Has anyone dealt with a major loss before? Or trauma related to death? I'm a senior in college and I just lost my Grandma a few months ago. It was the first loss I've ever experienced and it came so suddenly. I wasn't able to say goodbye to her either. 2 days after her death I had to go back to school and I just wasn't ready, I was very close with her. Thankfully my friends and teachers are being patient. I was starting to feel better emotionally when this past sunday I watched a freshman die. I was cashier at the school's cafeteria when he fell right outside the window. He was groggy, hardly awake, and could barely move. A police officer came to help and called 911. An ambulance came and checked his pulse and immediately took him inside the ambulance. A few moments later a firetruck came and brought out a Lucas (automatic CPR machine). I didn't know what it was at the time and thought the kid was still alive. Eventually they all left for the hospital. I kept telling students that I'm sure he was okay, and tried to calm down a bunch of people. I had to work after seeing all that. The next day in class my friend got an email that a student died and I knew it was him. I started bawling and left to call my Mom. She talked me through everything and calmed me down. Now I keep thinking about that kid thinking about when he died and if he was still alive when the ambulance got there. Then I see his probably lifeless body being dragged onto the gurnee. This kid who was maybe 17-18 in an unfamiliar place with his family 1,000 miles away. I just hate thinking about it but my OCD is hyper fixated on it. I'm stressed out from school and can't process all of the loss I've experienced. I can't afford therapy right now and am on a waitlist for a free, volunteer based therapy group. Has anyone been through something similar or has any advice??

We still don’t know what happened to her. Young, healthy, vibrant. I have so many thoughts…I want to know what happened to her. She is the one I would go to for times like this. I feel selfish as well. I’ve been seeing her for ten years. I can’t imagine starting over. So many strong OCD issues that she helped me through. I have lost an important person in my life. My heart and prayers go out to her family.

Hello everyone, I hope you are all doing well! I lost my dad yesterday and me having ocd since I was 7, it just skyrocketed. Yesterday it was difficult for sure, but I didn’t have any intrusive thoughts about self harm. It all happened suddenly when I was half asleep (trying to sleep even though it was really hard), were I feel as if a switch turned on in my brain and out of nowhere I started feeling angry. I recognised at that moment that I was not angry but that’s what my brain was telling me. And that’s when I had an intrusive thought of harming my mom came to my mind and immediately after that came the thought of harming myself. And it stuck. I know grief can make these themes pop up, but what if this is all real and not ocd? I’m scared. I acknowledge I don’t have thoughts in my head of planning to harm myself, it’s just a feeling that this is going to happen. Now letting my thoughts out brings me relief, even sometimes this intrusive thoughts bring me relief (that is very scary), but ocd makes me so pessimistic, and that I’m doomed in life and the sad life my dad had will also be mine as well. There are moments where I feel hope and relief, but it doesn’t last for long. As if I’m so so sure that this is going to happen. And me having magical thinking ocd doesn’t help either. Grief is hard, sometimes I cry, other times I laugh with my friends and family, but those moments I laugh is when I get terrified ( I read people who have made up the decision to (you know) are happy and laugh. Anyways, I’ve talked to my mom about it, she’s super supportive of me restarting therapy and even though she’s struggling with grief, she’s always there to listen to me and give me all the comfort I need. But I informed her about the thoughts the moment the popped up. Just so that she knows and can save me because I don’t trust myself at all. Sorry for this huge rumble, but I’d really appreciate your advice. I’m scared and so not ready to start therapy (at one hand I don’t want to, it feels such a chore, but I know I need to get help). I’m very pessimistic at the moment and I feel no one can convince me that I’ll get better. I think my future life, and it brings me this warm nice feeling and then it is followed by the thought that this will never happen. And because I have magical thinking ocd, and my uni exams have just started, I had this feeling that this exam season will be endless and it’s never going to end. Guess what, I’m probably going to just take one exam out of three (my mind is like you see, this thought and feeling came true) and that’s where I get super pessimistic. Okay, I’ll shut up for now, please give me some advice on how you try to manage your thoughts and what to do for now. Take care ❤️

I recently lost my best friend — my grandpa. The night of his death was traumatizing in a way I wasn’t prepared for. I’ve been an ICU nurse for years, surrounded by death and grief, but this time it was different. I was the first to notice how critical he became, and I immediately jumped into action. I didn’t only feel like his granddaughter that night — I became the healthcare family member, the decision-maker, the advocate. That split — nurse and granddaughter — shoved me into overdrive. When his prognosis became clear, I moved into roles I never imagined I’d hold for him: funeral coordinator, palliative care planner, end-of-life advocate. I was doing all the things that needed to be done, and somewhere in that motion my own grief got put on hold. At the funeral I couldn’t cry. I felt sad, angry, exhausted — everything that comes with grief — but the tears didn’t come. My emotions were still “at work,” as if I was waiting for my shift to end. Weeks later the wall came down. I finally cried, and with that release came a deep, heavy depression. Old patterns returned: I’ve always struggled with depression and health anxiety, but after his death a new terror arrived — death anxiety. It felt like a friend had moved in with my old anxieties, and together they made everything louder and harder to bear. A trip my fiancé and I had planned for months became one of the hardest times I’ve had. Instead of rest, each day brought a panic attack. I found myself unable to leave the house and hyper-focused on every tiny body sensation. I started avoiding things that might raise my heart rate — coffee, alcohol, exercise, even sex — out of fear that a normal physical reaction meant catastrophe. I tried to protect myself by avoiding stimulants and activity, but that only deepened the exhaustion and the fear. Even being in another country triggered fear: what if something happened while I was too far away to help? What’s humiliating and humbling all at once is that I know the physiology. I know what is likely and what is not. I can recite the facts, and still my mind takes me to the worst-case. Grief blended with my clinical instincts in a way that kept me from feeling until it couldn’t be contained. Once it broke loose, the waves came — sadness, panic, terror — and I felt like I was drowning at times. And yet — even in the middle of this storm — I am working on myself. I am choosing care. I enrolled in more therapy sessions and I’m showing up to them, even when it feels impossible. I joined a support group specifically for health anxiety and death anxiety and have started to hear other people’s stories that mirror my own; there is comfort in that shared language. I’m practicing small, brave exposures to the things I’ve been avoiding — a short walk, a half-cup of coffee, a moment of gentle movement — and I celebrate each tiny win. I use grounding tools when panic hits, I keep emergency plans in my phone so travel feels safer, and I tell my fiancé when I’m scared so I don’t carry it alone. I am hurting. Some days the grief and fear feel like waves that will swallow me. But there are also signs of change: appointments kept, meetings attended, small steps that prove I can move through this. I am learning patience with myself and permission to grieve on my own timeline. I’m learning that being an ICU nurse doesn’t make me immune to pain — it makes me human in my grief — and being human is allowed. Today I am acknowledging both the hurt and the hope. I am honoring the work I did for my grandpa, and I am also honoring the work I am doing for myself. The drowning feels real at times, but I am actively learning to float, to breathe, and to ask for an oar when I need it.