I can’t help but slightly blame my family for my lack of mental health. I have a mother that is a good person but cares so much about appearances that I now have anxiety over any imperfections. My dad yelled at me and my brother so much that my first reaction to anything is anger. And my dad literally always talks about how amazing my brother is. I was telling him how my boyfriend helped me out a lot by teaching me how to study and he then proceeded to name how much smarter my brother is. None of this pertains to OCD necessarily but it caused me to spiral. Usually that means cleaning but my house is cleaning so I’m just obsessing over how literally everyone but my mother thinks my brother is better. I love him very much. But part of me thinks that if he wasn’t here, my life would be better. My Pure O is more of the problem than OCD. There are no compulsions. Just obsessed with the idea that my brother will always be better than me. No matter what. It’s stupid but I just want to be a priority to someone other than my boyfriend or Jesus. I want someone in my family to understand my struggle with various mental illnesses and with always coming in second to my brother.

LONG VENT POST: This is my second post of the day. Seriously, I am SO sorry. I have therapy tomorrow, I promise I will shut up after this lmao. Anyway, for Memorial Day weekend, I spent it at my aunt/uncles vacation house. Fortunately it wasn’t a big crowd - just my mom, grandmother, aunt, uncle and I. For context, I come from a pretty big family, and I am the youngest of 7 cousins and a younger sister to two brothers. All my cousins are in their early to mid 20’s, each very successful in school and their careers. My half brother is 29, and absolutely crushing it. My full brother is turning 23, he’s also doing amazing with school. I just turned 20 in April, I feel very lost. I know I want to be a forensic psychiatrist one day, and that I want my PhD. I want to be the best therapist I can be, but the fact that I barely get by with ocd/adhd has been discouraging me, so I currently feel like a flop. Anyway though, spending time with my aunts/uncles/cousins/grandparents triggers my ocd the most, as majority of them can be on the judgmental side. ESPECIALLY my aunt, she’s on my moms side, and she and my mom are total opposites. My aunts a very calculated, straightforward, logical, stern, sassy buisnesswoman. She’s successful, but lacks a lot of understanding and can be so cold and just mean. My moms a kindergarten teacher in a struggling community, and she’s always thinking about others before herself, extremely emotional, caring, but neglects her own needs a lot. They’re sisters, and they bump heads a ton. My aunt and all of her kids aren’t neurodivergent. They simply don’t understand mental health. My mom does, thank god. My aunt and uncle think that if a kid is having a psychotic break, then that kid should be kicked out of the house and not helped at all. My mom and I entirely disagree with this idea, and that someone clearly mentally suffering NEEDS mental health help asap, and they need to be home. The streets are the last place someone suffering should be. While we were vacationing at the house, my mom argued about this with my uncle. I was asleep, thank god, but I seriously hate having people in my family like this. I can never tell them about me having ocd, they’ll think it’s just an “excuse” for not getting things done, or just me trying to feel special. The reality is, they don’t get it. My full brother went through the worst psychotic break a few years ago. It lasted two years on and off due to bipolar disorder, but thank god he got himself help and he’s doing absolutely amazing now. He’s frustrated and embarassed with himself but now he’s on track, and as I said, crushing it with school. But the entire time he was going through this, my aunt and uncle just didn’t understand. To keep it short, they thought his mental problems were behavioral, and that he’s a “crazy” kid. The reality is, he was coping with the loss of his childhood best friend and our other uncle who was like a second father figure to us. He had manic episodes from the grief and self medicating with drugs and alcohol. This was all the while Covid was happening and he was a freshman at a college states away. He was so vunerable. I’m saying all this because, well, how am I to seriously be forward about my mental struggles when they couldn’t even show the slightest amount of empathy to my brother, who was struggling, so much more intensely than me? I’m quiet at family gatherings when they’re around for this exact reason. I have so much resentment toward them for it. I try to avoid them when I can, because I love them, I just hate their actions/views. What do you guys do with these kinds of people?

I’ve been struggling so much these past few weeks. I’ve been so anxious and just have had nonstop crazy,weird disgusting thoughts and idk anymore. Like I’m not diagnosed but I recently researched about it and it explained everything I’ve been experiencing like exactly. But I’m also very young so idk what’s happening I’m just so confused. I barely slept today cause the thoughts just wouldn’t stop. I have only told my dad about what’s been happening and he told me that he does want to help me and stuff and find someone that could help me but then I just feel like he dosent care, like when I talked to him about it about how I suspect I had it he just like completely changed the subject. But he did bring it up yesterday which was good i guess. And I’ve posted here before and people have been really nice and told me that just because I’m not diagnosed that doesn’t mean my experiences aren’t valid and I appreciated that a lot but I don’t know I just keep doubting everything. I’m also worried because my brother actually has OCD and ADHD and more stuff and I know how stressful it was for my parents to understand him and stuff and if I turn out to actually have OCD as well then I just feel like I’m going to be something else they have to worry about and stress about.

I’m about to turn 18 and I’ve graduated high school a year early and I deal with intense feelings of imposter syndrome. I have no clue where my life is headed and not really even sure what college I wanna go to. I know I want to go to college but I just don’t know what I should do. I have a good job that I’ve been at for over a year and thats great, but I look at people my age and feel like I’m not where I’m supposed to be. I’m an overachiever and someone that deals with OCD and the mix of those two is not fun. I think that when I was a child I had a lot of pressure placed onto me to do so well that I’m constantly looking for ways to improve in many aspects of my life. This leaves an unrealistic outline of where I should be and makes me feel so shitty that I can’t even see the good I’m doing. I can’t remember many positive things that people say to me about myself because I don’t think my brain believes it. I often worry if I’m not as smart as other people and overthink mistakes I make so many times a day. Excepting constructive feedback from people is extremely hard for me because I feel like I’ve failed. I feel sad about all of my past relationships with people. I feel scared nobody will ever love me.