your OCD and that this is just an undefined period of time you need to wait out.

Yes please that will be great I’m sorry I’m such a bother lol

You’re not a bother at all! Nothing wrong with someone just asking for help. Luckily at the moment I’m managing my OCD, but if I was relapsing then I would really appreciate someone helping me out so happy to do so for you! ? So in my own experience and from what I’ve read, one of the core problems of OCD is the inability to accept uncertainty, specifically concerning topics we care about. Let’s imagine I say to you “How do I know an asteroid isn’t travelling directly at me right now and is going to crush me in precisely 10 minutes?” You’ll most likely reply by saying that there’s no reason to worry about that. The chance of it occurring is minuscule and you don’t know of anybody who’s been crushed by an asteroid out of nowhere. Besides, our radars would have most likely picked it up. A person without OCD would accept this reasoning and proceed with their lives. In fact, they wouldn’t have even asked the question because they could have thought of the reasoning themselves. An OCD individual will understand the reasoning but might not be satisfied with it. I might reply to you with “But how can you know for certain?” “What if the asteroid is travelling faster than our radars can pick up?” “It’s still theoretically possible though isn’t it?” And I might develop an obsession over the idea followed by anxiety once I’ve convinced myself I’ve got precisely 9 minutes 30 seconds to live until an asteroid crushes me. As OCD individuals, we aren’t comfortable accepting that sometimes unpleasant things are theoretically possible, or in your case, not being able to definitively prove something isn’t possible. It’s just something so ingrained in us that we can’t talk ourselves out of it without anxiety building up and taking over our thought process. From what I understand, therapies aim to either remove the fear of something being possible, or removing the fear of not being able to prove something isn’t possible. By removing these fears, we are able to think in a non-OCD fashion: “Although I don’t want this fear to be true, I recognise that I’ll never be able to get 100% confirmation that it isn’t true, so there is zero point worrying about it. Instead let me think logically and constructively - there is no significant evidence to suggest it is true so I will progress as if it isn’t. But at the same time, I know that theoretically there is a scenario in which it is true” Or alternatively “I don’t want my fear to be true, but what will be will be. It is extremely unlikely but if it is true, it is out of my control and that’s just the way things are. It would not be constructive to let that fact get in the way of my life. That’s the hand I’ve been dealt and that’s fine, annoying but fine.” I think therapy works best when both fears are eliminated but some obsessions seem to lend themselves more to one than the other. In your case, the first seems more appropriate but you may encounter other obsessions which are more suited by the second one or both. Sorry for the information dump! Just eager to share what I’ve learnt to try and help people going through the same struggles! Hope this helped!

Thank you so much! I really appreciate it x

Thanks so much for your help @smul! I think the ocd thoughts I can deal with but it’s just the feeling ‘depressed’ and feeling emotionless and not happy with anything is what I’m struggling with. Will this pass with time or is there anything I can do? I try distracting myself but I’m not enjoying anything at the moment. I’ve also let my boyfriend know as soon as I started feeling this way and he’s really supportive when it comes to ocd but he keeps saying ‘please me happy’ and it isn’t that easy and I feel like there’s so much pressure to be happy now

I will tell him that thank you so much @smul. I also doubt myself and say ‘no this time it isn’t ocd this time it’s real’

That’s where you catch yourself before you engage in an OCD thought pattern. Once you’ve reduced your anxiety to a sufficiently low level you can start learning to accept uncertainty but you can’t do that until you’ve reduced your anxiety.

What do you mean by accepting uncertainty