Ocd Hope Quotes

It's like, I'm scared and there're a lot of ugly things, but I'd rather be shipwrecked on this lovely island than safe in a sad, gray cell.

I close my eyes and make a wish that I'll stop having OCD so that I can be a decent friend again. If I want it badly enough, hopefully it will come true.

I wasn’t saying it didn’t all happen like that, but all of that was included in the chunks of time that had gone missing from my brain. They dropped out somewhere. And if the chunks were round, they would have rolled away. So I was hoping they were bricks and heavy so they stayed in the same spot. I just needed to retrace my steps, if I only could remember where I’d been.

I have existed for twenty-one years. I didn’t live them all, but from now on I am hoping to.

I’m a girl with OCD. At one moment, it makes me feel worthy of all my dreams. It gives me an undefinable sense of purpose and hope, and emotions. And then it has me dangling from its fingertips. It targets my vulnerabilities and shakes me to my very core. It strips me from the things I value the most—my self-respect. Whenever I feel my life is under control, it comes back and takes over.

At the neurological level, the rationale for Refocusing is straightforward. Our PET scans had shown that the orbital frontal cortex, the caudate nucleus, and the thalamus operate in lockstep in the brain of an OCD sufferer. This brain lock in the OCD circuit is undoubtedly the source of a persistent error-detection signal that makes the patient feel that something is dreadfully wrong. By actively changing behaviors, Refocusing changes which brain circuits become activated, and thus also changes the gating through the striatum. The striatum has two output pathways, as noted earlier: direct and indirect. The direct pathway tends to activate the thalamus, increasing cortical activity. The indirect pathway inhibits cortical activity. Refocusing, I hoped, would change the balance of gating through the striatum so that the indirect, inhibitory pathway would become more traveled, and the direct, excitatory pathway would lose traffic. The result would be to damp down activity in this OCD circuit.

I like to say the idea of Phantasma came to me all at once, hitting me like a ton of bricks one cloudy afternoon in November 2021, but truly, my experience with obsessive-compulsive disorder has been building to this story for a very long time. During the process of brainstorming the sort of adult romance I wanted to debut with, I was going through a period where my obsessive-compulsive tendencies were flaring up more than usual and the voices in my head were getting a little too bold. To my friends, these compulsions were alarming little anecdotes over lunch—‘that sounds like a horror movie’ one of them said (affectionately)—which is funny because, to me, someone who has lived with OCD my entire life, it was just another day of being unfazed by the increasingly creative scenarios my mind likes to conjure. OCD has such a wide range of symptoms that it makes every person’s experience with it different. Unfortunately, it has also become a commonly misused term conflated with the idea of being overly neat and clean, when in reality a lot of people with OCD have much darker symptoms. In my experience this has made explaining the real effects of OCD very hard as well as making it more difficult for people to regard the condition seriously. It’s so important to me to convey, with the utmost sincerity, that I know people are not doing this to be malicious! Because of the misuse of the term, however, some of the ways this disorder is shown in this book may come off as exaggerated or dramatic—but the details of Ophelia’s OCD are drawn directly from experiences that I, or someone I know who shares my condition, have had first-hand. And it’s still only a fraction of the symptoms we live with daily. Ophelia’s story is a love letter to my journey of getting comfortable being in my own head (as well as my adoration for Gothic aesthetics and hot ghosts). And while her experience with OCD, my experience with OCD, might look a lot different to someone else’s, I hope that the same message rings clear: struggling with your mental health does not make you unworthy of love. And I hope the people you surround yourself with are the sort of people who know that, too.

Not unlike alcoholism, the cycle of OCD continues in solitude and isolation … Even in therapy it never occurred to me to talk about plucking out my eyelashes and eyebrows. Not once did I bring it up – not once did it occur to me bring it up, the shame was so deep and ingrained. Fortunately, over the years alcoholism has gotten more and more screen time and does not carry quite the cloak of shame it once did. You won’t necessarily find us shouting it from the rooftops, but then again there are support groups in high schools these days. Hopefully OCD will one day find a similar degree of understanding in the general audience, because that understanding and dialogue are what we need to break not necessarily the cycle of repetitive behavior - because sometimes we can and sometimes we can’t - but to break the cycle of shame. Because I can tell you from experience . . . the shame is a killer.

…strength doesn’t have to mean putting your problems aside or staying silent. Strength is sometimes being brave enough to seek the help that you need.

I have existed for 21 years. I didn't live them all, but from now on I am hoping to.

I'll Be There For You These words are etched on our hearts. but they're so much more than just words, they're a complete emotion. But it's all just an illusion, a utopia, for which we long. we trade in drinking coffee on a couch, with drinking at a bar. we utter more words to Alexa and Siri, than to people face to face. we can never have six people in one room without anyone looking at their phones. we trade in memories with pictures. we actively look for reasons to not be around people. a Chandler is considered too mean and sarcastic, Ross has too much baggage, who has the energy to deal with that. Phoebe is too quirky to handle. Rachel, that spoilt and entitled bitch. no way. Joey is the fuck boy that will cause you nothing but pain, and Monica with her OCD, that's way too high maintenance. no, we don't say these things when we watch the show, we say these about people around us who bear similar characteristics. we adore these characters, we envy their friendship, their bond, their love. we long for nothing else, yet when confronted with them in real life, we belittle, avoid, cut-off, ignore. we don't want to disturb the utopia, are terrified of bursting the bubble, because if we start recognizing the flaws in our fantasies, we'll be forced to recognize our own. we love to live an à la carte life, wherein we pick and choose the qualities and personalities of a person that we wish to see, and the ones that may simply be brushed away. Generation after generation, will watch that show and call it their utopia, and each will give up hope of ever attaining that, alas! It was a different time! what we long for doesn't require a time machine to achieve, it doesn't need for mobile phones to not exist, or for less bars to exist, or to live away from your parents. it's only as complicated as we try to make it, when it can be as simple as, I'll be there for you, 'cause you're there for me too

I'll Be There For You These words are etched on our hearts. but they're so much more than just words, they're a complete emotion. But it's all just an illusion, a utopia, for which we long. we trade in drinking coffee on a couch, with drinking at a bar. we utter more words to Alexa and Siri, than to people face to face. we can never have six people in one room without anyone looking at their phones. we trade in memories with pictures. we actively look for reasons to not be around people. a Chandler is considered too mean and sarcastic, Ross has too much baggage, who has the energy to deal with that. Phoebe is too quirky to handle. Rachel, that spoilt and entitled bitch. no way. Joey is the fuck boy that will cause you nothing but pain, and Monica with her OCD, that's way too high maintenance. no, we don't say these things when we watch the show, we say these about people around us who bear similar characteristics. we adore these characters, we envy their friendship, their bond, their love. we long for nothing else, yet when confronted with them in real life, we belittle, avoid, cut-off, ignore. we don't want to disturb the utopia, are terrified of bursting the bubble, because if we start recognizing the flaws in our fantasies, we'll be forced to recognize our own. we love to live an à la carte life, wherein we pick and choose the qualities and personalities of a person that we wish to see, and the ones that may simply be brushed away. Generation after generation, will watch that show and call it their utopia, and each will give up hope of ever attaining that, alas! It was a different time! what we long for doesn't require a time machine to achieve, it doesn't need for mobile phones to not exist, or for less bars to exist, or to live away from your parents. it's only as complicated as we try to make it, when it can be as simple as, "I'll be there for you, 'cause you're there for me too

I'll Be There For You" These words are etched on our hearts. but they're so much more than just words, they're a complete emotion. But it's all just an illusion, a utopia, for which we long. we trade in drinking coffee on a couch, with drinking at a bar. we utter more words to Alexa and Siri, than to people face to face. we can never have six people in one room without anyone looking at their phones. we trade in memories with pictures. we actively look for reasons to not be around people. a Chandler is considered too mean and sarcastic, Ross has too much baggage, who has the energy to deal with that. Phoebe is too quirky to handle. Rachel, that spoilt and entitled bitch. no way. Joey is the fuck boy that will cause you nothing but pain, and Monica with her OCD, that's way too high maintenance. no, we don't say these things when we watch the show, we say these about people around us who bear similar characteristics. we adore these characters, we envy their friendship, their bond, their love. we long for nothing else, yet when confronted with them in real life, we belittle, avoid, cut-off, ignore. we don't want to disturb the utopia, are terrified of bursting the bubble, because if we start recognizing the flaws in our fantasies, we'll be forced to recognize our own. we love to live an à la carte life, wherein we pick and choose the qualities and personalities of a person that we wish to see, and the ones that may simply be brushed away. Generation after generation, will watch that show and call it their utopia, and each will give up hope of ever attaining that, alas! It was a different time! what we long for doesn't require a time machine to achieve, it doesn't need for mobile phones to not exist, or for less bars to exist, or to live away from your parents. it's only as complicated as we try to make it, when it can be as simple as, "I'll be there for you, 'cause you're there for me too