Some words of hope tonight for those who might need it, from someone who has hit lots of low lows with OCD and often thought I would never have hope again, but here I am, and I do have hope again. Message to all soocd sufferers. Things can and will get worse before they get better. OCD is like an irresistible metaphorical scab that we keep picking, keep uncovering the rawness until there is a scar, and it feels unrecognizable, we feel unrecognizable to ourselves, because of all the picking and uncovering and perspective shift we've gone through over time bc of the disorder, but what is a scar if not just evidence that your body once went through something and made it to the other side? That's what ocd is. Yes, you're probably never gonna go back to the old you. Yes, you're always gonna have that scar, that emotional trauma of a brain that makes you feel like you've lost all sense at some points, and yes the intrusive thoughts and fears won't go away permanently, but when you decide to face those fears, i mean actually face them, commit to the fear and feeling the fear and doing what you've decided you want to do despite the fear that ocd plants in your mind, you will see that it does get better. Don't expect your life to change overnight. Don't expect to one day suddenly be free of the disorder in some magical way. You have to work at it and commit to temporary discomforts that you will eventually start to understand don't last forever. They are temporary discomforts (exposures and resisting compulsions), they can feel like the world is ending and you're doing everything wrong, but that's just a feeling. And you need to resist the compulsions anyway if you want to see change. It's so difficult in a society where it is preached to us that feelings are fact and we should guide our lives on gut instincts and intuition. Unfortunatley, ocd sufferers don't get that luxury of relying on feelings to make choices. Accept the discomfort of that. Accept that as an ocd sufferer, you might need to approach the world differently than someone with a more typical pattern in their brain. Don't see it as a bad thing. Just see it as something to adapt to, and when you start to approach yourself with acceptance, you make more room for recovery to happen. Trust me. <3