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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?

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Hello, I am not a professional, but I myself have ocd. The things you are describing sound symptomatic to ocd. Ocd is made up of obsessions and compulsions. An obsession is a reoccurring thought, image or urge that bring you a lot of distress. A compulsion is the act you do to prevent your thought from coming true, and making you less anxious about it. For you, your obsession was being sick, and your compulsion was touching wood and reassuring yourself, and repeating the phrase "I hope i'm not sick every again". In addition, you were also scared you were going to harm yourself (obsession), so you tried to avoid having to go into the bathroom (compulsion). This all sounds symptomatic of ocd. Maybe perhaps write your mum a letter to describe how you are feeling. Please try to seek out help professionally because it can help you with your symptoms. In the meantime try and distract yourself from your intrusive thoughts, I know its easier said then done. Maybe when you feel very anxious by your thoughts watch your favourite tv programme or something like that. 

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Hi @Dotty, sorry you are struggling. Pink lemonade already offered some good advice but I wanted to check in as well because I can relate very closely to your fears. My OCD developed when I was about 13, and the main initial fear was the same as yours, fear of throwing up ( also known as emetophobia) especially in public.  In my case after I did exactly that during school one day. I also experienced a period of fear related to suicide, like you not because i felt like I wanted to, but that I could lose control and hurt myself. Dealing with those (and other) intrusive thoughts due to my OCD has been some of the hardest times in my life. That’s the sucky part. The good part is I have gotten to a place, thanks to therapy, hard work, time, and medication, where those fears don’t bother me anymore. It is absolutely possible to overcome these hurdles in your life. I went from being absolutely terrified of things like riding buses, trains or planes (due to fear of getting sick) to doing all on a regular basis (well at least before COVID-19). I live and work overseas (Japan) and fly home to the US (Seattle) every year to visit family. That’s a 10 hour flight!  It seemed impossible at one point I could do that, but here I am!  OCD has made my life more challenging than it would have been, but I’ve also been able to do a lot of things. I went to university, graduated, started a career, moved overseas, have traveled to multiple countries, etc. I wish I didn’t have OCD, and I’m sure you feel the same, but I want you to know that there is hope. You can beat this. 
 

But enough about me :)

The symptoms you’re describe sound exactly like OCD to me, and though I also am not a medical professional and can’t formally diagnose you, I feel pretty confident. 
OCD is basically what’s its name says

O = obsessions = unwanted, intrusive, thoughts/feelings/ideas that we can’t seem to get rid of and keep occurring over and over. Basically thoughts that seem to get stuck in our brain and cause distress (anxiety, fear, doubt, etc)

C = compulsions = Behaviors, usually repetitive, that we engage in to try and get rid of or at least weaken the distress that we feel from the obsessions. They can be directly related to the fear (day hand washing because you are afraid of germs) or not (such as doing something a certain number of times to feel “safe”). 
 

D = disorder = A condition that causes significant disruption in our lives. 
 

If you have all three, chances are you have OCD. From your description I’d say you have all three. 
 

As Pinklemonade mentioned, the best thing you can do for yourself is to see a qualified mental health professional to get a formal diagnosis and start working on your recovery. Hopefully your parents would be able to help you, but if you really don’t think that’s an option there are other ways of getting help. You can find information on the main OCD-UK site including contact info for Ashley, who is in charge of the charity and can possibly help put you in touch with people who can help. If you have a way of contacting your regular doctor that would be another avenue for example. 
 

Treatment for OCD typically involves a type of therapy called CBT that helps you adjust how you respond to intrusive thoughts and break the cycle of compulsions. Compulsions seem like they are helping because they give short term relief, but unfortunately they make things worse in the long run. Working at reducing and ultimately stopping your compulsions is another important part of recovery. Therapy is like working with an athletic trainer except it’s for your mind instead of your muscles. You learn exercises and ways of doing things and practice them over and over til they become mostly automatic. Basically you retrain your brain to compensate for OCD. 

In addition to therapy some people also take medication which helps the brains of OCD sufferers to function more normally. It can be helpful for many people but many handle OCD without medication for various reasons. Whether or not you used medication, short or long term, will ultimately be up to you and your doctor. 

I encourage you to read the main OCD-UK site, there’s lots of information there and of course you can continue posting here to ask questions or just talk. 
 

Finally I’ll wrap up this looong post (too long?) with some advice. Overcoming OCD isn’t something that happens quickly in most cases (if any). Unfortunately it takes time and patience and persistence. But it is absolutely worth it. Think of it like training for a marathon. It might seem impossible now or close to it, but if you take it one step at a time and work your way forward slowly, you’ll find that you can make significant progress and in time change your life for the better. 
Hang in there, there is hope :)

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1 hour ago, Dotty said:

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

That’s unfortunate ? If only it were that easy. I try to have some patience when other people say that, it’s hard for them to understand since they CAN just not think about it.

I don’t know if it will actually help but it might be useful to find some basic info on OCD that tries to explain how the problem is you can’t just not think about it. I often use analogies to explain these things, a couple that I think apply:

Telling someone with OCD to just “not think” about their worries is like telling someone with asthma to. “just breathe” or a diabetic to “just make insulin”.  
 

Hang in there, you aren’t alone and there are things you can do to help yourself even if you don’t have the best support from your mom. 

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