OCD & Suicide

[Passerby]

Obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD)

Who has OCD and what are you're experiences of it? Please i need to hear other members up's and down's about it it make's me feel like i have no soul, i am going through a really bad day with my OCD.

This is just my opinion, but OCD is not much talked about or doctors underestimate OCD, waiting lists for help are over a year, i think severe OCD is living torture, i am a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, but my OCD symptoms make me so suicidal and not want to leave the house, let me explain,

I have to keep checking things in case i kill anyone through my own negligence (household appliances, doors, lights etc etc) , if i am driving, my ocd make's me check over and over again, because my mind (NOT VOICES) thinks i have run over someone and left them for dead, so i have to drive back where my mind says i have run someone over to check i have not, i have to check my car hand brake a dozen of times before i can leave it, in case it hits someone and kills them, i won't throw rubbish in a public bin in case it sets alight and hurts someone. I have named a few but there is many more and it affects me daily.

My OCD has got worse over the years, i am not on any medication for OCD, if someone can tell me a medication that has helped them, i will look into this.

Schizophrenia won't kill me but ocd will

I wonder how many people kill themselves over ocd on here

 

[rt1989526]

I have OCD. Pure-O subtype, intrusive thoughts, it is absolute hell.

 

[_Minsk]

dealing with ocd since roughly 4 years now, haven't been the same since then. its mainly contamination fear and intrusive thoughts. i can agree, it's pure hell.. there is no real sustainable treatment as far as i know, i know for myself that depression makes the symptoms worse for me.

 

[Deleted member 17949]

I've not experienced it personally but from stories I've heard from friends it can certainly be a very damaging force in your life if not handled properly. It's not to be taken lightly for sure.

 

[almostnohopeleft.]

I have ocd...pretty much slowly ruined my life, in conjunction with some other stuff the last two years of hs. I finally got treatment but by then, my social/athletic life was already falling apart, and the thing about my ocd and my personality is that I am so active and ambitious that me failing and struggling spectactularly looks normal to most people. I took a gap year bc the schools I got into weren't good enough...but it was probably one of the worst things for my mental health. I've never experienced anxiety and loneliness on that level. It was absolutely insane. In general, I had never experienced anxiety that like clouded my thoughts or tightened my chest much or anything. It got so bad over the past few years I literally like didn't know who I was anymore. I stopped doing everything that made me me, my relationships suffered, I lost my hobbies, my sport, ect. But on the outside, it looked like I was a smart kid who was doing in internship for cancer and then got into a top university as a walk on for a d1 sport.

Since quarantine, I started to rebuild myself. My entire world had closed in so much I was going down a road that wasn't necceasrily bad, but was so inauthentic to who I was, my entire world had become inudated with anxiety.

What OCD doesn't tell you is that, life does go on if you don't address it. It just becomes suffering. Either you listen to OCD and avoid the all encompassing, gut wrenching anxiety that makes you forget who you are, or address it head on and fix it, or you just ignore your ocd, don't address it, and fall deeper and deeper into a world of anxiety. At least with OCD my head stayed clear, and my heart didn't feel so heavy. Life was just hard to keep up.

Recently, I hit several breakthroughs. I tried to explain to my parents that for the first time in years, I felt hints of myself again. It wasn't my goals from high school, but it was like passions from middle school I had never quite executed on. It almost feels like I am reborn, a kid again, doing things I used to do years ago. But that's what I need right now. To be sheltered, so my brain can continue to heal and move the needle in the right direction.

But that is coming a bit too late, which is why I'm here. My parents decided to send me to college across the country anyway, and I had like 48 hours to prepare. I am being triggered to the point where I am losing the clarity in my head again, and risk becoming a zombie. Meds don't help either, because they just numb that zombie feeling. I should be feeling this level of distress, because my situtation is so far away from the real me, it's incomprehensible. I barely have the capacity for OCD anymore, this anxiety is so consuming.

But if I look back, yes, OCD is where this all started. And back then, OCD felt good, a delaying of good feelings. Then it progressively bcame more and more stressful to the point where doing the things that made me happy only spiked anxiety. I know I'm speaking on somewhat abstract terms, but the worst thing about is it slowly shuts you down until you dont even know who you are anymore. And its a slow process.

The key to fighting it, in my case where I deal with pretty high-level OCD, is to constantly be mindful of your emotions, and where you are in the present moment. Not banking on the future to fix things. That's what OCD did to me, and it has just about ruined my life.

Which leads me to here. I was forced to move in yesterday, I am so overwhelmed with anxiety I am on the verge of killing myself, and nothing can really fix that except the people in my life getting on the same page about where I'm at and what I need. I'm not actually crazy, but damn dude I'm honestly sick of this shit. It's been years at this point, and to finally feel okay again, and realize life is so much fuller than what you have been living...to have that taken away again by being placed in a brand new environment, is insane.

I've read somewhere that OCD has one of the highest risk of suicides. I believe it. While it wasn't the only factor, it gradually made my life more and more difficult until full blown anxiety took over that has been hell to get rid of.