[cherrystem]

Pretty much since I was young, I've had really nasty intrusive thoughts of doing things I don't want to do or thoughts mirroring beliefs I don't want to hold. Sorry, I'm not elaborating as much as I could and I know this isn't a judgmental atmosphere but I still feel strange typing this out as far as admitting it even to myself (it's within the last few weeks I've come to see it as a mental health issue at all), so I don't feel entirely comfortable addressing all of them. Suffice to say, many of my thoughts were violent or sexual or counter to my beliefs and the whole thing was very very persistent. I went to my father and he said when he thought things he didn't want to think (which wasn't ever to the same degree as it is for me as far as I know, he's on anxiety meds but I'm pretty sure he doesn't deal with anything like this), he thought 'these thoughts have no place in my mind', which I tended to repeat a lot. Without it helping much. I also essentially relied on distracting myself a whole lot of the time.

I've been in mental health care since the age of 12 or so due to my poor performance in school and general depression (I grew up in an extremely dysfunctional and abusive home and I had some pretty major learning disabilities so it wasn't really a recipe for academic success) but I was always too ashamed to mention my thoughts to anyone, as I thought of it as outside the bounds of mental issues and more something inherently wrong with me. I was also really uneducated about my own conditions aside from doctors telling me what I had (even when I wasn't fully honest with them) and giving me pills. I also had some bad experiences with doctors, including one who mocked my abuse and made sexual comments to me at the age of 15 (!!!) so I wasn't inclined to trust a lot of them in general. It wasn't great, but my attitude was generally to act as sane and cooperative as I could so they wouldn't judge me. Not healthy but what can I say, I was a teenager and I'd had some very bad experiences. I was on SSRIs from the age of 16 and other medications earlier, so that dulled a lot of my symptoms. (I do remember going off medication for a few days once because my prescription had ran out and seeing images of my own dead body decaying, but I put that down to withdrawal.) In general, I was uneducated about mental illness, I hadn't been wholly unmedicated since I was a preteen, I had some awful doctors and I wasn't fully honest about my symptoms. Kind of a recipe for disaster. Even with the medication, I had two suicide attempts when I was 19, was hospitalized, my Zoloft dosage was upped. I remember having more episodes of intrusive thoughts over my teenage years (including a few bouts of AWFUL ones) but it was dulled. I don't know how much of that to put down to SSRIs.

I am now no longer a teenager (22 and adjusting to the adulthood transition with work and moving out of my parent's house) and I've been more and more determined to take my mental health care into my own hands. I realized some of my past doctors hadn't discussed important side effects with me, so I've tried to do my own research about my own conditions and what I'm prescribed. I recently went off Zoloft because I was having negative sexual side effects and onto Wellbutrin and it was a DISASTER. I'm constantly feeling guilt for things I've both done and thought in the past and having intrusive thoughts that I also felt guilty about. I'm digging my nails into my skin so much that there are visible marks (I've self harmed more severely in the past but this is as far as it's gone now). I've had to rely on essentially distracting myself to even function. It's taken up hours upon hours of my days for weeks now. (I will also add this has been a difficult month due to outside factors, namely a LOT of increased contact with my mom, who triggers the hell out of me, so I don't want to discount that. But I don't want to discount the drugs either.)

Still, I more credited my intrusive thoughts to something awful and secretive and wrong with me than mental illness up until really recently. It was actually a friend's account of OCD and subsequent internet research that led me to think this was symptomatic of something else. That was VERY recent. I found Pure OCD accounts and was really shocked by how familiar it sounded. I didn't want to self-diagnose when I had the privilege of seeing so many professionals but it sounded SO MUCH like me and I'd been very reluctant to talk about my symptoms, so I wondered.

I actually mentioned Pure OCD to my current therapist and he pretty instantly shot it down, essentially saying "you don't have OCD" as soon as the words even came from my mouth. I'm also an abuse survivor - I was physically abused by my mother from ages pretty much 5-15 (I believe? it may have started earlier but it very definitively ended at 15, at the time my mother left my father). After that, my mother essentially put on an extremely self-congratulatory 'reformed' act that involved her being less volatile but still extremely manipulative and entitled (and it's taken my current therapist to make me realize she's still emotionally abusive and it's a large part of why I had trouble moving past it). The woman who gave me my past diagnosis even made separate copies of her report that wouldn't mention the abuse overmuch because I mentioned my mother would insist on seeing it and she didn't want to potentially put me in a situation that would make my mother angry. My therapist essentially believes all of this stems from PTSD - I can trace some of my thoughts back to things my mom did to me (I have thoughts about choking people, which I recently connected to my mother choking me when I was growing up) but frankly, not all of it and it seems really loosely connected at best a lot of the time. His theory is that since my mother frequently told me I was an awful person, I've had thoughts that support that theory and that it's PTSD. I don't want to argue with him, but I've never seen an account of PTSD that involves unrelated intrusive thoughts and was wondering if anyone else could shed some light? He's very dismissive of diagnosis in general and wants to more address symptoms as they come, which again, I don't want to argue with him but I am so unsure about all of this? I'm actually going back to the woman who initially diagnosed me, since figuring out disorders is her specialty, while my current guy seems to almost think they're irrelevant. I don't know whether that will be of use, but I guess I wanted a second opinion. I'm not really looking for a particular diagnosis and I don't want to think I have anything a professional says I don't, I just feel everything goes so far beyond what I've been tagged as before (anxiety, depression, learning disabilities) and I don't really know how to deal with it, so I was wondering if anyone had a similar experience?

[thickntired]

Hi,

I found that prozac really helped stop my intrusive thoughts and adhd meds made them worse. I have run the gament of having violent, sexual, paranoid and all types of crazy thoughts. I am sometimes afraid that I will act on them or yell something obscene. I try to take deep breaths and think of the now/present like where I am or what I'm doing. A lot of times I ruminate over stupid bs from years past or future anxiety. The only real is on the now.

Peace,

TnT

[vans1974]

Originally Posted by cherrystem

Pretty much since I was young, I've had really nasty intrusive thoughts of doing things I don't want to do or thoughts mirroring beliefs I don't want to hold. Sorry, I'm not elaborating as much as I could and I know this isn't a judgmental atmosphere but I still feel strange typing this out as far as admitting it even to myself (it's within the last few weeks I've come to see it as a mental health issue at all), so I don't feel entirely comfortable addressing all of them. Suffice to say, many of my thoughts were violent or sexual or counter to my beliefs and the whole thing was very very persistent. I went to my father and he said when he thought things he didn't want to think (which wasn't ever to the same degree as it is for me as far as I know, he's on anxiety meds but I'm pretty sure he doesn't deal with anything like this), he thought 'these thoughts have no place in my mind', which I tended to repeat a lot. Without it helping much. I also essentially relied on distracting myself a whole lot of the time.

I've been in mental health care since the age of 12 or so due to my poor performance in school and general depression (I grew up in an extremely dysfunctional and abusive home and I had some pretty major learning disabilities so it wasn't really a recipe for academic success) but I was always too ashamed to mention my thoughts to anyone, as I thought of it as outside the bounds of mental issues and more something inherently wrong with me. I was also really uneducated about my own conditions aside from doctors telling me what I had (even when I wasn't fully honest with them) and giving me pills. I also had some bad experiences with doctors, including one who mocked my abuse and made sexual comments to me at the age of 15 (!!!) so I wasn't inclined to trust a lot of them in general. It wasn't great, but my attitude was generally to act as sane and cooperative as I could so they wouldn't judge me. Not healthy but what can I say, I was a teenager and I'd had some very bad experiences. I was on SSRIs from the age of 16 and other medications earlier, so that dulled a lot of my symptoms. (I do remember going off medication for a few days once because my prescription had ran out and seeing images of my own dead body decaying, but I put that down to withdrawal.) In general, I was uneducated about mental illness, I hadn't been wholly unmedicated since I was a preteen, I had some awful doctors and I wasn't fully honest about my symptoms. Kind of a recipe for disaster. Even with the medication, I had two suicide attempts when I was 19, was hospitalized, my Zoloft dosage was upped. I remember having more episodes of intrusive thoughts over my teenage years (including a few bouts of AWFUL ones) but it was dulled. I don't know how much of that to put down to SSRIs.

I am now no longer a teenager (22 and adjusting to the adulthood transition with work and moving out of my parent's house) and I've been more and more determined to take my mental health care into my own hands. I realized some of my past doctors hadn't discussed important side effects with me, so I've tried to do my own research about my own conditions and what I'm prescribed. I recently went off Zoloft because I was having negative sexual side effects and onto Wellbutrin and it was a DISASTER. I'm constantly feeling guilt for things I've both done and thought in the past and having intrusive thoughts that I also felt guilty about. I'm digging my nails into my skin so much that there are visible marks (I've self harmed more severely in the past but this is as far as it's gone now). I've had to rely on essentially distracting myself to even function. It's taken up hours upon hours of my days for weeks now. (I will also add this has been a difficult month due to outside factors, namely a LOT of increased contact with my mom, who triggers the hell out of me, so I don't want to discount that. But I don't want to discount the drugs either.)

Still, I more credited my intrusive thoughts to something awful and secretive and wrong with me than mental illness up until really recently. It was actually a friend's account of OCD and subsequent internet research that led me to think this was symptomatic of something else. That was VERY recent. I found Pure OCD accounts and was really shocked by how familiar it sounded. I didn't want to self-diagnose when I had the privilege of seeing so many professionals but it sounded SO MUCH like me and I'd been very reluctant to talk about my symptoms, so I wondered.

I actually mentioned Pure OCD to my current therapist and he pretty instantly shot it down, essentially saying "you don't have OCD" as soon as the words even came from my mouth. I'm also an abuse survivor - I was physically abused by my mother from ages pretty much 5-15 (I believe? it may have started earlier but it very definitively ended at 15, at the time my mother left my father). After that, my mother essentially put on an extremely self-congratulatory 'reformed' act that involved her being less volatile but still extremely manipulative and entitled (and it's taken my current therapist to make me realize she's still emotionally abusive and it's a large part of why I had trouble moving past it). The woman who gave me my past diagnosis even made separate copies of her report that wouldn't mention the abuse overmuch because I mentioned my mother would insist on seeing it and she didn't want to potentially put me in a situation that would make my mother angry. My therapist essentially believes all of this stems from PTSD - I can trace some of my thoughts back to things my mom did to me (I have thoughts about choking people, which I recently connected to my mother choking me when I was growing up) but frankly, not all of it and it seems really loosely connected at best a lot of the time. His theory is that since my mother frequently told me I was an awful person, I've had thoughts that support that theory and that it's PTSD. I don't want to argue with him, but I've never seen an account of PTSD that involves unrelated intrusive thoughts and was wondering if anyone else could shed some light? He's very dismissive of diagnosis in general and wants to more address symptoms as they come, which again, I don't want to argue with him but I am so unsure about all of this? I'm actually going back to the woman who initially diagnosed me, since figuring out disorders is her specialty, while my current guy seems to almost think they're irrelevant. I don't know whether that will be of use, but I guess I wanted a second opinion. I'm not really looking for a particular diagnosis and I don't want to think I have anything a professional says I don't, I just feel everything goes so far beyond what I've been tagged as before (anxiety, depression, learning disabilities) and I don't really know how to deal with it, so I was wondering if anyone had a similar experience?

Sorry to hear, regardless of your diagnosis, I'd find a pdoc and T, that treat the symtoms you're currently experiencing! For OCD and PTSD, anxiety and depression-Nefazodone is great medication or even an AAP like Latuda. Best of luck and hope that helps a bit!

Hi CS:
I've been "in the mental health system" [insert eye roll here] since I was a child.
When I was finally diagnosed with OCD [Pure Obsessive/Pure O type] at 28/29, things finally began to make a hell of a lot more sense in terms of a clinical picture.

Some of my obsessive and intrusive thoughts resemble what might be seen as paranoia [which is not an uncommon tendency to have with treatment resistant bipolar in particular, but bipolar generally as well].

I had.. a LOT of issues with what had previously been termed paranoia, social anxiety, perseveration associated with autism, probably a couple other things.

As I got older, into my mid and late twenties, it was clear that no treatments addressing these issues were actually all that helpful. Gaining stability for longer than a couple months was considered a pipe dream- the effects of untreated Pure O can include depression, overwhelming and ultimately disabling anxiety, tendency toward agoraphobia, inability to maintain solid relationships or conduct life in general in a functional and normal way.

A lot of people are not dx'd with Pure O until many years after they first begin experiencing symptoms.

Part of this is that it's difficult to know that your internal monologue is a bit dysfunctional if you don't talk about specifics... and very few people, especially before any kind of treatment, will talk about the Pure O inner monologue.

Because frankly, it can make you feel like you are a monster [which has been my experience at times as well as others' that I have spoken with].

Pure O can get worse because even though it is referred to as "purely obsessional", there are actually routines and compulsions done to alleviate the distress that these thoughts bring.

You actually mentioned things that fall under common compulsions:

he thought 'these thoughts have no place in my mind', which I tended to repeat a lot. Without it helping much. I also essentially relied on distracting myself a whole lot of the time.

Because the compulsions and rituals happen mentally and the embarrassment or outright fear that some of our thoughts can induce- it can sometimes be very difficult for a clinician to understand what is going on.

Many clinicians who are not experienced with OCD specifically are likely to simply brush aside concerns that one might have OCD when they are symptoms resembling Pure O. Also, it is very difficult to "root out" that someone is experiencing this- the first therapist to even acknowledge that I had "obsessive tendencies" didn't actually do so until I had been seeing her well over two years. It took a couple more doctors and out patient hospitalization for any of the pieces to be put together... which means that at this point the most difficult part of my mental illnesses- the OCD [not the autism or the bipolar], is finally being addressed.

I think there is actually a lack of education regarding specifics of OCD. Social workers and counselors tend to be less informed, though certainly there are some very knowledgeable and competent individuals in those positions who understand the picture of OCD. I've found PhD's, PsyD's and MDs [psychiatrists] have a greater tendency to understand more about OCD.

I can't say "Yes, you have Pure O" and it is great that you don't want to self-diagnose or not involve a professional.

It has been my experience, as well, that some providers tend to jump on the PTSD train for everything. I don't actually have PTSD, but several have tried to slap that label on me as an explanation for what seemed to be intense social anxiety and paranoia.

You describe some complicated details and if the therapist you have been seeing isn't a PhD or PsyD, I would encourage you to see one, simply because OCD specifically can be very complex and people with those qualifications tend to understand more about it. [Not as a general disparagement toward those who are in the helping professions but don't have that degree.]

I have used this before to try to explain Pure O:
What is Pure O?|OCD-UK

I have found it to be one of the better explanations and introductions to the experience of Pure O.

All I can really say is that much of what you describe is VERY familiar, and i have found that the root of my issues was for the most part OCD.

I do encourage you to find another opinion and explore all possibilities, though. Particularly if what you are doing right now isn't helping as you need.

ETA: as far as SSRIs go, I've found most of them do nothing at all, and the ones that do something tended to make me sick.

The exception has bee Luvox [fluvoxamine], which has helped greatly with the OCD symptoms I experience.

[cherrystem]

Originally Posted by JosieTheGirl

Hi CS:
I've been "in the mental health system" [insert eye roll here] since I was a child.
When I was finally diagnosed with OCD [Pure Obsessive/Pure O type] at 28/29, things finally began to make a hell of a lot more sense in terms of a clinical picture.

Some of my obsessive and intrusive thoughts resemble what might be seen as paranoia [which is not an uncommon tendency to have with treatment resistant bipolar in particular, but bipolar generally as well].

I had.. a LOT of issues with what had previously been termed paranoia, social anxiety, perseveration associated with autism, probably a couple other things.

As I got older, into my mid and late twenties, it was clear that no treatments addressing these issues were actually all that helpful. Gaining stability for longer than a couple months was considered a pipe dream- the effects of untreated Pure O can include depression, overwhelming and ultimately disabling anxiety, tendency toward agoraphobia, inability to maintain solid relationships or conduct life in general in a functional and normal way.

A lot of people are not dx'd with Pure O until many years after they first begin experiencing symptoms.

Part of this is that it's difficult to know that your internal monologue is a bit dysfunctional if you don't talk about specifics... and very few people, especially before any kind of treatment, will talk about the Pure O inner monologue.

Because frankly, it can make you feel like you are a monster [which has been my experience at times as well as others' that I have spoken with].

Pure O can get worse because even though it is referred to as "purely obsessional", there are actually routines and compulsions done to alleviate the distress that these thoughts bring.

You actually mentioned things that fall under common compulsions:

Because the compulsions and rituals happen mentally and the embarrassment or outright fear that some of our thoughts can induce- it can sometimes be very difficult for a clinician to understand what is going on.

Many clinicians who are not experienced with OCD specifically are likely to simply brush aside concerns that one might have OCD when they are symptoms resembling Pure O. Also, it is very difficult to "root out" that someone is experiencing this- the first therapist to even acknowledge that I had "obsessive tendencies" didn't actually do so until I had been seeing her well over two years. It took a couple more doctors and out patient hospitalization for any of the pieces to be put together... which means that at this point the most difficult part of my mental illnesses- the OCD [not the autism or the bipolar], is finally being addressed.

I think there is actually a lack of education regarding specifics of OCD. Social workers and counselors tend to be less informed, though certainly there are some very knowledgeable and competent individuals in those positions who understand the picture of OCD. I've found PhD's, PsyD's and MDs [psychiatrists] have a greater tendency to understand more about OCD.

I can't say "Yes, you have Pure O" and it is great that you don't want to self-diagnose or not involve a professional.

It has been my experience, as well, that some providers tend to jump on the PTSD train for everything. I don't actually have PTSD, but several have tried to slap that label on me as an explanation for what seemed to be intense social anxiety and paranoia.

You describe some complicated details and if the therapist you have been seeing isn't a PhD or PsyD, I would encourage you to see one, simply because OCD specifically can be very complex and people with those qualifications tend to understand more about it. [Not as a general disparagement toward those who are in the helping professions but don't have that degree.]

I have used this before to try to explain Pure O:

I have found it to be one of the better explanations and introductions to the experience of Pure O.

All I can really say is that much of what you describe is VERY familiar, and i have found that the root of my issues was for the most part OCD.

I do encourage you to find another opinion and explore all possibilities, though. Particularly if what you are doing right now isn't helping as you need.

ETA: as far as SSRIs go, I've found most of them do nothing at all, and the ones that do something tended to make me sick.

The exception has bee Luvox [fluvoxamine], which has helped greatly with the OCD symptoms I experience.

Thank you so much for sharing and talking with me, Josie, I really appreciated your response.

Honestly I didn't want to argue with him because he's the professional and I'm not but as soon as I read about Pure O I recognized SO MUCH of myself and I'm still really not convinced that isn't the case, even though I don't want to go up against a professional and say they're wrong. I guess all I can do is get a second opinion, I'm going back to the person who first diagnosed me and I want to be sure? I've really felt like a monster as well over the years and was SO ashamed of what was going on with me that I couldn't connect it to mental illness even knowing I was otherwise mentally ill.