Crippling OCD

My OCD is absolutely terrible. It's taken over my life so many times already, and currently I'm in another one of those phases where intrusive thoughts occupy my mind the entire day, so I can hardly be productive.

Thankfully I still manage to focus at my part-time job but at home I'm usually lost in my mind and by the time I sorted it all out it's bedtime again.

I'm very afraid that not obsessing would result in me losing who I care for the most. The death of my cat, my mom's cancer, the disappearance of my girlfriend... everytime my OCD makes me feel like that's what I get for not having obsessed enough.

False memories in particular make me obsess like crazy. Misremembering mountain shapes, the placement of markings on the street, the sun's position in relation to a place at a certain time. When I go out for a walk I'm often so focused on the shadows and the landscape in the distance to see if everything aligns correctly. Sometimes I panic when I look at the time and I don't feel like the right amount of time passed since I last looked at the clock. When I read chatlogs, sometimes I feel like the things are out of order and don't reflect the original conversation, or that the date is not correct. Sometimes I try to reconstruct thoughts to figure out how I could miss things that were so obviously in plain sight.


My mind is constantly operating at its limits, at any moment. And because there's so much going on, I can hardly focus on anything. So when the times comes that an obsession forces me to think back on an event, the memory is often fuzzy and I misremember, which makes me obsess more. It's such a vicious cycle.

I'm on medication, but I feel like the meds impair my short-term memory, which actually helps make the obsessions worse. Because sometimes I can hardly remember what happened 10 seconds ago.

So many strings of thought always occur at the same time, and OCD forces me to keep track of all of them. So whenever I forgot what I just thought about I start obsessing to find out what I just obsessed about.

Especially when it comes to sensitive topics for me, this is especially bad, because I instantly feel like if I don't finish that string of thought successfully, something awful in regards to that will happen.

When that thought is accompanied by an obsession by a false memory, my mind instantly interprets as the first sign towards my fear coming true.

For instance, I've been in an abusive relationship with a girl that liked other girls once. It was so crippling for my self-esteem to know I was never her preference, though I only really felt the extent of this after the relationship ended. I obsessed so much about the sexuality of girls I liked later on, that I got severe stomach cramps. And if I couldn't finish these strings of thought, just feeling right, I instantly felt like they would turn out to be bisexual/lesbian as well. Often I would ask for reassurance to the point of where I got on their nerves for asking so much about it, despite knowing about my condition. I'm not homophobic, I'm just really traumatized by this experience, and having OCD only makes it 10 times worse.


It's almost unbelievable I managed to have this extreme case of OCD under complete control for about a year. But things got out of hand again, and as soon as my cat died things went down the drain entirely. My OCD blamed it on me, saying such a catastrophic event could only occur because I ignored my OCD for so long.

Now, I'm completly under its control again.
I will be seeing a therapist this Thursday. Wish me luck.

I don't recall having had the opportunity to welcome you to PC, Coco. So... welcome! I'm sorry you are having such a difficult time. Hopefully having come here to PC can be of some comfort & support. Here are links to 5 articles, from PC's archives, on the subject of OCD:

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) | Psych Central

The Best and Worst Treatment Options for OCD

ERP Therapy: A Good Choice for Treating OCD

Avoidance in OCD: It's Never the Answer

When OCD Targets Your Relationship

Good luck with your upcoming therapy appointment!

The therapist appointment unfortunately didn't really lead anywhere.

They straight up admitted they didn't feel like they were the right person to help me. It felt pretty weird, too. I couldn't even open up on a surface level because I don't really feel understood.
They might apply their knowledge from their studies, but it feels so fundamentially different talking to a person that only learnt about the subject compared to talking to people that suffered through similar struggle.
Unfortunately, the latter doesn't prove to be a good source of support.

I know another nearby therapist I'll try contacting, but I do feel more hesitant now.