Hello everyone. This is a summary of my life regarding anxiety and diagnosis.
About 6 years ago I was diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder. It’s just so weird how looking back I did such things that just seemed normal to me. And since then I have been so disgusted by people who use the term OCD for everything. They think it’s just about being extra clean and organized. Oh, how wrong they are! They do not know a bit of what WE suffer. This definitely led me to a delay in realizing that I was having weird thoughts and doing out of the norm things. I just want to thank God and destiny for the supportive people I had and still have in my life in that moment, because if I feel it was so hard struggling with that initially even though I had support from my parents, I cannot imagine what it would have been to go through it completely alone. Even though I have to be totally honest, the only person who knew I was struggling mentally was my mother and my father, but I avoided talking about it, it just felt so… irrational… it was embarrassing to speak about my thoughts.
My obsessions and compulsions have varied a lot throughout time. I began to isolate more in high school up to the point of having 1 friend and then none. My mind was firing with thoughts every second. I remember them getting worse. I remember the cold feeling of uncertainty of WHY was I feeling this way. WHY was I thinking this way. Am I really a bad person!? Have I gone mad?! I was so unhappy.
I started collage and it just became worse. Fast forwarding, I went to therapy, didn’t really help. My thoughts shifted to be more of “If I touch this, my mom will die”, or “If I take more than 3 steps to get to this side of the room it means I will fail my exams even though I know I studied hard”. I WAS MISERABLE!
Anyways, so I have used an SSRI for the past 6 years. I have not received the adequate therapy. Has anyone tried ERP (exposure response prevention) therapy? I am thinking of trying that out. Let me know what has helped you as an OCD patient, please.
also… it’s so weird not knowing anyone (like knowing them in person) who feels the way I do, who struggles with OCD. No one surrounding me suffers from OCD.
