Summer9173

Hi everybody, I have a quick question about birth control is anybody has any knowledge on this if that’s okay I’m going to call the sexual health clinic anyway, however I get a bit of anxiety on the phone so I thought I’d ask on the forum first in case somebody may know too I began birth control mid-cycle, so 2 weeks before my period, I had already ovulated but on my Flo period tracker app it’s saying I’m 3 days late? I know I’m not pregnant as I’ve been safe, so I don’t know if my cycle has messed up a little bit because I did begin taking it mid my cycle perhaps? On my pack my ‘dummy pills’ are basically next week which is when I’m guessing I’d get my withdrawal bleed, however I’m just not really to sure how it works. Is this kind of normal for your period to be delayed, especially when you begin the pill?

How is everybody this Friday?

Hi Everybody, recently my therapist recommended that I show many signs of Body dysmorphic disorder, however I’ve never really known what that is nor looked into it. I began exercising to help my mental health as I found my intrusive thoughts and my depressive mood was fairly okay after completing my workouts. However now it’s become into an obsession where I’m constantly looking at my tummy to see if there’s any difference and if I’ve lost weight (I weigh 8 stone 13 currently) I’ve been constantly checking the calories on every single item when food shopping. Exercising everyday and if I’m honest I’m feeling completely worse. I feel like because my ocd and social anxiety disorder was taking over my life I wanted to be in control of something, to look good and feel good but especially with social media I’m constantly looking and comparing myself to other beautiful models which I know I shouldn’t but I just can’t help it I think I realised how bad it was when I tried to do ‘intermittent fasting’ where I wouldn’t eat after 7pm all the way to 11am sometimes 12. I was starving but I felt guilty as soon as I ate something bad, I think it’s hard to love myself especially growing up around social media. I’ve ended up weighing myself a lot during The Day which I know is so bad but I keep thinking bad things if I don’t stay or be healthy. I guess it’s once again another thing I’m trying to be In control with and I know it’s my OCD linking into this. I just want to learn to love myself and to love my body and who I am.

Thank you @Ma29 I will have a look into that I’ve never heard of a social prescriber either but that would be amazing! its so difficult as even with my OCD she gets excited because she thinks she’ll get money off her water bill and other benefits 💔💔

Hi everybody, I know this is a topic I’ve mentioned quite a lot. I’m so sorry but I just feel like I need to move somewhere else to get myself better, home life is extremely toxic and awful and I’ve came to the realisation I can’t get well when my mum is not well herself. She speaks to a counsellor from a local IAPT centre, and she came upstairs just now to mention how she’s going to speak with her therapist today about how I accused her of having a personality disorder (I didn’t accuse her, I mentioned it as she shows a lot of the signs) and how I’m basically calling her crazy and a psycho this makes me anxious as I don’t want a stranger to think I’m a bad person, for my mum to twist things and for her to think I’m an awful person because of what the therapist might say about me. I feel so sick as she’s already said he’s called me a ‘gaslighter’ which I don’t understand why? I of course I’m nervous that the therapist will say she doesn’t have a personality disorder despite her showing so many signs. Even this morning it was 6am and she has music on at full blast to cheer her up but she does this every morning, I know this has angered some of my neighbours but she ‘doesn’t give a * about what they think’ even when she’s screaming and people can here she doesn’t care. I know what she’ll do and it’ll cause even more of an argument which will increase my ocd and anxiety even more. I had a bad experience with my local IAPT so I’m just nervous, she says I’m her problem, I’m always the problem all because say I won’t take a cup out of my room that I’m still drinking out of? She takes everything as an attack and absolutely screams. She’s still sleeping around with my dad despite being broken up for a year now (he treated her so so badly) it’s just so clear something is wrong. I don’t even think it’s right for a mother to scream at her children every single day for hours, even that has been so damaging to me and I’m 19 now, it’s still going on! If anybody has anything I can do like housing support etc, I just can’t live here anymore. There’s no family I can live with and I have social anxiety too which makes it even worse as i struggle to go out it’s getting so much worse, I can’t get better and she’s making me feel suicidal

The mental health team makes me so angry!! I used to work as admin for the crisis/CMHT as my first job and I couldn’t even handle working behind the scenes there as patients really seemed to be neglected. One man walked in extremely distressed (I was covering reception because funnily enough nobody wanted that role!) and he said he’d had no contact from his care-coordinator for weeks can he speak to her. She came down to meet him shrugging at him when he was talking and rolling her eyes!!!! Now I’m on the other side I’m extremely anxious myself as they don’t seem the best at all - even from other peoples experiences like yourself I’m so sorry you went through that however. It’s a shame they clearly wasn’t educated on what OCD and intrusive thoughts are…. If I was you I’d laugh at them now as that’s what they call your professionals when they clearly got it far from right. I would try and see if I Could sue the team if I was you, or even report them? I did that with the hospital I worked at and now there’s an investigation going on, just so they don’t end up doing that to somebody else I’m so so sorry you went through that and I know how angry it can make you feel, I hope your okay after that now

I remember getting my first set of intrusive thoughts when I was 14 too I was in school so you can imagine I thought the worst like I was a freak etc, even when I did research back in the day the worst thing I did was go on Reddit and Quora as they didn’t mention OCD at all, just people agreeing that it was strange because they didn’t actually know what it was. I don’t think there was even much awareness on OCD back then either!! I’m so sorry you used to feel like a ‘freak’ too, it makes me so sad hearing that OCD can do this to a person just because intrusive thoughts can be on taboo subjects. Even my therapist said she gets these type of thoughts at the train station, I feel like everybody does but of course with OCD, it plays on these type of thoughts where people would usually just shrug it off and forget about it. I could agree with this more ^^ I’ve spoken to some of the most loveliest, most kindest people on this forum who I can genuinely say has helped me more then any therapist/doctor I feel like it’s because we’re so understanding as OCD is such a horrible disease, i call it The bully in my brain. I love this post though it’s so important to remember to be kind and not feel guilty/embarrassed over our intrusive thoughts. My goal is to one day be open about it with everybody in my life

I agree with @Wanderer, it didn’t do much for my OCD either, however it did work wonders for my social anxiety and my anxiety/depression I was on 50mg and after a couple of months of being on them I was able to go places/public places whereas before I struggled to do that immensely. I did find however my anxiety increased from taking them in the beginning but I do think that’s pretty much a side effect of all anti-depressants. Of course all anti-depressants work differently for everybody, so even if you found Sertraline isn’t the one for you there are many others

Thank you so much for your kind reply @Hedgehog, I don’t know why it’s so difficult accessing help from the crisis team but maybe it is my area perhaps as for Anafranil because it’s an older anti-depressant, my doctor said it has to be prescribed by the CMHT as he can’t prescribe them - I’m not 100% why but I respect his decision your reply really did give me hope and made me smile as I was struggling this evening so thank you so much!! I feel like there’s a long way to go with the mental health system in the UK, I’m hoping we get there soon.

Hi everybody, today unfortunately hasn’t been the best of days at my doctors surgery I was meant to see the mental health practitioner last Friday in regards to a check up as well as to talk about possible medication. However she never ended up calling me…. Of course I called the surgery up and the mental health practitioner had gone home. So I called on Monday this week and told them the situation and booked me on for this Friday (so today) and the mental health practitioner didn’t call me again I just called up the surgery I’m signed up too and she told me she did get through to everybody as the list was only small and I should’ve been seen last week. I feel so heartbroken as I’ve been trying to get through this week waiting for my CMHT appointment and for a review which should’ve been weeks ago now. They never got back to me despite knowing how vulnerable I’ve been. It’s like I’m running on adrenaline at this point. Of course it’s left me scared so If anybody has any advice on what I can do and how I can be seen by the CMHT as it’s only a medication talk to be given Anafranil, I would really appreciate it

It really is like her personality and mood changes so quickly, how would I be able to get her to go to the doctors without it coming across ‘offensively’ as I do really believe help would benefit her massively. As I said she shows so many Signs of BPD which is really difficult to deal with sometimes especially when I have mental health issues myself.

Sometimes it can be okay and when it’s okay it’s nice and I want it to stay that way so I don’t confront her about what’s going on I do think maybe it’s because she has mental health issues of her own perhaps as she has been through a lot in life and had me at a young age too, so she’s grown up with me. As for my dad he didn’t really treat my mum very good, I think he just fell out of love with her but she always used to cry that he’d give her no attention. However he is a lot more calmer and doesn’t really look for trouble, when there is trouble he just walks out of the situation. My grandparents however is probably where my mum got it from, I love my Nan but she’s very similar, however I do think perhaps my mum has undiagnosed BPD as she shows so many signs of it xx

Thank you so much for your kind reply Saffron😊 life can be really difficult at home, I’m not the perfect daughter but I feel like I’m an awful person all the time and I don’t do enough to help her. Realistically I’m ill myself and I struggle finding energy in a lot of things, I guess why that seems like I’m being lazy but I’m really far from if I work so hard especially at my job etc. I think now it’s taught me that I don’t like to make people upset so I treat them overly amazing even if there treating me badly which I know is something I need to get out of. She’s been through a lot in her life so maybe it might be that and my Nan (her mother is very similar.) I just feel like without my mum I wouldn’t be nothing as she’s my comfort even though she isn’t very comforting. I know she loves us but the way she behaves is unexceptable. I remember being 14 and struggling with intrusive thoughts so I’d lay with her because I was terrified of them and I didn’t know what ocd was. She’d shout at me and talk about her problems when I was trying to tell her what was wrong (almost like mine are worse then yours) I love her to pieces but in a way I’d really like her to get help without coming across as mean. I did mention borderline personality disorder to her and she took it extremely offensively and that she’s just reacting like any normal parent to things I do but thank you for your reply Saffron I have so many things I want to achieve in life

Hi everybody, I just wanted to get some things off my chest and some opinions as to me my home life is normal. But the more I speak about it people say ‘no wonder why I have OCD’ - including my therapist. My mum is a very angry person and has always been that way. I’ve always felt like I’ve walked on egg shells around her for as long as I can remember and I get extremely anxious even when I hear her walking up the stairs because she screams every day for hours and hours (sometimes it can go on past midnight and so on) it will always be over very minor things, she wants the house looking perfect for when she gets home from work or shopping or her friends house, but as you know when your suffering from OCD/Depression it takes all of the energy out of you , if it’s not done up to her standards she’ll say ‘what have you actually done then’ and scream for hours and hours on end about my ‘laziness’ and ‘what do I actually do that’s useful’ My emotions are never valid to her either, she says ‘you seem absolutely fine to me there’s nothing wrong with you…. I saw you laughing at the telly upstairs…’ 😐it’s like my mum sees her emotions as competitive and that she’s worse and had it worse then I have, completely disregarding mine all of the time. She’s never apologised either, I didn’t even know parents apologise to their children after screaming at them for no particular reason, I’ll be sitting downstairs quietly and she’ll join me to criticise and scream and then play the victim - can you see where the walking on egg shells comes from It’s very difficult as I’m only 19 but I’m being made to feel like a child. She doesn’t treat my brother this way, only me. She knows I rely on her a lot, we live in a very small village so there’s no public transport, I’ll need her for lifts to get to places otherwise I’m isolated. I have no money due to not working because of my OCD, I’m scared to start driving because of my OCD. I do want to get better and getting out of this extremely toxic household would make my life so much better and that’s what’s keeping me going. Ever since I was a child she’s always offloaded her problems onto me and screamed when I didn’t understand (I’d be 14/15) giving her advice about relationships? I love her so much but now I look back I don’t know if its partly emotional abuse. My Dad left last year because he couldn’t handle it anymore. I feel trapped like I have nowhere to run and she makes me feel like I’m nothing without her or I can’t do anything without her my therapist is helping me massively with this but I feel like now I dig deeper I’m actually scarred with my home life. I feel a strong sense of protecting people because of how my mum was ….

Thank you @snowbear I’ve really realised how much OCD can cling on to a thought though so I’m able to not let things get to me too much and pass, but because this is real it’s a little bit more annoying in a way because I just have this overwhelming sense of guilt. I got the idea from all the girls when I was at college, a lot of people do it but I just feel so guilty because I betrayed his trust In a way, it’s a little more easier to forgive as I was young and I see videos like this all the time say when I’m scrolling on tiktok bored, it’ll be a video say of a girl posting ‘fake account photos’ so it looks real and ‘psycho tips and tricks’ I just feel so embarrassed when I watch them because I see my younger self in it. I think I feel bad because I never told him even though it can be laughable at times. I love the last part of your reply as I know life comes with a lot of learning curves that my OCD will most likely latch on too unfortunately, but I do feel like situations like these do tend to happen a lot too