Is there hope?

[PipM82]

27 years in hell

[mind-full]

Coming up to 50 years old this month. Happy Birthday, Hadenuf72

I'm 28 years old, not much older than that bewildered young man you remember being in 1995. For almost 5 years, I've been watching unwanted and intrusive thoughts slowly feed on my life. Until the new year, 2022, I didn't know what was wrong. Did I have a brain tumour? Was I sleep deprived? Malnourished? Inherently troubled? The thoughts I was experiencing were not my own. Something awful was happening to me. That much I was certain of.

This January, by chance, I found an article about Harm OCD. I was completely shocked. There it was. The answer.

Harm and POCD are quite arguably worse than a living hell. It is the devil himself sitting on your shoulder, laughing as he bends your ear in a paradise of missed opportunities. I'd love to be a dad someday. I'm great with children, but recently, this means carrying the weight of unwanted thoughts on my shoulder. We both know that they're only thoughts, but the distress they cause is no bluff. It's heavy lifting.

I encourage you and your wife to take a break from OCD, and instead, go to the aquarium. Let me explain:

Having OCD feels a lot like being at the aquarium, standing in the shark tank with the sharks. When you see a shark swimming closer, you don't just observe it. You scramble to get away. Your thoughts, like sharks, seem like they can hurt you. It's important to remember that you're not in the shark tank - you're at the aquarium. The sharks will be disturbing, but on this side of the glass, you can allow the disturbance to come and go.

OCD sufferers are moral people. You don’t deserve to be so unhappy. Stop swimming with the sharks, take your wife's hand, and walk through this aquarium together. There's a lot of beauty to see.

Is there hope? I sure hope so! I'm 22 years from my fiftieth birthday, and I plan on seeing a hundred.

Cheers to that, my friends!