Severe OCD has completely taken over my life - looking for the best specialist treatment available
I am a 19-year-old male from the UK. I will get straight into it and say that I have been suffering immensely with severe OCD and a very serious restrictive eating disorder for the last five years.
I have been in and out of general hospital multiple times and it has not been good for me psychologically. Each time I have felt like my life and autonomy were stripped away and that I became just another person lying in a hospital bedjust another body lying in a hospital bed, receiving general refeeding treatment, but with very little psychological support or assistance in treating the root cause of why I am there in the first place.
I understand that general hospitals are not specialised mental health or eating disorder facilities and that their primary focus is physical stabilisation and recovery. However, I believe that what I need is far more personalised and specialist support which treats the wound itself rather than repeatedly patching it up temporarily.
Due to the nature of my condition, I go back and forth with help constantly. One hour I can fully agree that I need treatment, and the next I feel completely averse to it and terrified that treatment will take away my entire identity, personality, abilities, sense of self, and everything that my current mental state has become attached to.
I have also been diagnosed with ASD. I have a good relationship with my parents, however I find that the more people become involved in my recovery and intentions, the more resistant and averse I become to them. I understand that this is also part of how OCD works and the toll it takes on the brain. Irrational rules begin to feel absolute and objectively true, even when rationally I know they are not.
OCD has a way of working around every sense of reality and rationality and creating its own set of rules that feel just as concrete and unquestionable as breathing or sleeping.
With all of that said, I do want help. I genuinely do. I know this has not meaningfully improved in five years and I am beginning to accept that this is not something that is simply going to resolve itself gradually over time. It always feels like recovery is just about to begin, that there is just one more thing in the way, or that the “right moment” will eventually come where I will suddenly be able to change everything myself. But the patterns of the last five years show me that this is not how it works. I can become fully convinced of something and it simply turns out to be another trap created by my OCD.
Any progress I make is quickly met with regression and the undoing of that progress for what feel, in the moment, like extremely convincing and “good” reasons.
I have been trapped inside my own head for years, but especially in the last few months things have become far worse. I have reached the point of spending up to 18 hours a day writing constantly about myself, recovery, my thoughts, fears, existence, and almost anything else that fills the hours. I do this with virtually no breaks for weeks at a time.
I do not allow myself rest or diversion because it feels like distraction from what is “truly important.” When I try to do normal things that other people might do in everyday life, I feel like I am abandoning reality or distracting myself from some deeper truth that I need to remain fully aware of at all times. As soon as I lose my mental grip on things As soon as I lose my mental grip on things - whether due to exhaustion, physical weakness, coldness from my physical condition, or plans not going perfectly - I feel completely out of control and convinced that everything is collapsing and that I am going to die and that the world is ending.
I have tried therapists and worked with psychiatrists in the past, however I have repeatedly been told that my case has become extremely complex and engrained and that I will likely require something much more intensive and specialised to break out of this cycle.
I am reaching out because I honestly do not know what to do anymore. I cannot continue living like this. I am 19 years old, had to leave school, have never had a job, and have not had meaningful in-person contact with anyone outside of my family for over three years.
I am fully aware of the objective severity of my situation. People can explain OCD, eating disorders, mental illness, physical illness, malnutrition, and the consequences of all of this to me endlessly, and rationally I understand it. But understanding it intellectually does not make the actual lived process of recovery feel any more possible when I am trapped in the moment of making decisions. In those moments, OCD feels completely in control regardless of what I rationally know to be true.
I could talk about this for days, but this post needs to conclude somewhere.
Without getting into every day-to-day detail, I know that objectively the reality is probably simple: I need specialist treatment and I need help breaking this cycle before it destroys my life entirely. But while inside this state, nothing feels simple. Every thought branches into endless further thoughts and explanations and analyses, and I constantly feel an overwhelming need to capture, explain, express, and fully understand all of it at every possible level. I realise this is impossible, but that does not reduce the urgency or compulsion to keep trying.
What I am asking for is recommendations for genuinely world-class treatment and support.What I am asking for is recommendations for genuinely world-class treatment and support (a lot to ask, I know).
I am specifically looking for highly specialised care for severe OCD alongside eating disorder recovery centred around OCD compulsions and restrictive behaviours. I am not simply looking for generic inpatient stabilisation or short-term refeeding. I am trying to find the highest level of expertise possible for cases like this.
I would love to be able to live out my life and find some satisfaction, and to get myself into society whilst maintaining my personality, individuality and uniqueness.
At this point, finances are not the primary concern. I am willing to travel internationally and pay privately if necessary in order to access the best care available.
I also want to emphasise that this is something I am trying to pursue myself. I know that part of my OCD twists recovery into something that feels like it belongs to other people rather than to me, and that can make me become even more resistant to it. I need this process to feel like something I am choosing and initiating for myself because I genuinely want my life back.
Even while wanting recovery, there is still a huge part of me that is terrified of losing the mindset, awareness, identity, and mental framework that I have developed after living almost entirely inside my own head for the last five years. I know that probably sounds strange, and I do not mean it arrogantly or as if I think I am uniquely special or beyond help. I believe every severe OCD case becomes deeply personal and intertwined with the individual person’s mind, life, fears, environment, and sense of self.
I think I have simply allowed OCD to take over my life to such an extent that it now feels more like “me” than I do.
If anyone knows of genuinely exceptional treatment centres, psychiatrists, psychologists, residential programs, or specialists anywhere in the UK or internationally that deal with severe OCD and OCD-driven eating disorders/restrictive behaviours, I would be immensely grateful to hear about them.
I apologise if some of this comes across in the wrong way. I don’t mean to sound aggressive or arrogant or self-important, or that I believe my case is somehow “above” anyone else's. I know that severe OCD can become deeply consuming and is so uniquely intertwined with a person’s own mind. I am just feeling pretty lost and desperate.
Thank you sincerely to anyone who took the time to read this. Any guidance, recommendations, or personal experiences would mean more to me than I can properly express.
Have a good day everyone.