23 YO - Can't leave the house, don't know where to start.

Mordred

Hello,

I'll try to keep this short.

I am 23 YO male and I have been suffering from severe social anxiety and OCD for at least 6 years now and it has only gotten worse. Enough is enough I need to get help but I don't even know where to begin and if I can even bring myself to do it. I'm wasting away.

the SAD in particular has only worsened as I've let it decay my brain for this long. I can count on probably 2 hands the number of times I've left the house in the last few years and I've only left it twice in 2024. Last Christmas I had to go into the Sydney CBD for a Christmas dinner and there were only about 15 people there total ( 7 of which were family) but I couldn't take it so I just had a panic attack and cried by myself like a baby on the balcony the whole time.

I am 23 and have never gone to a party, can't drive and never have, never had a girlfriend, I can't even look at people in the eyes or go to the mailbox without being paranoid, and when someone knocks on the door, I hide. It's at the point where I'd probably rather die than leave the house to go to the hospital if I had a medical emergency or something.

I have no consistent income and have never worked because I can't leave the house and im in a semi rural area, so i'm isolated. I rely on my family for most things which is selfish and kills me inside. I was making okay money trading crypto earlier this year, but since September or so, that hasn't been going well.

My immediate family knows my situation and my extended family definitely suspects it but I don't talk with them much. My mother has been asking me for help for years but I always chicken out.

OCD has also gotten worse. For example, I meticulously brush my teeth for 20+ minutes and take screenshots of the timer app to make sure on my phone. I also shower for ridiculous amount of time, to get rid of "contamination". The real kicker is false memory OCD which is torturing. For example, I'll obsess for hours and stress that I poured vodka in my tea???? and that I swear i could taste it. I also have to do a holy cross gesture over the toilet seat to make sure it isn't contaminated and to check each point of it. I could go on and on.

So yeah, where do I even begin? I can't talk to people on the phone either and I feel like bringing a family member to an appointment at my age is embarrassing. I'm also obsessively worrying that a doctor will just say im "faking" and dismiss me, but in reality I should've been heavily medicated years ago.

Flowergirl97

Hi,

I don’t know what it’s like to have ocd but I have experienced anxiety. Luckily, mine has got better over time but I know it can feel like it’s so difficult to feel hopeful that things won’t get better. I think there is still a lot of hope for you to do things you want to do in life. You might not fall into the ‘normal’ category for people your age but there’s plenty of people out there who won’t care if you meet society’s definition of normal. I think being in your 20s is actually more challenging than it was even 5 or 10 years ago. Things are changing quickly, social expectations change, more things rely on technology, and people are more isolated than ever. It has helped me to remind myself that a lot of the things I experience are not my fault and sometimes I just need to take a different approach and be WAY more proactive than comes naturally to me.

I would highly recommend volunteering to get some work experience, and there are opportunities online that might be achievable for you depending on your skills and interests. Or something that is only for half and hour or an hour every other week so it’s more manageable. Also take small steps to access services that help with managing your ocd and depression.

The first step is trusting that taking small steps will slowly start to help. It sounds like you do need to make an appointment with a doctor, make sure you have transport to the appointment and a family member to come with you if you need one- though sometimes what we need is to do things on our own to gain trust in ourselves- and then attending the appointment. These are small steps but with anxiety or ocd can be difficult.

Something else that helped me is deciding to do things I want to do even if I fail at it or it goes wrong or people think I’m weird or whatever, just doing it anyway. Sometimes it goes better- or a lot better- than expected. The point is not the outcome but that I did it regardless of what the outcome would be and I did it with the right intentions. You could try this if you find you have unhelpful thoughts about seeing a doctor.

I have often felt scared of people and done a lot of overthinking of past conversations or overthought future social situations and I’m sensitive to people’s facial expressions because I sometimes assume they’re thinking negative things about me. But I continually remind myself and decide I won’t let these things that I can never actually know are true or not stop me from being happy or being myself and doing the things I want to do.

The older we get the less we care about what other people think so there’s always that to look forward to in the future

Mordred

Hey,

I'm super glad to hear that your anxiety has gotten better. I hope I do still get to do things I want to do in my life because I feel like I've wasted it, especially my youth.

The work experience idea is fantastic because I doubt I'll be able to find paid work when my anxiety (hopefully improves) since I don't have any experience. I think my first step is to get diagnosed, I've been putting it off for years now. I don't know how fast the process is but I'm looking for the right doctor now. Following through with going to the appointment will probably feel like climbing Mt. Everest with no gear lol.

I really appreciate your valuable advice. 😁