Lana Faye

Important note on St John’s and Ashwagandha - they won’t magically remove OCD, that’s your job to retrain your brain. OCD thoughts are not the problem, however the reaction to the thoughts is. I still get OCD thoughts occasionally but I’ve learnt to disregard and continue with my day. In my case, the aforementioned herbs help to reduce anxiety and feel a bit uplifted.

@LSD-Rumi hey there! MUCH better!!! Although NAC and Inositol didn’t help me. Hope you are also fine ?

@integral I did not take anything but vitamins during pregnancy. It’s postnatal period that hit me hard. I took Ashwagandha for 2 months. Worked great in terms of reducing anxiety. When I started Ali’s OCD recovery program, the first step was very hard and my brain would send me literally anything to get me into fear - during that period I took Ashwagandha in the morning too since it was the worst time of the day. As for breastfeeding, I wasn’t doing it at that time. Antidepressants ruined my chance for breastfeeding, unfortunately. And I wasn’t taking St John’s and Ashwagandha while I was on antidepressants.

@Schizophonia hi there! No, I don’t have any of these. Regarding the meds you mentioned, haven’t tried them and not planning to. I assume I’m way too sensitive for them considering how my body and brain reacted to antipsychotic and antidepressants. I’m fine with the blend of St. Johns Wort, passion flower, balderian and vitamin B6 which I take in the morning and Ashwagandha before sleep. Works best for me. No side effects whatsoever. Ah, magnesium also helped.

@Federico del pueblo thanks! It is not that. But the theory sounds valid although quite controversial. In my case it’s fear…too many fears. I was afraid I could lose consciousness while giving birth and he’ll get stuck and I’d kill him. His heart rate was dropping so I got scared. It’s mostly PTSD that transferred into OCD because I was misdiagnosed with postnatal depression which I made worse myself by overthinking and trying to run away from anxiety. Now everything is fine. But took me 8 months.

UPDATE: the only method that has really worked for me to deal with pure O is the Greymond Method, which is all about putting yourself „on a diet“ aka reducing rumination, talking about your fears, confessing, googling stuff, reading other people’s stories on the forums, and analysing thoughts. And of course, doing classic ERP on a daily if not hourly basis. It has been the most painful 1,5 months of my life but no amount of pills, psychotherapy, inner child work, shadow work, self acceptance, and similar stuff helped as much as Ali Greymond, who deeply understands OCD because she has struggled with it herself, fully recovered, and has been helping people for over 15 years. I cannot say I‘ve completely healed my mind but I have reduced anxiety to 0 and the scary/weird thoughts do not bother me anymore. It’s still a long path ahead and I must work on the underlying sensitivity to prevent relapse but at least the road is clear now.

Here is a YouTube channel that’s been quite helpful

Hi there! Thanks for sharing your experience. I see OCD is spreading over the most important things to me starting from my son, sanity, mind and well, ultimately my ego. It just feeds on any bit of attention we assign to the weird or scary thoughts revolving around the most important things. OCD particularly loves fear, anxiety and pity. It rages in the morning so intensively that I get lost in this vicious cycle of obsessions (bad or weird thoughts) to compulsions (reading more about OCD, talking to others about OCD, scanning your mental space, trying to control the content of the thoughts or substituting a bad thought for a good one). It is just exhausting… literally hell.

??? so suffering was necessary and well, basically unavoidable

@LSD-Rumi Thanks! I’ll look into those. May I ask what kind of OCD do you have? Around which themes? Is it Pure O or you have compulsions, too?

OCD runs wild in the morning and afternoon and I occasionally slip into depressive mode but I feel better without antidepressants. Doing psychotherapy, too…lots of shit to go through. I’ve read you are doing great in your recent post happy for you!

Thank you for sharing your experience. The problem with medications is that they don’t treat the root cause of the mental illness however, they surely give you an opportunity to work things through. I personally hated on SSRIs because they made me emotionless and I generally felt like I wasn’t myself.

Antidepressants messed up with my brain a LOT! I feel much better without the medication and my OCD is gone as I allowed my mind to imagine anything it wanted without judgement. Perhaps in your case you needed the meds. Everyone’s case is different. I myself am afraid to try psychedelics though since I’m not mentally stable.

Yes but that did not help much.

Not judging my scary thoughts and not assigning them any meaning has helped greatly. Thank you @Leo Gura