Aa
really want t o move on from this "OCD"?
Im an 18 year old girl and also a freshman in college. All my life I have freaked out over little things that are major to me. When I was a little girl I use to worry about if I was gonna ever start my period or not. Sometimes before i leave the house i will check the windows , locks, plug ins, ect.. several times before i leave. here lately o have been soooo scared of getting hepatitis because my friend got it. Now every little thing triggers it! Now i obsess with washing my hands several times before i eat or do anything. If i cant wash my hands i WONT eat. Idk why?? i go camping all the time you hardly get showers there and im fine. But at im using lotion all the time now because i wash my hands soooo much that they dry out badly.they hurt soo bad. Idk if its college making me stress more or what. My main thing is you know that saying " if its too good to be true it probably is" i kinda obsess over that. Im living a life i never thought i would be here in a million years living with a guy a love dearly , in college things are just great !!! but i feel like im waiting on somwthing to ruin it :((( im the person things never work out for... I LOVE the guy im with sooo much i could not and will not ask for someone better because he is also my best friend, we do everything together. why cant i just be happy?? I ALWAYS THINK NEGATIVE. and i try not too. Im always a happy outgoing person but when im in certain situations i always prepare myself for the absolute worst. Id rather do that and it turn out better than look to the best and it be worst. I really need a counsilor i think , not to be cliché, but obviously i have stress over lots of different things right now as you can tell. Where can i get a good counsilor that can help me with all of my problems????!!!! I just really need to talk to someone!!!! without being embarrassed half this stuff i dontr want to tell my friends because they don't take me serious on the i guess you can say "OCD" part. they just laugh and shake their heads but the whole time im being real. Thank you sooo much for your concern.
Thanks again I will go get help. Guess your sister is an inspiration to me because I really want to be a nurse!! thanks for your concern!!
Get some help as soon as you can. You can ask your teacher for a reference perhaps if you feel comfortable with that.
As far as your profession goes, all I can tell you is that OCD can be managed with CBT alone for some people and CBT with medication for others. My sister has OCD. It runs in families. Anyway, she had/has the germ phobia. Her OCD started when she was 7. She went to nursing school and also got her master's in nursing. She was in the cardiac care ICU for a long time, then managed a cardiac care practice and now works for the government. Your OCD doesn't have to hold you back. You can be anything you want to be you just need to get help for what is really an imbalance in neurotransmitters in our brains.
Also, as far as HIV goes. It is so very hard to get. It doesn't survive outside of the host therefore can't survive on surfaces, etc. In fact, if you got a needle stick with a syringe with HIV tainted blood in it, your chances of seroconverting to HIV positive is 0.03 percent. Less than half of one percent. THAT is how hard it is to get.
As far as your profession goes, all I can tell you is that OCD can be managed with CBT alone for some people and CBT with medication for others. My sister has OCD. It runs in families. Anyway, she had/has the germ phobia. Her OCD started when she was 7. She went to nursing school and also got her master's in nursing. She was in the cardiac care ICU for a long time, then managed a cardiac care practice and now works for the government. Your OCD doesn't have to hold you back. You can be anything you want to be you just need to get help for what is really an imbalance in neurotransmitters in our brains.
Also, as far as HIV goes. It is so very hard to get. It doesn't survive outside of the host therefore can't survive on surfaces, etc. In fact, if you got a needle stick with a syringe with HIV tainted blood in it, your chances of seroconverting to HIV positive is 0.03 percent. Less than half of one percent. THAT is how hard it is to get.
Thanks a lot its nice to no someone who understands. I do have a teacher who is a doctor for this but I don't want her to treat me different. She teaches my psychology class and yesterday we were going over all the mental diseases and went over ocd. She talked about people washing their hands so much cause they were afraid of germs and im not trust me I love to go mudding creek swimming you name it. its just the things that linger in those germs like aids, hep. And not to mention that im going to school right now to be a nurse. I love it but I don't want to stress everyday when I do become a nurse and im scared this will keep me from doing what I love.
Hi there....wellcome to the OCD forum.
You sound like me actually. I had a lot of problems in college and of course my glass was always and still is half empty. We are the great catastrophizers. We like to control everything and so that is why you plan for the worst and hope for something better. Anything we hear is fuel for our OCD. I never had a germ thing going on but of course I can understand where that comes from.
Anyway, you are right in that you need to get some help for this. People that don't have OCD just don't understand because when we talk to them, inside they are thinking "Why can't she just stop thinking about it?" They don't understand that we didn't choose to be this way. Our brain chemistry is different and makes us this way.
So you have some options. You can see a school counselor and talk to him/her and get a referral to a psychologist or you can just skip the counselor and go straight to a psychologist that works with people that have OCD. Ideally it would be somebody that teaches cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)
We are never going to be OCD free but we can manage it and make our lives a whole lot better. CBT is invaluable in my book. I relied on it for many years when I wasn't on medication. Right now I take medication and my life is pretty much normal.
The holidays are coming up and I know you are going to have finals soon and that is stressful (yes stress exacerbates OCD). But once you get done and you have that nice long break over Christmas, make sure to see somebody and get the ball rolling. If you can see somebody sooner that would be even better.
Take care and let me know if you need anything else.
You sound like me actually. I had a lot of problems in college and of course my glass was always and still is half empty. We are the great catastrophizers. We like to control everything and so that is why you plan for the worst and hope for something better. Anything we hear is fuel for our OCD. I never had a germ thing going on but of course I can understand where that comes from.
Anyway, you are right in that you need to get some help for this. People that don't have OCD just don't understand because when we talk to them, inside they are thinking "Why can't she just stop thinking about it?" They don't understand that we didn't choose to be this way. Our brain chemistry is different and makes us this way.
So you have some options. You can see a school counselor and talk to him/her and get a referral to a psychologist or you can just skip the counselor and go straight to a psychologist that works with people that have OCD. Ideally it would be somebody that teaches cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)
We are never going to be OCD free but we can manage it and make our lives a whole lot better. CBT is invaluable in my book. I relied on it for many years when I wasn't on medication. Right now I take medication and my life is pretty much normal.
The holidays are coming up and I know you are going to have finals soon and that is stressful (yes stress exacerbates OCD). But once you get done and you have that nice long break over Christmas, make sure to see somebody and get the ball rolling. If you can see somebody sooner that would be even better.
Take care and let me know if you need anything else.
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