Hi, I'm new here.
I'm in my mid-thirties and have realised over the last year that I suffer with ocd. I was always an anxious person and always had little things I had to do, such as check locks a certain number of times etc. and going over and over in my mind little 'mistakes' I had made and how it could all lead to something terrible, but never realised what it was. Then over the last couple of years it just took over my life and it was when reading a book on ocd, that I realised it was describing me EXACTLY. It's been both a relief to find out what it is, but also quite scary too.
My main problem is how it's prevented me from building any kind of life for myself. I still live with my mum who is very unsupportive, she's actually quite cruel, she constantly mocks my anxiety and treats me as if I'm just an embarassment and a failure. I really need to move out but I've trapped myself. I could never last long enough at a job to save up money - which I NOW realise was ocd - I would become obsessed with mistakes I had thought I had made and convince myself I couldn't handle it and would be fired soon (even though I would be told by people that they were glad I worked there, I wouldn't believe it) and so I would quit because I couldn't stand the constant anxiety every single day. Then I would try another job and the same thing would happen. Over and over again.
Recently though I did manage to get a volunteer job in a charity shop - only two hours a week which isn't much, but it was a huge deal for me - and again the ocd was really, really bad. BUT I've managed to stick it out, even though some days, the ocd has been just unbearable. It's just absolutely exhausting to be replaying over and over mistakes I've made in my head ..... silly little things that other people don't even think about cause me endless misery. For example if I think I forgot to pick up something off the floor, I will become convinced that someone will trip over it and really hurt themselves, or if I made a mistake on the till, it will end up costing the charity money, if I forgot to turn a switch off, it will cause a fire ..... The list is endless ....
I just feel so stuck. Even if I can stick at the volunteer job, it's going to be months and months before I have the confidence to apply for a job - which will probably then be too overwhelming and I won't get anyway (I have huge gaps in my work history - how on earth do I explain it?). Meanwhile my ocd is torturing me everyday and I just feel as if it's a never-ending cycle.
It's just so hard to imagine that my life will be anything other than how it is now - or that it won't just get even worse! (I'm so much worse now than I was even a few years ago) and on top of all that, having an unsupportive family is also really hard to deal with.
Anyway, just wanted to say hi. Thanks for reading.
Susannah