Help Long COVID anxiety, OCD, BPD, Disability, and Me

[butyouhavetotry]

Cross-posting and changing some details from the anxiety and OCD megathread because my problem is a bit more specific.

Anyone else here deal with comorbid COVID anxiety/long COVID? To me this has shot through any and all progress I had made with my OCD and anxiety and made it extremely difficult for me to interface with my community. I was infected with Covid for the first time last year, and since then have dealt with excessive illness, fatigue, difficulty focusing, and other associated conditions. Compared to some long haulers I am fairly well off. I can still walk and work and I am functional enough to be physically able most days. But it is not enough for me to be happy.

I was extremely lonely for most of my life because of my anxiety and OCD, and avoided any and all non virtual socialization. After I came out as a trans woman last year, this started to change. I dated actively, became an involved activist and took part in my local music scene. I still masked, but I was ignorant of the long term damaging potential of Covid. Now that I am aware, it has cut me off from almost all of the social world. I live in a small, consvervative city, and most of the venues where I was doing these things do not even enforce bare minimum things like masking. Every time I leave my house, I have to deal with overbearing intrusive thoughts and consider that a face-to-face interaction could permanently and exponentially worsen a disability I already struggle with. Every cough, every sneeze, every joke about not feeling well I hear from unmasked folk is agonizing. I've lost many friendships due to them not respecting my boundaries and dating is impossible because there is no community for other cautious folk.BPD worsens this as I feel violent hatred and rage towards people who don't take precautions, and ugly jealousy for other people who are capable of enjoying their youth and making the most of life while I am constrained to my room in fear and sickness. Covid is the perfect OCD brain worm, in that it can strike anywhere, with no warning, invisibly, and mental and physical strain while infected makes it worse, so of course OCD provokes more stress when I think about the possibility of having it again.

I see no future where I can be okay. This will be a problem for the rest of my life and no matter where I go or what I do, and this fear makes the risks that I take and social events I go to not enjoyable as I dissociate and feel such anxiety. This has been made exponentially worse by my attempt to exposure therapy myself out of this fear by moving in with a roommate, which I thought would help lower my anxiety by building risk tolerance, but now I just have absolutely nowhere I feel safe. I spend my free time outdoors and isolated and spike with horrific panic attacks when I actually have to return home to eat and sleep, and hide in my small bedroom of the apartment. I've threatened to break the lease multiple times over this but I have nowhere I could go to live safely, I'd have to move in with someone regardless until I find stable housing. Since this move only a month ago I have initiated suicide by wrist slitting multiple times a week and only hold back because I can't take the pain. If anyone has advice for dealing with this present pandemic I welcome it. Otherwise I have set plans to CTB in September, as I believe strongly in the spiritual significance of Fall and I believe that it is enough time to see if I can "get used to it", but so far my experience with BPD has been that no matter how much I get used to emotional stimulation, ot doesn't stop hurting. It is difficult to maintain optimism.

 

[maneose]

I feel you :( I got Covid last year as well and in turn infected my entire family with it, my mom got so sick that she fainted in the middle of the night and had to be hospitalized for a week. I'm the only one in the family that still has lastly effects from it and permanently lost my sense of smell. Although very small, it has sorta driven me crazy as it's only gotten worse over the last few months and started affecting my taste. The last thing keeping me going was knowing I could enjoy my next favorite food eventually, but now almost every food has the same vague disgusting taste. I get phantom smells and sometimes regain my sense of smell for a few seconds if become overwhelming and distresses me. I can smell things if they're pungent enough but that gets me so overstimulated I end up crying because it's so unbearable. I wish there was a way for you to feel safe despite the fear and anxiety, especially if you're immune compromised. Mentally healing isn't a linear process and it's really hard at the beginning, so I wouldn't say it would be time to give up, try as much as you can whenever you feel like it, even if you progress and end up back at the start, you're still in the race! Although a lot people now don't wear masks anymore unfortunately, majority of them have gotten vaccines, I know it's not the best remedy and people can still get sick but it's much better than it was a year ago. I hope you're able to recover