Please, help yourself.

Sarah, Today is the 1st of August 2024. I’m tired of this cycle. I know it exists, yet I can’t break out of it. I have been looking through all my old pictures on Google Drive. I have gone through all of my old Tiktok’s. I’m sick of living like this. Multiple and many times I have tried to break out, and sometimes I really was successful. I became genuinely happy and developed a positive mindset, but then something occurred, or a new or regressive interest sucks me back into my obsessive habits. It’s unhealthy. I know it’s perfectly fine to like what I want, but when it’s so intense and blind it’s difficult to find myself. It happens time and time again. Obsession. My greatest weakness is obsession. I have insisted to my parents, friends, and to myself that I really did have severe OCD growing up. And I’m sure I did. But my mistake was saying that it was gone. Sure, the physical evidence had disappeared. I now don’t have bad intrusive thoughts, I don’t believe I’m going to be cursed whenever I do something wrong, do something the wrong amount of times, or have unlucky numbers that I can’t associate with no matter what. I don’t feel uneven on my right and left anymore, count each step on a different tile, or avoid the cracks on the pavement. I don’t experience trichotillomania. I don’t have breathing problems, where if I don’t breathe the correct amount of times or deep enough I break into a meltdown because I think I’m going to die. I don’t have compulsions to move my body in certain ways or balance myself out. No; all these symptoms disappeared. But the OCD is still here, just milder. I still bite my nails and skin. I hate it when certain people touch objects and I refuse to touch them after. I despise people moving my stuff. I will have a meltdown when someone ruins my personal space, or if I hear somebody move downstairs and be reminded of their presence in proximity to me. I get addicted really easily (binge eating, porn, certain content/fandoms). I often go through every draw in my room and name everything in them to ground myself. I will listen to the same song on loop for hours on end. I will repeat a random word again and again in my mind for ages until I realise it. I will have delusions of being watched all the time like I’m on a TV show, even though I logically know I’m not. And I will romantically become obsessed with somebody, experiencing intense limerence. This is the worst part of it. Limerence. Many people may experience it once or twice in their life. Although I have experienced it on five occasions (Or more). The first was the worst (A). I thought I had fallen in love. The sensation was so strong I thought I would die. I was obsessed with everything about her, she was too perfect to me. I would’ve done anything for her. I would’ve died for her. My maladaptive daydreaming (Which also went away later) was abused until all I ever thought about every waking moment was her. I thought I felt love, like it was a physical thing. It was so intense I was convinced that we were destined to be together and the delusion was just so real to me. I only just learnt that love is the concept of a mutual connection, and not a singular emotion. It lasted for four months. I haven’t felt anything like it since. (Then my OCD went away???). The second lasted for an entire year (A). The third for three months (M) - It was online. The fourth for three months (C) - I saw her once and built a delusion around the thought of her. The fifth for six months (G). And finally my current one, that I cannot prevent. (M). It is so genuinely tragic, but I can’t stop thinking about her. It has been 8 or 9 months and probably, unfortunately, counting. Everything I do, I think of her opinion on it. I think about her reaction to everything I post. I compulsively check my likes and views for her name. It never happens. But if it did, I would go mental and it would fuel my obsession further. I always believed crushes were meant to be like that. When my friend said they stopped liking someone because they got a haircut/ or could just ‘stop liking them’ just because they wanted to: I thought that was insane. I’m the one who is insane. I always was, I am and always will be. I need help, and a proper diagnosis. I know wanting a diagnosis is such an online mindset, but I mean that I seriously need it to recover and receive proper support. I need help. I want help. I want it so badly, but whenever I bring it up I am shut down because my condition seems so absurd and severe and exaggerated that nobody believes it actually happened. I can’t prove it. The only thing I can show is my scalp which has healed and my finger nails, but it’s not enough. It’s ‘just anxiety’. I do believe I have social anxiety on top of it though, so I can’t refute the idea. My biggest fear is being diagnosed as a pathological liar. I don’t remember what it was, but I saw it in a film one time. What if the doctor listens to me and instead of diagnosing me with what I suspect I am, they actually diagnose me as a liar. Or as delusional, but not because of what I’ve said, but because I’ve said it. What could I do to defeat that? It’s unrealistic, but I’m so paranoid that if I do seek help, they won’t believe me. What if they think I just follow the mentality of people online who want to label and diagnose every trivial thing about themselves? Maybe I do subconsciously, but in this case I am infinitely serious about it. I can’t live like this and I can’t live with myself. I can’t live like this. I can’t live like this. I have just finished Year 9. You have just finished Year 11. In 2 years time from now Have you found peace?