Search the Community

Hey guys! My name is Harlo and I'm searching for serious advice. I'm 20 years old and suffer from..well..everything. Severe panic disorder, anxiety, depression, agoraphobia, social phobia, fears, intrusive thoughts, OCD, and probably much much more. I have been dealing with this for almost 5 years now and for the past 2 months now, I have been at my worst. I had such a horrible childhood. Both of my parents were and are alcoholics, my brother was and is a drug addict. I've always been the only sane one in the family.. no addictions and had full control of my life. I think that's what made me INsane ha. I found my brother overdosed on heroine 4 years ago which was my breaking point. He survived..thankfully. but it was devastating at 16 years old. Growing up and still to this day I constantly hear fighting and yelling and screaming between my mother, father, and brother. My parents just recently filed for divorced a year ago. I now live with my mother and brother. My father lives at my old house. Anyway, when I started getting panic attacks I was a senior in high school. I had to drop out of cheerleading, dance, and every other activity. I couldn't got to school. I've been through it all.. hospitals, inpatient hospitals, western psychiatric partial hospitalization, therapists, psychiatrists, medication, group therapy, etc. I lost everything.. fortunately I was able to graduate. For college, I have to do online because I can't actually go to college. I can't work. I basically cant function. I can't sleep at night and I basically sleep my days away. It's like is rather sleep than feel all of these feelings. I'm scared of everything. I'm scared of my panic attacks, going far, going anywhere actually, being alone, all of my symptoms, my thoughts, everything. My mother and father were there through it all (surprisingly) so therefore, I can't be without one or the other. I'm 20 years old and I'm like a 2 year old baby. They literally have to babysit me. It's pathetic. I don't know what to do anymore.. I don't know who to turn to for help. Look, the thing is.. I'm sooo dependant on my family...like I'd literally go crazy if i didn't have them around.. they're all I got. But.. at the same time.. they're making it worse by the stress they put on me with everything. What do I do? Where do i even start? I'm lost. Nothing is helping... Can someone please try to help me figure something out...

I just want to start this off with saying that I never want or enjoy any of this, at least I sincerely hope I don't. I'm shaking and cold and feeling like I'm about to cry as I'm typing this and there's this horrible, horrible loop of guilt inside of me. All too common for someone who suffers with OCD, so I've read and read thousands of thousands of time in my anxiety, but there's this little voice in the back of my head saying that it might not be. After all, I've never been properly diagnosed, but I am experiencing so many of the symptoms and I suppose I'm clinging to the idea I'm ill and this is an entity entirely different from me that's causing me to think all these nasty, nasty things in desperation and in fear that I might truly be evil. It all started when I was about nine or ten years old. I got home from the bookstore and I was so very happy. I had spent the day with my mother and we bought a book we would read together and then it started. My mind had randomly conjured up the thought of me praying she would die and I swear on everything I can possibly swear on, I didn't want that at all. I began to cry and pace throughout the house and pray to God that I didn't want to say that in my head and that nothing would happen to her. I believe that was my first panic attack. And then I'd start remembering all these (admittedly silly) things I did when I was younger like telling scary stories with my cousin and having ridiculous, absurd, and obsessive anxieties over them that it would make her into a killer or something. I also would have thoughts of me saying dreadful things about people I'd pass by on the streets that I would never for the life of me say and later on, have intrusive thoughts about me telling really bad people I'd see on the news to come after me telepathically. And I'd believe that they were going to come after me being a young, impressionable, imaginative child and be panicked for a while. Now, I never told my Mama about this because I was worried that she would think I was a psychopath and want these thoughts. So I locked myself up alone never saying a word about it because I was afraid. Being so vocal and so expressive about my emotions now, I have no idea how I even managed to do that. The intrusive thoughts went away for a short while only to come back around the time not long before I turned fourteen. I am freshly fifteen now and with each passing day, they get more intense and more terrifying and more real-seeming. They were first just words and now they are disgusting images of me doing horrible things I would rather die than do and even those dreadful groinal responses. I am in CBT and my doctor says that it's just the intense fear of the thoughts and that feeling causing me to have these responses, but they still terrify me so much because of how exceedingly intense they are (especially when I'm sitting down and sometimes when they occur, I'm just so paralyed in fear that I don't stand up and then I go into this loop of worrying whether I really enjoyed it or not because I didn't stand up). These images keep playing in my head, they follow me everywhere I go, they occur almost every minute of the day, and I want them to stop. I want to let it go. I want to be innocent and free and beautiful again. I don't want to be a monster. It's my biggest fear. It just keeps on spiralling and the fear in my heart is enabling me from functioning. I have missed so many days of school and had to call early for home because of this- especially since it's already quite hard for me to focus on my work or anything else for the matter (I can't even read books or fanfiction that much anymore without spacing out!) because of my ADHD and when my head spaces out, the thoughts can occur and that terrifies me. Please help. Am I really someone who gets off of harming others, but just in denial of it or am I just a victim of OCD or anxiety or something of the sort? Am I the strong princess or the evil sorceress? Like I said, I'm doing cognitive behavioral therapy (and have been for over a year) and also talking with my aunt who is a therapist and I've told them everything, they say there's nothing wrong with me and my enemy that is fear is what's causing this, but I tend to forget their advice and always find myself back here. Is there anything I can do to stop this death in my mind and heart? How can I be strong? Do I need to be medicated? If so, what medications should I consult my psychiatrist about? Thank you so, Elsa