is it normal to feel comfortable with your ocd cause you are so used to it?

i keep feeling that i am used to ocd and that i would feel weird if i wasnt there

[deValentin]

It’s little bit like for hoarders who don’t seem to be bothered by mountains of objects piled up around them, but feel torn apart if a well-intended person tries to remove some. However, when they receive an eviction notice or a dear family member plans to visit, they become to some extent embarrassed by their lifestyle. Likewise, out-of-control gamblers need sometimes to lose their house or marriage before they start to question their self-destructive habit. It is true that OCD can become a familiar feature that fills a void in your life (for instance, few rituals here and there don’t appear to hurt anybody), but when it overtakes your life, and jeopardizes everything you hold dear (job, health, self-esteem, marriage, etc.) would your attitude towards OCD change?

[Hidden in reply to deValentin]

a bit recently it changed as i feel ashamed of it but i bkame everyone around me for my ocd as it is triggered by stress and other human beings can be so stressful.

[TomFed]

I call it a mental Stockholm syndrome. I've dealt with that ocassionally throughout my healing journey. And it took me some time to fully realise that it's the same sneaky treacherous OCD trying to trick me into believing that I need it to feel whole and to survive. It's nothing unusual thou, as most of us have been suffering from OCD for years or even decades before we reached out for help. OCD is really hardwired deeply into neurons, and it takes time and effort to reshape our brains and minds.

Severity of OCD symptoms and your own personality traits will define how willing you're to commit to the therapy plan and healing in general. I remind myself daily that OCD has been ruining my life for decades, and it has highly influenced me in developing alcohol addiction which almost killed me. So OCD is no buddy of mine, but a mental disorder that I have to focus to heal from. It is to the best interest of mine and people around me for me to heal as profoundly as possible. I truly believe that it is the single most important task in our lifetimes for us OCDers to heal from this disorder and to learn to love ourselves.

Currently, I'm at the point where OCD symptoms are classified as below clinical significance. I have never felt better and more clear minded in my life, although I know there is still lots of healing to be done. And healing is always about the actions we take one day at a time.

[UKmum68 in reply to TomFed]

Beautifully written and thank you for your encouragement. My daughter is 20 and leaning into her therapy and healing and is determined to get better so her life isn’t destroyed by this disorder. Can I ask apart for therapy and meds what else you’ve done to help with your healing?

[Hidden in reply to UKmum68]

i tell myself off when i have thoughts so itell myself things like"dont be silly its ridiculous" it helps me but not when i am going through my massive episodes where i am ruminating endlessly and not sleeping at all. then not much can help me tbh. i would say dont bother with medication get therapy.

[UKmum68 in reply to Hidden]

The therapy and ERP is definitely the way but low dose meds has helped with sleep.

[Hidden in reply to UKmum68]

maybe find out what trigered the ocd. mine was trigered my people accusing me of things and also joing a cult which gave me religious ocd i have both religious ocd and false memory ocd at the same time when i left the cult. i also has health anxiet at one point but i got better from this. my mums hoearding was triggered by her mum throwing all her things as a child. i thing each ocd has a trigger.

[TomFed in reply to Hidden]

It might be interesting to know what was one of the triggers of OCD, but if the trigger is not present anymore, it won't be much help in the therapeutic healing after all. Most studies show that OCD is caused both by genetics and environmental factors, and it can be triggered by one traumatic experience or many little things, or don't even need to have some specific trigger at all.

I give you my personal example. The development of OCD in my case was highly affected by my obsessively neurotic mother (who herself definitely has clinically significant anxiety issues, maybe even OCD). If I was still living with her up to this day, this kind of circumstances might affect my treatment and healing. But I left my parents home as early as I could when I was 18. So it is of minor importance or none at all to my treatment how my mother raised and treated me as a kid.. (and most of the stuff that happened in my childhood is long forgiven, I just wish my mom could find more peace in her own mind, so I help her discover meditation and some other useful tools these days).

I guess what I want to say here, ERP is a very practical treatment approach. It is about what actions we can take NOW to stop the compulsions and break the OCD cycle. That's why psychodynamic and psychoanalytic therapies have been proven of no use to treat OCD in most clinical cases. You can ask all day long "why? why? why?" , and we OCDers often tend to do it as many of us are very self-analytical persons. But the answers to those whys and ifs don't matter in the end for your OCD treatment.

Maybe after OCD is at least partly healed and the symptoms go to subclinical levels, some of us will wish to explore pshytherapic healing further as it is a life long journey. So I don't say other healing modalities are useless to us. But if your OCD is still running high and messing up your life daily, my advice would be focus on ERP for the time being as much as possible.

Good luck.

[TomFed in reply to UKmum68]

I've never taken any psychiatric meds from OCD. I understand that in many cases they 're useful along the ERP therapy, especially at the initial stages of the treatment or when the OCD symptoms are more severe.

So for me the first and most useful treatment modality was and is ERP. I as well found some natural over-the-counter food supplements like N-Acetyl Cysteine very useful to calm down the flow of intrusive thoughts. So I take 2-3 g of NAC daily. I take some other supplements and vitamins as well, in case you're interested pm me and i will send you more details.

Other tools that helped me a lot is meditation and sports. I know meditation is not for everyone, esp when the OCD symptoms run high. But I've been doing it consistently around 5 years now and it brought much more clarity and presence to me. Nowadays I'm usually able to notice the compulsions and safety behaviours almost immediately after starting doing them, so in most cases the clarity of mind helps me stop immediately and don't fire up the OCD cycle again.

Doing sports, like exercise in the gym, jogging, boxing, tennis, helps me to stay quite fit and it is producing the overall good feeling that helps me deal with OCD much better on day to day basis. What else.. nutritious diet, as some studies show protein rich big breakfast is helpful for people with anxiety related disorders.

I had developed an alcohol addiction before, partly due to trying to self medicate myself from OCD and anxiety, but that's I guess another story. After getting sober, I was mostly able to kick off other unhealthy and very compulsive habits step-by-step, like smoking and porn, which might be not that harmful for people without OCD, but those daily compulsions really were firing up my compulsive brain.

Part of my healing process is 12th step programme which taught me a spiritual principal that in order to heal we have to help others. I might not understand or agree with everything there, but the spiritual rule itself works miraculously well both for me in the meetings of AA and in my daily sharing with other OCDers. It also helps to keep ego at bay, and refocus from my own mind with its 95% trash content onto others (and their trash )

That's about it in brief.

[Hidden in reply to TomFed]

i think my hypochodria episodes appear when i was studying science at uni and kept talkind about ilnneses. my religious ocd happened when i joined a cult my false memory ocd happened when people called me a podophile for loving a 19 year old when i was 27.

[TomFed in reply to Hidden]

How does knowing those triggers help you to do ERP and heal?