#eocd

I have a hard time with showers and I think a lot of it has to do with maybe an pool incident that occured when I was little. It could also be from the extensive fear of water. I've always had trouble with showers due to the water. It also could be from when I had my first panic attack when my mother put me in the bathtub to run water over me to calm me down because I wasn't aware of what was going on at the time which was a panic attack and the shower made it worse.

I can't imagine a point in my life where I'd be ready to leave any of this behind. I'm gonna miss this shit so bad. But I don't want my death to be a scary thing for me. I don't want to run away from it when it's time but I don't know how to accept such a complicated deal - losing everything, good and bad.

The thing about the way existential ocd manifests for me is that it's like I have constant intrusive thoughts about dying and being dead. It's like a little needle poking at my arm little by little every day, and sometimes it manages to get deep enough to strike bone. Usually when it gets to that point - going down the rabbit hole my intrusive thoughts are pointing towards until I reach a void that causes me panic - I, for a split second, feel like I'm staring death in the face and I recoil. Something washes over me that just makes me feel so fleeting and insignificant, and it just makes me want to shout I AM HERE, I EXIST AND I WANT TO EXIST, PLEASE DON'T TAKE LIFE'S PRIVILEGES AWAY FROM ME, I CLING TO THEM TOO MUCH but I'm screaming all of it into a vacuum because death doesn't listen to pleas. Death takes indiscriminately. It just makes me feel like life is a delusion I will forget when I am reduced to singularity, an infinite state of non-existence. I can't cope with that. I love life despite how much it's hurt me and I think that says something.

My brain is just like "everyone dies, including you. yes you. you will die. you personally. you won't be able to breathe, feel, hear, speak, taste, smell, walk, even think. you won't be anyone. you will not exist and it will stay that way for the rest of time. you don't get to come back. you will be screaming and crying on your deathbed as death swallows you whole. you will be pleading with everyone around you to help but there's nothing they can do to save you. your ears will ring, your vision will go blurry, you will hallucinate all the things you remember and everything that will be lost to time, including yourself. you will fight and resist to the end until you are reduced to dust. and then you'll be dead. the end. nothing else. the world will go on without you."

When it came on today it was the first time I ever felt hyper-aware of my physiological symptoms - hyperventilating, shaking, heart pounding, running and screaming.

Existential OCD (E-OCD*): a subtype of OCD where obsessions are centered on existential questions about the nature of life, death, existence, humanity, and other philosophical, spiritual, and psychological topics where there is no known true answer. While non-pathological “deep thinkers” may also spend time and have great interest in the same questions, for them the process is enjoyable and/or engaging- however, for those with E-OCD, the process is extremely distressing and induces overwhelming existential dread. It can cause someone with E-OCD to question everything about life in such a way that it prevents them from living their lives normally, because they can’t stop obsessing over finding answers to the questions that terrify them. Compulsions can include hours of research on one’s fears, excessive anxious introspection, avoiding feared topics (e.g. unreality, alternate universes, eternity, simulations), and and asking others to reassure them about the existential possibilities they fear. Like all subtypes of OCD, the manifestation varies with each indivual that has it- religious people with E-OCD may compulsively pray for answers to remove the doubts they have, someone who fears that they aren’t real may compulsively physically check to reassure themselves, and so on.

The colors represent the vast unknowability of the void.

Learn more about Existential OCD.

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