I was a shut in for most of my life until a couple years ago due to OCD. I'm 30 now and the loss of my entire youth is so unbelievably crippling I'm finding it hard to be remotely hopeful at all.Feel like I've destroyed any chance of happiness or normality I could have had and it is unbearably painful.
>>31508648Maybe you should keep mourning that until you're 40. Then, once you're 40 you can start mourning your 30s. Life hack!
>>31508648What advice do you want?
>>31508648Congrats, that you understand your shortcoming.Its okay to lose whats normal.Focus whats in front of you, improve and learn.There is time as long as you still breath.Every success starts of a pebble with thousands of failure.So cry, and be strong in the process.
>>31508648Yep, it's brutal. I'm in a very similar position and I really can't see too much of a future for myself.
>>31509015This
>>31508648Some people's lives turn around as they get olderI had a friend who told me that a lot of people have a nice life early and then have a hard time later on, but for some people it's the other way around. Harrison Ford (the actor famous for playing Han Solo and Indiana Jones) was a carpenter until he was in his 50s before he started acting I think
>>31508648How did you get past it? What stopped you from continuing to be a shut-in?
>>31509760>>31508648Not OP but I've had severe OCD for a few years now and two things that have helped a lot are: 1. Mentality regarding your beliefs about how reality works. In my opinion, OCD is heavily based on your metaphysical beliefs. If you can think about how reality works objectively, you might find out that it seems that a lot of things are ultimately predetermined and a lot of things you worry about with OCD are technically possible but ultimately unlikely. AWhat helps me to make progress in overcoming it is to do things while accepting the fear that is present. You will have to be brave. It is a disease of intimidation. Sometimes it helps me to remember that there is apparently medical literature where people with OCD were found starved to death in their home even though there was food in the house. Things like that make me angry and it helps a bit to use that anger to fight against the OCD. But be careful looking that stuff up because some of it is pretty severe. Basically, you will have to force yourself to be brave. It really is possible. I've done it before. Something else I read from someone is to just let go of the fear by giving up stressing and trying to prevent everything and accepting the fact that your fears may be possible and continuing to go on doing what you wanted to do anyway. That honestly helped me too. BUT that doesn't mean you have to be extreme and do the opposite of what you were scared of doing or something. It's hard to just let the fear go but it really is possible. The second thing is diet and biology. Research which foods and other things can irritate OCD. For example I recently read from a post on this site that onions sauce and cheese have some chemical in them that irritates the part of your brain related to OCD. I eat a ton of onions sauce and I stopped since I read that post and immediately noticed a difference. This was only a few days ago too. Things like caffeine can irritate it too but that kind of depends. Sugar too
>>31509760>>31508648>>31509800Also be careful and try not to rely on your emotions to fight OCD if you can avoid it. Cultivate your own strength and make yourself act without being affected by the influence of OCD. Learn to use your willpower, and not only rely on your emotions. And if you can do it, someone else can, too
>>31509800*onions sauce because this site changes that word to onions
