- Date posted
- 1y
Help please!
Hey everyone, I’ve not posted on here before so here goes… I might be all over the place so please bear with me but would appreciate your guys help. I’ll do my best to explain everything. Sorry if I go on a bit here. I’ve always had quirks since I was a kid such as having to step on grates in the floor, counting things and asking people to repeat themselves. I’ve just always lived with it and never thought much of it or paid much attention to it I guess and then COVID happened… I ended up with far too much time on my hands and nowhere to go which drove me crazy. I couldn’t stand it and had no escape as such. I really struggled and sought professional help for what I thought was anxiety. I ended up on Sertraline tablets and had counselling. I’m not so sure the counselling helped but I think that might be because we were classing it as anxiety. In the mean time, I’ve done a bit of research in my spare time and came across OCD. As soon as I looked in to it, things made a lot more sense. It just seemed “me.” The reassurance, the making people repeat themselves, asking the same question, going round in circles in my head and never being happy with the answer I got so I “had to ask again.” It really just started to make sense to me and I kind of understood what was “wrong” with me and I guess I got a bit of peace from that. I came off my tablets about a year ago as I thought I was better until recently. The past week or so, maybe two weeks, I’ve really gone backwards and it’s almost debilitating for me again. I think the fact I’ve done this before and remember how awful it was last time makes this time even worse because I thought I’d beaten this, naive maybe? How my OCD tends to work is I get fixated on one thing/question and it runs around in my head repeatedly. I might get the reassurance once, I won’t be happy with that, it doesn’t seem to go in so I have to ask again and the cycle continues. It’s also sneaky as OCD generally is and I’ll find different ways of asking etc. I always tell myself the next time I ask will be the last time but for some reason, it doesn’t click and I have to ask again. It’s making me unhappy, I’m sat at home with it going round in my head. I can’t focus on spending time with my family or my children as it consumes me so I take myself off to the bedroom to be alone. I’m scared of ruining Christmas for the kids because of it. I’m a grown man but I’m getting upset over all of this. I feel like my heart is beating out of my chest as I’m getting that worked up from all of this and panicking so I end up in floods of tears just not able to handle this. I take the small wins such as finding this subreddit and there is more online than I thought about this so I’m glad I’m not alone but I do feel like “my OCD” is on it’s own. I don’t find many that are obsessed on these small things that I get fixated on so that makes me feel stupid as well, like my OCD isn’t relevant if you get me? What seemed to trigger me this time around is something that happened at work. The problem is I now feel like that person has the “answers”, is the key to my happiness (awful feeling) and I’m holding some kind of disdain for that person as I feel I need reassurance from them. Can anyone please help me at all or give me some advice? I’d greatly appreciate it. Have a nice Christmas guys, thanks for reading. :)