So I have health OCD. One of the ways it manifests is that I am terrified to take any new medication. It doesn't matter if its prescribed for a doctor or just a supplement. I have had some bad experiences with medication in the past. So I had my yearly physical the week before last. I talked to my doctor about possibly trying something for my anxiety/panic attacks. I tried Buspar a few years ago. It did nothing for my anxiety and gave me headaches. I do not want to take anything addictive. So I asked her if she could recommend some supplements. Last year, she recommended I start taking a B vitamin for my depression and it really helped. She gave me a print out. She also mentioned that a lot of people use Ashwagandha for anxiety. I have done some research on that already. There are a lot of positive reviews on Amazon. So I found out that was rated really high and bought it. It arrived on Thursday or Friday. I put off taking it. So this morning I decided I was going to take it. My OCD was going crazy. What if it makes me throw up? What if my throat closes up? What if it doesn't work? What if its been tampered with? What if it kills me? I ignored the thoughts and swallowed it with my other pills. I feel like that was a major win.

I have a question My OCD has felt almost invisible the past few weeks and now that is starting to stress me out a lot. Right now I am at a point in my treatement where I was asked if I would like to take medication. I told my therapist this week that I would like to try the medication based on how miserable I feel in during OCD flare ups. But now my brain always tells me that I only go throught this treatement etc. to seek attention and that I am just dramatic and should be ashamed of myself for wanting to take this medication. So now I am doubting if I should take the medication or not. Any advice?

It started when I became an adult, and started receiving my mental health diagnosis. I hyper fixated on each and every action I did and how it could be related to my diagnosis’s. It then lead to fixation to my physical health — making appointments and seeing every specialist I can to rule out every possibility. I currently have been suffering with obstructive sleep. I woke up the past few days with severe pain from the lack of sleep whilst believing I was oversleeping. Luckily my fit watch tracks my sleep cycle and it turns out I am not receiving any sleep. I had an extreme panic attack — bursting into tears on the phone with my mom wondering what this case might be. She told me it could be sleep apnea and that a simple sleep study could figure this out. However, knowing my family history I made appointments to every specialist I can to make sure it is nothing serious. The unknown of health can be scary to me. Watching my mother suffer with her physical health chronically since I was a child lead me to be very conscious and aware of how my body is functioning. This morning was one of the worst moments of physical pain. I should just take one step at a time with the sleep doctor instead of taking measures to see every specialist that could pertain with this issue. However, that is very hard to me. I don’t want to ever wake up in the pain I was this morning. Does anyone else suffer with health-related OCD? And if so, how do you find a sense of ease during moments like I expressed?

Hey friends, I hope you all are well. I just wanted to check in and ask people's experiences about being on medication. I have had OCD pretty much my whole life, just got recently diagnosed 4 months ago and my therapist recommended that I get on meds for it so I have a psychiatrist appointment set up. I'm a little apprehensive about getting on them, but I've realized that I do have some sort of chemical imbalance in my brain that plays a part in my OCD and anxiety. I would love to hear anyones experiences or words of encouragement. Thank you, I hope you all are well.