How do you get past the trauma of your first big OCD episode? Mines happened three months ago at home. I vividly remember that day. Everything was going normal until the afternoon when an old video triggered the intrusive thought about “what if I harm my mom.” I remember the tremendous fear that I felt in that moment. Even writing about this now is hard I feel my chest tightening. That month was really hard for the first time in my life I felt like my life had no purpose. I had no idea how I was going to get through the day let alone the week and the rest of my life. That was the moment I hit rock bottom. Now that I am in therapy I have had my fair share of wins and defeats. Most of the times I let this fear of returning to the place I was a couple months ago consume me pulling my back into episodes of depression. I hate always feeling scared and having these intrusive thoughts and feeling out of my body and not recognizing myself in the mirror. It’s hard because I feel disgust about myself. Like I’m my own worst enemy. With the holidays around the corner I’m scared to go back home. I feel sadness because my roommates cannot stop expressing their excitement about going back home yet I’m sitting here in anxiety reminiscing on the fact that I’m might hit rock bottom again. I want to feel Ike myself and be excited about seeing my parent instead of being scared of not only getting these thoughts but the strong emotions that I felt. One of the current themes that I have is the idea of being or going crazy and suicidal OCD. My suicidal OCD makes me feel like it will be to hard to handle and I might do something to harm myself although I don’t want to. I just want advice because I miss my parent but scared cause, I don’t trust myself to be physically and emotionally ready to because I miss myself I grief who I was as a friend, sister, and daughter. I want to stop feeling out of my body and overall terrified .

I’ve recently been struggling a lot with OCD. I have had OCD for a long time I just didn’t realize it until more recently. About seven months ago I developed panic attacks one day randomly at work. I thought I was having a heart attack and went to the hospital where they told me it was just a panic attack and I assumed I would snap out and be better within a few days. However it didn’t. Here’s where it gets scary, I was staying at my then boyfriends house while dealing with blurry vision, anxiety attacks everyday, and more (unsure of what was going on). But at some point I saw my bfs (pew pew 🔫) on his table and it sent me into an anxiety attack after sudden thoughts that I was going to hurt myself with it. I begged him to put it away when I’m not looking so I didn’t know where he put it. He did. These thoughts lasted for about four days but began to go away. (I thought that was it and I would be back to normal). Unfortunately though I ended up moving back in with my family when we couldn’t get my panic attacks under control in time for me to get back to work and pay bills. However, coming home brought up a lot of trauma from when I was kid. My anxiety got worse but I didn’t have those thoughts again. About two and half months ago though, I got sick and went to the hospital where they gave me steroid pills and a steroid shot but sent me into some kind of psychiatric event. Ever since then though, I have been suffering from harm OCD, I have had moments of intense anger that I usually have to completely walk away and go on my own because of how intense they are, and it feels like it’s getting worse. Today I felt fine until about and hour and half ago where I started to dwell on the fact that my suicidal thought was influenced by my OCD and at the moment my OCD is at the worst it’s been. This caused me to get suddenly really depressed and I started crying thinking about how I can’t handle this. I then saw a post talking about how suicide rates are high for people with this form of OCD and it made me question if I am mentally strong enough to pull through this. I fear that at times I’m getting worse. I have good days but I have a lot of bad days. Unfortunately this sent me into such a bad panic attack I went over to my nanas crying about how I can’t deal with this. I took a 0.25 mg Xanax which helped calm down the panic attack portion of it but my brain is still uncomfortably active. I guess I just need hope. I’m so saddened by this. It’s like my life took a total 360 in 10 months and got even worse since the steroid shot. Idk what to do about it. I can’t stop the spiral. I talk to two different therapist weekly and start more next week, making it 5 times a week. I feel no improvements…

(Long read) hello everyone. i was out of the country for about 3-4 months and traveling. my ocd was not that bad at all and I was able to handle it even if it came up. on my way back home, it immediately started. i have learned how to handle it better, but i am more sad and just “awaiting” for something bad to happen. for example, i have sexual themed ocd. pocd and family related stuff, and also my ocd targeted my pets for about a year and it manifested into compulsions that disturbed me and made me not want to be around my cats. now that i am around my cats, i feel like “what if i harm them or do something bad?” or “what if you do those weird compulsions that happened before?” , when i look back on the compulsions that happened, it doesn’t feel like me and it was clearly driven by ocd, but it makes me worry i am just a sick person. i know myself and i know im not, but i had such a weird childhood and then ocd from 15 years old and up. so when these weird compulsions had happened , whether it was for the pet ocd theme or pocd or the family ocd, it feels like some sort of proof. anyways, i feel a bit for content with myself but i know how real ocd can feel and i just remember feeling so hopeless and suici da l, i just don’t want to go through that again. i take a more spiritual route of life and healing, and i wonder if anyone has some deep spiritual warmups or practices i could do to maybe open up my mind more? maybe to realize this is all in the mind? but also to not fight it… Not fight it meaning not let it take over my life. i racked up so much debt in therapy and i truly think i can get through this alone i just need a bit of help. but i dunno. any advice would help! thanks everyone ☀️

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 ❤️