I forgot to post this before I made my first post :doh:
Name's Steve, 24 years old, and suffered from palmar hyperhidrosis and anxiety since my mid teens, and also OCD but 'beat it' over the past year.
Regarding the PH, I could've had it before then TBH but it wasn't an issue until one day a class mate was playing a game on my phone and made a comment about how the phone was sweaty when I gave it to her, 'you have sweaty hands, me too!'.
I didn't pay much attention after that either TBH and we didn't share some bond with the condition or anything, but that's the earliest meemory of knowing I had overly sweaty hands.
It was only after I left School and I was about 18 that it started to get to me and I realised what I had. By this stage I had also had other stuff happen in the form of being bullied a bit, got messed about by friends I thought I had and getting depressed and suffering from OCD. I think suffering those things has made this condition worse at a guess, as I always get it when I'm nervous about something, which was pretty much all the time until about a year ago. I let things spiral in my head into bigger things than they are, and also didn't start to get on top of the OCD until about a year ago.
Anyway, about a year ago I started to get on top of the OCD. Mine was routed in superstition going back to when I was being bullied at School. I got the idea that if I did things a certain number of times that it was a routine that meant I'd be safe. The biggest example of this was checking the doors were locked 4 number of times at a time when I as getting threats of being assaulted. Each day I checked all the doors in the house were locked 4 times and each day I didn't get attacked. So I just kept on doing it, up until 3 years ago when I found the folk who were threatening me had moved on. But by then the OCD had developed in to eating a certain amount of food each day and asking specific questions to people to get me through life in general too.
Then a year ago I was having a lot of trouble losing weight. Stuff I did wasn't working, and I began to question whether those things I was doing obsessively were having a positive influence on my life. I then stopped doing the things I was doing one by one and found nothing different or bad was happening to me, and now don't do any of the stuff I used to do.
I still have great anxiety about things though. I just blow things out of all proportion and imagine worst case scenarios and become convinced they'll happen. These things can be anything really; social situations, exercise, I've become increasingly convinced I'm going bald recently too. This isn't as bad as it used to be in my younger days though, and again since I got on top of the OCD that has helped me with my anxiety too. But it is still a problem that I'm grappling with constantly to varying degrees, I think it's just because it's in my nature not to be positive about things and also try and sort of prepare myself for the worse, so I become convinced it'll happen. This is through growing up, particularly as a teenager and the stuff that went on, I think.
But what is making me more determined to 'beat that' is I'm sick of having these damn sweaty hands, and I know with my experience with the OCD that I can do it, or make it not anywhere near as bad at least. I know the sweaty hands are a significant amount due to my anxiety because on occasion I will be at peace, watching sport or something for instance, and I'll catch my hands are dry. Then something happens to set me off again later on and they go back to being sweaty.
So I've started using driclor more regularly now, and if they show signs of improvement in some sort of long term way I think this will then make me more positive, and help both my hands again and my state of mind. I'm fearful though that if it doesn't improve after using it for a significant amount of time and then trying other treatments and they don't work things may become worse in terms of my state of mind. I guess I'll just have to wait and see.
But I came across this forum earlier and joined straight away. I haven't had the confidence to talk about my problems over the years as everybody is/seemed to be so different to me and I just (wrongly I suppose) thought they wouldn't understand. Again, with overcoming the OCD, and also seeing more about mental health stuff being talked about I've plucked up the courage to join in
Name's Steve, 24 years old, and suffered from palmar hyperhidrosis and anxiety since my mid teens, and also OCD but 'beat it' over the past year.
Regarding the PH, I could've had it before then TBH but it wasn't an issue until one day a class mate was playing a game on my phone and made a comment about how the phone was sweaty when I gave it to her, 'you have sweaty hands, me too!'.
I didn't pay much attention after that either TBH and we didn't share some bond with the condition or anything, but that's the earliest meemory of knowing I had overly sweaty hands.
It was only after I left School and I was about 18 that it started to get to me and I realised what I had. By this stage I had also had other stuff happen in the form of being bullied a bit, got messed about by friends I thought I had and getting depressed and suffering from OCD. I think suffering those things has made this condition worse at a guess, as I always get it when I'm nervous about something, which was pretty much all the time until about a year ago. I let things spiral in my head into bigger things than they are, and also didn't start to get on top of the OCD until about a year ago.
Anyway, about a year ago I started to get on top of the OCD. Mine was routed in superstition going back to when I was being bullied at School. I got the idea that if I did things a certain number of times that it was a routine that meant I'd be safe. The biggest example of this was checking the doors were locked 4 number of times at a time when I as getting threats of being assaulted. Each day I checked all the doors in the house were locked 4 times and each day I didn't get attacked. So I just kept on doing it, up until 3 years ago when I found the folk who were threatening me had moved on. But by then the OCD had developed in to eating a certain amount of food each day and asking specific questions to people to get me through life in general too.
Then a year ago I was having a lot of trouble losing weight. Stuff I did wasn't working, and I began to question whether those things I was doing obsessively were having a positive influence on my life. I then stopped doing the things I was doing one by one and found nothing different or bad was happening to me, and now don't do any of the stuff I used to do.
I still have great anxiety about things though. I just blow things out of all proportion and imagine worst case scenarios and become convinced they'll happen. These things can be anything really; social situations, exercise, I've become increasingly convinced I'm going bald recently too. This isn't as bad as it used to be in my younger days though, and again since I got on top of the OCD that has helped me with my anxiety too. But it is still a problem that I'm grappling with constantly to varying degrees, I think it's just because it's in my nature not to be positive about things and also try and sort of prepare myself for the worse, so I become convinced it'll happen. This is through growing up, particularly as a teenager and the stuff that went on, I think.
But what is making me more determined to 'beat that' is I'm sick of having these damn sweaty hands, and I know with my experience with the OCD that I can do it, or make it not anywhere near as bad at least. I know the sweaty hands are a significant amount due to my anxiety because on occasion I will be at peace, watching sport or something for instance, and I'll catch my hands are dry. Then something happens to set me off again later on and they go back to being sweaty.
So I've started using driclor more regularly now, and if they show signs of improvement in some sort of long term way I think this will then make me more positive, and help both my hands again and my state of mind. I'm fearful though that if it doesn't improve after using it for a significant amount of time and then trying other treatments and they don't work things may become worse in terms of my state of mind. I guess I'll just have to wait and see.
But I came across this forum earlier and joined straight away. I haven't had the confidence to talk about my problems over the years as everybody is/seemed to be so different to me and I just (wrongly I suppose) thought they wouldn't understand. Again, with overcoming the OCD, and also seeing more about mental health stuff being talked about I've plucked up the courage to join in
