u/Own-Air4571

I was thinking about how the average life span has increased significantly since the times of hunting and gathering; the times of farming; and since the Industrial Revolution. But is this really what is better and meant to be?

For instance, some people go through a very bad illness, health failure experience, or catastrophe, and are saved by medicine with time, but in a more primitive society, they almost certainly would have died. Some of these people go on to live for a long time after, but their life is suffering and terrible. Nature, in that sense, can reduce suffering.

What do you think?

I wanted to ask if you guys think reincarnation, or some form of it, could be a real thing without the need for any kind of God.

Like an example let’s say is over an immense amount of time, your atoms again form a cell that turns into life. It wouldn’t be you anymore, but it’s the matter that was you, and a consciousness appears into that new life. This example does not have to be religious at all, but rather a scientific explanation for re-experiencing life at some point after you die.

I’m wondering how much of this is just me versus how much of it is a product of OCD. I’ve met a few people with OCD and they have tended to seem kind-hearted and at least one seemed meek.

I have always been kind-hearted and have problems with meekness, although I have improved on the meekness. I am not saying this to make myself look good; in fact I wish I were less meek and kindhearted. In fact with my meekness, I’m lucky that I’m still alive; it got me into some terrible situations. That’s how bad of a trait meekness can be. Perhaps relevant is that I also have anxiety and ADHD.

So what do you think? Is this stuff a part of OCD? Are you kindhearted and/or meek?

Hello everyone,

For the last 4 months I have been dealing with an OCD flare, where the focus has been getting negative intrusive thoughts all throughout the day, every day, of a traumatic incident I had when I was 19 (near-death experience). I am now 30 years old. The trauma is not only the fact that it was a near-death experience, but also the emotional trauma of having been backstabbed by people who I thought were my friends during the incident (two of my "friends" who were with me during the incident, and who I'm certain set me up, behaved in a backstabbing manner to get me more hurt than I needed to). The negative intrusive thoughts mostly center around the behaviour of one of these people during the incident.

Regarding the above incident when I was 19, in this paragraph I'll give some detailed context. You can skip this long paragraph if you would like; it has the terrible details of my traumatic incident. When grade 12 started, I had super bad anxiety and headache problems (I did not know at the time that I had anxiety), and I took a medical leave. I was very angry and lonely, and I started hanging out with a bad crowd of drug dealers and drug addicts. It was a very bad idea that I strongly regret, but at the time I was pretty crazy, not afraid of risks, had very poor judgment, and kept hanging out with them even though they treated me badly. I was also at the time very easy to manipulate, very meek, people even made fun of me that I would do anything you tell me to do. They exploited my meekness throughout my associating with them and during the traumatic incident in which I was attacked with fireworks 3 times. In the incident, the 3rd time I was attacked with fireworks, I was slow-running on a street with my "friends" with the two attackers following not far behind, presumably looking to get closer to me for a better chance to attack me again. We were beside a convenience store on the street and one of my "friends" said "let's get drinks", and we ran into the convenience store. I strongly regret this; I should have kept running toward home (my home was maybe about another 200-300 metres away, would involve turning on some different streets). We bought drinks, and the other "friend" of mind yelled in my face when we were at the cash register, "did he give you the right amount of change?!". Then we ran out of the convenience store, running back in the direction where the attackers were (I know, very stupid of me to follow them in that direction, I was behaving like a stupid sheep following the crowd). The person who yelled in my face in the convenience store made a dramatic motion as if he wanted to throw me across the street, looking up at the sky as if he was asking some kind of deity to please get me run over by a car on the street. He made a spinning motion as if to throw me across the street, but he did not touch me. I did not immediately see the attackers, but they were sitting next to the door of the house next to the convenience store, waiting for me to run by so they could lock me in for targeting. I saw them in front of the house and saw one of them light another firework, aimed so it would hit me in the face. I panicked and ran across the street to avoid getting shot in the face. I stopped right in the middle of the street as cars drove by both in front of me and behind me. If I was just a bit closer to either sidewalk, I could've been hit by one of these cars going I think 40-50 km/hour. They then passed by and I finished crossing the street. This was the real big physical trauma, almost getting hit by a car. I then continued running in the same direction and we ran to the apartment of the person who behaved as though he wanted to throw me across the street (I should maybe mention that there was a third "friend" there throughout the incident, but he didn't do anything bad to me). I went into his apartment (I knew his family so even if he may not have wanted me to go in his apartment, I was reasonably confident his family would let me in). We did go in his apartment, and I stayed there for about 30 minutes I think. I wanted to stay longer but the people there (his brother and other friends of his) kept telling me that the attackers are gone and I need to go. So I left the apartment and indeed the attackers were gone, and I walked home safe. I behaved very stupidly during the incident of my attack, seemingly a combination of being very meek, very confused, very bad at thinking rationally in intense situations, and perhaps even I have to admit that I think a part of me wanted to see what would happen and didn't care if I would die (I also had extremely low self-esteem at the time). I particularly beat myself up over how I ran into the convenience store with them, how I ran in the same direction as them in exiting the convenience store (although I wasn't certain if maybe the attackers had gone to the other side of the convenience store, until I saw the attackers), and how I ran across the street (I think I should've tried to block my face with my hand/arm and kept running straight on the sidewalk, so that the worst thing that would happen is I would get shot in the face, not the worst possible thing happening being getting run over by a car, although in my running across the street and almost getting run over by a car, I did not get hit by any fireworks). Sorry, I know that was a long description.

I also have mental compulsions with these negative intrusive thoughts where I say to myself phrases like "low psycho murderer", "crazy psycho backstabber", "low evil", "crazy evil", "desperate evil", "low psycho backstabber", but unfortunately these compulsions just make me feel worse.

I experience time periods of a few hours to several hours where the negative intrusive thoughts and compulsions really quiet down, but then it flares back up from me recalling the memories of the incident (or bad memories from the time period involving the same people) and/or doing the above-mentioned mental compulsions.

This is not the first time I have had an episode like this of these same negative intrusive thoughts. I had a very similar episode in 2023, but it went away after about 4 months. From what I recall, it went away after two weeks when the negative intrusive thoughts went quite down in severity (I don't recall having the mental compulsions in 2023 that I have now). I recall in those two weeks before it ended I at least once said to myself that "this is a part of my life", so the acceptance helped. Then I was finally able to stop thinking about it and focus on other things. But it has been 4 months this time in 2026, and I see no sign of this going away anytime soon. Both then and now I am on the same medication, Celexa.

As an interesting fact to add, before this episode in 2026 started I tried two different medications, as I was very frustrated with my anxiety not getting better (I also have Anxiety and ADHD). Before trying the different medications, the last time I even had one day of these negative intrusive thoughts was in 2023. First I tried Zoloft earlier this year, during which there were two separate days where I had these negative intrusive thoughts. I discontinued Zoloft because of nausea and vomiting. I took it for about a month. Then I tried Prozac. On day 4 or 5 of Prozac (was still just on a 10 mg starting dose) the negative intrusive thoughts began again and have been every day since then. I took Prozac 10 days at 10 mg, then about 30 days at 20 mg, then went off it for two weeks and started Celexa again. So it looks like the trying different SSRI medications was not a good idea and may have been a significant factor in these negative intrusive thoughts coming back.

I was on Celexa 20 mg for 9 weeks, now on 30 mg for the last four days. Unfortunately I don't really see an improvement in the negative intrusive thoughts or mental compulsions, although maybe with some time 30 mg or 40 mg of Celexa will help.

I have been suffering a lot from these negative intrusive thoughts; when I get these, it is by far the worst of the different mental health issues I experience. I am hopeful that they will go away in time, but there's a big difference between my life now and how it was in 2023: in 2023, I was working full-time at a job I was happy with at the time. Now I am just working part-time with my dad in a job I cannot see myself taking over in the future, where in this job I barely do anything and my mind is more free to wander. Since mid-2024 I have been feeling pretty hopeless as to what is a suitable job for me, so I am doing this working with my dad in the mean-time.

Before these negative intrusive thoughts began 4 months ago, my mental health difficulties since mid-2024 were more of severe anxiety; getting over-stressed easily; getting headaches and bad migraines that make it very difficult if not impossible to function; and getting anxiety from technology. Yes, getting anxiety from technology may sound very weird, but it's a part of my mental health story when I was a teenager. I had a severe computer game addiction until a point in grade 11. When I quit in grade 11, I at first felt much better, but then I started thinking a lot about regretting my computer game addiction and all the bad it did to me. This negative thinking and rumination turned into an OCD loop of obsessively thinking negatively about my past computer game addiction and thinking negatively about technology in general. This culminated in a nervous breakdown, after which I did push through the rest of grade 11, but as mentioned before then had to take a medical leave in grade 12 as I became dysfunctional.

Back to the present...

Since these negative intrusive thoughts started, I actually haven't been getting anxiety from technology much, and have barely gotten any headaches, and when I do get headaches, they aren't so bad and don't last long. So in a way it is like my mind changed mental illnesses to help me improve on my anxiety from technology, anxiety of getting a headache, and anxiety of getting over-stressed. But the problem is that these negative intrusive thoughts are much worse and make me miss my previous mental illness focus before 4 months ago.

As you can see, my mental illness tends to have an evolving nature. Since high school it has basically been mainly focused on either my anxiety in general, my issues with technology, and this traumatic incident and related bad memories from the time period when I was hanging out with the bad crowd that led to the traumatic incident. I also fortunately have had time periods of pretty good mental health.

I'm looking to get peoples' advice on my current mental health issues with the OCD of traumatic memories, as well as any advice and suggestions you may have in general. I'm hoping Celexa at 30 mg will help, but my experience has been that my mental health is best when my life situation is best, less to do with medication. All the same if this doesn't get better I may need to try atypical antipsychotics or get psychosurgery, I really don't know. I can't keep going living like this. Thank you for your time.

Hey everyone,

I’m wondering if there are medications other than SSRIs that any of you have found helpful for OCD or the anxiety/distress of OCD.

I’ve been looking at atypical antipsychotics such as aripiprazole, quetiapine, and risperidone. Do any of you have experiences with these? My shrink said to put them on my list for if increasing the dose of my ssri doesn’t help (recently increased my dose of Celexa to 30 mg, and we may take it up to 40 mg) and we may try Lexapro/Cipralex before trying different drugs.

I’ve also been looking at daily sleeping pills such as Dayvigo. Do any of you have any experiences with those kinds of daily sleeping pills?

For the past four months, I’ve been going through a bad flare of my OCD where I’m stuck in an obsessive loop of my worst traumatic memory and related memories repeating in my head over and over, thinking a lot about what I should’ve done differently and thinking very hatefully and angrily of the people involved, including two “friends” I was with who backstabbed me / made the situation much worse. This OCD is the worst of all the different OCD focuses and symptoms I get (my OCD tends to evolve).

Thanks for your time and help.

I’m confused by the concept. Like couldn’t the developer always just unplug the ai?