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i'm going to lose my life one day to this illness i never asked for. it could've been beautiful.

Hey everyone, I hope you are all doing well . I am not sadly. Idk what to do at this point in my life and it’s really scary. My family seems to not get it really but idk how to explain what I’m going through . So basically I had an uncle and I have many cousins with schizophrenia. All of them don’t take meds and have went off the grid with my family or have passed . I am so unbelievably scared of getting it that I can’t live my life without being scared everyday. I have had so many thoughts and dreams and a lot of come true(no joke) and I’m like oh shit that means I’m delusional and I’m having delusional thoughts and now it’s taking over my dreams and it just doesn’t make sense to me. I am very scattered brain 24:7 I feel I can’t talk or speak right, I keep going through not feeling real or right and I’ll be talking to my family and my brain will be like “ what if this is a hallucination and you’re talking to yourself”. I’m EXHAUSTED to the max and most I’ve ever been. Idk what’s going on with me. I’ve also always been a superstitious person because weird shit was always happening or strangely a “coincidence” that even my family would be like wtf is going on with that. And I never understood it as a child, but I’m so so so sooo scared bc of that and what I deal with now that I’m developing it. And I need help.

I am uncertain where to start, as I’ve only self-diagnosed myself with having OCD tendencies. I can look back into my childhood, adolescence, young adulthood and now, and I see pockets of when OCD was alive and well. I have been learning about somatic healing the last few years because I’ve been wanting to connect with my body to understand. I want to feel more grounded. During this process of wellness, I’ve learned that I have OCD and ADHD qualities that I’ve lived with my entire life. Could that be true? Was I good at hiding it all, or making it appear as part of my personality? Was I masking? I think that’s a term that’s used these days. Here’s a story that involves what may be OCD. My sister and I, aged 14 and 16 at the time, just took our first flight together to visit our aunt and uncle in Seattle. While there, intrusive thoughts kept popping into my head that something was going to happen to my dad. Where were these thoughts randomly come from? Was I thinking them, did they magically appear, was it my intuition? It was an unsettling feeling and I had frequent thoughts that my dad was going to die. At that time, my life felt so beautiful. It felt so full of love and happiness. I loved my family. I had my very first boyfriend. It was summertime and as I was taking a walk down the ocean shore, I wondered if life is supposed to feel that happy. I just genuinely felt full of light and love and all the good stuff. And thoughts kept coming about what I could possibly learn in this lifetime if I haven’t experienced pain. Why was I having such an existential crisis at age 14, on a summer vacation with my sister? It was just two days later when we tried calling our dad and he wasn’t answering. I had a gut feeling that something happened. It wasn’t until my dad’s sister answered my home phone that I knew. My sister and I held hands and collapsed to the floor in pure shock. My dad died of a heart attack. It was such a blur of a time, as my developing brain couldn’t process it at all. Anyway, fast forward to me being 36 years old, I still fear that my thoughts could have caused his death. It plays in my head when I get to thinking about that summer vacation. So now, as a mother of three beautiful children, I get intrusive thoughts and worries about anything happening to them. My heart starts to race, my eyes fill up with tears and I just can’t imagine it. Is it OCD? Is the fear causing these OCD thoughts? I have nightmares sometimes of these terrible things happening to my loved ones. I guess what I’m asking is, could this be OCD. What type of OCD? I also have this repetitive string of things I say in my head when I get intrusive worries. It’s along the lines of “God please protect my loved ones. Keep them safe. Surround them with love, protection, health.” And the ADHD symptoms are a whole other part of my life. I have felt this thing inside of me forever thinking something is wrong with me, not knowing what. But seeing peers living their lives so freely and doing things that feel harder for me have left me feeling crippled. And nobody would know this about me. If you saw me from the outside you’d think I have it all together- a husband, three kids, etc. But truly I have felt so alone and unable to fully live at my core. And I just need to know why or what or how. I just want answers so I can truly heal.

people here say that their ocd isn’t completely gone but it’s not ruling them and it’s in the back of their mind still but not ruling them. but i don’t want it on the back of my mind. i want clarity about what i believe and who i am again. i don’t want a shred of doubt. i want to be freed. i feel like this is impossible.. like the ocd doubts are apart of me now.. i don’t understand why this happened to me.

I’m literally shaking panicking that I’m paychosis, sometimes I feel so weird very weird feeling and ugh I know it’s ocd but I’m scared of not remembering who my husband is or like acting crazy or having to go to a mental hospital like I don’t want that and like psychosis and ocd have very similar symptoms. I was diagnosed with OCD but I’m scared I have that and I don’t want to I’m like ugh sometimes I feel so out of myself I wake up feeling weird I feel very weird symptoms in my body I wanna be fucking normal I thought I was okay but ugh I feel so horrible right now and it also doesn’t help that I’m on my period but I just saw the word psychosis and decided to search it up and now I’m scared I have it.

it’s always like this. I get to talk to someone, we chat, then stop chatting or get very slow replies. but I can’t complain when I said that if I don’t reply, I’m busy or dealing with stuff. everyone has their life & no one is obligated to reply to me. I have learned that I really am just alone. I don’t want to force anyone or be obsessed. this goes for online friends. I only have 4. but they haven’t replied to me in days/weeks/months maybe. honestly, this has helped me not becoming dependent and wait for a reply like I used to. I would go on worrying for a while if someone wouldn’t reply for a certain time. I wouldn’t tell them ofc but I would become anxious. as for real life, I guess I can say 1. maybe 2 but one of them was a friend from elementary and we only met up once after sophomore year of high school. we’re now in college (actually, she graduated already) & have met up with her that day. we updated each other on our lives. it was nice, but I don’t think it was the same ‘best friend’ friendship we had as kids/teens. we don’t talk anymore. (only if I view her stories on instagram and say something) the other one I could say is half online/half real life. I met him online and we met irl a month in. he’s a good guy and honestly the first person that I like as a friend. someone I can trust, I guess. not fully, but definitely can be a lot of myself around. he’s been busy with life as well. he’s not obligated to reply to me. this one, I rlly like talking to but again, life happens. so I stopped being ‘excited’ for a response. in the end, it’s just me. my pain and myself. if I can’t make any friends irl (or maybe new friends online)(don’t get me wrong, I like the 4 online friends I have. they’re dear to me. they are just busy) at the end of this year during school, I will just give up. I tried before in my previous semester but it never happened. I am just going to accept my solitude. all I want now is either to not be here (sometimes), get a bike and ride by myself, or I don’t know. I don’t find anything appealing at the moment. sometimes there will be a spark but it goes out quickly. I genuinely do not see a happy life in the future. even after I told my dad of a ‘plan’ I had to retire early and keep learning in college to feed my curiosity, I just think maybe I’m not fit for living. I’m just tired. I try. I don’t find joy in many things anymore. it’s just not interesting. I just want to crawl up in my bed (as I am now) and move to a different place. I just want peace. will it be death that I find peace? or maybe living by a lake? who knows. life needs to let me rest.

Hi guys, how are you doing? So in the last months I’ve been feeling really great, coping and doing well. But my husband started traveling every week for work, he’s gone for 3 days each week. It was the trigger to the most unwanted scary thoughts and my anxiety is sky high. The thoughts I have are really bizarre and they scare me so much. For example “what if life isn’t real and everything is just inside my head/brain and I am completely alone? And thinking this thought makes me feel psychotic because no one normal thinks things like that. It is the dread of being utterly alone, disconnected from reality and others, leading to a profound sense of isolation. And the thing is: everything is doing ok and even very good on my circumstances. I fear losing my grip on reality, fear of being trapped in in my own mind, without escape. I question the meaning of life and if I am a threat to others by thinking like that, or that I won’t be able to take care of my life and responsibilities (my work, my marriage and my dog). I really feel hopeless, so I’ve just been panicking 💔

TW for mental health issues, death, ptsd, ED i guess ill just start off by saying that i have struggled since i was young with severe anxiety and panic attacks since i was about five but an onslaught of CPTSD worsened a lot of things for me. i developed an eating disorder in my teens and was hospitalized for it. i’ve been in and out of therapy since i was ten and while i do my best without medication to live my life to the fullest, i often feel like i don’t deserve the successes and support i’ve received in the last few years b/c i feel like i don’t deserve to be happy at all. i saw a video recently of a girl talking about her obsessive hypochondriac thoughts that i resonated with and when i read the comments, a lot of people pointed out that it might be ocd. it hasn’t ever been a thought that crossed my mind and now im wondering if im twisting that video into some sort of self diagnosis for myself. im wondering if it’s just my high anxiety that’s causing these severely intrusive thoughts. for example, i have had a really hard time sleeping recently because the thought that i or my partner might die in my sleep keeps me up. if i have an aneurysm or a heart attack in the middle of the night and die, or worse, if my partner has an aneurysm or heart attack, is it because i don’t deserve to be happy with him? i don’t deserve a wonderful relationship? another thought i have is when i drive with us both in the car, im going to crash and severely injure both of us or kill us both. i have never once crashed my car or gotten into an accident btw, but for some reason i just get this extremely morbid thought that im going to crash and it’ll be the end. i had a weirdly spiritual experience/revelation in 2020/21 about the multiverse and i keep thinking that every night i actually die or that i get into accidents or something morbid happens and im somehow timeline jumping and going to a different multiverse and that’s been my odd way of coping with these thoughts. i guess im just trying to figure out if this is even remotely similar to OCD or if im just over analyzing it bc of my anxiety/hypochondria i guess?? i dont know i just want help. if this isn’t OCD, please tell me and i will delete this post and app and ill sincerely apologize to everyone who actually suffers. 🙏

Hi everyone, I’m currently on vacation and dealing with a relapse in symptoms. This started a couple of days before leaving, and it’s super frustrating to still be experiencing it. More so of “existential” OCD, and it’s really making it hard for me to enjoy things. I’m so upset because I had a few months of minimal ocd, but now this uptick in symptoms really is throwing me off and making me feel defeated. I’m trying my best to push through and not engage with the thinking, but at times it’s so hard. I feel like I’m back at square one which is terrifying. If anyone has any insight or support, please feel free to share. Thank you!

Hey everyone. My mental health journey started last year when I developed OCD which I believe started in childhood. I have suicidal ocd with some relationship and existential mixed in. Last night I experienced my last bad panic attack due to derealization. I don’t have depression- I want to be here. But I’m so so tired of dealing with this. I’m scared that I’m “too far gone”. I don’t want to give up. I start IOP next week. Is there hope for me? need some positive thoughts

i wake up constantly in the middle of the night, and i just woke up and i feel so weird i genuinely can’t explain the feeling. i feel like im still sleeping and dreaming and that nobody will be able to see me or hear me, i feel like ive completely lost myself like i am not me and that im in someone else’s brain/body. i feel like nothing is real, i do experience a lot of dissociating but this doesn’t feel like that. i have thoughts that i leave my body and go to someone else’s, specifically that im my dad because my dad has a lot of mental health issues, and a lot of issues from doing so many drugs in the past, and he’ll go into phases randomly where he goes completely insane and says he hallucinates, he’ll say/do random stuff that doesn’t make sense to anyone else but to him he’s making perfect sense and i am terrified ill end up like him. or that i am him and ik this sounds so crazy. i feel like this isn’t even ocd anymore, it’s so exhausting and it’s a new feeling everyday that’s even scarier. all i can do is cry and sit here because i am genuinely so tired of this, i don’t even see a point anymore. i feel like ill never live a normal life ever, i can’t make friends, i have no friends to me honest, i can’t even feel close to my boyfriend because of all this, i don’t feel close to my family either. i don’t know what to do anymore but i am so tired of this.

man idk I have been suffering all summer I have been getting really bad thoughts about the TRIGGER WARNING devil and God and how I don't believe in it but the thoughts are so bad. I just hate them. I also don't feel like I could go to heaven when I think like this and all I keep doing is worrying and worrying about the people I love. I'm so terrified of the thoughts I keep getting and everytime I pray to god somethings always interrupts my prayer. its like what should I do then? also I feel ugly and fat because I have been eating a lot and I normally starve but this summer my family has been making so much good food that I have just been eating and now I have a belly bump that makes me feel super fat and ugly also I gained a lot of face fat. I also keep feeling useless cause I just play games all day but idk what I should be doing because I cant find a job (I'm not a adult btw) and I feel like a low life and also nobody wants to hire me idk why but because of that I'm really suffering and very scared to go back to school because my family cant afford to buy me new clothes so I have probably just 1 outfit. I feel like I'm rotting. I feel like its in my head and showing through my body as well. I really just wanna stop these intrusive thoughts aka religious ocd worrying ocd and others. I wanna go back to being like a normal kid with normal thoughts but I cant. also I don't know what this is but everytime I look in the I start freaking out because I start focusing on all the light and weird particles that are in the dark when you close you eyes and I start freaking out because I would feel like they wouldn't go away and if I looked at somebody with those articles I'm still focusing on they could die.

i could be fine one day and then all of a sudden go into this long period that lasts a few days, sometimes even weeks where i feel so disconnected from everyone and everything. i will be talking to my boyfriend and think to myself “ is this really my boyfriend do i even like him “ or i’ll look at my family and be like “ is this really my family “, i feel so out of touch with reality and it is so scary. things look distorted, i feel like i am behind myself 24/7, like i am watching myself through a movie or something. it is so scary and i feel like there’s something wrong with me, and what sucks is i cant even explain what i feel, and i feel extremely alone. my birthday is coming up and i feel like i wont even be able to have fun because i will feel so weird and not present at all, i dont know what to do and i will feel this way out of nowhere. some days its worse than others, idk i feel like im genuinely losing my mind or that im gonna lose my mind and go crazy. is this normal?

Im currently having problems with dealing with my emotions and body symptoms such as stomach problems, nausea, not having appetite, im just stressing myself over it. I never learned how to accept emotions and right now it feels hard to do and i dont feel like its actually helping me to go through this. I accept everything, even that i worry and i feed the emotions sometimes cause its automatic and i have to learn alot but im just there,.it feels like im letting myself go on to the rabbit hole and im not doing anything about it. And if i try i feel worse cause the thoughts gets louder and then im more afraid and the symptoms of stress are higher then if i accept it i sit with that and it gets worse and worse bc of automatic thoughts and judgement(and i cant judge them either cause thats judgement too) or if i want to stop doing it i start to repress the experience... Im okay with feeling sadness, im okay with grief, but the stress the nausea the dizzyness,stomach issues, feeding the fear and panic makes it worse, and i dont know how acceptance works... I understand that i accept the feelings that comes up but the automatic judgementd come too bc of past experience, but i still have to accept that too and theres the problem cause i dont see the progress there its either i accept it and it keeps feeding or i accept it but i dont want to feed it or think about it which then makes it a fight and it makes it worse... For me how it seems like its that acceptance would seem like accept i how i feel, everything i feel, that i might get hospitalize cause i cant handle it, that i might turn really bad, that i might put me in bed cause i will be so sick and mentally off, and just be okay with it, but thats doesnt help for me, its accepting catastrophizing thoughts just makes me depressed... I know i wont figure it out all at once, it will be time, but i struggle with acceptance and what to do then which doesnt helps me move. I understand i accept whatever i feel but then what? The automatic judgements comes which makes the experience worse, and whoever was in this situation knows that the judgements has more judgments in them so its a never ending pain. Theres the problem, what to do then? You cant fight the judgements cause it just make it worse. People say acceptance its not giving up, but i do feel like its that what they telling me cause letting all these things be and just be there its sounds giving up for me, I give my fate to the experience i have, its no more what i can do, its where these things will lead me. I dont know how to face this cause i either drown in the pain or i try to fight with it. And many times i feel guilt cause im not actually deal with grief, im not feeling sad over the thing i lost, im being worked up by the experience i have and the fear i have... I know i need time and i wont figure out everything but i need help in this to move forward. Whoever read it all thank you for your time. The remaining months in this year will be about grief...

Please, does anyone fall into this bucket? What works for you? How are you moving forward? It’s been over 10 years since my diagnosis and I’ve seen over a dozen providers. I’ve tried ERP, ACT, TMS, several Rxs, even started I-CBT. I’ve attended an intensive outpatient program and local support group. I even saw an OCD specialist who turned me away because no one else has been able to help me and he doesn’t see what more he could try. I’m feeling very discouraged. I try to follow general self help books too, but I get so frustrated because they don’t consider people with disabilities. I’ve also tried stoicism and turning to religion. It feels hopeless. What kind of life am I supposed to lead? Of course no one can solve my specific set of circumstances but if someone out there is in a similar position I’d like to hear about your journey. I’ve abandoned my career, my degrees, my dreams. I don’t know what comes next. P.s. I don’t meant to discourage anyone who is new or starting out on their OCD journey. I know it sucks, but please continue to seek healing. ❤️‍🩹 you are worth it.

Does anyone had or have the existential fear of our brain functions. I have so much hyperawareness in my thoughts, I focus all the time in my feelings and my intentions in order to check if I am strange or not and if I have control of my actions. I do psychotherapy 4 years and I thought I was fine. But this June I had a derealization episode(or ocd) , after that a depersonalization episode (or ocd) and after that I have obsessions about our existence and that every aspect in our lives has to do with our brain and for some reason these thoughts scary me. I know that at some point is ocd but I am very confused why this thoughts scary me so much. I observe others and I am curious how it's possible not to think about that and this make it worse . I am so anxious because obviously we are our brain ,I know that and brain has to do with everything,but I don't know why it make me anxious and if it's possible to live without these thoughts. I do many compulsion but my biggest is to figure out if I have compulsion in order to figure out if my thoughts is ocd or delusions. It's so real and these thoughts really bother me. Any other with same experience?

Is there a point to living anymore

Something I’m really struggling with is the thoughts of having a child. My husband and I got married last year and always planned to have kids. I am currently experiencing an OCD “flare” and I’m wondering how ethical it is for me to have a child knowing I may pass this condition on. Any insight is appreciated!

just venting. tw for SH. too lazy to type everything. genuinely just tired. I don’t want replies. the end is somewhat beginning to be appealing. maybe if I do it, they will care. I’ll be pissed if they do. fuck off, you didn’t know me, you have no right to care if I go. I was always in the background. all of a sudden I will matter for a few moments, and what for? don’t even try to give compliments to who I was. you didn’t know me. it’s a shame I thought of a future. a non realistic one. I only felt comfort in my imaginary world. hopefully there is another life. a better world. I think I will rest now. good night.

for context, i’m not officially diagnosed but i’ve had symptoms since i was around 8 (from what i can remember) and lots of people close to me in my life told me i probably have it too. Anyways, i am at the lowest point i’ve ever been in. It genuinely just gets worse. It doesn’t help that i’m Female cos my monthly hormones make it SO much worse. I have literally no one to go to with my problems because i’m way to scared of their reactions. For weeks i’ve been too scared to do the things i enjoy. For example, listen to the music i like, watch my favourite tv shows and movies, dress in my favourite clothes and use my good makeup. This is because i am TERRIFIED of it being tainted by my thoughts and if they are ill never enjoy them again without thanking about this time. Also, i believe i am not worthy enough to have these pleasures in my life anymore. This has made my life miserable. Most my days revolved around wearing my ‘safe’ clothes and doom scrolling for HOURS because that’s the only thing i deserve to do. I’m so sick of living this way, nothing is fun anymore. im miserable most of the time. I barely sleep and i wake up early almost everyday which makes the shitty day im gonna have even longer. I’m so fucking tired. I have like nothing to live for anymore, i feel like my life is over and i’m only just turned 16. I spend hours reading and ruminating on the internet and various other blogs and pages which doesn’t make it better in the long run, it provides me a little bit of relief until all the anxiety floods back in again. I’m so uterlly and completely lost i dont know what to do anymore. no one knows how i really feel and i see no point in my life at this point. I just want to die and start over or just never have to be here again. Sorry about the long ass rant i just need to get how i feel out here.