G'day Alex, seen you around a lot but never actually said hi.

I also have OCD. At one point, in my late teens, I was unable to leave my house because of it. My OCD is focused on fear of illness and contamination like yours. Gaming and VGChartz are sources of distraction for me too, and your experience of being diagnosed after having a total breakdown is almost exactly how it happened for me too. (I was 18)

Here's what helps for me:

- Building up a resistance to the catalysts of my anxiety through gradually controlled exposure. For example, I used to be so afraid of contagion that I would walk two meters around a discarded cigarette butt and could not get close enough to a public rubbish bin to use it. I drew u a plan for myself where once a day I'd stomp on a discarded cigarette butt or force myself to throw rubbish in a bin. Just once a day, so as not to push myself too hard. Over time, these gradually became less frightening. Now neither bothers me, and I can do things that were unthinkable to me ten years ago like use a public toilet or ride on a bus/train. 

Now, this is not a quick fix. It takes months. It takes years. I have been working on it since I was 18, I'm now 30, and while I have come further than I ever imagined I would as a teenager, it is still a work in progress, and I suspect it will be for as long as I live. But it has made a big difference.

- Delaying seeking relief. Often the anxiety can be relatively short-lived and I've found that if I try to distract myself and wait it out, I can often outlast it, and temporarily break the cycle.

- Medication. I've been on several different ones, but the most helpful was Efexor, though this will of course vary on a per-person basis.

The most important thing to remember is that just cos you feel awful now or in the moment, doesn't mean it will stay that way. Like I say, I've battled this thing for 13 years and when I compare myself now to where I was back then, the difference it night and day; as a teen I never thought I could reach the point I'm at now. You can't see the sun at midnight, but that doesn't mean it's not coming. 

All the best to you mate.

Good day, Curl. I know you from the community, but I don't remember if we ever talked.

Man, I can't thank you enough for your post. It feels like you know exactly how my brain works.

My parents keeps telling me to distract myself from the negative thoughts by doing something I like. My fear usually is not from something that's happening, but from something that may happen.

However, I have some kind of... Barrier, that don't let me do what I like. For example, I love to play video-games, like probably everyone around here. So, if I have something bothering me, I will think something like: "No, I will not play today. I'll wait until this anxiety disappear, so I can fully enjoy the game."

My mom always tell me that it should be the opposite: I must force myself to do it, even if I feel like I don't want to. She says that I must fight against this line of thought. I'm working on figuring this puzzle out.

And of course, I have my medication too.

You know... When I had the breakdown, I visited a doctor in my city. He prescribed me a medicine (Can't remember the name, sorry) and I started to take it, but it was not working.

After some weeks, I visited him again, and he told me to wait for a bit of time, but if the medicine didn't work, he would commit me to a mental hospital. I sure as heck didn't wanted that.

Thanks to my family, I went to another doctor, and he changed the medication to the one I take today. It's been two years since that, and I never had another breakdown.

Having reliable people around you also helps a lot.

No worries man, I felt a similar feeling reading your post, I could relate so strongly to so much of it. I think it's so much easier to understand when you share the same condition.

I'm really sorry to hear you've been put under pressure from your first doctor, that's one of the worst things someone can do to a person with OCD, but I'm glad to hear you haven't had a breakdown in two years. The thing with medication is it can take a while to find the one that works best for you. I've been on 5 different meds; the first didn't help much at all, and only with the 5th one did I find the one that worked best for me. Same goes for doctors really, I've had some great ones and some bad ones, and its worth trying several in order to find one that suits you well.

Another thing that I like to do is run or otherwise exercise, like if I am just stressing out of my mind I just go outside and run, just run til I'm exhausted; I know it's a cliche but I find it really does kinda just drown out the anxiety and buy me time for it to subside.

Have you tried masturbating?  That's a good distraction with something you probably like.

Hey man, how are you holding up?

I thought of something else to add; another trick that's been helpful for me is things like meditation, ASMR, and mindfulness. I know these are often looked at as kind of hokey but in my experience they can be quite useful tools. Something as simple as breathing exercises where you force yourself to breath deeply and slowly and focus on getting the air down to the very bottom of your lungs, keeping your shoulders level, 6 seconds in, hold for three seconds, then six seconds out.

These are more a bandaid than a long term fix but can be good for getting some short term relief while you work on long term goals like desensitizing yourself, CBT, and medication.

Hope you're doing okay man.

Hey, I'm doing better now. Thanks for asking!

I never tried meditation or ASMR, but I've heard about them as a source of relief. Fortunately, my mind is clear at the moment, but I'll check it when I feel like I need it.

By the way, I feel like talking about my problem with others is helping me to have a better understanding of how my mind works.

No worries, glad to hear it! Yeah talking it out can help a lot, at least for me. Feel free to message me or just quote me here if you ever need to discuss it. :)

Hi, guys. I want to thank you all for the messages in this thread. I also feel like updating my situation.

Today, I went to my doctor. It's been a couple of years since I started taking all the medications, while trying to take control of my feelings. So far, I can say it's really working!

My anxiety was reduced by a lot in the past year. In fact, I'm not worried about trivial things anymore. Of course, I still have anxiety, so my doctor told me that I must "change my way of thinking", since the medication is already doing it's work.

He told me to enjoy the good days, instead of worrying if the tomorrow is going to be bad. I reflected a bit about that, and I think he's right. Why would I avoid enjoying some good time on VG Chartz today because I'm fearing a car crash tomorrow? It makes no sense (I never had a car crash, by the way).

So, I can say I'm happy. I don't know if I will ever get rid of my anxiety, but if I can control it like that, I'm already fine enough. I still fear some things like medical exams, or diseases (I have Hypochondriasis due to the anxiety. But heck, I don't know how the pandemic has not scaried me.)

Maybe visiting VG Chartz and talking to people that enjoys gaming, like me, can help me to get even better.

Thanks again!

So, do you have generalized anxiety disorder or OCD? Or, is it both, or something else? You mentioned OCD originally, but some of what you talk about doesn't sound like OCD to me.

Anyway, I'm glad to hear that you're doing better. I hope you can continue to improve. Mental illness sucks, bigtime.

Thank you.

At first, when I made this thread, I didn't mentioned it, but the anxiety seems to be the core of my problems, and the reason I have OCD. When I was anxious or scared about something, I couldn't take it out of my mind easily, and I was obsessive about checking if something was off.

I will give you an example: If I noticed something strange in my face, I would keep going to the mirror to see if it's not getting worst. I told my doctor, and he said "you have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder". I wrote this thread a bit after this event, and I didn't mentioned it for particular reasons.

In other words, yes, I have OCD due to anxiety problems. But after some time of treatment, I can say that this problem is almost gone. I have no idea if it will ever come back, but so far the situation is very positive.