New and in need of help!

Hi everybody!

My name is Vanessa and I have been dealing with OCD for 15 our of the 24 years of my life. Complete with intrusive thoughts, compulsions and rituals, occasional derealization, paranoia and wanting to just remove my brain from my head.

I never thought I’d actually join an OCD forum much less write in one, but I’m at my wits end. Therapy has not and I fear WILL NOT work on me. No matter what I do, I can’t guide my head to ignore intrusive thoughts and not act on a compulsion. I’m scared (usually at night) to brush my teeth for fear I have to stand there and brush them for like three hours until I get a perfect and good thought in my head, which overpowers the intrusive thought (I have no doubt people here can understand).

I don’t sleep and I can barely function because I’m up all night doing different compulsions and rituals and I have school and work obligations which is hard when I’m barely functioning. My head physically hurts and I’m just really tired.

My intrusive thoughts (trigger warning here if anyone is effected) are mostly about BIG questions and fears. A lot about death (which typing this out is giving me anxiety) and losing my family/not seeing them in the afterlife. I’m not a religious person but I get stuck violently in this track of thinking that I can barely do ANYTHING other than sit around and cry and think about it. Its the scariest most horrible though and the thought of not being with my family has rendered me weak. I have no fight left in me.

My biggest problem is that a lot of my intrusive thoughts CANNOT be proven wrong or right because they all have to do with stuff that comes after. It’s petrifying me and I can’t stop doing rituals JUST IN CASE it can save my family or something. It’s exhausting, but I am too terrified to take that chance.

Any advice from anybody on here???? It’s 2 AM right now and I have to be up at 5 so, wish me luck.

Drugs?

hello and welcome to PF!

But no, have you tried getting a prescription to maybe try and take the edge off, and help therapy to be more effective? I've never been officially Dx'd, much less gone to therapy, but more than one user here has found a combination of drugs/therapy to be what they needed to get to a place where they began to get better. I think the idea being the drugs is temporary, if possible... something to just help you get to a better headspace.

And thank you- I thought I was the only one who has wanted to rip my brain out on occasion.....

I would say having a religion helps- except that only replaces one set of worries, with another. Will I go to heaven? What if I don't? I'm scared of going to Hell.... etc etc. Not that I don't have good reasons for thinking that, but apparently I'd rather be frightened at the prospect, than actually do something to prevent the burning lake of fire. And even then, yeah I'm gonna be doubting my salvation, so.... yeah.

I think about, and fear, death an awful lot, too- although being OCD, I do the 'I want to DIE' thing a lot, when the anxieties about other things are spiking. Once I get into that Death mode of thinking, I have to really watch myself or else I'll be just like, we're all gonna die what the heck does anything matter, etc.etc. Coupled with an intense fear of it.

You say you can't stop acting on the compulsions... only advice I have, is you have to break them. Start small with one of the weaker compulsions. There's nothing magical about it- just takes practice. Not that it's easy to get started, but when I can manage to make myself NOT do something, and stick to it, it does get easier with time, the more I refrain from acting on a compulsion, the easier it is to not act on it.... but it has to start somewhere with making myself not give a $#%^ about something bad happening, and walk away from that compulsion.

Gentle hugs- I hope you can get some more rest tonite.

Thank you so much for the response! Even somebody reading my horror makes me feel a bit better. I actually am on medication. I’m on Zoloft and started at 200mg but have been tapering off as it’s doing nothing for me. It just makes me so reluctant to try other drugs because I feel hopeless that nothing will work.

I also get stuck in that bubble of “why do anything? Nothing matters” and it’s so sad and horrible and my existential crisis is making my OCD so much worse. Breaking the compulsions is something I’ve tried but it sends me into such a panic that never seems to come down. And like I said, it seems like if I have to flick the lights on and off a million times for my dad to stay alive then that’s what it’ll take.

But I’m so tired all the time. And so not living in the moment and all in my head and ughhhhhhghhhh stress

Hmm. I guess I'm a little narcissistic or AsPD then... I don't ever worry about other people dying, lol. I'm too self-centered, for that, I reckon.

Well, flicking the lights a bunch of times is irrational. I know that, you know that, we all know that.

OCD isn't rational, and rational arguments don't work against it- it'll always come up with a reason why it's true, why this is the exception, etc. The only time I defeat a compulsion is to simply not carry it out and ignore my brain. It is really hard the first few times, I know. For me, managing to make any kind of headway against OCD is a matter of out-stubborning it. Not easy to do, but it's not complicated, either. Just have to be more obstinate, and OCD is very good at being stubborn.