when I was a child I used to force myself into peoples lives. I used beg for attention from everyone even random strangers. I couldn't tell when I was being rejected and hence constantly acted dramatically. the problem is that I cant tell whether im still like that and I don't know why I do it. its like I have no control over how I act or who i open up to. I open up to people ive just met and I end up feeling worse cos I think theyre laughing behind my back.

I'm a 16 year old girl. I never bit anyone as a kid or anything like that. I have been diagnosed with OCD, Severe Clinical Depression, and a Generalized Anxiety Disorder. I am on medication for those things. But I have been having the urge to bite things lately. It doesn't matter what mood I'm in. I just randomly have the urge to bite things. I mostly bite myself; I could never bite another person. Yes, I have been self-harming for a little over 4 years, so maybe it's just another form of self-harm, but it's getting pretty bad. The bite marks last about a half hour. I've only broken through skin once. What is going on with me..why am I biting all of a sudden...

Hi there!
20 year old girl looking for some guidance.
I have a history of mental health issues but have never been diagnosed with anything. My dad has Tourettes with ocd and my sister has anxiety disorder. We all take prozac for our anxieties though im not diagnosed. I have tendencies toward ocd, Aspergers, anxiety, and eating disorders but do not fit a particular box. Im going to list my obscure quirks based on which issue I think they fit and hopefully someone can help me if they relate or understand!

OCD Tendencies:
I have an intense fear of germs, but only human germs. Im fine with the ocean, dirt, or sand etc as long as I can wash my hands after but I can't touch doorknobs, money, etc without washing my hands IMMEDIATELY. The strange thing is I don't obsess over what these germs will do to me, like I don't think ill get sick or die or anything, I can just "feel" the germ on my hand or body and it drives me crazy until I wash it off. If I touch something really dirty, I have to wash my hands 3 times for the dirty feeling to go away.

When i was about 5 my ocd tendencies started to come out and it manifested in me being afraid of germs and dead things. Dead things WERE dirty to me. I stopped eating meat. I put my favorite toys on a high shelf and refused to play with them because I didnt want to get them dirty. I washed my hands until they’d bleed and i had to wear socks on them. Since spiders killed things, they became the dirtiest thing in the world to me. If a spider touched something, I couldnt touch that thing unless it was washed. My parents got me a “cleaning spray” (which i now suspect was just water) to spray things so i could touch them again. When I was six, a butterfly died in our hallway and got covered in ants. I had to leap over that spot in the hallway because I couldn’t touch it, and I did that until we moved out of that house 2 years later. I had meltdown after meltdown because I found out the seats in my car were made of leather.

I still can’t touch anything if a spider has walked on it. I live in the forest, so they are always in my home. I wear shoes and socks in the house because I can’t touch the floor. If something falls on the ground I either throw it away or have to pick it up with gloves and wash it. I know this is irrational and there is no fear driving it, but if I touch any place a spider has been or if a spider touches me i have to scrub and scrub my body… this is very exhausting.

Because of this I get overwhelmed by small tasks. My dad used to always get mad at me because I would leave the fridge door open when Id take something out of it, until I finally explained that I have to use my shirt to open the door and its very difficult because sometimes I accidentally touch the door and have to wash my hands again...etc. If i drop something on the floor in my house now I usually leave it there because otherwise I’d have to get gloves, pick it up, wash it, then wash my hands.. Etc.

Un-identified Tendencies:
I hate eye contact. It feels so unnatural to me, I usually avoid it unless I know its important (job interview, date, etc) and then I have to purposefully hold my gaze and focus on looking attentive. I often stop paying attention to what people are saying because I’m focusing so hard on looking like I’m paying attention (lol). I hate sitting across from people because eye contact, I always make my boyfriend sit next to me at restaurants.

I have trouble with personal space/boundaries. In lines I always get too close to people without realizing, my boyfriend has to pull me away/remind me to give people space.

If I get excited about something, I talk very very loudly without noticing. I always have to be reminded to stop yelling..

I am super clumsy and awkward. I am ALWAYS bumping into things/dropping things.. Especially in the morning.

My sister and boyfriend recently told me that people often think I am a bitch when they first meet me because of my humor. I have a super blunt/...

[ Continued ]

Hello,

Well for starters I wanted to say that I'm a Seventeen year old girl who has recently been diagnosed with GAD. I have always feared a lot, and would always obsess over a certain thing/thought. I never really thought much of it, but now that I look back, it all makes sense. When I was around Seven years old, my older brother had came home from school one day and told me about germs, he explains how they were all around us. I quickly became obsessed with the thought that I would catch all these germs and catch a deadly illness and die. Every time I touched anything or anyone touched my hand, I would run to the bathroom and wash my hands. I was washing my hands up to 15 times a day and I didn't want to touch anything at all... Well like I said, I never thought much about that.. Until recently during summer break I had nothing better to do, other than watch TV, and everything I saw had to do with murders and people going insane. Well I saw this episode on a Hispanic show about a lady who had some type of Multiple personality disorder, who ended up killing her boss. She took medication for her disorder, but that day she forgot to take it. She didn't realize she had killed her, until the memory of her kept haunting her. She would see her everywhere, and she would speak to her telling her "You did it, you killed me" much later she got the clue that she had committed that murder. Well I quickly became obsessed with the thought of me going insane or sleep walking and doing such thing. I actually started putting things against my door so if I did sleep walk, I wouldn't be able to get through. The thing is there hasn't been a time where I have slept walked. The thoughts used to be much worse, but I've been seeing a therapist since the moment I realized I had a problem, and I've been feeling much better. There's days where I feel completely fine and happy and then there's those other days where I completely panic and feel like my world is falling apart. I would much rather kill myself than to ever hurt anyone in anyway. The thought of doing such thing causes me so much emotional pain, because I know that I wouldn't hurt anyone. Sometimes I cant help but feel so hurt and upset with myself because of those thoughts, that I just want to end my life. I try to talk to the people who I love about this and try to explain it to them, but they don't really seem to understand. They say "Oh everyone has those types of thoughts, just get over it" although, everyone might have those types of thoughts, I cant seem to just "get over it". I basically want to know, is there hope for me? How many others can relate to the way I'm feeling?

Rightio, guys! Welcome to my world! It's great in here, albeit the landscapes may appear a little cerebral and neurotic sometimes. I lead the fine young life of an Irish student. Yes, student life is... well, chaotic. Effective organisation is always precluded by the necessities of student life (i.e. sleeping erratic hours, inconsistently meeting inconsistent deadlines, and an all-round simultaneous lack of planning and spontaneity). I am doing what I love (that's binge-reading on metaphysics and critical theory and writing highfalutin essays on it all), and even if it doesn't make me happy, that's okay, because I'm doing the right thing with my life right now. Clarity helps.

Happiness (whatever it is) is a thoroughly overused term these days. Why on earth should I be happy just because I have everything and my life is pretty darn good?! 'Erm... perhaps because you have everything and your life is pretty darn good...?' This is called circular reasoning, a logical fallacy. In fact, the entire pursuit of happiness in itself is both illogical and pointless. For a fact, nothing makes me happy. Ought I be stricken now by an avalanche of guilt? Not really. It's okay to feel whatever you feel and it is absolutely ridiculous to feel what someone else (or society, in fact) tells you to feel, because that's even more absurd that not feeling good, when life's good. In fact, the pursuit of happiness makes people depressed, because it's cheating logic and breaking down the faculties we rely on to make clear distinctions between things!

I like my life. I don't like my depression. I live life with depression. I do not live a depressed life. When I am really depressed I am not living my life, but this has nothing to do with my life and everything to do with my depression. It is important when I am very depressed to never wish my depression to end, because this would mean ending my life. And I like my life. It is much more likable than my depression. It only makes sense to say, then, that I like my life more than I can ever dislike my depression, because depression requires life in order to exist and wishing my life to end because it will end my depression is completely absurd, because it denies the origin of depression, which is not life, but absurdity. Yes, depression is absurd, but life is not and in order to affirm what is true and meaningful (i.e. the fact that depression is absurd) we must affirm life.

Of course, it may appear to be problematic when philosophers say that life is absurd and melancholia is a natural reaction to the absurdity of life. This may be true (and if it is it becomes difficult to distinguish depression from life), but even these philosophers find a way of affirming life, even if only in spite. For Camus, absurdity must be affirmed because our lucidity is the basis of all that we have. According to him, we must continue to push the boulder up the hill knowing it will fall back down, because acknowledging the pointlessness of this task liberates us to accept it. For Kierkegaard, it is defiance: rejection of help or escape which gives us strength to be our own and endure. For Nietzsche, life, suffering and all the tragedy in the world must be relished in order to rise above the adversity of slavery and become masters of ourselves through strength and creativity.