- Date posted
- 3y ago
- Date posted
- 3y ago
This sounds like a perfect storm of grief and trauma. Loss of a loved one, possibly witnessing death or pre-death, and OCD?! Does your school have any counseling? A lot of schools either have a counselor you can see or have someone you can see as you’re waiting to see a more long-term or more credentialed therapist. Don’t be afraid to tell them it’s urgent. Especially since this happened on campus and while you were at your campus job. In the meantime, please know I’m sending you extra strength and comfort and that any time you want a puppy snuggle, just whisper, “need you,” into the ethers and my boy is sending you so many lovins. 💪🏼💜
- Date posted
- 3y ago
My school does have free counseling! I did it last year and loved it, it really helped me. I tried scheduling again this year but they said I had the skills to handle myself and should only schedule if it's an emergency. Then after my Grandma I tried scheduling but they were all booked. They do have another counselor coming in for the students handling the greif of the freshman passing?? But I'm not sure?? Also thank you for the support! I think saying "need you" will make me giggle and think of puppies :) I appreciate you!
- Date posted
- 3y ago
@Archer I’d say give the counselor there another try. Even though I believe in you and that you have the skills to deal with lots, because we OCD people are so strong, this is more than you should be expected to deal with while also having to do normal school and campus job stuff. Again, I believe you can absolutely make it through! I just think this is why the school is getting another counselor on staff, so why not try? And while I didn’t get my dog till I was almost done with school, thinking of and smiling or giggling about puppies is totally what helped me through school! ☺️🐶
- Date posted
- 3y ago
@ARTnotOCD Right after class I went to the counseling center! I asked if there was anything available and they said yes! I just need to make an appointment and I'll be notified when there is a group counseling session (specifically for the recent death). Thank you again so much for the help! This is absolutely the worst moments of my life and am so thankful for the pure kindness of others :)
- Date posted
- 3y ago
Yeah, I walked in on my wife’s attempted suicide and found her. I thought she was gone and I’m not sure how I grieved the months after but I know one night I had a thought that I stabbed her to death and my ocd was born. I’m still in therapy for my harm ocd. I’m with them I would let the school counselor know you need them because this is something different than when you needed them last year. They shouldn’t turn you down.
- Date posted
- 3y ago
I'm so sorry that you experienced that. I hope that the counseling is helping you? I did end up going to the counselor's office!! I'm going to schedule an appointment soon and will be going to the group therapy session!!
- Date posted
- 3y ago
@Archer Thank you. It has helped but I’m not the same happy go lucky person I was before and I’m not sure if I ever see that day coming. I’m glad you went back and spoke up for yourself.
- Date posted
- 3y ago
I have. My younger brother and only sibling passed away from an extremely rare form of brain cancer. He was in his early 30s when he was diagnosed. There are only 100 cases a year and 90% are kids under 18. He was sick for 18 months. He couldn't do chemo because it was on his brain stem. He had one setback after another. He had pneumonia, an abscess on his rectum, C-Diff, he fractured his back after a fall (I found him) This was before I knew I had OCD. I have a really hard time being around sick people, but especially terminally ill people. I also HATE hospitals. He passed away in May of 2013. Just a few days before my birthday. He died May 21st and my BD is May 26th. I did get to say goodbye. But I was not present when he actually died. I knew I wouldn't be able to handle it. So say it was devastating would be an understatement. I still miss him every day. I don't think I will ever completely get over it.
- User type
- NOCD Alumni
- Date posted
- 3y ago
Hi Archer, I am sorry for the loss of your Grandma and truly sorry that you had to witness that freshman pass away and that your OCD bully has chosen that experience to latch onto and make you dwell on. Trying to encourage you to try not to pay attention to the intrusive thought of the memory of what happened albeit it probably the correct thing to say, sounds harsh, so instead I will say please hang in there and try to focus on happier thoughts instead. I am very glad and relieved that you went to talk to the counselor and will be scheduling an appointment and attending the group therapy. I am sending my best wishes and thoughts in your direction, stay strong and you will get through this. I, like most others have experienced major loss throughout the years. Having a history of cancer in my family has lead to many instances of loved ones struggling with or succumbing to it more than I’d care to remember. Add to that the prevalence for depression and alcohol abuse and more often than not most family gatherings are usually at a funeral. I will say the first death I ever experienced probably affected me the most. It was when my great grandmother passed away suddenly when I was 6 or 7. I remember feeling numb and distant, possibly because I couldn’t fully comprehend it, or possibly because of the chaos in my head between my undiagnosed OCD and ADHD. I looked at how others were upset and yet I felt nothing and started questioning if I was a good person or not and ruminated on that constantly. I pushed everyone away for years because I felt I did not deserve to be cared about since I was such a bad person for not grieving enough or at all when she died. I should have done what you did and talked to someone instead of keeping it all in my head. Stay strong and you WILL get through this and never be afraid to reach out to a counselor or a friend or even just posting here whenever you need advice, to vent or just a distraction for a few minutes. Best wishes.
Related posts
- Date posted
- 20w ago
Hi, this is my first post. I am very nervous reaching out as I haven’t ever done so before publicly. I found out a year ago I had ocd and since then it’s been very clear that I have had it for a long time. I currently struggle with health ocd, death ocd, and I’m sure others as well, I always am scared I have or will develop an illness or schizophrenia. One thing I’m struggling with is depersonalization/derealization. I am under a lot of stress being in nursing school right now so maybe when I’m don’t with school I will feel better. Also I recently switched my medication to sertraline. I have been on it about a month and 1/2 but just increased my dose. It is worse when I first wake up. I am going to go see a therapist again once my PCP gets back to me with one that specializes in ocd. If anyone has had similar situations or recommendations to help me get back to feeling better that would be so greatly appreciated. I am also embarrassed to say I’m scared of getting schizophrenia. The obsessed with that began a year ago when I was taking psychology class. I became so afraid of getting it that I am constantly looking for signs or symptoms. It drives me bonkers. I would like to overcome that fear all together. Please give me advice. Thanks.
- Date posted
- 12w ago
Hi, I’m new here!! I’m praying I don’t get judged for this. But, back in late May of 2022 ( literally right before I graduated high school), I added this one random girl from my school on Snapchat. She posted something about a graduation party , so I swiped up on her story basically saying how I can’t believe we’re almost graduated. She replied and we had a really short and simple conversation. The next day ( i believe) , we started talking a lot , and I just so happened to see her at the highschool when we were grabbing our graduation outfits and doing the rehearsal. When I saw her irl, I kinda got turned off ( I heard she was kinda crazy) , and on top of that , she was a little ugly irl. I remember seeing her Snapchat bio , and she was close friends with my female cousin ( a year younger than me) , who I happened to experiment sexually with when I was 10-11 years old. I remember going to work later that day and having sort of a lightbulb flick thought ( it wasn’t a good thought though) , what if my cousin told her about what happened when we were younger? So I started to kind of panic and immediately distanced myself from that girl. I also experimented sexually with one of my female friends when I was 10-11 , and from that day onwards, I’ve been pretty much living in paranoia and a little bit of guilt about someone finding out and my life being ruined . On top of that, It’s gotten worse to now sometimes I wonder if a girl I added off of quick add ( Snapchat) is underage even if they told me they were 18+ or had 18 and above in their bio, and I get so much guilt and anxiety about that. I even had a quick thought last February on what if I did something inappropriate with my younger cousin when I was 15-16 but I just can’t exactly remember when it happened , and it still eats me alive when I think about it, because I don’t know if it happened or not. I’m sorry for the long vent, I just wish I felt normal again. No matter how much I try to do things that old me used to do, life always feels “ off”. I always kept the top part about when I was younger a secret up until early (ish ) 2024, then I vented to one of my best friends and he told me that that’s a normal thing to do at a young age. Since then, I have told multiple friends and they all say they did similar stuff, but my brain just can’t accept that. Please help me, I quite literally overthink everything nowadays. 2021 was the last full year that I felt normal ( coincidentally, the best year of my life so far) . It’s not just about sexual related things either, sometimes I’ll wonder if I messed up something at work or hit a car while driving/hit someone and drove off. I just wanna live my life how I was supposed to live it after highschool ( carefree and happy) before whatever it is ( I think it’s ocd) hit me unexpectedly. Thanks to anyone who read this , I just needed to pour it out regardless of how negative I felt typing this, I hope someone can relate , because I feel so alone in my head at times.
- Date posted
- 11w ago
So, I know my capacity to get fixated on things. And it's normally something that's relatively remote but, my latest issue is really getting to me and I was wondering if people have any advice. I'm avoiding getting too into specifics, as I don't want this to get reassurance-y but, in essence.. I came to the realisation recently that people who I'd been "friends" (feels like the wrong term now) when I was younger were not very nice people, and normalized a lot of very unpleasant behaviour towards other members of the group. They really normalized it, sold themselves as figures of authority, as older and more responsible and grown-up than others, and looking back, they acted horribly. And coming to this realisation, that I'd been manipulated into just accepting their behaviour has just... broken me. My OCD has latched onto it and I can't stop feeling irreversibly tainted by it. I've talked to others about it, and they've reassured me, told me it's not a big deal and that I hold myself to too high a standard, but none of that sticks. I feel better for a bit, then think 'Maybe when you told them you were skewing it to make yourself look better' or 'Did you leave out a crucial detail'. I keep ruminating over and over, trying to remember exactly how everything played out, trying to figure out if I fed into the behaviour, if I did something bad myself (because y'know, I feel like I was accepting of it at the time, so what does it say about my own values?). I know I need to stop doing all this if I want to improve, but then some part of me keeps saying 'So, you're just going to let yourself off the hook then?' Normally, I can rationalize my own fears to some degree, assure myself something won't happen, but the realness of the situation, and the fact I only came to understand the reality of it because the thought had been bothering me means it feels so much more all-encompassing. I know confessing in itself is a compulsion, but I keep feeling that if I'm not I'm somehow concealing what I 'really am' from others around me, and any positive interactions are me deceiving them in some way. I feel like I can't enjoy anything in life right now, and a good part of me feels I should not enjoy it ever again. If anybody has any advice on it, I'm all ears. Or even hearing if you relate to these feelings, I might appreciate the solidarity at least.
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