[StephenWW]

For the past seven years I have dealt with very bad ocd and anxiety. I have always had ocd, but at that time my symptoms started getting worse. Very bad fear and panic symptoms mixed with ocd starting when I was about 22 or 23. I got psychosis symptoms around that same time and got on clozaril which fixed it, but I still had these symptoms left over. My mind will jump from one thing to the next to worry and freak out about and obsess over. I will also have repeated thoughts about the same thing over and over and will tend to repeat myself when talking to people because my mind is stuck on one thing. Anaphronil seemed to fix my symptoms for a short time but then stopped working. I was wondering if anyone has any success in stopping strong ocd symptoms like this with medication or otherwise and could tell me what worked for them.

[Skeezyks]

Hello StephenWW: I'm sorry I don't have much of anything I can offer in the way of suggestions here. But I saw that no one had replied to your post, so I thought I would. I don't know a lot about psych med's in general. I've taken a few on-&-off over the years without much benefit. I no longer take any.

I struggle with a lot of recurring troubling memories. They just keep coming back over-&-over again. There's no way to get rid of them & no way to stop them & nothing I can do about them. (Oh, & by the way, I have a history of suicide attempts to show for them.) So this is a serious issue for me.

I believe one cannot stop, or stuff down, disturbing repetitive thoughts or emotions. This simply makes them keep coming back stronger & more frequently. So I simply strive to accept them... with lovingkindness & compassion. When one comes along, I breathe into it & smile to it. I then try to drop the "storyline" (what the thought entails) & continue to breathe into the underlying emotion (be it fear, hate, sorrow, whatever) until it fades of it's own accord. This is a Buddhist practice called: "compassionate abiding". In addition, I do walking meditation & I frequently practice compassionate abiding when disturbing, repetitive thoughts arise while I'm walking.

I wish you well...

[apoplexy]

Exposure & Response Prevention (ERP) Therapy is your best shot at eliminating a lot of OCD compulsions, obsessions, etc. I have made excellent progress with ERP. Google it, torrent books on it or simply buy Grayson's "Freedom From Obsessive Compulsive Disorder" <-- this book is incredibly useful.

Read it, learn it, love it, encode it into your way of life.

[Nimitri]

I use paroxetine for my OCD and the tools gave me by https://mindsetdoc.wordpress.com.

What I used for my OCD and I keep using is: let the thoughts come and go. Don't suppress them, don't judge them, let the appear in your mind and walk free. I know it's hard, that the magic thinking will make you believe that if you don't attack them, you don't do the ritual to overcome them, the most horrible punishment will occur and it will be all your fault.

But that only made it worse. Nothing will happen if you let them pass. They will not invoke the wrath of god or karma. I had and still have so many fantasies and catastrophic belief (for years I imagined hurting my mother with silverware and I punished my them for such thoughts both physical and emotionally or that if I closed my eyes in the bathroom I would be transported to another reality just the same but I will leave my rotting corpse and destroy the happiness of my family, for example) and the less I fought with them, the less I judged me a monster because they appeared, the less they hurt me. Is the same activity that apoplexy advice: ERP.

Oh, it will be terribly uncomfortable at firs, the uncertainty and weight of the anxiety will feel crushing But we are used to that. And with each day it will be less, it will hurt less and you will be stronger. That I can promise.

One of my tools is, when I'm having those thoughts is to try to live in the now by: saying who I am, where I live, what I have done, what I'm doing, the day and hour I'm saying this. Without using adjectives of any kind. Just the facts. To ground me in the here and know because that's what anxiety and OCD rob you, of your present moment for the what if and could happen.

I hope this can help you. Take care.