New here- 2nd post

[Guest cspurdie]

Hi, My names Casey I'm 16 years old and have been suffering from OCD for around 5 years and was diagnosed 2 years ago. Currently being treated with therapy and can see a difference in some areas. I'm struggling to get everything under control, the continuous necessary checking is something I have learnt to deal with however, rituals and intrusive thoughts about failing the ones I love have been taking over my life even more so of late. Looking for some advice and any pointers in the right direction.

[dksea]

Hi Casey, welcome to the forums! I'm glad to hear you have been diagnosed and are getting therapy. Therapy is the best way of treating OCD but it does take time.

One mistake many people make is going in to therapy expecting the sessions alone to make the, better. Therapy sessions definitely are important and can help, but it's the work you do with what you learn from your therapist that really makes the difference. A good way to think of it is like a sport, your coach can teach you and guide you but you have to put in the practice work to get better.

Another piece of advice is to try to be patient, especially with yourself. OCD can be incredibly frustrating and its normal to want to feel better sooner, but it's also important to appreciate the progress you are making, and not expect yourself to be perfect all the time. The goal of course is to break out of the compulsions but sometimes being able to shorten or delay them is a victory worth celebrating.

Something that helped me was getting a better understanding of how OCD works, both psychologically and neurologically. I highly recommend the book "Brain Lock" for this as it does a great job of explaining the details about OCD. Understanding won't make it magically stop but it helped me frame things in a way that made fighting it easier.

I encourage you to check out the main forum as well as the forum for teens, I'm sure there's lots of good advice there and not everyone checks the Intro forum so they might not see this post.

Hang in there, OCD is tough, but it's definitely beatable!

[Guest cspurdie]

Thanks a lot!