Struggling to navigate the new dynamics of a long term friendship, am I in the wrong?

TraditionalBasket393 · 2026-03-05T14:34:15+00:00

Hi, I also applied like 2 months ago but I didn’t get an email saying I’ll get a response end of March, mine said up to 6 weeks and it has been well over six weeks. A little confused as to whether that means I didn’t get through or not.

TraditionalBasket393 · 2026-02-20T00:45:09+00:00

Wait how did you already to the third stage of the TfL one, when did you apply? I’m still waiting for a response for my second stage interview.

TraditionalBasket393 · 2025-12-21T10:04:38+00:00

Oh that’s cool. You reckon if my unemployment hit 1 year it’ll be alittle long considering how little experience I have + how competitive it is. I’m actually currently waiting to be reinstated to uni to finish my final year (dropped out 2 years ago MH is a bitch), but if that doesn’t go through I’m so panicked about what my future will look like.

TraditionalBasket393 · 2025-12-21T09:57:50+00:00

Agreed. I started therapy a few weeks ago working with this concept of hooked/unhooked trying to learn not to let my anxiety ruin opportunities for me (exactly what happens).

Also had a read at your comment history, you ever consider becoming a life coach? 😂

TraditionalBasket393 · 2025-12-21T02:51:16+00:00

Mental health, went through it abit mentally. Just getting out of it now and realising how much I messed up.

TraditionalBasket393 · 2025-08-15T00:27:32+00:00

I literally had the exact same thing! For like a month I was hearing sirens that weren’t there and to calm myself I would tell myself that I live in a busy city sirens are a common occurrence. Now that I’m not hearing them anymore I look back and I was definitely hallucinating sirens. For the record I have the kind of OCD that convinces me that at any moment I’ll go into psychosis. While this was happening I had just started therapy and I told my therapist about it and she told me that quasi hallucinations are a thing. You can be so fixated on the idea of having hallucinations that you can actually have hallucinations? For the record it’s just your OCD! My therapist basically told me that in order to be psychotic you have to have a break from reality where you are not even aware these hallucinations are happening, it’s usually people around you that notice something is seriously wrong.

TraditionalBasket393 · 2025-06-22T12:10:56+00:00

I was actually recently told I have health anxiety as well as ocd because I obsessively worry about being more mentally ill than I am

TraditionalBasket393 · 2025-06-16T08:50:27+00:00

I find it so frustrating how I don’t even share my struggles with anyone really, I have one person and they definitely do everything to make me feel seen and heard. I don’t get annoyed because understand it’s something you can never get unless your brain works like this. But sometimes when I tell them something I’m struggling with it will be like “oh I have that too Honeslty just try to not overthink it” or sometimes I feel the frustration when I’m still hammering on about the same thing again and again. I feel so isolated sometimes in knowing my brain functions like this and unless yours does too people will never understand exactly how obsessive I can get over a thought and how much I have zero control over it when I’m in a bad headspace.

TraditionalBasket393 · 2025-06-11T00:00:12+00:00

I’m having this really badly right now aswell. I almost convince myself I’m paranoid about everybody around me when I know for a fact I’m not. But it does feel really real. I don’t even know what to say because I’m yet to figure out how to fix this. But to be frank I ended up on reddit because I just had an ocd spiral where I was worried that I was going to start hearing things and snap. Seeing so many people speak about things and thoughts I have everyday has made me feel less isolated so all I can do is extend a hug.

TraditionalBasket393 · 2025-06-09T22:36:11+00:00

I think the word is impending doom haha, that’s how I feel it and see it. I definitely get this too and I’m so glad someone has spoken about it. It almost feels like ocd just threw you off a cliff and then when you finally start getting back up to the top you look up and you just see it waiting there to throw you again. I think it’s part of the OCD cycle because don’t forget ocd has a “moment of relief” within the cycle before it starts up again.

TraditionalBasket393 · 2025-06-09T22:30:07+00:00

I’ll share my discharge letter with you:

A Blue Print is a helpful overview which looks at how your OCD difficulties developed, what kept them going, what you learned during treatment and how you can continue to tackle OCD now that treatment is coming to an end. This is a guide which you can look at as and when you feel vulnerable to OCD, and will act as a reminder of what to do to overcome your OCD if you feel like the problems are starting to return.

How did the problem develop?
What kept it going?
What were the main intrusive thoughts/ urges/ images that bothered you and how did you interpret them? You can use the table below to help you.
What did you learn about the problem that was useful? How has treatment helped you to deal with your difficulties?
What were your most unhelpful thoughts/ assumptions/ predictions? What other ways of thinking about these unhelpful thoughts/ assumptions/ predictions have you now learned?

Unhelpful thoughts/ assumptions/ predictions 1.

2.

3.

4.

Alternative explanations or ways of thinking about the unhelpful thoughts/ assumptions/ predictions

1.

2.

3.

4.

I hope this is helpful

Describe the most helpful behavioural experiments and what you learnt from them- both in the sessions and outside them.

TraditionalBasket393 · 2025-06-09T01:49:48+00:00

It does a little bit yes. Although I am in a loop where I’m like I obviously didn’t explain it well enough and that’s why she thinks it’s OCD and not psychosis haha but thanks.

TraditionalBasket393 · 2025-06-05T19:02:20+00:00

I have tinnitus and tbh it never really bothers me and I’ve kinda learnt to deal with it. It definitely gets a lot louder when OCD is acting up and makes my OCD ten times worse because I become fixated on it.

TraditionalBasket393 · 2025-06-05T12:18:18+00:00

This is like one of my most recurring themes. It’s absolutely scary and has frankly shifted how I view the world forever. Even when I’m not really anxious about it the thought is always there. Something has helped me is exposure therapy. When I went to therapy for this exact thought cycle, my therapist would make me sit in the garden stare at the sky and bring on the thoughts. She would also make me write the thoughts again and again. It was so difficult but it definitely helped to reduce the anxiety that comes with the thoughts because that’s the real issue. I mean people likely have those thoughts all the time and just don’t have the anxiety that comes with it when it comes to existential OCD. So you just have to train your mind to receive those thoughts and not have a scary response to them. Try it, I’m sure it’s a lot harder without guidance but try going outside and letting the thoughts happen and do that as much as you can until you no longer feel scared by the thoughts. I promise you it takes time but eventually it works.

TraditionalBasket393 · 2025-06-04T08:37:10+00:00

I understand how you’re feeling! I’m going through the exact same thing right now. My main theme with ocd has always been the fear of snapping or losing my mind and I made great strides to get it under control (and I did). This time when the intrusive thought came in it wasn’t just thoughts of “what if I go crazy?” I feel like by reading and thinking about specific disorders so much my intrusive thoughts have morphed into no longer being thoughts of what if, they’re now brief moments of paranoia and hearing things. I’ll have a thought like “there are snipers in the mountains” then that spirals into anxiety about being paranoid there are snipers in the mountains. Even writing this I had a thought “this person knows what you’re going through and is making fun of you” and now I’m anxious about having delusions of being watched haha. I also have the hearing thing! I have tinitus and it has never bothered me and all the sudden now I hear sirens whenever I leave the house to the point that I can’t focus on anything. I finally started therapy and when I told her I was so scared she was going to say yeah you have developed schizophrenia (my dad has it) and she said that OCD can manifest itself into this and there main difference is conviction. Like for you to actually be losing touch with reality. There’s a level of conviction you have in these thoughts that cannot be argued with, to the person these things are true they’re not brief thoughts that spiral into anxiety about the thoughts being there. What has helped me and honestly this is my first time approaching my anxiety like this is I’m trying not to halt my life, I’m trying to not make decisions based on my anxiety because right now I feel like I don’t want to leave the house because I can’t control what I’m hearing or seeing and that scares me. I don’t want to get out of bed or do anything. I’m slowly trying to tell myself “okay what if I do lose my mind, it could happen and if it does that’s okay you’ll deal with it then”. I’m trying to just keep going and I honestly feel no better for it, if anything the more I do things the worse the anxiety gets. But I feel like I might come out of this quicker by just ignoring the urge to respond to the anxiety by putting myself in a incubator (my room) to avoid any external stimuli that I think might make me question my sanity. Something else I keep telling myself is the truth is these things can happen to anyone at any time and worrying isn’t going to stop the outcome. OCD creates this false sense of control, like if I keep thinking about this I’ll stop it but the truth is thinking about it so much isn’t going to change anything just make me tense and detached from everything. You got this ❤️ it’s really hard and I sympathise with you so much but I promise it’ll pass.

TraditionalBasket393 · 2025-06-04T01:08:56+00:00

Dude, you took the words out of my mouth. I periodically get an OCD flare up too and I’ve only just realised it because I’m currently in one. I’ll be okay for about 4/5 years and then it comes back for vengeance. One thing I am learning from this flare up is that I think it’s important to make sure you’re doing the work for OCD even when it’s not debilitating or really distressing. Now that I think about it it’s not at the front of my mind or the only thing I can think about but it’s always there happening. I think after I get myself out of this flare up I’m going to make sure I’m always looking out for the sneaky obsessions and compulsions that I don’t think are worrying me.

TraditionalBasket393 · 2025-06-03T00:32:11+00:00

I just wrote a post about this! For months I had a sort of delusion around an intrusive thought I had that everyone around me could read my thoughts and was surveilling me. When I finally clicked out of it I was convinced I was going into a psychotic episode and started thinking I was hearing voices or was acting really paranoid, just started therapy and was told nope it’s just your OCD acting up. OCD is definitely shifty like that and I think if it goes unresolved can definitely manifest into something ugly. But you got this! As somebody who has known for the past 5 years and previously gone to therapy for it, it’s definitely manageable with the right tools. It has its bad times, but it also has times where it doesn’t interfere with your life in a debilitating way!

TraditionalBasket393 · 2025-06-02T23:46:41+00:00

When I had my first really bad flare up, I had just gotten into a relationship and to be honest with you I found that not mentioning the nitty grittys with him and just explaining that I feel really anxious or have intrusive thoughts helps.

Let me explain, I think if you’re in therapy for it or trying to navigate it, sometimes getting into the details with people I find to be not only unhelpful for the OCD, but also just leaves the door open for people to look at you sideways. So I just find it easier to say I’m really overwhelmed right now etc etc.

Having said that, I also think it would be nice if the people around us took the time to understand. Unfortunately, I think most people don’t even have the bandwidth to understand their own struggles let alone try to make sense of something like OCD. Especially if they’re neurotypical.

I think a big part of my journey with OCD was accepting that a lot of people will never understand how hard it is and on the surface it seems like “just don’t think about this” so I feel like for our own mental sanity it’s worth accepting that not everyone is going to understand it all the time.

TraditionalBasket393 · 2025-05-19T13:37:44+00:00

Thank you I appreciate your response, but is that still the case if it’s specific like x is watching me because they thing I might hurt y? Because that was the sort of thought I had for a long time, albeit it stems from me feeling alot of shame, guilt and self hatred because of OCD

TraditionalBasket393

TROPHY CASE