Dotty

Hi, Hope everyone is doing okay! Haven’t posted on here in a while, and to be honest, I’m not really bothered if anyone replies to this or not. I just feel like I’ve been internalising all my emotions recently and I really, really need to let them all out. I know in my other posts I’ve said that I have suspected that I have OCD, but I’ve never been formally diagnosed, as my parents are reluctant to take me to get formally diagnosed, as they blame it on me being “hormonal” (I’m only 16 so I don’t think I can go to a professional without parental permission??). But lately, I’m not even sure if it’s OCD anymore. Since about May I’ve been terrified of committing suicide. However, at first it focused mainly on actually doing so, whereas now I feel like I’m just obsessed with my mental health. I feel like what I’m now scared of having depression, or even just being sad, but I feel like I’ve almost convinced myself that I could have depression, and that I’m miserable all the time. Therefore, I’m constantly trying to prove to myself that I’m happy, or I’m trying to improve my mental health. I keep trying stuff like attempting to fix my sleeping schedule, or meditating, etc, in an attempt to make myself happy, but I always fail, and give up-I think because I have convinced myself that I am miserable. However, I go through periods of about several days - a week of being miserable, and having no motivation, and not really wanting to do anything. During these periods, anything I see I will think of as sad, if that makes sense. I also occasionally typing that I might want to die when this happens, but I’m not sure if that’s the intrusive thoughts. Then, I suddenly have like, a few hours or maybe a day where I’m so motivated and I’m ridiculously happy, and I think that life is amazing. Everything I see I’ll think is amazing. Maybe that’s just normal teenage mood swings but I’m not really sure?. Also, I still constantly touch wood superstitiously. Except, before it was mainly to do with either being sick, or suicide. Now, it still focuses mainly on those, but literally anything bad that I hear I’ll go “I hope that doesn’t happen to me, touch wood”. Like the other day, I was reading, and in the book the main character had cancer, so I was touching wood over and over again, hoping it didn’t happen to me. And then, sometimes I do it for no particular reason. There’s a wooden shelf above my bed, so sometimes when I’m lying in bed I just repetitively touch the shelf, for no reason whatsoever. Anyway, as for now I’m going to try to do a small amount of exercise every other day (and try and build up the amount I do) , and potentially attempt meditating again. I think that by not suddenly deciding to eat healthily, and do loads of exercise, and keep a journal, etc, I might actually stick to this resolution! As I said earlier, I’m not expecting anyone to reply to this, but I feel a lot better for letting it all out. I’m also not sure if any of it made any sense, so sorry to whoever’s reading this! Thank you so much, and I hope you’re well and safe.

Thanks @Lost in Thought! I’m trying to treat them as just thoughts, and will look into CBT. Thank you for the advice, means a lot

I’ve been struggling with intrusive thoughts about suicide and self harm for a couple of months now. At first I tried to avoid razors and knives and stuff, and focused mainly on impulsively doing it. However, now I think I’m focusing more on whether or not I actually want to do it. On some days I can completely convince myself that I do not want to do it. But some days, it’s not that I convince myself that I do want to, but it’s that I can’t convince myself that I don’t want to enough that I can be sure I don’t want to (don’t know if that makes sense). This then makes me panic. Also, every so often (probably about 5 times a day), I ask myself if I feel okay / sad. The answer to this is almost always yes, however, even if it is, i then start to feel sad. It’s almost as if I expect to feel sad because of the intrusive thoughts? As well as this, every time I’m happy or doing something I enjoy I start to think ‘what if this is the last time i’m doing this’ because i’m scared i’m going to harm myself. I tend to have a few good days, when i feel a lot better, and then days when it’s really bad and i’m miserable. Could all of this be related to OCD? I still have the same problem with touching wood, however most of the time i just try to block it out of my mind. I have also tried to have a better sleep schedule and have also started meditating daily. This is helping a little bit. My parents have acknowledged that I could have OCD but aren’t looking into getting any help. Are there any ways I could try and help improve without any professional help? Thanks x

Thank you so much! Means a lot?

Lol I told my mum everything and she told me to just not think about it. Fun times.

Hi guys! Thank you both so much?. Will take on board both of your advice...

Ever since I was 8 I have had a pretty severe phobia of vomiting. It started when a boy threw up next to me in class. Since then, the thought of vomiting has terrified me, to the point where if I think about being sick, I start to feel sick. I struggle to get it out of my head, and often have days or even weeks where I am convinced that I’m going to vomit, as it will constantly be in the back of my mind during these periods, and I panic. I started doing things which I thought would prevent me from being sick quite soon after I initially started experiencing this. In my mind, I would say “I hope I’m not sick ever again, touch wood”, (and then obviously touch wood). I knew that this probably wouldn’t prevent me from vomiting (and it didn’t, I’ve thrown up since then once), however if I did not touch wood, I felt anxious and so I kept doing it anyway. This habit has continued up until now (I am now 15), I can’t seem to stop it. There were some other things I did too, for example, a couple of years ago one of my teachers mentioned that there was a vomiting bug going around the school. For about 6 months I was applying hand sanitiser once or twice in every single lesson, despite the fact that my hands were ridiculously dry and cracked. I began to do other stuff too, some of them ridiculous, to either ‘prevent’ myself from being sick, or just in case I actually was sick. The main one of these would be my mind telling me that if I did a certain thing, I would not be sick. The thing would be completely unrelated to vomiting, for example, “if you read 10 pages of this book you won’t be sick”. However, 10 pages would never be enough and I’d have to keep reading until I felt like it was right and I’d fulfilled this task. About 1 month ago, one of the people my mum works with committed suicide. I started to worry that I’d do the same. It wasn’t that I actually wanted to, but it was the thought that I could. I began to be scared when going into the bathroom, as there were razors in there. I was scared to be alone, in case I lost control and somehow harmed myself. I began to use the “touch wood” and “if you do this, you will never harm yourself”, for this as well. These thoughts terrified me, so I googled “fear of harming yourself”, to try and reassure myself. I came across Harm OCD, and found that I related to this. For about a week I was obsessively googling harm OCD to try and reassure myself that this was what these thoughts were, and I did not actually want to harm myself. I mentioned that i was having these thoughts to my mum, but not all of it. I just said that I was scared of ever feeling the way that the girl who committed suicide felt. My mum then told me that that girl had had mental health issues from a very young age, and other details about her life which might have influenced her decision. For some reason, this reassured me, as I was very different to the girl. These thoughts almost completely went away for a week. However, I then found out that a boy who went to my primary school had also committed suicide about a week ago, and the thoughts have started again. I frequently get violent images in my head, and can’t get them out, and it terrifies me. I know that I do not want to die, and yet I can’t get it out of my head. I’m scared to tell my mum, as she isn’t the most sympathetic and understanding when it comes to mental health. I’m also scared she will judge me, as I know these thoughts are ridiculous, however I really want them to go away, obviously. What do I do? Could this be OCD?