leftyhelen

Hello all. So, I've never had this fear before. But, last night I took the MMPI-2 test and got results back. It's supposed to test categories which you are high on that show incidents of mental illness. I answered truthfully, albeit a little negative as I was afraid of invalidating my results by presenting myself as "too good". Anyway, it turned back that I have a variety of tensions-including anxiety, depression, and particularly high for obsessive-compulsive tendencies...but it also said that I could have somewhat "psychopathic deviate" tendencies....this really scares me because I do not want to be a crazy psychopath. On questions where it asked whether we sometimes wanted to hurt family members, I did not mean physically but answered yes....To explain, I have a tense relationship with my mother because she is an addict, serial cheater on my father, and sometimes emotionally abusive. I sometimes want to lash out and make her feel bad emotionally (and have done it) because she has really hurt me in the past. I also want to "emotionally pay back" people who have been cruel to me in the past, i.e. made fun of me. Does this make me a bad person or sound like characteristics of a psychopath? I'm really scared. I love children, am an emotional and sensitive person, and always thought of myself as fairly good. What if I have an evil mind? By the way, I'm a 19-year-old university female.

Recently, I've been feeling very depersonalized in social situations. A lot of my other symptoms have gone down-I've fought through POCD, scrupulosity, number fascination, being obsessed with how I look, etc... It seems like things finally should be going my way. I have a good friend group, an awesome family support system, I love my college, etc. (I'm American, by the way...) And then something in me freezes. I don't know if anyone else understands, but whenever I'm feeling good, and "unsymptomed" (which doesn't happen often) my brain seems to realize it and is like "oh dang, what can I ruin for Helen this time?" Recently, I've been feeling very depersonalized in conversation. I'm never in the moment anymore, and I'm actually usually pretty good at talking to people. Now I doubt EVERY SINGLE thing I say and whether it's the "right thing" and I feel my anxiety rise in social situations. I just feel very out-of-the-moment in my experiences - does anyone else experience this? It's almost like my life is a lucid dream I'm too worried about to experience.

bump?

Hello all. So I've posted before, but I'm trying to still collect my thoughts about my illness as a whole and I want to organize all my information to see if anyone can help. I've had OCD since childhood, and it's manifested in a multitude of ways. There's been a lot of Pure O, I've had strong POCD and am still suffering from strong moral scrupulosity. I've also had counting obsessions when I was younger (when I did actions, it somehow had to involve the "right number", some washing hands repetitively, etc. I've always been confident in my appearance, until high school (I'm American) where quite a few different boys were mean to me. At the same time, I dated a good number of guys in high school as well. I was also very opinionated in my small parochial school, which I think made a lot of people mad. Anyway though, some boys were mean to me. I was extremely hurt and began to become obsessed with my appearance and how I came across. I also went to Reddits like amiugly where strangers can rate you and tell what you think. The responses were a mix of positive and negative, but I could overwhelmingly only fixate on the negatives. I would hear those words day after day in mind, and I could not avoid it. Now, I am obsessed with getting reassurance from friends and family (a known compulsion, I know). I am constantly asking my loved ones if they think I'm pretty or not, if I look good when I go out, if I'm as good as this girl or that girl etc. No matter what they say though, I always end up feeling bad again and again, and when I'm alone I look in the mirror and see this ugly, ugly girl. I feel like my fixation on how I look has gotten so bad, and has morphed into this combo of OCD and BDD. I want to feel beautiful like I once did. I try to tell myself that it is ok to, but my brain tells me I'm delusional for being confident in myself when some other people have said I'm unattractive. It's very hard because I want to be honest with myself, but I have no idea where I stand. Some people tell me I'm beautiful, others ugly. What do I think, and does anyone have advice on how to have a healthy relationship with my self-esteem? Also, I hate that I am so fixated on appearance, I feel very vain. By the way, I'm 18 and go to college in America. Thank you!

Dear @Ashley Sorry, I should've prefaced. I also suffer from other OCD symptoms and have for years. I have scrupulosity OCD as my main other component, but I also have experienced obsessions with numbers, the "correctness" of placements, repetition of words if I believe I have not said them "right." I am not an incredibly neat person, so I would say my compulsions do not fall under the typical cleanliness "umbrella" that OCD is often characterized as. Rather, I suffer from the need for CONSTANT reassurance. People will repeat themselves to me but I still feel those pangs of anxiety and I need to keep hearing things again and again... Does that make sense?

Hey guys! This is another form of OCD that I have that I have never really talked about on forums, or even seen really mentioned and wanted to see if anyone else can sympathize.. I am a freshman college student in America. But, I would say this has been going on since junior year of high school. A couple of times in my high school career, boys said I was ugly or unattractive. Now, I have never seen myself in that light before they mentioned it. And I HAVE had boyfriends. I've dated probably 5 or 6 guys and obviously they needed to be attracted to me for it to happen. In fact-one of the guys who was mean to me said it after I rejected going out with him again. So that could be part of it. However, it has created a sort of spiral effect for me. I constantly feel insecure about myself and my looks and worry that everyone who is meeting me thinks thinks I'm some hideous troll. It has made it very hard for me to start friendships with guys since and to be engaging and fun because meanwhile I am afraid they are judging me and thinking negatively. I also get closed-off with my girlfriends when I think they are not giving the response that I want. I also get insecure because I feel like I have a very attractive friend group and that I must not belong. Curious-have any other sufferers gone through this? And what is your advice for getting out there. (By the way-this is me. )

Hello all, So first of all, I am an 18-year-old female with OCD. I'm in my freshman year of college, and my obsessions/compulsions are really getting the best of me. I have struggled with different types of OCD my whole life. I'm not a super organized or clean person, in fact I would say I am messy. But I have suffered other compulsions and obsessions that fellow sufferers will recognize. Preoccupation with numbers, repetition until words sounded "right", erasing and rewriting math homework numbers, POCD, obsessions about my relationships, etc. RIght now however I am acutely suffering from moral OCD. And I don't know how to stop it. I have been raised Catholic my whole life. My family is faithful (we go to church every weekend) and a lot of my relatives are too. However, my family has never been pushy or overbearing. They are not super stringent in their beliefs, rather they try to focus on love and charity, which is important to me too! (Especially for me, since I'm an ENFP Meyers-Briggs. A little bit more relaxed...) Through my childhood there have been some "traumatic" events that may have shaped my disorder. I moved around a lot when I was little, my parents were deployed in the military, they had marital issues involving infidelity on my mother's part...despite this, we are still close as a family and try our best to work through things. But I think this may have encouraged (along with my strong faith background) my preoccupation with doing the right thing. I still believe in God, and I do not want to stop being Christian/Catholic. But I feel like I'm dying. I want to be able to live the life of a normal college student - go out, curse sometimes, party sometimes, gossip with friends, enthuse with them about their hook-ups, be supportive of my LGBT and sexually-active friends because personally (despite my faith background of a relatively conservative religion) I lean more liberal. But every time I do those things ever, I feel enormous pangs of guilt. The thing is, I think I'm a good person otherwise. I do care a lot about the well-being of others, my friends, loved ones, and the world. But I feel so much enormous pain and scrupulosity about all my actions. I feel as though I'm definitely going to hell. And the thing is, I don't want to stop my behaviors. I want to enjoy being a normal, 21st-century teen. And I feel like it's my OCD, not my faith, that is causing such enormous terror about it. Through my "OCD lens", I can see that I'm applying a very limitation of the Bible to myself. You have to follow every precept specifically, or you will be damned. I know not all Christians think this way, and many are much more lenient. But I worry-if I am lenient in my beliefs, and simply "believe" in Christ-will I be damned forever? Am I going to perish? Is this the end? How wicked am I? And I simply cannot stop going in this doo-loop! I would love to simply live my life and expose myself to the things I've mentioned above so I can just be NORMAL for college. But it's different to dismiss for me than my other previous obsessions, because I cannot ignore that this does not have some merit, at least in my mind. In fact, several pastors have told me it's a blessing to have religious scrupulosity, because it will make me a better person. But I feel like I am trapped, that I am making my choices out of fear rather than decision. I hope this makes sense. And I hope you guys still think I am a good person, which is what most of my friends and family tell me. But I am scared I am too doing too much evil and I will go to hell. For response criteria, please know I don't want to stop being Christian. I think I need advice on how to deal with this and mold my faith around this difficulty.