How I Beat Anxiety/OCD twice – Recovery Story Time!!
My story:
Regular 30 something guy living in America. One day maybe 7 years ago I was out to dinner with my then fiancé and had a random thought about what if I killed her and/or myself. This thought caused an intense spike in anxiety and struck literal fear in my heart. From there the anxiety and intrusive thoughts continued and got worse. I would make lists of reasons why I shouldn’t/wouldn’t hurt her or myself (even though I knew in my core I had no desire to), would perform both mental and physical compulsions continuously, was petrified to be around knives, all the core Harm OCD symptoms. This continued for maybe 6-7 months until I started learning about OCD and how my compulsions were feeding the OCD. I eventually learned and did ERP on my own and basically healed myself and life was great for a while.
Then maybe 2.5 yrs ago it came back with a vengeance, probably 3/4 x worse than before. I’m talking 24/7 intrusive thoughts with different themes about every horrible thing you could imagine, killing myself, killing my wife and kids, doing inappropriate things to my kids, swerving my car into every single car that I passed on a one lane multi direction road, thinking the devil was pummeling me with these thoughts 24/7 to try to get me to off myself. Literally any sound or sight would spike my anxiety. I developed a nauseous feeling in the pit of my stomach that would come and go and cause me to vomit and dry heave daily or multiple times/day. I now know this was a ‘nervous’ symptom of anxiety but at the time thought it was maybe an unrelated food allergy, maybe a stomach condition called EoE, maybe gastroparesis. I spent tons of money on gastro/food allergy testing (all negative) and therapy/ERP bills.
Basically, from the moment I woke up my brain would snap into what I now understand to be ‘flight mode’ and I would spend all day trying to run away from my own in escapable thoughts. It was hell and my life was unlivable, and I thought the only way I might be able to get out of these thought loops would be to unalive myself. The only time I had any relief was when I was asleep and dreaming. At the expense of my kids, marriage, job and family, I would spend the majority of my free time trying to figure out how to get rid of OCD, intrusive thoughts and anxiety. I’d scour reddit (see my past posts), go to ERP therapy, go to support groups, google, watch Christian sermons and pray to God to fix me, and reach out to random strangers on Facebook to get their advice.
In July of this summer, I was finally convinced to go on Zoloft as a last resort. Some time (maybe 1.5 months?) into the Zoloft journey, I came across some reddit posts similar to this one about people’s recovery success stories and what they did to get there.
Here is one: My Pipeline to Recovery - How I Completely Recovered From OCD/Anxiety :
He links to http://nothingworks.weebly.com/ which I would say was the most impactful in my recovery. It’s a long read but I would insist anyone looking to recover read it, reread it multiple times and put it into practice. The bottom line of what I learned is that I was training my nervous system to be in constant ‘flight’ mode by trying to get rid of my anxiety and intrusive thoughts. By researching, responding to the thoughts, doing compulsions and trying to get rid of them, I was training my brain that these thoughts were important thus reinforcing the OCD cycle and perpetuating my suffering.
So what did I do? As ‘Nothing Works’ suggests I practiced activating my ‘rest and digest’ nervous system response. That meant stopping trying to get rid of the thoughts and just letting them be there, let the anxiety be there AND, and this was equally important in my recovery (Shaan Kassum has some very valuable insight on this and anxiety in general) was to GO BACK TO LIVING AND TRYING TO ENJOY LIFE! I stopped spending my free time googling how to get rid of ocd and intrusive thoughts and I went back to doing the things I used to enjoy before OCD. I played my guitar, I played with my kids, I played games on my phone, I worked, I traded stocks, I went back to working out, I blared loud offensive music. And you know what? In the beginning, it suuuucked. My anxiety was through the roof and my brain was screaming at me “Go back to researching and doing compulsions!! You need to pay attention to and get rid of these thoughts right now!!!” but you know what I did? I said F you brain, I’m in charge and I’m not going to do shit about these thoughts and I kept doing whatever I was doing. If you give intrusive thoughts your attention your brain reinforces them as important and continues to produce them. If you ignore them and instead give your attention to the world outside of your brain, your brain learns that that is what is important and adapts accordingly.
Another huge part, at least for me was relearning to breath in all situations. I would harbor a single thought in mind basically all day, (e.g. telling myself to ‘be confident’, ‘pay attention’ or ‘be patient’, these are compulsions) and just be extremely tense and nervous all the time and especially in any social situation. Once I stopped doing that and learned to relax (verse just telling myself to relax), stayed calm, didn’t react on way or another to thoughts or situations, focused on activating my ‘rest/digest’ nervous system and BREATHE I started to see improvements and my nervous system started to heal. I don’t think I’m the first to make this analogy but performing compulsions and trying to get rid of anxiety is like walking on a broken leg and expecting it to get better. The only way is through (Thanks Shaan), by activating the rest/digest nervous system response and allowing your nervous system to repair itself.
It took maybe 2-3 months of going back to living to get to where I am now. Now I have switched jobs, I have little to no anxiety, I am confident, relaxed in most social situations (thanks to remembering to breathe), and my life is better if not similar to how it was after my first recovery. I no longer spend any time trying to get rid of intrusive thoughts and instead spend my time working, being a Dad to 2 awesome kids. I spend a ridiculous amount of time obsessing over my lawn and any free time outside of that I work out, watch sports, drink beer, play video games or hang out with friends.
I am still on 50 mg of Zoloft (down from 75 as of 3 weeks ago). I would say that has definitely played a part in my recovery but exactly how much is up for debate. I may try to ween off it in the near future or I may stay on it, I am fine with either. Do I still have the ‘intrusive’ thoughts? Well I would say they have reduced probably 80% but are they around? Absolutely. What do I do about them? Nothing, I just ignore them and live life.
And that’s where I am now. Will I relapse at some point like I did before? Maybe but I don’t worry about that, I just live life. I am sharing this in hopes of potentially helping others that are in the grips of this condition like I was.
Most influential resources for my recovery:
Claire Weeks book Hope and Help for your nerves (I cheated and used chatgpt to extract relevant info for myself)
Shaan Kassum on youtube
The link to the reddit post above
Really, they are all preaching the same thing. Stopping running from/avoiding/trying to get rid of OCD and strengthen/desensitize your nervous system through the ‘rest/digest’ response.
I know everyone’s journey with anxiety is different, but I do believe recovery is possible for everyone. I can’t guarantee what worked for me will work for you but I am more than happy to give my perspective as someone who has been through the worst of it and is now living a pretty good life.
DMs welcomed but keep in mind I’m not a trained therapist or specialist, only someone who has lived through it.