Gingham

Hi everyone, It’s been a long time since I needed to post here but I am massively struggling at the moment. Things have got bad over the last week or so and I don’t know how to break the cycle. I had been managing my ocd for a while. By no means had it gone but I was able to work around the checking, counting, repeating actions until they felt ‘right’ but the last week I have been having to do so much more. I don’t know what’s changed or even how I managed to get it to fade before but I’m worn out both mentally and physically. I just wanted to share with people who understand xxx

I take clomipramine having tried many others first. I started on 10mg and worked up slowly. I had particular issues with sweating (it was unreal) but it has long since passed. It might be worth seeing if you can start a bit lower than 25mg and gradually build up. It is always hard when taking tablets to start with and having to endure the side effects before they have chance to work so it feels like all pain and no gain but keep communicating with your doctor about what you are experiencing and hopefully things will settle.

I have been doing well with managing my ocd but literally this afternoon I feel like I have gone back to square one. I am 55 minutes into trying to correct something that feels wrong and I’ve been at the hitting myself out of frustration for 10 minutes. I don’t know what to do

Hi all I have taken various medications over the years and have become used to getting brain zaps when coming off them. I dropped my clomipramine down to 100mg about 18 months ago as that was the best dose for helping ocd but limiting the weight gain a bit. For the last month/6 weeks, I have started getting brain zaps and they are definitely worsening even though nothing has changed. Is it common to start getting what I thought were withdrawal symptoms when you’re still taking the same dose of the same brand tablet? I am really wary of coming off the clomipramine as things are going reasonably well at the moment and I’ve even been lucky enough to be able to rejoin the company I had to leave 2.5 years ago due to my ocd, which I never dreamed would happen as I let them down so badly and I never thought I would be able to work (I’m part time at the moment) this sort of job again, but I am really enjoying being back there so hopefully that gives a bit of hope that things can improve! Anyway, although things are better, there are still struggles and if the clomipramine stops working or I have to come off it, I am terrified it might tip me over the edge again. Has anyone else experienced an onset of side effects or withdrawal symptoms when on a stable dose of medication? Thank you for reading xxx

I understand the urge to stop all checking and counting in one go - sometimes I would get a rush of motivation/enthusiasm/some feeling that I could do it cold turkey but I too would go back to it. Thankfully I am doing better with my ocd these days (I am worried typing that will ‘tempt fate’ and cause a relapse) and I have found that starting slowly and building confidence has been the most helpful way for me to proceed. I can also say that, in my experience, although just tackling one thing first felt like a little drop in the ocean given all my other rituals, that progress is almost ‘transferable’ to other rituals so gradually momentum builds and progress has a tangible effect on life. I am still impacted by my ocd but, compared to how things have been, it feels much more manageable. Best of luck with the therapy, although it is hard to take those first steps, things can improve.

I have been out of bed for 1 hour and 45 minutes. So far I have spent 50 minutes trying to walk up and down the stairs correctly and 30 trying to walk in and out of the kitchen door correctly. My head is pounding, I am dripping in sweat and I am so broken. I just don’t see a way out of this. I can’t let myself walk away once I’ve started trying to correct a compulsion so I just end up there forever. i didn’t sleep on Sunday night and then when i fell asleep at 1am this morning , i ended up sleeping until 10 tonight& still didn’t want to get up. Everything is a mess. I can’t tell anyone. There’s only my parents to tell and they will blame me for: being lazy, not having any discipline, for not going out for a walk everyday, for not getting new soft furnishings etc for the new house (when I don’t need them as I don’t use the rooms they are intent on me getting pointless things for), not seeing their friends (I have none of my own), not eating properly (that’s always a good ‘go to’ for them as I used to have an eating disorder). Then they will blame my therapist (or me for not working hard enough with him) before telling me to make an appointment with my GP (who can do nothing but prescribe medication & im already on that) or with the cmht who are also only able to say they’ve done the referral to St George’s. I hate my life. Sorry, I am just so fed up.

Sorry everyone but I need to get off my chest how lonely and frustrated I am with everything. Everything is depressing me so much. I can’t see how I will ever be free of ocd and I’m at the point where I don’t even know if it’s worth trying or just giving up on life. It’s all so pointless (ocd included) and I have nothing to live for except my parents. It’s making me more frustrated with my ocd because I’m constantly thinking how pointless all the checking and tapping and counting is but I can’t stop myself doing it. My new surgery did a referral to St George’s (the last CMHT didn’t appear to have bothered after 2 years of saying they were doing it) but when I read the referral it talks about contamination ocd which is absolutely not the main issue with my ocd…I just don’t see the point if people ignore what you say to them and then make up some referral that is not correct. The CMHT don’t have anything to do with me really. My CMHT before last told me there was nothing that could be done to help with my other issues so it’s only the ocd I bother trying to sort out with services now and even that has gone wrong. I am being ignored by a former manager from one of my old jobs, but I thought we were friends and the friends I thought I made at my last job don’t message me. I don’t know if they have been told not to have anything to do with me because of how I left with no notice period because my ocd flared up. None of my other friends bother with me either. I have nobody. Everyone hates me and I just spend every day wanting it to be over. I’ll never get another job. I will never have a ‘point’ to being here. I know there’s not much anybody can say in response to this and I don’t mean to sound negative, I just needed to get it all off my chest. thank you xxx

…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 .