What has helped me

I want to start by stating that I have no idea if this will actually "fix" anyone's OCD. I'm not a medical professional. I figured though that since this has seemingly given my OCD a complete turnaround that I should share as I've been without any major issue for a month now. Sorry for the length but I need to go through all the details to explain it properly. Also before you read this and assume it's simply a mood disorder that was causing my OCD keep reading. There's more.

I was diagnosed with pure OCD as a kid. My dad also has OCD (his OCD is similar to mine but mine doesn't involve as much contamination OCD as his). I went to see a psychologist in January of last year. I didn't want to be on meds and found out psychologists (in my state) can't prescribe any. I told her about my OCD dx and she took note of it. She said I seemed to have a mood disorder too. After about half a year of going weekly to her and getting a second opinion from a psychiatrist, it was confirmed that I had bipolar I.

I believe the reason it took so long was due to the fact that I was in huge denial about my mood disorder. I blamed it on my PTSD because I didn't want to go through what happened with my dad and his bipolar (some of my OCD is PTSD though). I even repressed a lot of my memories where people had to have an intervention saying that I had actually done things like he had done. I had them message my psychologist before I could forget again. My brain is good at forgetting the bad stuff though I have gotten better (even with no meds involved).

Now please note that I am not anti-psych nor am I against taking meds. As long as everyone is fully aware of what the meds do and how they will help a patient it shouldn't be a big deal. I admittedly was rather anti-meds at the time though and had two reasons to not want meds. 1) If you screw up taking the wrong thing you can make things worse. 2) My dad was on meds all my life and it did NOT work out well for him.

After learning of my depressive side I started remembering more. If I had a depressive cycle I'd recall at least more if not most of it. The memories of each time and feeling out of control made me consider meds. I wasn't able to be how I needed and the depression was too much. I would easily get OCD big time during these low cycles. It was that traumatic hopeless feeling where I felt it would never end. The thoughts would consume and force me to meditate on them. I knew about the OCD thoughts but never quite properly tied it to depression since I wasn't remembering the depression plus other times I'd feel not just stable but also great.

I couldn't handle the lows plus the OCD thoughts. I wound up talking to my psychiatrist and found a medication I felt comfortable with after research. This medication helped quite a bit but it wasn't completely helping. I still had compulsive issues but I wasn't having "mania" or rather uncontrollable emotions.

Now, remember how he diagnosed me with my mood disorder? Before he confirmed it he told me that he was certain I had ADHD. I didn't understand this because I had always thought of ADHD as the complete inability to focus and hyperactivity. I wasn't always hyper and could focus on a lot of things. I didn't realize how much I was focussing through thoughts I didn't need to have popping up.

One important thing to know is that the mood disorder and ADHD are both extremely similar. They both have compulsive behavior and rapid thinking which can lead to thoughts being like trying to surf the net without Adblock. With ADHD it's that way but with huge amounts of clickbait that you can't ignore. Bipolar is that plus extremely traumatizing clickbait every so often).

Another thing is if you suspect one or both then please make sure you for sure don't have a mood disorder or if you do DON'T take the ADHD meds first! If you have both the ADHD meds can start an extremely bad cycle if a person has an unmanaged mood disorder. As it turns out, once I started taking meds my mom told me my dad had been on my exact ADHD medication but his mood disorder wasn't treated yet so he had thrown it out thinking it was bad for him.

My mania was gone but I was still on occasion having issues with "harmless" magical thinking. I don't see it talked about but I think others likely have it. For me, I'll get a compulsion that's an urge to touch something for good luck but not to prevent a catastrophe. I also had compulsions to eat. Both bipolar and ADHD have this due to 1) making one feel they are tired and need more energy and 2) food sometimes creates dopamine which both disorders require.

After that got stable I started taking ADHD meds. All OCD has gone as long as I'm on both meds! My meds last 12 hours. In the morning I'm not so bad. I think it's because I'm just waking up. Irritable but not freaking out over everything. I try to take them to where they wear off as I'm going to sleep. Any earlier and I start getting a whiplash of rapid thoughts while trying to do things before bed. The meds make me too awake to sleep but I don't have issues sleeping as long as I don't drink caffeine and rarely eat sugar (I have hypoglycemia so I need sugar at times).

I learned that caffeine and sugar do something similar to the brain that ADHD meds do. If you have too much it can not only make you not sleep due to being a stimulant but also like ADHD meds it increases dopamine. Now dopamine is great when it's within the normal range. Problem is when you go over. Turns out too much dopamine can cause paranoia and anxiety. Couple that with caffeine sugar or both and you get constant paranoid and stressful thoughts.

Thank you for reading and I hope this makes life more manageable for as many as possible. <3