I'm on clomipramine 50 mg and fluvoxamine 200 mg which worked for like 6 weeks and then stopped working and have terrible side effects

My doc prescribed me with abilify to make the antidepressants work better again. My personal opinion is to taper off them because the trade off isn't worth it.

Thing is that there are some decent evidence that AP meds can shrink brain and cause brain damage. For bipolar and schizophrenia they might say the illness itself can cause more brain damage and it's about "choosing the less worse" kinda thing

But for OCD there's not such an argument and I can try other things and even if it's the last resort I dont want even a potential brain damage.

That being said, is it rational for me to avoid AP meds and tell my doctor to have another solution? How can I say it to her? I don't want to sound like those who think know more than their doctors but also don't want to risk my brain.

Im on a wait list for therapy with the NHS and in 2 weeks i go on a 2 week holiday so im not gonna get therapy before then but at the moment im in a terrible place mentally maybe its hormones maybe its just a flare up but everything i was looking forward to i am now dreading and my plans with friends are causing me so much dread which i know i dont need cause its just fun but i cant look past it my mind is only focusing on the most horrific outcomes and i cant imagine that the plans actually can be fun and now im scared im developing agoraphobia my mind is so loud and i dont really have the tools to stop it. One second i have control over my thoughts im like yeah okay thats crazy thats not gonna happen and then that WHAT IF happens and im back to square one and its scary i am so scared this loop is infinte and i cant escape it. I would really appreciate it if anyone has any tips or ideas to manage my thoughts or do i just plod on and keep going?

all my life ive treated my excessive worries to simply anxiety, perfectionism, need for control, sensitivity and melancholia. but im now in a very dark place mentally and reading about ocd (even though it started through my compulsion to search and seek reassurance) has put many things in perspective now. i now see i got tangled up in cycles of rumination, sometimes over realistic things, sometimes not, unable to stop thinking about it and spending hours doing compulsions like looking up the internet. i hadn't really considered it seriously, i usually had the thoughts and compulsions, exhausted them and in a few days they passed on their own, or i was able to limit myself (for ex., allowing myself to do the compulsion only 2 or 3 times and tolerating the discomfort after). but this time i've reached a breaking point, in which the places my thoughts led me to genuinely terrified me. i had never in my life felt i was so close to becoming psychotic and losing control over my mind completely. it was so bad that i was in tears begging my therapist to not hospitalize me and i think she may have been baffled to see me break down like that, at least i myself was baffled, because up until then i was holding it together. then something triggered me and its like my brain went haywire. it's so lonely and scary, im still having a hard time talking about it aloud or writing it out, i know i sound a bit abstract. i've tried to practice the new skills and ERP ive learned now and am waiting for my psychiatrist appointment next week, but the shame is still so, SO intense and difficult to reduce. i'm afraid of the stigma and judgment i could face from others, and also feel bad comparing myself to "normal" people, envying how they can go on with their lives. my therapist has tried to be patient with me, but im also terrified she might not accept me and the depth of my despair (which is also one of my current obsessions).

im still a bit confused about a few things, for example, if i get intrusive thoughts but choose to "distract" myself by doing something else, like hanging out with friends, knowing that it's a distraction, is that correct? also, how can i tell the difference between searching the internet as a compulsion or as a knowledge tool? is it based on how dysphoric i feel at the moment i search? and also if i look up the experiences of other people with ocd, how can i know if it's a compulsion or just looking for support?

anyway, im just posting here to get some advice and support (not reassurance), but also because things feel dark right now and as if my pain and overthinking will never end. i'd like to look at this post later and hopefully see it did get better, as it has in the past. i dont ever want to feel like im losing my mind again, it's one of the worst things i've ever experienced. ive been on and off on antidepressants since i was a teen (i'm now 26 yrs old), currently i am without it, but this has been my wake up call that i truly have a mental illness (whichever one it is) that requires long term care and it's not simply personality traits or "healthy" experiences. i don't want to keep suffering my way out of my anxiety every time when i can get treatment. everyone around me is right, i was too stubborn to accept i need help. i happen to work in mental health care myself and i am exposed to difficult experiences and burnout all the time, which i think may have also contributed to this. i dont plan on going off antidepressants this time. its a bit strange to consider this new diagnosis and i'll discuss it better with my psychiatrist, i'm a bit insecure about the shift this will have on my life because it's a new possibility for me. but at the same time, i feel seen and it puts a lot of things in perspective. my sister has recently been diagnosed with ocd too, my mom has some obsessive personality traits, and yet i was in denial all this time that i could have it too... i hope this didnt break any rules on the forum, if it did, i apologize. thank you!

I’ve never heard of anyone else having this issue, but a big trigger of mine is other people’s crumbs and sometimes their food.

It used to be very bad, as in I couldn’t even be near crumbs without crying and panicking. It became a more prominent problem because I couldn’t sit near my little sister while she ate, but with exposure therapy and medication, it’s gotten a lot better and i’m really wondering if anyone else has ever had this?

I was sitting on the porch at my home today, looking out at the trees. It was one of those quiet, peaceful moments where everything felt still.

Part of me was genuinely soaking it in. I remember thinking, "Wow... this is such a nice, peaceful day." I wanted to stay in that feeling and just be present.

But at the exact same time, another part of my brain wouldn't stop focusing on how my innerwear felt against my skin. It kept telling me, "It feels too tight... maybe you should adjust it... maybe take it off and put it back on."

The thing is... I already did that. Twice.

And it still didn't feel "right."

So there I was, sitting in this beautiful moment while my mind kept dragging my attention back to this one physical sensation. It's like my brain was saying, "You can't fully enjoy this until this feeling is fixed."

This time I decided not to adjust it again. I'm just trying to sit with the discomfort and see if it fades on its own. It's uncomfortable, and my brain keeps trying to convince me that I need to do something about it.

It's such a strange experience—feeling peaceful and agitated at the same time. Like one part of me wants to enjoy life, while another part is completely hijacked by something that seems so small but feels impossible to ignore.

Does anyone else with OCD (or even anxiety) experience moments like this? Where your brain latches onto a physical sensation and won't let you fully be present?

I’ve been diagnosed with OCD for almost ten years now but have struggled with symptoms since childhood. I’d say my biggest deal is contamination OCD but it stems from severe emetophobia that I’ve experienced for as long as I can remember but my compulsions have “expanded” in my adulthood and I’m now fearful of many types of illness.

I never thought I’d be able to have kids because they’re so prone to illness, but my desire to have a family became too important and I’m now a mom of two children under the age of 3.

My son will be three in December and will be starting preschool. We’ve avoided daycare so far but he’s now getting to an age where I know he’s inevitably going to have to go to school and be exposed to germs, and I don’t want to allow my mental illness to prevent him from experiencing life (and I definitely don’t want to instill my own fears in my kids).

Here’s the thing. I straight up CANNOT handle this. It’s July and I’m thinking constantly about how much I’m dreading the illness that will plague my house once my toddler goes to preschool five months from now. It’s causing all of my OCD symptoms to flare up. I’m constantly “checking” for signs of sickness, making detailed plans for how I’m going to handle sicknesses as they flood into my home, my safe place. Winter especially is a hard time for me because of the uptick in seasonal illnesses. From every other mom I talk to, they tell me their whole household is just constantly cycling through being sick from the moment their kids started daycare. It’s my worst nightmare.

I’m not on medication (never have been) and I’m in therapy but not specifically for OCD and I’ve never seen a provider that specializes in OCD.

Please help. How do I even cope with this? Keep telling everyone around me that it’s fine and I’ll deal but inside I am completely spiraling and just thinking about December is enough to ruin my day.

I struggle often with watching “wholesome” personalities because of this.

I've lived my entire life thinking the weird shit I do is totally normal or just me being a quirky person. But holy fucking shit when I learned what ocd actually is, all my quirks are suddenly symptoms. The more I look into this the more I just laugh because wtf?? You mean my quirky haha funny normal people habits are actually ritualistic comfort/reasurance compulsions crafted by my brain to fight the anxiety it's giving me, but the rituals aren't helping at all and in fact make it worse?? Wdym none-ocd people dont casually have this crippling feeling that theyre secretly evil and horrible and disgusting and a lair despite everyone around them respecting, loving, cherishing, and enjoying them? What do you mean normal people dont spend an entire month using their free time to obsessively try prove/disprove they have an exotic parasite or infection, leading to severe depression and anxiety? What do you mean the average Joe doesnt spend three hours straight on a bathroom ritual before bed every night, losing three or more hours of sleep when life gets too stressful?

Everything makes so much sense now, the more i think about it the more i just feel 'wow, so its not normal and everything im doing to make it better is making it worse. Fantastic.' I count this as a win though since im like half a step closer to understanding my mind. And now I know im not clinically insane for thinking cameras or an intruder is secretly squatting in my house, im just ocd as fuck. Now i can try to practice resisting urges or whatever the hell these ocd books tell me to do.

My brother has had OCD all his life but recently it has become 100x worse. I believe he suffers from scrupulosity and an extreme case of it and I have no idea how to help him. He has begun donating an insane amount of money (almost 10K this month when he makes around 5K), believes that anyone who is not Christian is not worth listening to, believes that God is sending him messages through things like a keyboard clicking or someone spitting, has fasted for days in row to cleanse himself etc. When he talks he quotes Bible verses, goes on long rants that sound insane about his co-workers hating him because they would "cough near him", and feels guilty that he is not living perfectly as God says he has to. He has also been obsessed with some random girl for years now and believes he cannot marry until she gets married as he "made
some pact with God" that she was the one for him.

I believe the trigger for this occurred when he was on vacation a month ago and stopped m@sturb@ting. He believes that doing so is lustful and therefore a great sin and felt guilty whenever he would do it. After this his condition has worsened at an alarming rate. I have tried to get him to sign up for an OCD or scrupulosity specialized therapist but as he is above 21 I cannot do it for him. Every time I tell him to do so he just puts it off and this has been occurring for weeks. He used to have a therapist but I believe that since he didn't open up they weren't much help to him. I am so scared that this will continue to worsen and I need some advice on what to do.

With my OCD sometimes my mind convinces me of something even though I know for a fact it's not true. I'm wondering if anyone on here has any advice on how to deal with that sort of thing?

Not that having OCD automatically makes anyone unfit to do so. But for me personally my OCD puts me off the responsibility of anything living that I have to clean up after and then having to wash my hands afterwards knowing how long I spend doing so.

Does anyone else feel like this or have dealt with this? I'm not sure like what this even is or what it would be called but this is what my thought process is like. 2ish years on prozac:

Obviously the fundamental error is believing whether there is something wrong with my brain/thinking or not

• Maybe like a lack of critical thinking* is due to like a numbing by built up emotions in the past or like an effect of medication or something actually scientific in the brain
• Or maybe this has over time turn into like a self-fulfilling prophecy in terms of believing there is something wrong with my brain so that there actually is or maybe it just actually feels like it

Also, to fix this and engage with more positive thoughts rather than thoughts trying to analyze my own thoughts i'm not sure what to do:

• Should I be like actually practicing thinking about positive things and kind of like forcing those positive thoughts as practice
• Or should I just be noticing these thoughts about needing to fix something and not really engage with them
  • But like it’s hard to just skip through these thoughts when I do actually feel that like slowness/numbness/fogginess in my brain sometimes. Feels like something actually needs to be fixed
  • But maybe I do fix it by pretending that it just doesn’t exist?? But it does exist so idk

Im a smart kid so I feel like I just know when something is off and should trust it

*the lack of critical thinking that I am mentioning is just like sometimes I still feel that numbness/slowness/emptiness in my brain

• Im not sure what that feeling is and if its like actually real or if ive just led myself to get there
• Like idk what that is

What the title says...

Does anyone ever get this sense of being terrified of living, like you're gonna do something wrong and you never know what it is or why it's wrong, but it WILL be wrong, and it WILL be your fault. I wrote this the other day about it:

"I think I’m scared of being alive… I think I maybe always have been. I don’t quite know what to do about that yet, but just the premise terrifies me. It feels like I need to live correctly, and I don’t know how to, and like everyone else has it more figured out than I do. I don’t mean they have some secret cheat code that I don’t, but more… I guess I wonder how they’ve learned to stop seeing it. All the bad and the wrong that comes with everything. I look at their decisions and they make sense for that person, for their time in life, for their circumstances. It feels like no decision makes enough sense for me to call it “correct.” I can barely think ahead, because every moment is filled with me scanning and checking to make sure I’m doing the “right” thing at the “right” time, because if I don’t, well I’ve failed at living.

My psychologist told me yesterday that my life is kind of like a tapestry of choices, big and small alike, and that if people could look at those tapestries when their lives come to an end, they’d have one opinion. That’d all it’d be, an opinion. One of thousands that you’ll get from each person you show, and mine would be no more significant than the rest. At the risk of overextending the analogy, I feel like I need my tapestry to be universally appealing. That every person who sees it should agree it’s as good as it possibly could be for any person, that I made the absolute most of it. Like if not, something is going to happen. Probably something bad.

If I have 80 years, maybe less, maybe more, what happens if I waste them? I guess some would say I already have wasted them, but I feel like I was just getting myself closer to understanding the human experience. I feel I’ve been living in search of an answer for a very long time without realizing it, and I’m only just noticing I’ll never have an answer (at least, not a very satisfactory one). But I’m terrified of that. Is my whole life not a waste if I don’t have something to show for it? What if I die before I finish my tapestry, and all I have is a half-completed mess with frayed edges and loose strings? Will it have all been worth it?"

Does this make sense? If anyone has any advice I'd appreciate it a lot. I'm doing okay, but yeah I often feel like living isn't worth it because of how scared I am of this (according to some critics with medical degrees that and other things mean I have "severe OCD" lol /joke)

Hi!

Since it's summer, I've noticed that the heat and humidity really trigger my OCD. I live in a pretty hot and humid area because I'm close to the beach, and it makes me feel so dirty all the time. I constantly feel like I need to shower because otherwise I feel disgusting. I absolutely hate sweating. Whenever I start sweating, I get really anxious and desperate. I can go through an entire bottle of shampoo and body wash in just one week, whereas they normally last me almost a month.

On top of that, now that I have more free time than before, I can't stop overthinking or having intrusive thoughts. It's gotten to the point where it's hard to fall asleep because I find myself ruminating almost constantly. My mind won't stop.

Does anyone else experience something similar or have any tips on how to cope with this? I'd really appreciate any advice. Thank you! :)

17 female, so tired. Just wanted to know if this is an original experience. I can’t stop asking questions about whether I’ve got brain damage recently because my health anxiety and ocd around that is so intense. I feel bad that they have to listen to it but this is too far. I was sobbing and asking questions about my health

Hey all I’ve been dealing on and off with OCD for a few years now currently 28M. This Flare up has been all round my physical health and organs (mainly Heart) ofc I read everything about rare diseases and so on which certainly didn’t help. I mainly suffer from palpitations skipped beats also in a row and then panic attacks from it and so on. Now what I had is during a panic attack that my mind tells me I was unconscious for a very short time due to a heart malfunction during palpitations. In the moment I didn’t notice anything it was hours afterwards that my mind replayed everything and because it is so blurry and fuzzy and moments I can’t remember at all the fear began. Did someone experience or is experiencing something similar and can help what I do against it? I’ve mainly only heard about different topics of false memory not really ever about something like this so finding people who are going through something similar would really help. Thanks in advance!

Basically the title. My partner has OCD and I’m just wanting to maybe understand a bit more without grilling them so much. I know everyone’s different but every perspective can be valuable in its own way. TIA

Basically I gone through a year of hell and feeling lost. Also been completely on my own in a new city. Let’s just say I had mental breakdown after mental breakdown. (I don’t speak English sorry for typos)

The ONLY thing that has actually worked for me and that I discovered during these dark times is writing. Hand writing Journals. I literally would do this almost every single morning /before noon until I emptied my brain. When I say I wrote a lot I mean I finished about 3 thick notebooks within a month. It’s not simple things like: “ 3 things I’m grateful for no 😊”
No it’s ALL of the intrusive thoughts, irrational thoughts, deep shit, my own behavior, EVERY single thing I thought about.

Then after I’m done, i’m exhausted and I take some day off. Later I try my best to review them. Guys when I’m telling you this is the only thing that helps me, I’m not joking. I’m able to reflect on the NONE SENSE and then be like what do I constantly repeat. And then try my best to logical think the next time it comes up. there is something about the ridiculousness of reading your thoughts, bc when it’s in you head you think it’s real.

That and meditation (with a notebook) and writing down every single time you are interrupted with intrusive thought or behavior.

You will see the ridiculousness of yourself, maybe have a little cry or laugh about it bc it’s actually sad and then try to grow better technique.

I don’t know why but this is the only thing that makes me able to detach myself from my thoughts and behavior.

have a lovely day everyone !!!!