Alice's Story
In today's blog, Alice share's her journey with OCD and navigating through health anxiety.
"When I was 10, my OCD and health anxiety started to show up. My family suddenly took me to a therapist (just once, and then again when I was 15) but no one diagnosed me anything and I felt fine, so I decided to quit.
The nightmare began at 17 years old: my OCD started to show up really badly. I was living with a brain that was telling me the weirdest things and I was so scared and ashamed, yet I needed to tell everything to my loved ones because I needed to know I wasn’t crazy. I started to see a cognitive behavioral therapist at 18 years old. Years of ashame, hysterical crying, days spent in bed avoiding my triggers, overthinking and ruminating every thought until I would fall asleep because I was tired after thinking so hard. I had nausea because of how much my brain was working. I would wake up each day with more muscle tension than the day before (still do). I was relieved that my problems had a name (OCD) but when the thought would come, I couldn’t calm down because “what if it’s not OCD, what if I’m a bad person?”.
But now I’m 23 and I’m handling my OCD very well (with my ups and downs of course). And I would like to hug that scared girl.
In the last couple of years I also started to have severe panic attacks for the first time. But now I can handle them by myself, and I’m so proud of these accomplishments.
I have to thank therapy and mindfulness meditation for this. My health anxiety is still my biggest enemy but I’m working a lot in therapy and I hope to see the light soon.
Try to practice mindfulness meditation for panic attacks/OCD/health anxiety, it works! It really helped me in my worst moments. You just need the right mindset and patience, because remember that healing it’s not linear.
But even if I still have to work a lot on so many things, I can say that I overcame so many others!
You can heal. I promise. Trust the process, trust therapy, and if you don’t like your therapist, find another one. If you don’t have money, find free therapy near you. Please don’t give up.🤍”
