Gingham

…but I am having a really bad few days. I’ve been better at challenging the repetitive behaviours lately but the last few days I have been up and down the stairs, checking, tapping, stepping and counting all day long. I feel like everything has gone back to square one. i don’t know what to do with myself. I feel like I can’t carry on. My life is worthless. I have no friends, my career and job prospects are beyond salvaging. The only people I speak with are my private therapist and my parents (by speak to, I don’t mean therapeutically…literally they are the only people who I have any contact with). l keep looking at my phone, wondering if anyone even remembers I exist. I don’t think they do. I can’t keep randomly messaging people when they’ve already ignored me a few times. Sorry to sound so self absorbed and ‘woe is me’. I’m just at the end of my tether & feel so alone. Thanks for listening xxx

Hello everyone I feel bad for coming back on here after a long while but someone was at my house last week and they went into the garden and then stepped back in through the kitchen door and brought mud onto the floor. It’s hard floor in there, not carpet. Anyway, after they left I cleaned it up but now I am fretting that it might have been some sort of poo that got brought in and I am so overwhelmed by this that I am feeling constantly sick about it, I couldn’t get out of bed yesterday or today and constantly have the image of the mud in my head. Even if it was just mud, I cannot forget about it or calm down about it and I don’t know what to do. Any help would be appreciated xxx

Good luck Summer xxx

Hey, I started with my current therapist with EMDR to see if it would help with the ocd. In my case, I didn’t find it particularly beneficial (I think all these things depend on so many different factors that it is impossible to say whether one therapy will help an individual or not - best thing to do is commit to it and give it a go!)…Anyway, when I realised it wasn’t particularly benefitting me, I bit the bullet and asked my therapist if we could switch to CBT with ERP…(he is also qualified in this) and he was absolutely fine with me changing. He is private so it may work differently on the NHS but I think any therapist would be more than willing to work with a client to find the best treatment for them. If you feel ready to do exposure work, then say so - it may be that your therapist is waiting for the green light from you to step things up a bit. You have started your post by saying that your anxiety levels have gone down a bit so maybe that is a sign that things are going in the right direction, albeit gradually

Hello, sorry for the delay in replying…I am having cbt with ERP fortnightly. I saw someone from the NHS in Jan, they moved my June review to September and then moved that to November. They aren’t doing anything as they did a referral to St Georges in London about 18 months ago & so don’t offer any sort of help now (there’s not been any response the the referral). I am paying for a private therapist for now. I had a session on Friday morning and we did some ERP on the stairs again. I seem to be ok when my therapist is there, it’s when I’m on my own it all seems to spiral. It makes it more frustrating that there is nothing I fear will happen if I don’t do it until it feels right, just that it will feel wrong forever and I will never be able to forget that it felt wrong so I will always have this feeling that I have to go back and do it again and I will spend my life having to either live with this feeling of doing it wrong or keep going back and repeating it until it feels right. I agree with what you say about the compulsions becoming ingrained - so many of the things I do have become automatic now, even when I watch tv I start to panic if I see someone pick something up and not touch underneath it 5 times. All these things have become my normal. Thank you all for replying, it helps knowing there are people out there who can relate xxx

Hey everyone i know that you will all understand this and I can’t talk about it to anyone else as a) I don’t have anyone and b) even if I did, it would sound ridiculous. I have just spent 1hr 45mins walking up and down the bloody stairs. I am so frustrated. I am dripping in sweat so I am going to have to go back upstairs now to get changed and have a shower. I am exhausted & really feel I am getting to the point where I can’t go on. I just can’t seem to make headway with the stairs thing. Some days I think I am but then it comes back twice as bad. I don’t even understand why it even matters. I stayed in bed until 4pm today just because I couldn’t face coming downstairs. It is ludicrous. My flat had stairs, but only about 10. The staircase in the new house are higher so it is harder work to climb them repeatedly. sorry to moan I’m just at the end of my tether.

Amazing! Well done! So glad it went well Enjoy your Maccie D’s!! XXX

I’ve been quiet on here the last few weeks…mainly because I am struggling to even get out of bed these days. I don’t know what to do or where to turn any longer. I am so tired of everything being a struggle. I dread waking up and getting up because I am so tired of the stress of it all. Ironically enough, I hate the routine of getting up…doing my teeth, having a shower, getting dressed and not just from an ocd point of view but just everything is so boring and ‘samey’. I describe myself as someone who gets bored easily but doesn’t like change. I have never woken up and felt rested and full of energy. I might have as a child but even at primary school I remember looking at my uniform hanging up and dread getting out of bed to put it on…not because I didn’t like school. It all just felt so pointless. Now, obviously I have the additional ocd reason not to get out of bed - dreading the fact that I’ll have to go up and down the stairs however many times before it feels right or face the unrelenting anxiety/dread/fear (‘discomfort’ isn’t a strong enough word) of getting it wrong and then everything I do after that igniting some ocd issues. Because that’s not a nightmare enough, I am also gaining weight due to the sleep/bed situation and that is sending my eating disorder into overdrive. Some days I go out on my bike in the evening but that is only for a go round the block. Some days I think it would be better to be back in work and I focus on that but then I will end up having some ocd meltdown spending an hour repeating some stupid thing until ocd tells me it’s ok and I realise that I’m too useless to even work and then I find myself daydreaming about my ocd not being so out of control and me actually doing a solicitor job and I get all excited until I remember it’s a daydream. I just feel so lost and empty and don’t know what’s wrong with me .

You braved it out earlier in the week. You can do it again. Use Tuesday as proof to yourself that these feelings will pass xxx

As @PolarBear says, it is a thought and only a thought, however distressing it is. Try to focus on something else (I find jigsaws, crosswords or computer games helpful) and each time the thought comes, remind yourself that it is only a thought and refocus on the thing you are doing - even if you are reminding yourself every minute. It will gradually train your brain to realise it is only a thought and that there is no point in bringing it up because you won’t give it any attention.

I seem to be posting a lot lately…and although I’m trying, I just seem to be getting worse. It seems so simple to just not do the compulsions so why can’t I do it? What is wrong with me?

For some reason I have had an absolutely awful day ocd wise. In total I have spent hours more than the usual on damned compulsions. I am at the end of my tether. I can’t seem to stop myself. Right now I have spent another 40 minutes stuck on walking through a door. If I don’t do it right then it will forever haunt me. I will never forget it. I know I need to test this and stop trying to get it right but what if I’m right and I can’t ever forget that I need to do it. This is all so stupid. I don’t even know why I’m so afraid of never forgetting that there’s something I need to do when there are so many other things I need to do but can’t do because ocd means I put things off for so long. And it’s not even like this is something I need to do. I know that but I just can’t get my head out of this loop. I’m so frustrated and I honestly don’t know how much longer I can carry on with everything being so difficult especially when it’s something so meaningless making it so difficult. It’s a year ago today (25th) since I quit my job without notice as my ocd had got so bad. I so wanted to get better and maybe even go back but that won’t happen now - I doubt they even remember me I was there such a short time & I was **** at the job anyway. I just feel so sad that it’s all ended like this. I found my uni application form the other day (I went as a mature student when I was 28) and I say how I wanted to go into law to help people and make life better for people who needed it. Instead I ended up in my weakest area academically in which it’s not about helping people in the way I had wanted to. Now I’m too old to go back and start again in a different area even if I did have the confidence & I can’t work full time and nobody wants a part timer in law and anyway, now I’ve left 2 jobs in relatively quick succession for the same reason, I have shown weakness and that is not acceptable in law. I don’t know what I’m going to do as ocd just seems to be getting worse and worse and I can’t think what job I could do given how things are but I need to be doing something. I don’t know where to turn or what to do.

I agree that you shouldn’t rush into a decision. What about annual leave? Could you book some time off to give yourself a bit of a rest and then see how you’re feeling? Xxx

Thanks @Ashley…I can see how it’s hard to separate support and reassurance with this. I think I am always afraid I am going to break some law or rule by accident and it would then ruin everything because I’d have a criminal record and then my ‘career’ (not that I really have one, but the hope of a career) would be ruined as I’d have to disclose it to the regulator and the whole thing gets totally out of control and I’d be so ashamed and angry with myself. I wish I could slow my brain down over things like this! When I looked the next day in daylight, there was nothing there so I think my take-away from this is not to panic first - again, I need to slow my thinking down… Thank you for your response - it did help to hear that wet sand can be tricky to clean…I haven’t set foot on a beach in over a decade so my experience in this is limited…I just assumed it would dust off but I think that must only be dry sand!

Thanks @Annie x…I am in a bit of a mess really. I told my GP yesterday that I have cut down my clomipramine to 100mg from 200mg as I can’t take the weight gain. I have a history of an eating disorder so my GP knew that this was always a possibility. She, and I, had hoped that the clomipramine would be a relatively short term measure whilst I was waiting to hear back about a referral the mental health team made to St George’s about 18 months ago but my GP hasn’t heard anything and the mental health team have moved my six month review appt from July to Sept so I haven’t seen them since Jan (they don’t think they can help) but I assume they haven’t heard anything either. Although I suspect they never actually sent the referral…the first one to the Maudsley never got sent apparently and then I was rejected as they don’t do inpatients but I thought they did have a residential unit. Anyway, I couldn’t take the weight and I thought it would be the lesser of two evils but I have just had the worst day and, seeing your comment about me posting more has made me focus and I wonder if reducing the clomipramine has made things worse. I don’t know if it would be so obvious so quickly though given that it takes so long to do anything in the first place but I feel like I am falling apart. I am sat here crying out of exhaustion and frustration with ocd and hating myself for being so fat. I can’t face getting out of bed in the morning (I seem to surface around 3pm now). I feel so low and dark. I’m scared to increase the clomipramine again because what if I gain even more weight. I can’t see a way out of this hole. Sorry - I don’t know where all that came from. I am just so lost, but thank you for your kind message xxx