u/spin_spin_sugar_

This won't be a long one, I just wanted to tell as many people as possible: Today I went on a bus with my partner to a nearby town! It's the first time I've properly, fully left the town we live in and gone to a totally different place in a year and a half!

The village we went to was very cute and pretty, we wandered around a bit and I bought a little memento to remind me of how brave I can be. I'm still kind of stunned, I don't think I've processed it yet.

Anyway, this was a very normal day to a lot of people, but I know that everyone on this sub will understand how massive it was for me.

^(I also want to publicly admit that for the couple of minutes that the bus was on the motorway- highway, for Americans- I had my eyes squeezed shut the whole time and refused to open them.)

I might be moving to Plymouth soon, and I'm not unfamiliar with the city but haven't really ever spent that much time there since I was a child (grew up nearby until I was about 13). I don't know anyone who lives in Plymouth to ask so I thought I'd ask here- what's it like? What are the good parts and bad parts, where is nice or not so great to live, what kind of things are there to do in the city?

I'm really sorry if this question is offensive or this sub doesn't allow more personal questions.

I am 29 and biologically female, bisexual/pansexual but demi-sexual. For context.

My whole life I have had issues with my gender. I have never felt "right" no matter how I try to view myself or describe myself to others. When I was a little kid I used to pretend to be a boy and hope to get away with it (I rarely did), and I never seemed to be accepted by the other girls or really understand them. I always got on well with boys and wished that I was one of them, that there wasn't any difference or barrier between us and they didn't see me as different to them. As an adult I still don't really find women easy to get along with unless they are very masculine, and I wish I wasn't that way. I dont dislike other women and I have female friends, but when I speak to other women I just feel *wrong*. Like being next to another woman highlights how much I'm not one, and that it might make people realise if they see me with a woman and can directly compare. I feel like I'm a totally different thing and am just in disguise- I honestly feel like a fraud of a female.

When I got a little older I learnt about different gender expressions and for a while I was calling myself non binary and/or genderqueer. I considered the fact that I might not be a girl or boy and instead am genderless. But that never felt right. Then I thought maybe I was a mix of both genders, which felt a bit closer but still just doesn't feel 100% correct to who I am. Throughout my teenage years I tried all different gender expressions, clothing styles, ways of presenting myself like everyone does, but nothing fit.

In my 20s I tried to just forget the whole thing. I thought that if nothing ever worked for me I should just not worry about it so much and just exist. Just be me. And that's worked okay, but its always in the back of my mind. The question about *what* I am exactly is always there.

I've fantasised about being a man, about having a man's body and having sex as a man (my partner is male and bisexual). And it makes me happy I guess. But I still just don't know. I've never lived as a man, tried to genuinely actually be one and I'm not sure if I could. The idea of trying to just be a man and dress as one makes me feel kind of embarrassed I suppose?

I have no issue with having female genitals but I despise having breasts. I'm pretty happy with my body overall (I've worked on it a lot over the last year) but I hate my breasts so much I think about it daily. And they aren't even that big! I wish I had a flat chest like a man so much that if I ever magically ended up with thousands of £ I'd get surgery and ask them to just be taken off entirely.

Last night I had a dream I got pregnant and had a baby, and this morning describing it to my partner he seemed a little shocked by how disgusted and averse I am to the idea of pregnancy and childbirth. He knows full well that I never want children and neither does he, and I know that there are loads of women who hate the idea of anything to do with having children physically and emotionally but he seemed to think my reaction to it was particularly extreme. The idea of me personally being able to make a baby always seemed incredibly wrong to me, like it would be the equivalent of some alien parasite getting into my body rather than a natural and normal human process.

This is a very long way of saying that I always wondered if I might be trans but have somehow repressed it and therefore blocked that part of me away? Or maybe I just don't understand enough about trans people and don't understand that I am one? Again, I'm sorry if this isn't really what the sub is for. Is it possible to be trans and not know..?

I'm reaching my limit with Agoraphobia. I've only had it for 2 years and I can go out in my local area, which I'm very lucky for because I know there are a lot of people here who have suffered worse for longer. But I'm done. I'm done with being miserable and anxious, I'm done with my life being on hold and I'm done with not *doing* anything day in day out.

I haven't been able to leave the town I live in for 1.5 years and I think a big part of this is due to a bad experience I had when my Agoraphobia started. I have no therapy available to me. I've been doing exposure therapy on my own (well, with my partner) this whole time.

About a month ago I managed to do a 10 minute bus journey and a 10 minute car journey without panicking. I felt anxious to start with but very quickly felt okay again and even stayed out for a while before going home. I haven't actually panicked properly in a while.

My parents live 1.5 hours away and it's my birthday next month. I want to go see them. I want to go *anywhere* that isn't where I live. And I'm getting very close to asking them to just come and pick me up and take me to their house even if it means forcing me and even if it's unpleasant. I honestly don't know how else I'm going to overcome this since I don't drive and have no one that can really help me with going out via vehicle.

I'm wondering if anyone else has gotten to this stage and actually did it, and how it went. Was it as bad as you thought or did it make you realise how unreasonable the anxiety had been the whole time? Was it successful? How did you do it?

I use it mostly for anxiety and stress, as well as physical stress symptoms which are mostly muscle tension pain, headaches, nausea, stomach pain and discomfort, and fatigue.

Ideally I'd like something that I can use in the daytime and the evening, something that is primarily uplifting, motivating, and calming. Something that will help me to be productive and focused without feeling super 'wired' and high, but I can still use it in the evening while playing videogames or watching films. My main issue is anxiety and depression, pretty much any cannabis will get rid of my physical symptoms so it's mostly the mental health benefits that I'm looking for.

I looked at reviews for these and they all seem like good options, I'm just wondering which one might be best. I don't care about the taste at all, just the effects. Let me know if you've tried any of these and what you thought! :)

(For more info, La Bomba is Jet Fuel Gelato X Wedding Cake, Watermelon Zkittlez is Watermelon X Zkittles surprisingly, and Lemonatti is Biscotti X Gelonade. The last strain I had contained Jet Fuel Gelato too, and it was pretty much perfect for me, but I've never tried any of the others.)

My partner and I used to live in "Ogdenville". It's a relatively small and quiet city, but very pleasant and charming. It's a historical city with a lot of nice buildings, landmarks, touristy stuff. It has a lot of young people due to having a very popular university, and is very friendly and a little artsy and liberal. It's a little middle class and slightly pretentious but generally very friendly. Think places like Bath, Cambridge, Edinburgh, but on a much smaller scale.

Unfortunately, Ogdenville is *incredibly* expensive to live in and is also a total rip-off because most of the rental properties are poor quality. About 15% are actually liveable and it's a VERY competitive area for housing. When we lived there before my partner struggled to get consistent employment and we ran into money issues. Because of this, we moved to my partners hometown "temporarily" to save money.

We've ended up staying in my partners hometown for 2 years. It's a tiny, boring commuter town right next to the motorway. There is nothing to do and there are no transport links at all. We both immensely dislike it here and are desperate to escape by any means. Our house is also very impractical and we have issues with it every month which our landlord fixes as cheaply as possible, so it's just getting worse and worse to be here. We are desperate to move away from here! The issue is, I'm agoraphobic. I've been working on getting better pretty much constantly over the last 15 months so that we can both have our lives back and start again.

We'd both love to move back to Ogdenville ideally but I'm terrified of the high living costs and ending up in a bad financial situation again. More importantly, Ogdenville is about 1.5 hours drive away and it's going to take me months MINIMUM to be able to do that journey.

Now here's the question- there is another city very nearby that we'll call "New Haverbrook".

New Haverbrook is only about a 15 minute drive away which is much more doable for me in my current mental state. The issue is, to be as nice as possible, New Haverbrook has a bit of a sour reputation. There is a lot of economic struggle there and the issues that come along with that, it's not dangerous as such but I've never heard anyone describe it as a lovely, welcoming, friendly place to be. It also has been very neglected by it's local council and many people describe the city itself as being grey and depressing, the architecture is mostly very brutalist. It has it's good points of course, it's not like a war-torn hellscape or anything, but it's objectively nowhere near as nice as Ogdenville. HOWEVER, it is also much, much cheaper. For a flat that would cost around £900 a month in Ogdenville, it would be about £600-700 in New Haverbrook.

Something major to take into consideration is that we don't drive. So right now we have barely any access to basic amenities like dentists, the hospital, supermarkets, stores, pharmacies, etc due to living in a tiny town- everyone else travels to New Haverbrook to stock up and get things done. Living in a city again would give us the ability to travel to everything on foot easily. Moving would allow us to be able to actually get medical and dental care again, be able to go to shops to buy things rather than constantly having to get deliveries, and just have more to do and more places to go.

On paper, from a purely practical standpoint, New Haverbrook is the better option: It's cheaper/affordable, easier to relocate to, and most importantly we'd be able to move there much sooner. But, we both know that ideally we'd rather be in Ogdenville, we just don't know if that's even possible for us anymore.

So I don't know what to do. We need to move soon, living where we are and having the current lifestyle that we do is destroying our mental health, badly affecting our physical health, and damaging our relationship. We're bored, miserable, and frustrated.

We need to do SOMETHING. We need to go literally anywhere else. But we're both terrified of making the wrong decision and putting ourselves into a worse situation in the long run. We've had so much go wrong over the past few years that it's scary to make *any* decisions.

Should we leave our current situation sooner for the trade off of living in a slightly shittier but much cheaper and easier city, or wait indefinitely to move to the city that ideally we want to live in, but have no assurance that we can actually make it work financially?

My partner and I used to live in "Ogdenville". It's a relatively small and quiet city, but very pleasant and charming. It's a historical city with a lot of nice buildings, landmarks, touristy stuff. It has a lot of young people due to having a very popular university, and is very friendly and a little artsy and liberal. It's a little middle class and slightly pretentious but generally very friendly. Think places like Bath, Cambridge, Edinburgh, but on a much smaller scale.

Unfortunately, Ogdenville is *incredibly* expensive to live in and is also a total rip-off because most of the rental properties are poor quality. About 15% are actually liveable and it's a VERY competitive area for housing. When we lived there before my partner struggled to get consistent employment and we ran into money issues. Because of this, we moved to my partners hometown "temporarily" to save money.

We've ended up staying in my partners hometown for 2 years. It's a tiny, boring commuter town right next to the motorway. There is nothing to do and there are no transport links at all. We both immensely dislike it here and are desperate to escape by any means. Our house is also very impractical and we have issues with it every month which our landlord fixes as cheaply as possible, so it's just getting worse and worse to be here. We are desperate to move away from here! The issue is, I'm agoraphobic. I've been working on getting better pretty much constantly over the last 15 months so that we can both have our lives back and start again.

We'd both love to move back to Ogdenville ideally but I'm terrified of the high living costs and ending up in a bad financial situation again. More importantly, Ogdenville is about 1.5 hours drive away and it's going to take me months MINIMUM to be able to do that journey.

Now here's the question- there is another city very nearby that we'll call "New Haverbrook".

New Haverbrook is only about a 15 minute drive away which is much more doable for me in my current mental state. The issue is, to be as nice as possible, New Haverbrook has a bit of a sour reputation. There is a lot of economic struggle there and the issues that come along with that, it's not dangerous as such but I've never heard anyone describe it as a lovely, welcoming, friendly place to be. It also has been very neglected by it's local council and many people describe the city itself as being grey and depressing, the architecture is mostly very brutalist. It has it's good points of course, it's not like a war-torn hellscape or anything, but it's objectively nowhere near as nice as Ogdenville. HOWEVER, it is also much, much cheaper. For a flat that would cost around £900 a month in Ogdenville, it would be about £600-700 in New Haverbrook.

Something major to take into consideration is that we don't drive. So right now we have barely any access to basic amenities like dentists, the hospital, supermarkets, stores, pharmacies, etc due to living in a tiny town- everyone else travels to New Haverbrook to stock up and get things done. Living in a city again would give us the ability to travel to everything on foot easily. Moving would allow us to be able to actually get medical and dental care again, be able to go to shops to buy things rather than constantly having to get deliveries, and just have more to do and more places to go.

On paper, from a purely practical standpoint, New Haverbrook is the better option: It's cheaper/affordable, easier to relocate to, and most importantly we'd be able to move there much sooner. But, we both know that ideally we'd rather be in Ogdenville, we just don't know if that's even possible for us anymore.

So I don't know what to do. We need to move soon, living where we are and having the current lifestyle that we do is destroying our mental health, badly affecting our physical health, and damaging our relationship. We're bored, miserable, and frustrated.

We need to do SOMETHING. We need to go literally anywhere else. But we're both terrified of making the wrong decision and putting ourselves into a worse situation in the long run. We've had so much go wrong over the past few years that it's scary to make *any* decisions.

Should we leave our current situation sooner for the trade off of living in a slightly shittier but much cheaper and easier city, or wait indefinitely to move to the city that ideally we want to live in, but have no assurance that we can actually make it work financially?

I've decided I want to try them, but I'm just a bit confused about which ones would be right for me. They have the Calmer, Calmer 2 and Calmer Pro but I'm not sure what the difference is!

I am getting them to take the edge off of background noise (I'm aware they don't lessen volume) because I get easily overwhelmed and distracted by background noise in cafes, shops, public transport, busy places, etc.

I have quite small and sensitive ears so really getting the smallest and softest ones would be best for me.

Which is best? What are the actual differences? Which is the comfiest and most versatile for daily wear?

I'm not diagnosed, but it's pretty obvious. I have all the standard, stereotypical signs. And I'd love to get an official diagnosis so I can actually receive the help and support available, but there's a 4 year minimum wait list in my country.

Anyway, my partner suggested that I seem to be especially affected by noise. We used to live in a city (and are saving to move back) and we both love being out and about but when we're having a day of shopping and going to cafes and stuff I get very easily overwhelmed. I still love being out and it never makes my mood bad, but I just get totally mush-brained. I stop being able to respond to things my partner says to me, I can't make decisions, I end up accidentally getting in peoples way or walking into people because I'm spaced out and can't keep up with everything going on. And sometimes it also makes me just feel very exhausted and mentally ragged. It's not really fair on my partner because he has to keep an eye on me to make sure I'm not wandering off or standing right in the way of a bunch of people staring into space.

I started looking on reddit to see what people thought about Loops and they seem divisive- some people love them and use them all the time, some people think they're a total waste of money. I also found out about Flares and found the same mixed opinions.

I'm wondering what your experiences and reviews are! Which one should I try? Which has a more likely success rate?

(Something I should add- I have small, soft ears. They're like baby ears, I swear they have no cartilage in them. So a lot of in ear headphones I buy I have to change the little rubber bit to the smallest size so I can use them and my ears are very sensitive to having something in them. So comfort and flexibility/accessibility is a big thing for me to consider with this!)

(I will not be explaining, I'm happy to have a chat in the comments but I need to just get this all OUT without going into the details. Also r/vent mods removed my post so if this looks weirdly familiar, that's why.)

I'm so tired of constantly feeling like no one is actually listening to me when I talk about how I feel. I get debilitating mental and physical fatigue, it's so bad that even just climbing the stairs in my own house makes me feel like I'm going to collapse. My entire body aches, I feel like I'm wearing some kind of invisible suit that makes my entire body 10x heavier. Every movement, even lifting a cup to drink, is tiring. I wobble when I stand still. I walk into things, hit my legs and arms and hands on things, drop and spill things, because my limbs are so tired and unable to be coordinated. I can't think, talking makes me out of breath.

And that's without the extreme anxiety that has made me Agoraphobic for the past 2 years, the depression that makes me feel like nothing will ever get better and I'll never feel happy again. The frustration and irritability that makes it feel like nothing ever goes right and the entire universe is working against me.

I have almost constant nausea and stomach discomfort and it doesn't matter what I eat, how much I eat, when I eat, how I eat. Nothing makes it better.

And I've spent hundreds of hours researching. Trying to figure out what could be wrong, what I could look into, what I can try to get better. I do all the things you're supposed to do to be healthy, I exercise regularly, I stretch and do mobilisation every day, I eat fairly healthily and even stopped being vegetarian, I drink water, I try to sleep a good consistent amount, I'm already on antidepressants and I've tried therapy. That's why I put the "not looking for input" flair because while I appreciate people trying to help, I absolutely *guarantee* that whatever you suggest I've already tried it or I'm unable to try it. I've had an ECG, 2 blood tests and a stool sample test and everything came back clear. I *should* be a totally normal and healthy, if not very healthy, 29 year old. But I'm not.

And I talk to my partner and my parents about it and they listen and they act sympathetic but they don't actually believe me. As soon as I'm done talking they start with "well, you don't *always* do your exercises consistently, your diet isn't *always* good, you don't *always* go to bed early enough, you don't *always* stay in a good mindset..." etc etc and it's like YES, I'M HUMAN!! I'm fallible! It's almost impossible for a human to be 100% perfectly consistent all the time! But 99% of the time I am and 99% of the time I'm doing all of these things to a strict routine to try to feel better and I'm also pretending to be happy and optimistic to make everyone around me feel more comfortable even though inside I'm exhausted and I feel awful and I just want to give up. And then as soon as I take a couple days off because I'm literally feeling too physically fucked to even move I'm getting criticised. I've been focusing all my efforts on getting mentally and physically healthy for 2 years but god forbid I need a week off.

I tell people that I'm incredibly exhausted to the point that I can't do anything and they say "well, you're not really doing much at the moment" *welcome to the fucking conversation! That's literally what WE ARE TALKING ABOUT.* I don't need to be told that I have a lot of stress in my life, I don't need to be told that I could be doing more when I can barely breathe or keep my eyes open.

It's so disheartening and isolating when the people closest to you, the people who live with you and have lived with you just don't believe you. I haven't ever given anyone reason to think I'm a liar, in fact if anything I'm too honest and I've been told my whole life that I'm awful at lying and making things up- I didn't get away with anything as a kid because I'm too honest and open. and my whole life my parents have said that they never know when I'm ill or in pain or struggling because I just get on with things and never complain, and now that I am saying "actually, I feel really bad and I can't just carry on like normal" all of a sudden I'm overreacting, it's all just normal stuff that everyone feels and *I'm* the one who can't handle it. Me. The person who worked a busy opening night in a bar in the middle of a severe sinus infection because I didn't want to call in sick. Me, the person who almost got pneumonia when I had a chest infection because I kept saying I wasn't that ill. Me, the person who moved house entirely on my own on foot in the middle of summer because why ask anyone to help when I can technically do it myself?

It makes me feel gaslit, and I don't use those kinds of terms lightly. I feel like I'm screaming that both my legs just got chopped off by a chainsaw wielding maniac and are spurting everywhere Tarantino style and everyone around me is just shrugging and saying "well, everyone gets little aches and pains sometimes. You should just go for a walk more often". And don't even get me started on doctors.

I just want someone to listen. Really listen. And just accept what I'm telling them without doubting me or trying to tell me its because I need to eat some fruit or go for a walk or something. I just want someone to accept and understand that I feel bad and I'm struggling. I don't know why that's so much to ask.

I've been Agoraphobic for 2 years now. I'm *still* waiting to start therapy. I've only just gotten antidepressants (10 weeks in, increasing my dose in 2 weeks). I haven't had a job or left the very small town I live in for 2 years. Currently I can go about 2-3 hours walk away from my house if I'm with someone (my partner and I walk a lot) and this month I took a bus to the very end of the town, and then a couple weeks later my dad drove me to the same place and back, it's roughly 10 minutes by car. I haven't had a proper panic attack in a couple of months and I'm feeling a lot more confident and hopeful- getting over this actually feels like a possibility now.

My partner and I hate where we live, we hate our house, and we're very bored. My parents live in a beautiful location and have offered that we can go there to get away from things any time. I desperately want to. I think about it every day. I want to have at least a couple days somewhere else, I want a break, I want to see something new and go somewhere different. But they live 1.5 hours away by car and I just don't know if I can do that.

My main issue is with car journeys and I have very little opportunity to work on that, so far I've only done that one 10 minute journey within the area I live in. Is there some secret way to do this? How can I go and see my parents?

My partner and I both have our own profiles on our Xbox. My partner downloaded Skyrim for me and I personally don't like to use mods, but my partner got the Anniversary Edition because he was interested in it and we found online that you can just turn off the mods in the game management menu. So he could use them and I can have my vanilla Skyrim nice and bland how I like it.

Before I opened the game I made sure to go into the manage game menu on my Xbox profile and unticked the Anniversary add-on box. When I started my playthrough I noticed that there were actually items in the game from those mods but just decided not to use them- no big deal.

My partner decided to download some additional mods for his own version of the game on his Xbox profile today.

When I went to load up my game tonight for it said that achievements were turned off because creation club mods were installed, which hadn't happened before. I loaded up my save to see what was going on and all of the mods my partner installed are now in my game on my profile. I closed the game and double checked the game management menu and the Anniversary mods file is still unticked, and in game the only mods displayed as being installed are those Anniversary mods. I can't even access the Creation Club in game because I don't have an account so I can't disable them that way.

It's not the end of the world but some of the mods are graphical and I don't like them.

Is there a way to seperate our games so that I don't have mods automatically installed on my game? We assumed that each profile would only have it's own mods installed but I guess we were wrong. Am I stuck with these mods, or can I remove them without my partner having to also lose them?

I referred myself to Talkworks a couple of months ago. I already did their 6 week video call group course on anxiety and depression last year which wasn't overly helpful for me because I already knew all of it from doing self help. At that time they discharged me despite my assessment scores gradually going down over the 6 weeks, and told me that they only offer 6 weeks at a time and so couldn't give me any more help. Which wasn't great.

After my assessment this time around the practitioner said that she felt that I needed to be moved up to a higher level of therapy with them because she only works with people who have mild-moderate severity of issues and she felt that she wouldn't be able to help me. Her supervisor initially refused this and said that I would *have* to do some CBT sessions with the original practitioner first, even though that practitioner admitted that there wasn't much she could do for me.

We've done three sessions and the practitioner has taken it back to supervision again now to ask her supervisor to move me up. Thing is, I'm not sure what exactly they'd be offering me at a higher level. The practitioner said that she wasn't sure what they'd do because there isn't much overlap between her level and the higher levels. All she said was that the assessment is much more detailed and there may be multiple assessments.

Can anyone share their experiences of being moved up to the "you're super fucked up" therapy level with them? What did they actually do? Was it helpful?

For context, I suffer from anxiety and panic attacks, depression, agoraphobia and OCD. I'm 29 years old.

I am extremely burnt out and have been for months. I suffer from OCD and anxiety, 2 years ago I had a mental break down and have been Agoraphobic since. I haven't left the town I live in for 2 years. I haven't worked for 2 years. I've barely seen anyone because I have no friends who would actually visit me and my family live 2 hours away. My partner is also off sick long term for physical issues and has mental health issues, and is currently in crisis.

I am still on a waiting list for therapy. I am medicated (Venlafaxine 75mg) but I'm waiting for a higher dose on my next prescription (150mg). I have no support outside of my partner- who is also very ill and burnt out from trying to look after me- and the Internet.

I'm desperately trying to make things better. I'm trying to help myself. I've spent hundreds of hours at this point watching YouTube videos, scrolling mental health subreddits, reading articles and studies. I've taken out mental health books at the library. I have a notepad with scribbled notes of how to get better. I've done CBT, Human Givens, ERP. I work out, I eat as well as I can, I sleep 8 hours a night, I go for long walks every day, I do hobbies, I meditate and do breathing exercises, I do stretches and mobilisation every day. I have a routine.

But nothing works because I can't do anything about my life. I can't change anything. We don't have any money and no one can help us. We live in a shitty, run down house that isn't practical at all, in a town we both hate and didn't want to live in in the first place (long story). Even if we had money I can't move house because I can't be in a car for more than 5 minutes without freaking out.

Every day is the same. Literally. Same house, same routine, same people I see wandering around the town, same 1 shop to buy groceries in, same YouTube videos to watch, same clothes to wear. Just me and my partner sitting around the house not really doing anything for most of the day waiting to go to bed and start the next awful day.

Every article I read says "try to remove stressors from your life" but how can I?? What the hell am I supposed to do? Just magic myself to the place I want to live and magic myself and my partner better and magic us up a nice house and nice jobs? I'm trying to improve my health but it feels like spitting into the ocean. "Do some mindful breathing and go for a walk in nature" oh, great, thanks that'll help.

I don't know what to do. I'm so burnt out I wish I could just walk into a forest and curl up in a little hole and sleep for years. I can't cope and I can't get better, and I dont know how to change things. I can't find any help on the Internet and there are no mental health services or crisis services that will help me. Short of going to the nearest doctors surgery and telling them I'm going to you-know-what myself so they'll section me I don't know how to get help. Every time I look up what to do in a crisis all the websites just say to contact a helpline or go to a hospital, they don't actually tell you how to get better. I'll do anything if someone would just tell me what to do.

Please, what am I supposed to do? How do I solve any of this?

Until recently it was believed that anti-depressants dealt with the symptoms of depression by fixing an imbalence of chemicals or hormones in the brain, the idea of "fixing your happy chemicals" or "giving you happy chemicals".

But now apparently there is a theory that what they actually do is improve or increase (I'm not sure of the right term) your neuroplasticity.

If this is true, how is better neuroplasticity what works for depression and anxiety, and how can we use this knowledge to better treat these conditions?

I already do basic ERP that I learnt on this sub (biggest, most massive thank you to the people here that make guides to help others) but I'm always looking for new self help that I can do. I've been seeing a lot of stuff about affirmations so I thought I'd do some actual research.

I know that there is scientific backing to affirmations, but I'm wondering if they're helpful for ROCD specifically. ROCD and OCD in general are very complex and I know there are some therapy techniques and self help techniques that are sometimes recommended that are actually harmful for OCD sufferers (EFT, for example). So I wanted to see if any of you had experience or knowledge of this before trying it.

Please feel free to share, and if you have any ideas for specific affirmations that would be really helpful too!

(I personally suffer from intrusive thoughts that I don't love my partner or don't love them enough, for context )