OCD - 16 with a fear of depression/suicide? Please help!

Hi,

(Here is a bit of background info on my history with OCD. Sorry if this is quite long!)

I first started to experience symptoms of OCD when I was about 8 years old, partly because I think I'm just predisposed to it and partly due to changes happening in my life which triggered emotional stress. The symptoms were initially things like rituals and compulsions (such as repeatedly tapping things, getting in and out of bed, switching the lights on and off, opening and closing the car door etc), many extreme and irrational fears (odd numbers, going to certain places etc) and most distressingly, intrusive thoughts.
I had a friend who's mum was a teacher in a senior school and tragically a student of her's committed suicide. It came as a massive shock to everyone. At the time as an 9 year old, suicide was a new concept to me. The prospect of a person wanting to die was distressing and confusing and it triggered a bit of an existential crisis. I started to question the significance of life, specifically my life, and experienced really scary intrusive thoughts and urges of a suicidal nature. I was never genuinely suicidal and the whole obsession with it was totally unwanted, but I do remember feeling mildly depressed (again I think these depressive feelings were intrusive, or at least in some way linked to the OCD).

This existential crisis phase was temporary, thank goodness, and by the time I was about 11/12 I'd managed to beat most of the physical compulsions which had been governing my life. However, I still suffered from a variety of intrusive thoughts which were all incredibly distressing. But I never felt depressed. At 14 I was finally able to recognise this as OCD after randomly watching a documentary about it, which was a massive relief because up until then I thought I must be crazy.

A year later the OCD took a backseat (I think because things had settled down in my life) and was replaced by overwhelming general anxiety. I experienced panic attacks, chronic vertigo/dizziness, dissociation/depersonalisation etc. Most significantly, for at least the past year I've been preoccupied with an intense fear of dying. I have been to the doctors and they've recommended therapy but I've just never had the courage to go ahead with it, which I know is my own fault because obviously professional help would benefit me.

Now, as I am yet again bracing myself for major change in my life, accompanied by the stresses of exams and typical teenage concerns: making friends at my new school, feeling apprehensive and uncertain about my future, insecurities and pressures (as well as my general anxiety issues) the OCD symptoms are resurfacing. My anxiety has been through the roof. OCD wise I've experienced mild compulsions but mainly intrusive thoughts. As my anxiety latches on to one thing after another, generally to do with the prospect of being physically or mentally ill or dying, I've had frequent bouts of hypochondria over the past month to do with several different health conditions.

A couple of weeks ago I began to feel really, really sad. I was home alone, contemplating how lonely I felt and how lonely I'd continue to be if I was unable to make friends when I moved away. Stupidly, I began to google things like 'teenage loneliness' and was presented with articles about adolescent depression and chronic loneliness, which made me feel anxious. I then started to catastrophise: what if the scenarios in these articles happen to me? What if these feelings escalate into something more serious? What if I end up developing depression? What if I feel miserable and isolated forever? I told my parents when they got home that I was feeling this way and they were supportive and tried to reassure me that this was a temporary thing. The next day I felt the same dark, heavy emotional ache in my chest (like literal heartache) and freaked out again about being depressed which made me feel even worse, intensifying the sensation. I did not want to die but every story I've ever heard about people being depressed and resulting to suicide were playing on my mind and I couldn't help but catastrophise. That evening I was a mess, crying and feeling awful mentally and physically, like the depressive feelings were taking a toll on my body as well. I was so worked up about the prospect of being depressed that it made me feel even more intensely depressed, a vicious cycle. I was googling things about depression to try and reassure myself that I didn't have it but it made things worse.

This 'episode' or whatever it was lasted for barely more than two days, but it felt like forever. Since then I've been anxious about feeling that way again. It has come in waves every so often, only mildly but enough to make me feel terrible and scared. Sometimes when I hear or read about depression anywhere I get filled with dread. I've begun to recognise certain things about my experience, like questioning my will to live and the point of living, as being very similar to the 'existential crisis' I had when I was younger. Things I've read online, like the fact that I'm of the age that depression usually develops, and a theory on youth suicide that young people who want to kill themselves also want to just live more intensely (which I can relate to) make me fear for my mental health. I DO NOT want to be depressed. I don't want it to even cross my mind. How can I be terrified of dying and want to die at the same time? Please tell me this is anxiety/OCD related and not genuine depression. I can't stop catastrophising and I don't want to obsess over it. I need reassurance that this is not something more serious than OCD. Have any of you had any similar experiences??? Thank you SO much for any insight or advice.

xx

Well hello there, mini-me.....

I appreciate your angst. I have a lot of the same kinds of thoughts. Including the constant dying. I'm always dying of something, honest. Just read my blog.

I think... that with me, anyway- I do go thru periods where I have a lot of suicide ideation- at least that's what I call it, whether it really is or not is best answered by a professional if I ever do start seeing one- but with me I think it's not so much a desire to die, as just wanting to run away from my problems, from Life. Since Life seems nothing but problems and it's always something and it never seems to end and, well, we all are going to die eventually, right? I think it's just wanting the current misery to end, rather than a genuine desire to die or end it all. Because, like you, I have this fascination, horror, and far too much of a preoccupation, with death. When I was younger I was able to forget it for long stretches, but I'm not 16; I'm 52. So... yeah it's a-comin', whether I want it to or not.

I keep going back to how I need to live in the moment. Because none of us get out of this world alive. It's really just how we live the life that we have. I have a grandmother in her 90s- she can barely get around- and she's arguably able to die at any moment- yet she's unconcerned. Every day is a gift and she takes it as it comes. Not a bad attitude to have, when you can manage it.

Like you I worry about depression. Anxiety and depression are, to my understanding, frequently co-morbid. I'm fairly certain I have dysthymia or some other form of chronic, not-major-but-not-great, either, form of depression. So anyway, like you I ask myself about being depressed and is this the way it's going to be AND I worry that my anxiety issues- that I've had for nearly as long as I can remember, so we're talking back to pre-kindergarten I was always afraid of something- will finally catch up with me and I'll spiral into deep depression, and ofc then I think well, I'm ###$. But it does us no good to worry about something that our anxiety can bring on, sweets. Like anything else touched on by our OCD, we have to find out what works to let it not eat at us.

I kinda throw fear of suicide in with harm OCD themes- my first real experience at a purely intrusive thought OCD was fear of killing and suicide. At about ten or eleven- so that was pretty frightening. It can be controlled, but I do have problems with certain situations- I don't like very high balconies, tall buildings, etc- I don't think I need to elaborate. Fear that you're going to kill yourself can be paralysing. But I've had these kinds of thoughts on and off for 40+ years and I'm still kicking, sweets. You are NOT going to kill yourself. You have a horror of it and the will to live is a strong, strong instinct, or else there wouldn't be a human race.

Dear floracia24:

I think that the human privilege of being able to think comes with the heavy price of fearing what we think. Animals are blessed that way.

Mindfulness is a practice of ongoing meditation throughout the day, paying attention to what you sense with your five senses, mostly seeing and hearing and feeling with your hands. Every time your brain is focused on such sensation, ex. sound, it doesn't think. And every break you get from thinking is blissful.

After all, if MORE thinking was to solve fear, OCD people would be fear-free. It is in not thinking that we get the break we need. And after a while of relaxing in sound, sight, feel.. then we can think with a fresh brain, not that foggy, dusty OCD brain.

Certain yoga and Tai Chi practices are excellent at giving the thinking brain a break while focusing on how the body feels, the slow stretches of yoga or the slow motion, deliberate movements of Tai Chi.

atina

atina wrote:It is in not thinking that we get the break we need.

Tell me about it! I like not thinking...

* Dear Snaga:

You wrote:"Tell me about it! I like not thinking..."- and so I will...

When you focus on a task that requires your focus because you can't do it automatically- you get a break from the OCD thinking and think of the task, for as long as you are engaged in it.

When you do things automatically, like brainless tasks at work, driving, tying your shoes, etc. your brain is free to wonder and so the OCD thinking takes over.

Mindfulness, that is, ongoing meditation, or in other words, paying attention to your sensations on an ongoing basis while performing automatic tasks and otherwise, is about focusing your brain on sensations so it is not free to wonder, and so not free for OCD to do its thing.

In slow yoga you focus on a posture. This is where your focus is, what to do with your arm, the other arm, this leg and the angle of your back bending; you notice the stretch in your lower right leg, the muscle you didn't notice before and you focus on maintaining the posture for a certain amount of time. In Tai Chi where you follow a set of slow motion movements, your focus is on those movements, in the group of people all moving the same way, in silence, very slowly.

Focusing on any one or a combination of the following: sight, sound, smell, taste, feel (feel of something on your skin, feel of a muscle straining or stretching) stops the brain from wondering. You practice it- maybe join slow, mindful yoga or Tai Chi class- or practice at home and you will see. Of course, when you stop you go back to good-old-OCD. It has to be an ongoing practice, daily for months at a time, persisting and then maybe, the brain will be less inclined to wander.

My progress in this regard has been excruciatingly slow but significant progress there is!

atina

I understood, sweets- it was a figure of speech agreeing with you that being preoccupied with something can be a blessed relief, however short, from anxiety.

The idea of using a meditative physical routine, has not occurred to me. That may be something to look into!

I've been thinking of at least taking up walking for exercise, even though I am physically active at work- I think instinctively know what you state- that activity helps to drown out the OCD

* Dear Snaga:

It thrills me that I suggested something that you may try. Really, made my day.

I walk every day. As a matter of fact I am going of a fast short 40 minutes walk in seven minutes.

Then there is the attentive, deliberate movements of slow yoga/ tai chi that in a different way, take the attention away from wondering into OCD misery.

atina