Still_Hopeful

Hi everyone, i will try to keep this brief. I used to struggle with a very bad OCD episode myself a few years back and somehow, thankfully, managed to recover to a point where I can lead a fairly normal life. Through this episode one of my closest female friends told me that she is also a OCD sufferer. She had a very bad, suicidal episode many years ago, after which she started taking medication that helped her and recovered mostly. About half a year ago her medication suddenly seemed to stop working and she got into this really bad episode again and hasn't really improved since. She is in a very dark place, on the edge of suicidal, she had to stop working and isolate herself from almost everyone. She had to go through various medication changes, all of which didn't help and had more side effects than good effects, so she is now back on the old medication that so far, after over a month, still hasn't kicked in. Considering the state she is in, I feel like the NHS is really failing her. Apparantly the psychiatrist wouldn't even see her recently, even though her husband stated that she is getting suicidal thoughts, and now she is on a fairly ridiculously small amount of CBT. Every time I meet her she is so down and tells me she doesn't want to be here Even though I struggled with OCD very badly myself I find it so hard to give her hope, and I really want to. I know that she will be fine if she hangs in there, but I wonder if anyone here can give me advice on what to say, how to be supportive and how to give her hope. I find it so hard to put it in words and "you will be fine" just isn't enough. Im trying to see her as often as I can, take her out of the house, make her have different thoughts and distract her a little (almost impossible so far sadly), try and tell her about my recovery and that it took quite a lot of time. She is very understandably getting very impatient about being in such a low state for so long, the medication not working and feeling so useless. I'm just so worried, I have lost 2 very dear friends through suicide already and always thought that if I had known how upset they had been, maybe I could have helped them. This time I know how bad my friend feels and I am just as helpless. I love her a lot and just want to do something useful, tell her something that actually makes her feel better, even if just for a few minutes. What have your experiences been and how have you helped your loved ones when they were at their very lowest? To clarify, I have never been on medication myself so I don't know a thing about it. That makes it harder for me as well to give any advice because I somehow managed to get myself out of this terrible loop by meditation, reading a lot about it, the four step brain lock etc. All of which I have recommended. I would be so grateful to hear from you.

Hello everyone, I used to be here a few years ago during my worst OCD time and first of all I'd like to say how amazing I find this community and how much help I found. My story is incredibly difficult, but to give some of you hope, there IS a way out of OCD. A few years ago I had no idea what I was suffering from. I had horrible thoughts and had to counter act them by repeating things on such an extreme level that normal activities were hardly possible or not possible anymore. I wasn't able to function anymore, and yet I managed to hide it so well that a lot of my friends still have no idea. Through reading about OCD, the 4 step brain lock system and a lot of meditation, exercise and healthy eating I slowly found my way out of OCD over the course of 2 years. It's still there and it does flare up here and there, but I finally feel like a human again. The problem I am having now is almost unbearable as well. I will try to keep this very short and it took me an unbelievable amount of distress to even write about this, as no person in my life knows about this. I am so terribly ashamed and just dont know how to ever find a way out of this. During my worst OCD times, for the past 6 years, I have been working as a freelancer. It was the only work I could do in my field as I couldn't cope with working a normal 9-5 job at all, and even as a freelancer I would often get replaced at companies I worked for because I had many bad days and couldn't keep up with the speed of normal workers. I struggled with money very quickly and often. My horrible thoughts and being so side tracked with OCD kept me in a cloud over those years that made it impossible to manage anything, especially my finances. I could hardly have a shower under 1 hour because of all the repetitions I had to do, so I had to live a "survive each single day" lifestyle, being unable to look further into the future. Fighting OCD and trying to stay alive took everything out of me, and I was horrified of the thought of being a failure to my family. My parents never supported my decision to be a freelancer, and they had to help me out financially in the beginnings very often. They didn't understand that it was the only thing I could do to earn money, that a "normal Job" just isn't possible for me. During those years i had phases where I felt better, but then a major event happened and threw me right back into the black whole. My relationship I was in with a man I really loved ended (because of my inability to tell him about my condition, not knowing how and if he'd understand, and feeling ashamed of having such irrational thoughts). I was an absolute wreck afterwards and just couldn't get over this at all. It made my OCD so much worse again and I hated myself. One of my closest friends committed suicide about a year later after a night out with me and some friends, and the guilt of not knowing about his worries and thoughts teared me all up again. Then my parents got very close to breaking up, my last rock in the sea at the time, with my dad moving out for a while and my mum having suicidal thoughts. You get the idea.... Basically, a lot of things happened to me in the 6 year period. In the past year my situation dramatically improved. My work got better after a change of fields and started to bring me joy. I started making money and being proud of what I did. I found the most wonderful boyfriend in the world who is amazing and supportive and loves me just as much as I love him (he knows about my OCD) and we live together. My OCD started to get better to a point where at least I feel like I'm able to do normal household actions and live a fairly happy life. But now I crawled out of the hole and could finally be a happy person, I am staring back at the second one I dug unknowingly while I was so ill. A huge amount of debt, ignored letters, things I don't know how to handle. Over the past 1 - 1.5 years I lived in fear of the day I will have to deal with this and the day I have to tell someone who will be utterly shocked and disappointed in me. I think my parents would have no respect for me anymore whatsoever because they had been right all along about my freelancing. My boyfriend doesn't know either and it's killing me to lie in bed, silently crying next to him so often without being able to tell him. I am completely unable to deal with this situation even though I can't think of anything else anymore. I'm so scared I will end up in prison (writing this is so hard, it's my worst fear) and ruin the lives of the people I love so much, and also losing the little bit of self respect I have left. It would kill me and make me suicidal, this keeps on popping in my head a lot now. What on earth am I going to do? I really don't know how to ever get it of this ever and the shame is unbearable to me. I have never ever told anyone at all and I don't want anyone I love offering me financial help to drag me out of problems that are my own fault. Has anyone of you had similar problems and any advice at all? I am so scared of what will happen when I face these depts, one in particular is very serious, and ending up as an even more empty shell than I was before, losing everything I love. I am so hopeless........... Please help.