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working to conquer OCD
TW. Also long post ahead . I’ve been dealing with OCD for the past 10 years. I’m 32 years old . I didn’t get diagnosed with OCD until this year. I was always diagnosed with GAD, panic disorder, and depression. I don’t have your typical compulsions. Mine are mostly all mental. Reassurance seeking, avoidance , repeating a prayer , etc . I have three main themes . Schizophrenia OCD, sexual orientation OCD, and HIV. Sometimes i deal with harm OCD and POCD but my main big three are the ones I listed first . I feel like the schizophrenic OCD is the most debilitating for me. For the last ten years I’ve been thinking I’m losing my mind . I thought once I got to a certain age the fear would go away but it hasn’t and is in full force . I’m constantly checking my surroundings, what I’m hearing, how I’m acting , questioning if things are real and so on . Now I do have times where this theme doesn’t bother me . It’s put on the back burner . I go through cycles . But when I’m focusing on this theme I feel like I’m hearing stuff . Most of the time I can’t make it out but recently I feel like I’ve been hearing a whisper saying “hey” . It mainly happens at night . It sends me into a complete panic and I feel like “this is it “ I’m seeing an OCD therapist and she recommended me to go to this psychiatric place in town to get meds to help my anxiety from the OCD. My last psychiatrist always pushed the newest medicine and was constantly changing up my regimen. I thought I would give it a try. WORST IDEA EVER . Keep in mind my therapist gave me a letter to give to her explaining I have been diagnosed with OCD and explaining it . She doesn't think I have OCD at all. She wanted to put me on an antipsychotic so me with my OCD brain . I asked her if she thought I was psychotic . She said I was nearing psychosis . She called me interesting . She feels like I have major depressive disorder . I'm just at a loss for words. It was honestly the strangest meeting I have had with a psychiatrist. It was very unprofessional. She has no idea the damage she has done nor do I think she cares. I just don't know what to Believe in anymore ... We met for approximately 45 minutes . First time ever meeting. I just want to cry and I’m freaking out 😢
So 🧍♀️ lately my eyes have been feeling tired like i just feel like shutting them and sleeping- and they get strained very easily 😭😭 this all started last Thursday when i was at robotics and i had to wear safety glasses but they were all scratched up and smudged and i wore them for 2 hours straight no breaks and i was focused so i didnt blink much- so after that my eyes constantly keep wanting to shut and they feel dry and overworked- but ofc- i had to google 💀 and now my ocd is convincing me that this means i have an underlying neurological disorder 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 PEODISKSJSJS IM SCARED I BOOKED AN EYE APPOINTMENT BUT IM TERRIFIED AND ANXIOUS
Since two days ago, I’ve had this new theme spiraling in my head. I have two cats and I recently just had a fear of getting r*bies (I’m scared to type it). It’s stupid, I know. I haven’t been scratched, bitten or anything of that sort, but I’m terrified that I could get it or that I have it, even though nothing happened. My cats are indoor, and we they are two years old, we are going to get them their shots soon (they had been up to date when we got them, but it’s been about a year). There’s no animals or anything and we don’t let them outside but there’s still that ‘what if.’ I don’t want to touch my cats and I’ve been monitoring myself every second I can. I wash my hands a lot more and I have such extreme anxiety and sensations that I can’t sleep at night (which worsens my anxiety because that’s a symptom of it.) please if anyone can help me or has gone through this, how can I calm down from this?😖😖
I really just need to vent. I recently had a relapse and while some days it seems like I’m feeling better, others are so difficult. Today, I’m breaking down at work in the bathroom and I feel so awful about that. Aside from the really scary thoughts I’m having about my health and my family members, I’m starting to feel really hopeless about the future. Like I’m never going to get better and that I’m going to get stuck in this ocd cycle forever. I know that’s not true because I’ve been able to make progress before, but the desperation and frustration that comes with a relapse make it so hard to remember that. I started medication and it’s only been about 3 days but I’m really scared that it’s not going to work or that I’m going to have to go through a lot of trial and error. I just really need to hear from people who have worked through their health ocd. I need hope.
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Everyone I knew with anxiety seemed to be so different from me. I have never just had anxiety out of nowhere. There is always a specific fear behind it, no matter how irrational.
By Erika
Read my Health and Contamination OCD story →My health concern OCD has been getting A LOT worse in the last days. I'm always panicking about having some serious illness, and I have yet again come to the point where I can't understand if I feel actually unwell or if it's just my mind. I'm under a lot of stress these days, I have some big changes coming up, and I know this is my way of coping, but it's tiring
Hello everyone, I have OCD and anxiety. Last medicines side effects was horrible for me and unfortunately I am not on meds now. 3 days ago I notoce vein was pulsing in my right hand palm. I measured my BP and it was 140/80. I am 32 years old women. Yesterday morning was the same, today is the same numbers too. What can I do? I am very afraid of hert attack 😭 Is this blood pressure coused by my anxiety?
soo im 17 , and im on 100 mg of Zoloft. And I’m just kind of thinking am I gonna be on this medicine forever, is this medicine going to mess up my brain, or like the development of my brain it’s really messing with me.
I’ve been feeling really really depressed the past few days due to health concerns. I’ve been really feeling down like not wanting to be here anymore and it’s scaring me. I was in the doctor’s office this morning and I got a scary thought that said maybe I should just k*ll someone in here instead of k*lling myself. Then the thoughts continued… this man walked past and I thought “hurt him” I obviously wouldn’t want to hurt anyone let alone a bug on the sidewalk, but the thoughts began to overtake me and I had a panic attack. It’s still bothering me and I’m still scared it’s real and that I’m going crazy. This happens to me a lot after I watch a documentary about someone who hurt someone else. I begin to think I am somehow going to go crazy like the person in the documentary and hurt someone. Although I don’t want to .. I would never ever want to hurt anyone.
I was looking into stuff for my friend who apparently has no internal monologue or capability to imagine images which is amazing but I can't imagine a life with that. I knew someone years that also couldn't imagine images a few years back and asked her what would happen if they took psychedelics. It turns out they've been using something called psilocybin to tackle a range of disorders like the ones mentioned above, ptsd and ocd with some positive results. I feel as if it might untangle some stuff in our minds in order to see more clearly. The hallucinations of the psychedelics may purely be our brain reorganising itself. Thought it was interesting
I feel like I wanna throw up I feel shivers It feels like you’re going to be sick I can’t sleep at all I stayed up all night because of this (not the first time) I physically feel sick
For anyone taking this ssri what is your dosage, when do u normally take it (concern about weight gain, flat emotion, sexual side effect as I’m in a relationship). Any advice would help everyone here with ocd would like to know doses and what time of day you take and if you have experience improvements or side effects. I just started today on 10mg but would want to increase and stay at 20mg if it works out. Today been feeling sad but I think that’s more bc of something that happen (found someonelied about something from past) so I think it’s more that than side effect other than that nothing I ended taking at 3 PM. Since my bf works 3pm- 1 am so maybe I experience any side effects during this time and not before or after. Again not sure how this works thank you
Hello, I wanted to reach out and see if anyone else is dealing with OCD pertaining to health? Every day I'm having a new diagnosis for myself and constantly monitoring different sensations in my body. I feel a compulsion to also constantly check my body for lumps, bumps, etc. The saddest part of all is that it's also something I encounter with my kids. I'm constantly in a state of flight or fight waiting for something to happen
I usually always watch my drink or leave it around a close friend, but about a week ago, I had to do something urgent & took my eyes off of my drink for a long time. Somebody who I’m not sure if they like me was around it & then as soon as I finished what I was doing they left off & when they came back they were looking in my direction. I started to toss it altogether, but I took a sip & thought it didn’t taste the same but it could just be OCD. It’s been a week but I still feel uneasy worried my drink was tampered with or that there was some type of undetected poison. Even when I’m doing good, I wonder back to it & it makes me anxious. How do I move past it?
I’ve been vaping for about three years now. I’ve tried to quit multiple times but with the people around me, also do, and it makes it difficult to stop buying it and or hitting it. My OCD is based off obsessive thoughts on my health and worrying about natural bodily feelings. Twitches, random pains throughout my body, scare me and make me feel like I can’t control my thoughts. When I vape, i’ve heard about lungs collapsing and I worry about it. I want to stop, but can’t seem to. If I have a headache I worry about a brain tumor, when there are many reasons I could have one. When I mess up a sentence I worry about a stroke, and check my face to see if it’s even. I worry about cancer on a regular basis, a small pain or lymph node swollen, i convince myself it’s cancer. I go to the doctor often because of this. It’s scary, that there is a possibility it could happen. I hate this.
When my intrusive thoughts get bad and I try my hardest to push them out it feels like I’m physically straining my head, like it legitimately hurts really bad and I feel like I get dizzy and can’t think and I can’t stop focusing and then my ocd causes me to think that there’s something wrong with my brain and that I need surgery or to be lobotomized or something crazy like that, does this happen to anyone else?
So I started using tampons but I don’t know how to insert right yesterday I was wearing one and it felt super uncomfortable so I took it off like 2 hours later and today I did it again and but took it off by the like the 5 minutes or 10 max because I seen that if you wear it wrong you could get TSS and I took it off and now I’m worrying because I seen that you could get TSS from taking out dry tampons so from that I was so worried and stressing I always take Magnesuim glycinate at night 400mg and today thinking I was gonna take another one I don’t know why I took that one I took it again at 12 pm and last night I took it like at 10pm now I’m scared something is gonna happen to me or I’m gonna die or od of it which it’s possible and I’m feeling cramps from the Magnesuim but I’m also on my period which makes it 10x worst ugh I’m very stressed I don’t know what to even worry about because I know you could also get cramps for TSS and back pain and I’m getting it ugh guys idk what to do I’m so overwhelmed
Hey everyone so I’m a college student and since my sisters birthday is this weekend I decided to go home for 3 days but I just realized right now that I forgot to pack my Zoloft and since yesterday I had a cold and was taking a bunch of cold medication I felt weird about taking my meds so I didn’t take my meds yesterday. I’m freaking out right now because I’ve never gone through withdrawals or anything but unless I cut my stay short that’s 3 days I’m going without medication.has anyone ever been in a similar situation or is there anything helpful I could do or even just some words to calm me down would be so helpful thank you 🙏🙏
So anxiety wise I had been doing so well. I wasn’t as bad as I had been in the past. My ocd stems from the fear of going crazy or developing schizophrenia. About 2 weeks ago I had something odd happen where I woke up and was getting ready for work and I had been seeing this zig zag thing in my eyes and then I couldn’t talk or type anything everything was jumbled. My boyfriend realized and I was able to tell him we need to go to the hospital. In the car on the way to the hospital I started feeling tingling in my right arm that spread to my fingertips. The whole time this has been happening I have a headache that I would score 2/10 nothing crazy. At the time I wasn’t sure if I had insurance or not but was under the impression I didn’t because I had just quit my part time job and was working PRN, I got stroke alerted at the hospital and they did a CTA and EKG and everything came back negative. The doctors told me they recommended an MRI to rule out a TIA but they didn’t think that it was one due to my age etc. due to the fact that I thought I didn’t have insurance I turned it down. The following day I was able to get my PCP to order me one and figured out my insurance situation and got the MRI done which also came back negative. My anxiety now is that what if I did have a TIA (mini stroke) and it’s just not showing on a scan because they self resolve so sometimes they don’t show up. What is worrying me is I’m not taking anything because they don’t think it was a TIA and they believe it was a complex migraine. I’m so anxious all the time hyper aware of every symptom I have. It’s been almost 2 weeks and I’m just so scared all the time.
So recently I made a post about having the theme of fear of psychosis and schizophrenia which has led to the fear of not getting sleep and being scared I’ll go crazy and start hallucinating from the lack of sleep. Last night I was able to sleep some hours after not being able to properly sleep for 4 nights (like I actually dreamt) but of course when I woke up I got the the thought “what if you didn’t sleep and you think you did” “what if you’re just hallucinating it” it made me instantly sick to my stomach! Of course I know I slept but these thoughts just get crazier everyday making me feel like I’m actually crazy. I just want to cry. It’s a constant battle everyday and I’m just so tired. I’ve never had these thoughts before. If anyone has gone through this please tell me what helped you. I miss getting home and looking forward to sleeping not being scared I won’t. And I miss just living my life and not having thoughts questioning if it’s my reality or not. Please I could really use some advice.
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