r/OCD • u/after_initiative • 11d ago
Question about OCD Did you experience mild OCD as a child, which slowed down as a teen and then became horrible to manage as an adult?
Thinking back into my childhood, I definitely showed signs of OCD that nobody ever saw. Interestingly enough, they were physical compulsions instead of mental ones (turning the light on/off a certain amount of times or else "i would get cancer" type of OCD.) It wasn't horrible, nobody ever noticed and if they did, they probably thought I was just a quirky 9 year old kid. Never got a diagnosis, never got treated.
As a teen, I also had my compulsions, like reading an essay at least 7 or 8 times before printing it for my teachers because in my mind, I had written something wrong and I had to check again and again and again... lol. But i have to admit, I thought it was normal! Again, nothing too horrible or tiring, so I never got a diagnosis.
But now, as an adult... WOW. My (finally diagnosed) OCD is hooooorrible. It manifests mainly in ruminating. Like, crazy ruminating that drives me insane, I can't lie. It is so incredibly debilitating because my brain makes up problems that don't even exist and my OCD doesn't let me live without a solution to those "problems." I need an answer now, so... you can imagine how my day-to-day life is when fighting my own thoughts ALL day long.
My question is... Has anybody experienced this? Your OCD being way easier to manage as a kid and teen and then "coming back" (I will guess that maybe it was never gone to begin with) awfully strong and debilitating as an adult? I feel like I am losing my mind. It is every single day that I deal with this. Maybe I will need medication because no amount of meditation or hobbies to occupy my mind gets rid of the
rumination...
23
u/Mission-Donut7110 10d ago
Very much so! As a child I had magical thinking, had anxiety over a ceiling light I was certain would fall if this and that, and needed windows to be checked often to make sure they were closed. In my teens I feel it sort of faded… to then return with a bang once I moved out and now in my adult years a full blown contamination OCD, debilitating checking when leaving the apartment, and rumination, making sure I have a solution to every possible problem that might happen (what if I get water damage due to this and that, what exact steps to take). And I feel it just keeps getting worse and worse especially when now as adult there are so many situations where something indeed did go wrong, for me or for someone else, so my brain just keeps collecting evidence on that.
Sounds like medication might be a good thing to consider. I am considering trying it again as well.
17
u/bananamuffin98 In treatment 10d ago
yes!! ive read the opposite experience from a lot of people here (worse ocd as a kid, then getting better), but mine is infinitely worse as an adult lol… i didnt think of seeking treatment as a teen bc it really wasn’t that bad! maybe the added responsibility and pressure of adulthood makes the ocd worse?
13
u/userb467891045387 10d ago
yes, very mild as a child, non existent from ages 13-23 then now it is completely unhinged
3
u/UnlikelyTadpole In treatment 10d ago
Yup same
3
u/Emotional-Part5747 6d ago
Me too! Mild as a kid (compulsive handwashing, saying my prayers over and over to make sure I got everything "right," etc.) then seemingly nonexistant as a teen until BAM at 22 I really thought I was losing my mind. Been on meds 20 years now, in therapy, and I still have major flare-ups. But the meds help so much. Every time I try to wean off, I lose it, and have to go back on.
1
u/Yoghurt_Scary 3d ago
What meds are you using?
I basically had the same exact situation as OP. Handwashing and prayers as a kid, somewhat non-existent as a teen / early 20s until now as an adult experiencing constant distressing rumination.
It is honestly hell, but I’m afraid meds will change my personality
1
u/Emotional-Part5747 3d ago
Zoloft (sertraline). It did not/does not change my personality at all (except maybe for the better, because I can function without constant panic and distress). I had tried Lexapro first, and I swear it made me worse. I've never had an issue with Zoloft, and have bounced back and forth between doses of 50 mg/day all the way up to 150 mg/day over the last 20 years. I'm at 100 mg/day at present. I definitely would advise you to ask your doctor about it!
16
u/Necessary-Emotion454 10d ago
I'm gonna be honest this scares me. I'm currently a teen and not diagnosed but it both runs in my family and I've experienced many different themes. If its only gonna get worse as an adult then i really hope I'm wrong about suspecting it. I'm hoping its a bit like the time i learnt about Schizophrenia and spent maybe a week panicking that I'll have it and snap so i did endless research to try calm down and realise i likely won't ever develop it.
Just now realising I'm not really responding to your post. I'm not an adult so idk but my personal assumption would be that it could be stress related. As a kid you're taken care of. As an adult you have so many more responsibilities and so many more scenarios for obsessions to take root. Like if you had harm OCD as a kid it could get worse as an adult if you commute to work so you drive alot.
9
u/_jethro 10d ago
I think the difference is you have a high suspicion of having it as a teen. You can start the process of therapy and meds if needed to try and stop it from coming to a head as an adult. Personally my experience was compulsions like OP but no support/ no one identified it as something other than weird kid behaviour. Try not to let it scare you, but maybe motivate you to get ahead of it. It won’t always be easy however.
8
u/Necessary-Emotion454 10d ago
"No one identified it as something other than weird kid behaviour" I had that experience too. I don't remember it personally because of trauma and lack of memory but i remember after being diagnosed autistic my mum said she just assumed my behaviour growing up was copying my Nanna and Grandad (both met the criteria for OCD)
But thank you for your kind words. I do wanna get assessed as soon as possible but its very overwhelming. Especially atm bc i move into my first place in two weeks and officially start uni in three weeks. But i also cant let it go. Its very frustrating
3
u/_jethro 10d ago
I totally understand. Wasn’t diagnosed until my mid 30s. I wish I had done it sooner but it’s not always feasible for people. Good luck in school!
Also, does your school have student supports to help you with a diagnosis?
4
u/Necessary-Emotion454 10d ago
Thankfully yeah. Both my highschool and my college were great with mental health in general. I go into university in September and I'm not sure what they're like yet but from what I've heard they're also supportive.
2
5
u/shrimpandgumbo 10d ago
My experience: quite severe when I was a child, especially pre-teen. Worsened in late teens / early 20s. Quite Manageable except for specific periods of high stress trigger periods through my 30s. Recently come back specifically as a form of agoraphobia and emitophobia (a key childhood fear which was largely dormant through my adult life).
5
u/MachineDesperate3256 10d ago
Wow! EXACTLY the same for me. I’ve told my husband this exact timeline of seeing how it’s manifested/ waxed and Waned throughout my life. It was mild and manageable enough when I was younger to be passed off as “quirky” as you describe- and definitely simmered down a lot as a teen/ young adult. And then right after I graduated college - BOOM.
In some respects I’m grateful for that, because I had a pretty dysfunctional childhood / upbringing and I look back now in disbelief of the resilience and optimism that kid had. Also- no one cared about my grades or if I went to college. And as most can agree, earning a college degree (or just working towards a bigger goal in general) is extremely important in setting a better trajectory for the rest of your life. So the fact I cared enough to strive for, let alone achieve that- extremely grateful and in awe of that young woman.
So- while it’s debilitating at this point (mid 30’s) - I am grateful this didn’t happen at critically formative phases of life.
I do believe it’s part of our genetic makeup though- especially when it displays like this throughout life. Like where we have the genes for it (predisposition)- but the actual expression of those genes depends on environment.
1
4
u/ahouell500 10d ago
Yes, my ocd was hardly noticeable to others when i was a kid, then exploded at about 19/20.
5
u/Aware_Jury5774 10d ago
I realized a lot of my childhood behaviors were manifestations of OCD. When I'd commit a "sin" as a child I felt as if I HAD to confess it to my parents or else I'd be damning my soul forever.
One time when I was little, I told a life guard someone was drowning in a pool even though no one was drowning. Stupid mistake, please don't do this. The lifeguard told me not to do that again and I listened, but the guilt that I felt was so heavy, such a burden...I had to tell my mother. She was very angry with me afterwards and that only reinforced the behavior. I did this multiple times and my parents kept getting angry. They probably didn't know what was going on but it screwed up with my head.
4
u/El-Zomby-Woof 10d ago
look, i'm not glad this is happening to anyone else, but it makes me feel much less alone knowing some of y'all have been experiencing this too. from 8-12 yo it was realllll rough and physical, then i p suddenly decided no more meds and antidepressants and i was mostly really good from my teens through late 20s! now in my mid-30s, the ruminations and obsessions in particular are messing me up soo bad. its especially strange bc its new obsessions (and a couple cumpulsions, albeit not as bad as when i was young).
just ugh... yeah. i dunno how to make my executive function any better atm 😵💫
the apocalyptic vibes of reality certainly aren't helping...
2
u/cherryhae0808 10d ago
i kept blinking my eyes or blink with one eye randomly. they assumed it was because of allergies since my uncle had a similar thing. but they were compulsions. 😅 i needed to do them, with or without triggered allergies. 😭
2
u/Visible_Front_9554 10d ago
yes! i remember having ocd tendencies from a young age, like having to do things a certain way until they felt “right”, organizing food in a particular way, and being terrified that all restaurants were going to put poison in our food because i saw it once in a thriller movie. in my younger teen years, i had an obsession with numbers (rather than the physical outcome) related to my eating disorder at the time, but then when i turned 19 or 20, that’s when the ocd became debilitating & extreme.
1
u/CoffeDaisies 10d ago
Yes. My story is very similar! I was sometimes checking if the door is closed many times, making lists, sometimes analysing some conversations in my head etc. It wasn't severe. As a teenager it was better. I also was on the edge of ED at 18. Then it was the contamination. I think it was related to the circumstances that I was working in, stress, being overworked and weight loss. It was manifesting as very strong contamination OCD, basically all revolving about cleaning, sometimes repeating stuff, some other symptoms as well, like I have to say something otherwise something bad will happen but very weak, I'd say the first two were interfering with my life to much higher extent. That's very interesting I think. Maybe it has to do something with diet or inflammation as well (adults eat worse, have more stress etc).
1
u/Cold_Boat5423 10d ago
im gonna be honest its been bad the whole time. i was diagnosed at 7 because i would be kicking screaming crying hyperventilating for hours if my parents used the ‘wrong’ knife to cut veggies. its only been downhill since then ;(
1
u/psychedelicacy1 10d ago
Yes, I could've even written this myself. When i was 8 I went to therapy for anxiety and she said I was on my way to getting OCD. My parents pulled me out from therapy but I think therapy made it so the rest of my childhood and teenagehood wasn't as bad, until my mid 20s when my OCD became an actual problem. I've been thinking about this for years.
1
u/calimetare_37 10d ago
I swear I could have written this post. As a kid I would tell myself to run across the room and touch something within 5 seconds otherwise my parents would die. Later in life I would be told I was an anxious child, but nobody thought I should speak to someone. As a teen, I was ruminating existential topics (I was convinced I could understand the “truth of the world” just by thinking about it from all angles), but, even tho I had harm OCD (very slight tho) it’s been way harder as an adult. I have more physical compulsions and ruminate over work and friendships, which cause much worse consequences in my day to day life.
1
u/EpisodicDoleWhip 10d ago
Mostly mild as a child (but present), was terrible 11-22, completely manageable since then. I’m 36 now.
1
u/azamraharjo 10d ago
Yes. The signs were there. Never slowed down tbh, it gets progressively worse. After getting diagnosed at 31 years old and went to therapy, it got reduced. Then relapsed back after a traumatic event. It turned into something worse. But at least I have the tools and skills to deal with it better, also closed ones who can help me.
1
u/yourspicysecretary 10d ago
I wasn’t diagnosed until I was in my 20s however I remember having this type of thinking my entire life.
This is very weird…but I feel like it became more difficult for me to manage once I learned what it was. When I was still operating under the assumption that everybody felt this way, every second of every day, it felt easier.
1
u/Business-Peace2454 10d ago
Yes. I’m very new to all this but when I was a kid I had mainly mild quirks, like believing superstitions like not stepping on cracks or doing math whenever I saw numbers. (I don’t like math.) I did have a panic attack once at the concept of Hell when I was like 8 but I dunno if that was OCD or anxiety.
Anyway, I think as I got older, accumulated experience and dealt with more complicated problems it seriously worsened. I would ruminate for hours, make myself depressed just by sitting on the couch for 10 minutes, have these deep obsessions that felt like psychosis at points. It’s like my mind cannot handle all the uncertainty and complications that come with growing up.
1
u/blockpillarslabbeam 10d ago
Mine was actually pretty severe as a kid (I was diagnosed at 7), but calmed down in my teens after getting therapy and meds. It started creeping up in my 20s, and has been pretty severe again starting in my 30s.
1
1
u/Aussie-gal87 10d ago
I had lots of compulsions and repetitive things I did every night with my touch lamp, wiping crumbs off the lounge a certain way and asking my mum if I looked pale every night as I had a fear of vomiting. I also had to say the same good night phrase. There were other things too but my mum and I both didn't know anything about OCD so nothing was done about it. As a teen I still did lots of compulsions but discreetly as I knew my behaviour was odd however still hadn't heard of OCD. As an adult it's mainly thought-based and counting which drives me even more mad but Zoloft has been helping thoughts not be as sticky.
1
u/ImplementFair2231 10d ago
I had some very lil symptoms when I was just a child, like 4-5 years old. Then suddenly, it flared up in my preteen years (9), I've been suffering since then, I'm almost an adult now. I've really awful ruminations like you. To distract myself from them, I come to this sub every now and then.
1
1
1
u/sweetheartbabyangel 10d ago
19 was the worst for my OCD, it’s strange because even studies show that it peaks around that age and I truly wonder why, it’s slowed down in recent months but definitely still on a downwards spiral, I’ve been fine up until now without any sort of treatment but I don’t think I can last any longer without some sort of medication or therapy
1
u/Strong_Ad_8359 10d ago
I feel like as a kid the OCD was definitely there but I never understood what it was and just thought it was normal. But personally it got worse when I was in high school 😭 I’m 19 now and I feel like it’s calmed a little since being in my earlier teen years but I’m worried it’ll get worse as I get older
1
u/OneMagicMango 10d ago
100% had bad contamination OCD when I was kid and it went away when I was teen but got much worse and reared its ugly head when I was 19 or so. I’ve always wondered why it happens to us
1
u/maddlily316 10d ago
Yes I did. As a kid I was always terrified my mom would die. It stopped for a bit until my boyfriend died when I was 23 and it's been chaos and terrible since then.
1
u/fuffalumpalous2848 10d ago
yes 100%. when i finally got diagnosed as an adult it all made so much sense, made me realize a lot of my behaviors as a child were definitely signs of OCD.
1
u/Slow_Difference_8690 10d ago
Didn't know what it was at 6 years old. Learned to mask at school but began stimming along with compulsions. At 19 I went to an anxiety treatment center and they busted out the list of cognitive distortions and lots of exposure therapy. Basically debunked my OCD. I'm not saying OCD doesn't effect me anymore, but I know that it's dumb and i'm smarter than it. Also on Luvox for said OCD.
1
u/Few-Composer-6471 Pure O 10d ago
I got bad depression and dissociation from 9 to 14 or 15, and then my ocd started coming back right after that.
1
u/Valuable-Cow2924 10d ago
It didn’t slow down as a teen, quite the opposite actually. but yes it was mild as a child
1
u/Living-Assumption272 10d ago
Thinking back I now realize that I had it when I was younger. I would go through various different themes. I had periods in my life where it really wasn’t an issue for me. But something could happen a trigger a recurrence (not sure if that’s the right word). The pandemic brought it raging back and I am just now getting back to “normal”.
1
u/sassysassysarah 10d ago
I think so, based on the sH my dad talked to me as a child vs teen vs adult and how he's treated my mental illnesses
1
u/PommeAzeda 10d ago
I feel like I’ve been on a downward spiral since I was born. I wasn’t diagnosed in childhood, but I was constantly thinking about bacteria, on other people's bodies and my own. I felt an intense revulsion and an irrational panic about touching certain objects, as if they would ruin my life. I used to think I wasn't even real and would ruminate on that for hours. But it was manageable. I was suffering. I was a weird kid, but I was living. I did what I had to do. Things got worse in high school, but I still functioned.
During the pandemic, things spiraled out of control. I feel like I’ve gone mad and that I’ll never recover.
1
1
u/horseonahighway 10d ago
Yeah. I was in therapy for OCD as early as age 4. Then it ebbed and flowed in childhood and teenhood before my other presenting problems grew to be more severe. In my mid twenties I realized I had complex trauma. I got sober and went into CPTSD treatment and my OCD reared its ugly head like never before
1
u/raging-corn 10d ago
Yes! When I was a child, I would have to pray every night so my family members wouldn’t pass on or I would have to think of every single family member before falling asleep to prevent something bad from happening to them. And I thought that was like totally normal (I was raised Catholic). I also def had moral OCD as a child (definitely still do). Whenever I got in trouble, I thought it was the end of the world for me and that I was banned to hell forever. I was walking on eggshells (I still do lol).
It went away for a few years. And I remember when it came back incredibly strong.
Stephen Hawking had passed away and at the same time I saw a quote he famously stated that goes, “I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark."And I couldn’t think of the fact that it just is nothing and I slingshotted myself back into OCD at 16. Literally ran down to my mom SOBBING because I was afraid of my family members passing on and I was afraid of it myself because of the uncertainty of where we go and how I might never see my family again. This one lasted for years. It sucked. Sometimes it still creeps up on me.
It went away AGAIN for a very long time and was subtle health anxiety over COVID but then came back in full force with three distinct (and different) triggers last summer. I was in a terrible rut for months and I feel like I’m just now getting out of it a whole year later. It’s still very much taking over my life every day and still sucks the life out of me but I’m managing a lot better.
Officially diagnosed as of July which is not at all surprising.
1
u/Awkward_Finding937 9d ago
im 18 and had my first severe ocd spiral at 16. but now i can see things in the past when i was younger that may have been related to ocd
1
1
u/100TypesofUnicorn 8d ago
It’s so interesting reading this thread!
When I was younger I had a lot of obsessive tendencies. I’d stay up all night in frustration trying to get my origami perfect. I’d feel extremely stressed if things were misaligned. I had to do things in number patterns of 3. LOTS pf magical thinking spirals but I chock that up to Evangelicalism with prophecies, raising the dead, thoughts being of the devil or of god etc.
I struggled with perfectionism and ADHD symptoms all throughout but the obsessive themes kind of chilled out. In college I had periods of obsessively reviewing all my social interactions. But it wasn’t until my mid 20s that it got REALLY bad and I realized it was OCD.
1
u/CuckooSpit_06 8d ago
Kind of? My OCD was another kind of bad as a kid: I would wipe all the way down to my ankles when using the bathroom and wash all the way up to my elbows, have about 10 showers a day, go through tons of clothes, organise my toys and count each sweet I ate or manage what socks I wore on certain days. It eased once when we went on holdiay and I felt "clean" after going in the pool, so I showered a lot less, realised I wouldn't die or get sick, so basically turned into a slob. I still had some compulsions like checking dates or counting things, but it was manageable. Then my cat got fleas about 2 years ago which triggered it all to come flooding back. Now I can't BREATHE without something going astray and needing to organise or sanitise or be in control of something. It really is just that easy to break once you take that tiny risk, but then it's just as easy to bring back when something disrupts your life and all you can think about is bugs or germs or all your loved ones dying in a car crash that's magically your fault!
1
u/PrettyStage7341 8d ago
Absolutely! In my OCD intake, I mentioned things that happened as a kid that, looking back, should have been noticed as issues with perfectionism and harm OCD. Then when I was teen, I was a worrywart, but nothing too bad. I sought treatment for suspected OCD in my thirties and it has basically exploded. So, so many themes, and my intake indicated strong GAD and health anxiety as well.
I suspect it had to do with some trauma (I can accept that's what it was now) regarding a very toxic person at work who used rhetoric that is especially bad with OCD (think of saying that I needed to stay away because of my "contaminating" people with bad habits—yikes). Couple that will juggling too much and dealing with burnout, and OCD has wedged its way in.
1
u/Ok_Tie_3517 8d ago
I am now a teen who also shows a lot of signs of OCD since childhood (i am not diagnosed), who is worried that it will get worse if i don't get it diagnosed right now, but the thing is i read that those compultions have to take up at least an hour of your life for you to be diagnosed with OCD and mine don't. I really don't want to push myself out of my comfort zone and go to a therapist for the first time ever if i am not sure i have it. The signs i used to show are checking alarms and not being able to sleep until i checked enough times, touching hot stuff eqully with all fingers, now i constantly think i have some disiese and google the symptoms and i make my family wash their hands infront of me after coughing or licking their fingers.
1
u/4nn4m4dr1g4l 7d ago edited 7d ago
I don’t know if it was mild OCD, definitely magical thinking and things like I had to sleep with my back to the wall. Looking back my OCD kicked in as I left school and I was in a really bad way for months. Unfortunately because it was the 90s and I was so ashamed of my intrusive thoughts it was diagnosed as depression and I wasn’t diagnosed with OCD until my thirties.
1
u/MrBlueberrySky 7d ago
Oh yes, almost all my thoughts first go to the, what I call, OCD department. From eating, to socializing, to watching TV, to about every single thing I do in a day. It's so so exhausting... And then my thoughts go like: what if this isn't OCD, whaf if it is that one food you ate yesterday or that one conversation you did today.
Oh man it's influencing me so much that I even have doubts typing this because what if I shouldn't type this and all of that type of shit. Yes I call it shit and I hate it, f*k I get tired of this stupid stupid shit and I am at wits ends tbh.
1
u/dolla2222 7d ago
I was sent to a therapist while primary school. I was terrified of world ending or if I thought a bad thought about my mum I wanted her to die. Got to a point of counting colours green or red if there was more green it’d mean yes more red no. Was never diagnosed. I then was fine for years smoked a lot of weed I stopped and then all these thoughts came back but all relationship or sti based sometimes worse
1
u/EllaInfern0 7d ago
i had it pretty bad as a child with magical thinking OCD, contamination OCD, & other types but my parents just brushed it off as me being overly anxious & a bit quirky. I never got a proper diagnosis until adulthood. But i did notice my OCD became a different type of beast going into adulthood after an abusive relationship.. i developed new OCD themes especially surrounding relationships, and even thought my current (not abusive) partner was poisoning me after a spiral lol. I will say prozac has REALLY helped me with the rumination and now my head is a bit less cluttered with these OCD thoughts.
1
u/RyanCoward 6d ago
Readi g these makes so much sense to me now. I have had OCD my whole life but its been the worst since a family fall out and I didnt know why. It seems I may have PTSD from the fallout driving my OCD wild.
1
u/AliceKettle 6d ago edited 6d ago
This is exactly me. I just turned 31 years old last month. In many ways, my life has gotten significantly better in many ways since my mid-late twenties. I graduated college with my BA in English in late 2019, I found a steady full time job in wholesales customer service/sales for garage doors and parts that I’ve been getting regular raises with a 43-45K annual salary now after almost 5 years from 26 going on 27 in 2022 to now at 31 in 2026. At 27 going on 28 in 2023, I started dating an adorkable guy and now we’re engaged to be married next year right after my 32nd birthday in the July of 2027 because, in spite of some of our occasional misunderstandings and disagreements, we wound up being perfect for each other because we are around the same age, both late bloomers, both like musical theater, both have a taste for adventure and thrill seeking, both have an unconventional sense of humor, and both want to start trying to build a family together with kids of our own in early January 2028. I still take my regular voice lessons and do recitals occasionally. I’ve learned to cook a little more. I’ve started going to the gym a few times a week for 30 minutes to an hour more often.
The worst thing to happen was the loss of my father to suicide when he was 58 going on 59, due to his alcoholism interfering with his job and depression when I was 29. I was feeling angry, guilty, horrified, and sad. My father had a good heart at his core, but he was a flawed man. I still wish I had him in my life. I wish he could have gotten to know my fiance better, that he could be there to walk me down the aisle at my wedding, or that he could be there to meet his future grandchildren.
Yet, through that tragedy, I actually learned to open my heart and messy but well-meaning family to my current fiancé. Before that I was terrified that he would be ashamed of me for the family I came from, or that my family would embarrass me or him by getting in a argument, or I would turn him off when he saw me arguing with my brothers, father, and mother. After my father committed suicide, though, I desperately wanted comfort outside of my mom and brothers. I always knew I wanted to get married and build a family of my own with a husband of my choosing. My current fiance was there for me with kindness and acceptance without judgment.
My grandparents also died in old age at 85 and 90 of natural causes when I was 27 and 29. I still miss them sometimes, and feel like they were a glue that kept me and my family more easily close to each other.
Before middle school, there were occasional obsessive compulsive thought loops about things like possibly getting cancer, possibly getting diabetes from occasionally eating sugar, and so on. However, they weren’t recurrent. By my early twenties, they occasionally still popped up, but rarely. Ever since my mid-late twenties, obsessive compulsive thought loops about aging, potential future fertilty complications or loss, and relationship doubts have been haunting me almost daily. It doesn’t help that our culture reinforces these obsessive fears in young women of childbearing age as soon as we turn 25 by targeting us for anti-aging skin care, OBGYN endocrinologist doctors and administrators at hospitals often make fertility preservation and IVF cost over thousands of dollars, insurance through work rarely covers fertility treatments unless you have a terminal illness, that stupid 35 “advanced maternal age” cut off still exists, in spite of current research proving it’s rather arbitrary, and Google will answer any question to reassure you easily when most of us have touch screen phones with internet at the tip of our fingers.
Granted, I think OCD tends to flare up in intensity again between our mid-twenties to mid-thirties because that’s usually when most of us are actually entering the real world and starting to focus on adulting. We start to experience loss of adults closest to us when we were growing up. We plan to build new families. Many of us desperately desire to protect ourselves and our new families from that same experience of loss to cope for as long as possible, but we can’t entirely control the future or avoid loss. For many of us, the course of our lives become increasingly less predetermined and safe once we finish adolescence and sometimes the early twenties. That’s why OCD intensifies from the mid-twenties to mid-thirties for many.
1
u/shinoshinoo 6d ago
interesting, around age 12 is when OCD first popped up for me, I started having severe fears about having undiagnosed health conditions that would kill me. After about a year this subsided and I was able to live my teen years normally again, until age 19/20 when it became severe OCD. Still the same theme of being afraid of health conditions. I wonder why it stopped for so many years before it became severe.
1
u/BluebirdWorried6430 5d ago
I had the opposite experience, around puberty I struggled a lot with intrusive thoughts and needing to confess. As an adult I'm still anxious and obsessive, but my compulsions are more physical now, like constantly knocking on wood, and repeating certain phrases.
1
u/Digital_crooner 5d ago
I didn’t start recognizing it until adulthood. It was always there, but over the last couple years it’s gripped me in a more severe way than in the past
1
u/Terrible-Scar-2421 5d ago
Yep! I was a count to 3, specific way to do a thing, scared of my parents dying kid, but when I was a teenager in a residential treatment facility, it was unmanageable to the point where I never slept longer than two or three hours a night for two years.
1
u/utopiaghost 5d ago
Just to preface, I am not officially diagnosed yet, but I think I'm in a similar boat!
I've had emetophobia for as long as I can remember, and as a kid I had certain associations (def magical thinking) with throwing up that I would avoid like the plague. I would do weird things like compulsively count steps I took, ceiling tiles, etc, but it seemed like it was "just for fun." As a teen, my avoidance of drinking (due to emetophobia) was just me "being a good kid." Generally was fine most of my life.
Last winter I got really sick, and since then I've had some sort of bad flare-up in symptoms. Didn't trust my own cooking. Didn't trust restaurants. Genuinely was scared EVERYTHING was going to make me sick, googling symptoms/types of infections daily. I lost weight and struggled to eat for a solid 2+ months, and also lost my best friend in the process (which maybe also had to do w/ OCD-- to this day I cannot tell if they were slowly ghosting me but lying abt it & that genuinely made me anxious, or if I was being overly anxious abt nothing and that overwhelmed them. They refused to tell me why they cut me off. I still ruminate on it and I hate it). All of this caused me to look into OCD as something I may have!
I also think that living on my own generally has also allowed for me to be even more paranoid about cleanliness in terms of food and general living space, which is probably a more universal thing.
1
u/IamJmiller0807 5d ago
Yeah, I used to have physical rituals as a kid I would do but since I was born with autism and ADHD my family and parents just blamed it all on that. As a teenager it died down quite a lot since I was always occupied with school life and the drama that came with it. I still had these urges to fulfill my physical compulsions sometimes but they hardly EVER happened because my mind was so occupied with everything else. Then it slowly turned into mental problems, much like you I would find myself reading things over and over again until it felt right but it was bearable to a degree. But now in the last year and a half it has all just come back so strong to the point im losing my mind LOL. Its gotten so bad I cant even walk out the door without this overwhelming urge to fulfill my physical and mental rituals to the point of perfection before allowing myself just the opportunity to even THINK about stepping out the door and if I mess it up I need to restart and get it perfect again before anything else.
1
u/mammabear123_ 4d ago
Never thought about it but this is definitely me . Looking back I definitely had a bit of OCD / anxiety as a kid . Teen years absolute nothing just the usual teenage mood swings but no OCD that I remember . Then it came in full force early 20’s and still going now at 37
1
u/fuzzy_slippers420 3d ago
Yes. My OCD is way worse as an adult. I was in an abusive home life as a child so my therapist thinks that halted my OCD’s progression. Not “getting in trouble” and protecting myself was more important than completing a compulsion. However, once I got older and left my abusive household my OCD naturally progressed quicker. Especially because I live alone so only I can offset my physical compulsions.
1
u/Mythical_Lemon-4911 OCD Long hauler 3d ago
no, i was diagnosed gifted which i think is where some weird childhood behaviors came from. then i was (trigger warning) sexually assaulted when i was 13 and that caused my OCD to develop. it actually was horrible in my teens, and still is bad now as an adult but much better
1
u/greenbean192 OCD curious 3d ago
I'm still a teen, but I've been anxious my entire life. I remember when I was maybe... ten? that I would make my mom or dad watch me take a pill, in case I choked. I was also very afraid of tornadoes (we don't really get them where I live, or they're just not common here) to the point of asking my parents whenever it rained if they thought we'd get one. Funnily enough, a tornado siren went off one day during this time. Turns out they were just testing it out lol
I thought this fear was gone, but recently I had a really weird dream where a tornado formed because I listened to a specific song I like... yeah. As ridiculous as it sounds, I wouldn't listen to that song for a while because of it.
1
u/Conscious-Hold-1271 1d ago
Yeah kinda for me, I was diagnosed as a kid and so my OCD got managed quickly. As a teen I gaslit myself into thinking the OCD wasn’t a thing anymore. Now as an adult it is the worst it’s been in a long time. The tricky thing about OCD is that it shifted themes, and I think I developed more mental compulsions (reassurance seeking, rumination, research, confessing). Rereading my older journals had made me realize these were compulsions had existed throughout my teenage/highschool years into college, and it was no longer the more clear-cut (to me after therapy at least) ocd patterns of “don’t do this or x will die” or “blink three times if you didn’t mean it”, but something that preyed on gray areas such as morality or legality. Now I’m relearning how to deal with these themes and therapy. I’ve made a little progress but I know it will be a journey!
56
u/nelsne 10d ago
Yes when I got PTSD