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.

Hi there, I had severe anxiety and fear following the birth of my son, which have eventually resulted in OCD, depression and suicidal thoughts. I without any reason feared I could kill my son. Tried to battle the fears and anxiety but the more I battled them the worse they became . So I was hospitalised. The treatment at the clinic consisted of psychotherapy and medication (antidepressants Escitalopram, Mitrazapin and antipsychotic Olanzapine). A week later or so my mind was going through hell. First, my thoughts felt torn…in addition to dry mouth, agitation, and restlessness. Then my thoughts were so fast I could barely catch any. Like they were running at a light speed. I reported these side effects to my psychiatrist but was told antidepressants take at least two weeks to have any effect. The third phase was tremendous slowing down of my thoughts. Two months later I have no anxiety but I generally feel like a zombie because all my emotions are dulled. I also feel like there is a cognitive damage caused by the medications so I’ve started tapering them off. Anyone having similar experience? @Leo Gura what is your take on antidepressants and antipsychotic medication?

@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

Yes, I’ve also heard that prolactin makes women really anxious after giving birth. Thank you for your kind message. It gets a little better.

My mom told me they broke my collarbone during birth.

I have asked them at the clinic whether they could put me on psychedelics instead but they refused, saying psychedelics are not as well researched as antidepressants. The theory suggests that the chemical imbalance, i.e. lack of serotonin or norepinephrine, causes depression but I don’t think that is true in my case. I was extremely anxious trying to find an answer why I had these pictures of me killing my son. I thought I was going nuts but in fact, when I started the meds, the situation got worse. I guess I’ve experienced the full spectrum of the side effects. I am better off without this shit.

Hey there! How do you feel now? I’m off antidepressants for three days, emotional blunting has gone but I still feel weird…like my consciousness is not the same.

@Richard Purdy Initially (a week after birth) I just had an intense fear of going insane and killing my son. It was absolutely irrational but it was very very intense. The more I tried to explain or analyse the fear, the worse it became. I think I developed ocd because I put too much meaning into my suffering.

@Leo Gura Is OCD a glitch of mind refusing to surrender to its fears?

@Cathal hi! I quite liked the soup analogy. I’d also describe it as having local teeth anaesthesia - you don’t feel the pain while a dentist is fixing your teeth but later when you want to eat something your mouth feels weird, like it doesn’t belong to you, so food doesn’t bring any pleasure. I guess antidepressants act like emotional anaesthetic. At least for me. They do not fix the problem, they just numb the pain. The calmness is obviously artificial and the side effects are very distressing. Especially, cognitive damage, emotional blunting and inability to experience orgasm. It looks like I am a very sensitive person and the dosage the doctors prescribed was too much. They wanted to increase it and keep me at the clinic longer but I refused. I gradually decreased the dose and now off antidepressants for three days. Been vomiting, having diarrhoea but on the positive note I at least feel that my heart chakra is on again. Before it felt blocked. My ocd still stayed with me. Antidepressants just gave some time to learn not to identify with my thoughts. Sometimes my fears of going crazy and killing my son are still intense. Especially in the morning and when I am alone. You are right, I am afraid to lose control but the thoughts are very intrusive so I just give up battling them, cry and then go on with my mom responsibilities. I’d say I have Pure O revolving around the themes of responsibility, violence and existential matters. All connected to ego, craziness and death. I thought the root cause was my childhood trauma. My mom suffered from schizophrenia and committed suicide in front of me. Since then I have been scared of going crazy and was continuously told since teenager-hood that if my mom had it I am likely to develop it too. Other things related to death were that before I did abortion and later had miscarriage. Also the pregnancy with my son was filled with much stress and hospitalisations. When I was giving a birth his heart rate was dropping and I was losing consciousness while having much responsibility to still be awake and push because his life was dependent on me. Understanding all of this still do not help me with ocd although I thought it would. Acceptance of the intrusive thoughts without any judgement and further investigation like why on Earth I have this suffering and why Karma fucks me in the brain bring more results. Do you also suffer from OCD?

@Judy2 Hi Judy, thank you so much for your kind words! It is a relief to meet someone who understands what ocd and depression are. It indeed has been a hell and I felt so much guilt towards my son for feeling “not a normal mom”. I understand now why I developed ocd and depression. I don’t battle intrusive thoughts anymore however, mentally and emotionally I still feel weird. Perhaps, it’s because of antidepressants. I am meeting my psychiatrist soon to discuss my situation. Can you tell me what helped you get through depression and ocd? I will be grateful if you share your story. Sincerely, Lana

@NoSelfSelf @Rilles @Arzola @Thought Art @Average Investor @Godishere Noted. Thank you very much for your responses and advice.