long time member(huge flair up again)

[Gareth22]

Hiya all i once again find myself on here i have intrusive thoughts about hurting loved ones.it tends to come in waves for a few years im fine then boom major 24 hour anxiaty attacks not being able to sleep being sick and having thoughts of harming loved ones.ive been fine since christmas but now im on holiday and for the last couple of weeks ive had the anxiaty attacks and lack of sleep but not really the thoughts.wich leads me into a question this year so far my nan passed away im coming off paroxitine im moving out for the first time and january im getting married do you think that could result in a flair up of my ocd.thanks for taking the time and reading this looking forward to your thoughts.

Gareth :-)

[Guest Sisyphus]

Hiya all i once again find myself on here i have intrusive thoughts about hurting loved ones.it tends to come in waves for a few years im fine then boom major 24 hour anxiaty attacks not being able to sleep being sick and having thoughts of harming loved ones.ive been fine since christmas but now im on holiday and for the last couple of weeks ive had the anxiaty attacks and lack of sleep but not really the thoughts.wich leads me into a question this year so far my nan passed away im coming off paroxitine im moving out for the first time and january im getting married do you think that could result in a flair up of my ocd.thanks for taking the time and reading this looking forward to your thoughts.

Gareth :-)

Hi Gareth,

Well from what I've gathered stressful episodes have a habit of triggering relapses so yes I think there's a fair chance all of those comnbined pressures and grief has brought it on.

So are you saying that in this latest episode you are experiencing anxiety but not actual obsessions or compulsions as such?

Cheers,

David

[Gareth22]

Hiya chears for your reply yeah the thoughts i have had in the past have been harm based around my fiance and parents but this time im not so much getting thouse thoughts(i am slightly) but its more just the panic attacks but there lasting days then i think im over them and ill start getting them again sorry if this sounds garbled but im away at the min and i only have my old phone not my i pad

Thanks for your reply by the way it means a lot

[Guest Sisyphus]

Gareth22, on 31 Jul 2014 - 7:29 PM, said:Gareth22, on 31 Jul 2014 - 7:29 PM, said:Gareth22, on 31 Jul 2014 - 7:29 PM, said:Gareth22, on 31 Jul 2014 - 7:29 PM, said:

Hiya chears for your reply yeah the thoughts i have had in the past have been harm based around my fiance and parents but this time im not so much getting thouse thoughts(i am slightly) but its more just the panic attacks but there lasting days then i think im over them and ill start getting them again sorry if this sounds garbled but im away at the min and i only have my old phone not my i pad

Thanks for your reply by the way it means a lot

Hey buddy - it's nothing.

I think a lot of us get these harm thoughts about loved ones. It's just what's available that OCD will use isn't it. The predictable old so-and-so.

Are you already taking medication? I wouldn't push anyone towards taking meds but if the problem's geenral anxiety as opposed to specific obsessions/compulsions, maybe SSRIs could take the edge off it while you get through this tough period.

Otherwise, perhaps slow breathing exercises(or diaphragmatic breathing), meditation, or exercise could provide a non-phramaceutical way of reducing anxiety.

I always thought the breathing exercise thing was a lame cop out but I saw a very interesting documntary recently explaining howyou can kind of reverse engineer stuff like anxiety with tricks like that. i.e. you can force a response that removes the cause - so calm breathing removes anxiety. I suppose this is exactly what we are doing by not responding to obsessions - removing the compulsions.

The brain is a remarkably maleable thing it seems.

And I think it's dead normal for a bloke to get freaked out about moving out and getting married - that kind of "oh no what am I doing, Im signing my life away" kind of panic, runaway response. Sooooo many guys get that before getting married. And moving out is a big change so it's going to be disorienting and shake up your reference points for a while, But what's certain is that your worry and paranoia about these things is skewed and an over-reaction to what it ought to be. So you need to recognise that and try to duck as much of it as you can, safe in the knowledge that one day you'll look back and thing "why the hell did I get so worked up over all that, when I should've just been chilling out and enjoying it all instead?".

Just trying to throw some ideas about - I dont mean to come off like a patronising so-and-so.

Edited July 31, 2014 by Sisyphus

[Gareth22]

No not at all some realy good advice thanks

[Guest Sisyphus]

No not at all some realy good advice thanks

Cool - hopefully some more people will be along with other tips

[Gareth22]

Yeah fingers crossed i forgott to add with my medacation i was on 20mg of paroxitine wich ive been on for over 14 years ive been steeping down for over 6 weeks one day having 20 the next having 10 and so forth till im now on 10 mg daily.what kind of ocd do you suffer from if you dont mind me asking?

[Gareth22]

Yeah fingers crossed i forgott to add with my medacation i was on 20mg of paroxitine wich ive been on for over 14 years ive been steeping down for over 6 weeks one day having 20 the next having 10 and so forth till im now on 10 mg daily.what kind of ocd do you suffer from if you dont mind me asking?

[Guest Sisyphus]

Yeah fingers crossed i forgott to add with my medacation i was on 20mg of paroxitine wich ive been on for over 14 years ive been steeping down for over 6 weeks one day having 20 the next having 10 and so forth till im now on 10 mg daily.what kind of ocd do you suffer from if you dont mind me asking?

Sorry Gareth - you did already mention the paroxetine. My memory's not great Im afraid. Well I think it's great that you're trying to come off the medication, but I wonder if it could be ambitious with everything that's going on at the moment? Or do you think the anxiety is separate to all that. People do report a lot of strange phenomena like that on these forums when coming off meds or changing meds. So maybe if it's too much to handle with all these other pressures you could temporarily go back on them for a while? Or maybe you feel you've come this far, so you'll see it through?

Yeah sure. My OCD is intrusive thoughts/rumination - what some people call Pure O, though it's a misleading label cos it can insinuate there's no compulsions when there are, though they are mostly taking place in my head. So I'll get intrusive thoughts and have to think through as to why the thought is not true, false, and therefore why I dont need to worry about it. Although some of them are very abstract now - i.e. not direct thoguths about bad things but associations from associations. And I kind of wonder why Im doing them at all a lot of the time YET, I am still compelled to do them, and they trigger anxiety all the same. Weird. But alot of the thoughts are directly about bad things and they're the most difficult. I get some of the usual themes too - fear of being a paedophile, whatever sexual or harm connotations OCD can conjure up based on what's available, a lot of OCD around certain difficult/awkward kinds of conflict. That's been a big one for me. Thankfully it doesnt come up that much, but when it does - not good.

Edited August 1, 2014 by Sisyphus

[Gareth22]

Yeah i can see how the thought would kick of the ocd.i think you have done amazingly for living with it for so long i read in anouther post.you went undiagnozed for years.i have never been fully diagnozed with ocd i had to take a test a couple of years ago and i was 1point under so she said we will treat it as g.a.d.but now.the harm thoughts are comming back i might go back to the doctors and be referd again(fun and games) i think with my harm thoughts.there starting to manafest.due to.moving in with my fiancenso it will be just us 2 in the house

[Guest Sisyphus]

Yeah i can see how the thought would kick of the ocd.i think you have done amazingly for living with it for so long i read in anouther post.you went undiagnozed for years.i have never been fully diagnozed with ocd i had to take a test a couple of years ago and i was 1point under so she said we will treat it as g.a.d.but now.the harm thoughts are comming back i might go back to the doctors and be referd again(fun and games) i think with my harm thoughts.there starting to manafest.due to.moving in with my fiancenso it will be just us 2 in the house

Someone else mentioned those tests recently. They seem potentially flawed in that they don't recognise that some people's OCD really fixates on one theme, and no weighting is applied. So unless you have a nice even spread of obsessions/themes, you get told your OCD isn't bad. So I wouldn't pay too much attention to that. I mean either you're displaying OCD symptoms or you're not at the end of the day and you are. Well if you've come this far without your OCD fear becoming a reality, I think you'll be safe mate.

I haven't done so well really to be honest. I have been completely mauled by OCD. Trying to do therapy now but it's been a long crawl on my belly so far.