Douglas

Another embarrassing ocd post. I dont know if this is actually a real concern or if its just OCD but i'm scared and having a lot of anxiety right now. I have a neighbor that I don't get along with. It started with him throwing food over my fence to feed my dog when I'm not home. I caught him once but never confronted him. It got to the point where my dog started gaining a lot of weight so i would leave him on the other side of the house so my neighbor wouldnt be able to throw the food to my dog. After i moved my dog to the other side of the house and kept him there, he starts losing all the excess weight. I never confronted my neighbor about throwing food over because i dont like confrontation. As a way to get revenge I sometiems would blast music loud enough for him to hear at night. Every time we see each other we would both exchange angry looks. Just earlier this morning I was outside my backyard and I saw him in his car warming it up. I started hearing this weird sound coming from his backyard. It was kind of a high pitched sound, kind of sounded like gibberish you hear on the radio but the noise was high pitched. I listened to that weird noise for about maybe 2 mins max, and now I'm regretting it. It bothered me for some reason. It was uncomfortable to listen to because of it's high pitch. A few minutes later i went back into my house and then i started hearing a ringing noise in my left ear which I think is called tinnitus. After hearing the ringing noise in my left ear, it started hurting a little bit. Right now my left ear is still hurting..I started having anxiety and started to think that my neighbor was mad at me for playing loud music at night so i thought maybe he turned on that weird high pitched radio noise to damage my ear drums. I keep thinking he is out to get me because we don't get along and that he is mad because i play loud music at night. Now i'm worried that my left ear is permanently damage. After that ringing noise, its still hurting and i think im experiencing some hearing loss in the left ear. Feels like the hearing ability in my left ear is greatly reduced. I keep covering my right ear up to see if I can hear anything with my left ear. I still can hear but i feel like the hearing ability in my left ear is greatly reduced. And then I did something that maybe i shouldnt do. I googled "causes of tinnitus" and then the first thing that popped up was "The most common cause of tinnitus is damage and loss of the tiny sensory hair cells in the cochlea of the inner ear. This tends to happen as people age, and it can also result from prolonged exposure to excessively loud noise. Hearing loss may coincide with tinnitus." Now I'm having a lot of anxiety about this and my left ear is still hurting. I dont know what to do. It is morning now and I haven't slept because i drank too much coffee last night. I googled to see if sleep deprivation causes tinnitus and it turns out it can cause ringing in the ears if you havent slept but the weird thing is that I used to stay up all night regularly and I never experienced ringing in the ears or even pain in the ears or any kind of hearing loss. This makes me think the weird high pitched noise that came from my neighbors house caused damage to my left ear. Now im thinking what if he deliberately turned on that noise because he knew that I was outside and still awake and then he went inside his car so that he wouldnt be exposed to the noise. I don't know if the pain in the left ear will stop and i don't know if the hearing reduction is permanent. I enjoy listening to music a lot.. I hope this is not a permanent thing i am too young to have permanent hearing loss in one ear.

My last time with a real psychologist was when I was 17. He put me on Paxil 10 MG. It helped a bit when I was younger but I was experiencing suicidal thoughts so I stopped cold turkey without tapering. After that I experienced irritibility. Later on i was on and off of it. My doc increased the dosage to 20 MG and i started experiencing more side effects. The benefits wasn't worth the nasty side effects so i quit SSRI's for good. I have tried ERP on my own without meds and it didnt go so well. The thoughts and anxiety was just too much. I was on prozac before age 17 and it didnt seem to help me much either.

I can't afford therapy at the momentbecause of money issues. I'm dealing with a lot right now not just OCD. I have other health problems that I'm trying to get resolved. I try not to feel ashamed about my condition but I can't help it when my condition involves being suspicious of people, even when those people are family. I feel like no one in my life understands me. My dad knows I have OCD and he still calls me crazy but i don't blame him. I have isolated myself from all my friends and the people that I once knew. I was diagnosed with OCD at a young age. I was diagnosed with social anxiety and OCD with depressive and manic tendencies later on if I remember correctly from my diagnosis at age 17.. My cousin has schizophrenia but I don't know if it was genetic since he developed it after using a lot of hard drugs. I think you might be right about it being Harm ocd. Didn't know the name of it until today. I've read about exposure and response prevention and compulsions. I think the compulsions are examining the food and making sure it looks normal, drinking tea or oj when i feel something is off, throwing the food away. I am not sure if paying close attention to the waiter/waitress/cook to see if they look bad or good would be considered a compulsion since it's normal for people to judge others based on appearance and personality, right? Not sure if paying attention to how I feel after eating and being hypervigilant is another compulsion. Even if I identify the compulsions, I don't know if I am able to stop doing them. The thought and paranoia just gets too overwhelming. I'm aware that a person without OCD would eat the food without having second thoughts, without regretting it, and without paying attention to how they feel after since they don't have the paranoid thought to begin with. I know this because I didn't have this before. OCD is just really hard to deal with and I'm already a negative thinker. What is the point of doing exposure therapy? It's a lot of hard work and from what I read online, one mistake, one slip up and the OCD can get worse again. It seems like no matter what I do, OCD will always be there in the background making my life miserable. The urges are just way too overwhelming and recovery seems like a long road. Also dealing with other health problems at the same time doesn't help. I have tried ignoring and accepting the thoughts, even agreeing with the thoughts and try moving on but the thought keeps juggling in my mind. I can't help it. I don't feel like I am mentally strong enough. Even if I was mentally strong enough to do the exercises, the OCD will always come back because I know I will slip up eventually and then end up going back to the same vicious cycle. It's like a constant battle between me and my OCD mind. It's tiring.

HI, i have extreme paranoia/ocd? about people drugging or poisoning me on purpose or by accident. When I go out to eat at restaurants i would always pay close attention to the waiters/waitresses and the cooks to see if they look like good people or bad people. If i get the feeling that they are bad, i would have second thoughts about eating the food they bring out. I would inspect the food closely and examine it to see if anything looks off. Because of this paranoia/ocd? thought, I would be extra nice to the waiters while im ordering the food because you never know. I know it sounds really weird. Not even sure if this is OCD or i'm just a quack. I feel ashamed sharing talking about this. Every time I have this paranoid thought, i would still eat the food but later on I would regret it. After eating the food, i become hypervigilant and would pay close attention to how I'm feeling to see if anything is off. An example would be i eat the food after having the paranoid thought and then later on I would feel tired or get a headache and I would attribute that to getting drugged by the food. It's like a mix of paranoia + OCD + hypochrondriac . Same goes for drinks. Later on I would buy orange juice or drink green tea because OJ has vitamin C (which protects the brain from neurotoxicity, so does green tea). After drinking the OJ or green tea, my anxiety would go down somewhat but even after drinking the OJ or green tea i would still question whether I actually got drugged or not. This also applies to the fear of getting poisoned by accident. An example would be ordering pizza at the restaurant and i would watch the cooks in the kitchen and i see one of them spraying windex cleaner to clean the counters and i would get the thought, "What if they are not careful and accidentally spray the windex cleaner on my pizza?" so then I would repeat the same process of examining the pizza, ending up eating it, regretting it, and attributing any feeling that i feel afterwards to being drugged. Sometimes I would even throw the food away if the thought gets too overwhelming. I am AFRAID of windex cleaners... especally getting sprayed in the face by accident. A At work, i see people leaving their water bottles unattended and i would think that is very scary because anyone can just take the bottle put something in it. I. I would think what if there is a sociopath that is capable of doing that? I would never leave my water bottle or my drink unattended at work, or anywhere else. Funny thing is I think the people at my work place knows. One time I brought my own home made sandwhich and then I left it in the break room's fridge. At that time I didnt really have fear of being drugged for some reason. But later on when i took the sandwhich out, I thought " what if someone drugged my sandwhich or spit in it?" so then I started examining the sandwhich, opening it up and seeing if anything looks off and i think a few of my coworkers noticed.I am reading this over and i sound like a quack. The crazy thing is that I never had this type of fear..i started developing it about 2 years ago. I have trouble trusting people in general, even my own family. When these thoughts were bad i accused my dad and mom of drugging me. I know i sound really crazy and i feel ashamed for being overly suspicious of people. Not sure where this is coming from but my theory is that i was scammed so much back in the past (dealt with some serious sociopaths) and now i just lost my trust in people and maybe it is affecting my OCD. I'm not sure.

It's eating at you probably because you looked up cancer symptoms which sounds like reassurance seeking. What i would do is stop searching up symptoms and stop looking at it.