I got diagnosed a year and half ago with it along with depression, anxiety, etc. The last month I’ve spiked so bad I feel like I’m losing control. I have harm ocd and my thoughts of hurting my loved ones and myself have been constant. I’ve been on Luvox 150 mg and I take Ativan 2 mg once a day and nothing has been helping. I am stuck in a rut of wanting to sleep all day but my mind is racing so bad at the same time. I feel so hopeless.

Note I also just got my period the first time since January, I have pcos and endometriosis as well so my hormones are whacked. My boyfriend tells me I need to get on something to regulate that but it just pisses me off. No one gets me no one understands. I thought I was doing better but I feel like this is my new normal and it will be the end of me. Any support will be helpful, thanks.

Just bought a new car, I spent quite a bit on it. I really like it but I keep think if I spent a little bit more I could have had added bells and whistles, such as a bigger touch screen, leather interior, blind spot monitoring, and a better stereo. I even have looked at the other cars of a reminder of what I think I should have done. How can I stop this rumination?

When I was in high school in the 1970s, I took a typing class.

Thereafter, I developed a compulsion where I literally typed in my head pretty much every sentence that I heard.

It was distracting but I became very fast typist :)

I had no idea why I was doing it. Back then I attributed it to the weed. But I’m pretty sure now, looking back, that it was just plain OCD, unconnected to the weed.

since 2022 I have a compulsion that what I think about during masturbation can happen and since then I always start masturbating again until I think only good things during the act so that everything works out and I can get on with my life, but whenever I try to think only about good things I always end up thinking about something bad without meaning to and there I go and do it all over again...

I've been unable to do anything for 2 years, without going to the gym, no studying, no working... and I'm so tired that I'm thinking about just ignoring these thoughts and moving on with my life, it's been very difficult to just ignore it, but I think I'll try, I don't know what else to do, I'm desperate, any advice?

Sorry for the English, I'm still learning

Like I’ll have a thought about something like a demon being real or something and then I’ll dismiss but then my brain will keep saying it’s real over and over again until I just painfully move on. Or it’ll try to convince me I’m a bad person or I’m gay or something(nothing wrong with being gay). It’s like my brain is literally against me and I argue with my self everyday, and name call myself everyday

I was freaking out earlier because I was stuck on a compulsion (spent about 15 minutes counting and recounting how many people were at church (34) and where they were sitting, after everyone had left) and it was sending me into a panic attack and he brought me down from it so well. He has an amazing way of being calm and having empathy without it turning into pity (which I am particularly sensitive to).

He had OCD but is in remission these days, so he actually gets it, and he uses that experience to help me. Just helping me breathe and reminding me I don’t need to complete the loop, it’s just a compulsion, and everything will be fine if I don’t do it.

Just wanted to share. My friend is awesome and I’m so glad to have him. Support like this makes such a huge difference

I started having intrusive thoughts almost a year ago. It started with "what if i'm a pedophile" then "what if I don't love my family" then "what if reality as I know it is actually fake". Even if I had ups and downs with these thoughts, they never made me feel as bad as my new intrusive thoughts make me feel now. I recently had the intrusive thought "what if my dad was a pedophile" I've searched in my memories trying to see if anything could confirm this thought but of course I couldn't. But I kept trying and it made it worse. I tried to see things where there was nothing. And I had the awful feeling that the way I've always seen my dad was going to change forever. And I love my dad so much, he is a great man so it just broke my heart, I had some of the worst days of my life recently. And to make it even worse I have now the new intrusive thought "what if he molested me when I was younger but I just don't remember it" so now I have these awful intrusive images and I just don't know what to do with them. I'm so scared that my brain will start to believe in these thoughts. This is my biggest fear. What if my brain is going to create fake memories? And just make it worse. I'm scared I'll just turn crazy. And that my life is going to be ruined.

I have now tried to self-educate extensively on how to respond (or rather, not respond) to ocd thoughts. I particularly like the idea that the brain’s defence mechanism has become stuck, and the anxiety is a “false alarm”.

But my barrier is this:

I never know whether the alarm is a “real” alarm or a “false” alarm. It feels so convincing and true and urgent. And it goes on and on (sometimes it feels like it never really turns off, blaring away in the background).

How can I tell whether the anxiety is a real alarm (action / fear needed ) or a false alarm (we can leave it alone)?

Any advice appreciated :(

i've made big strides in my recovery so i'm taking a huge step and attempting to get on my flight tomorrow without doing any compulsions. my biggest one is keeping myself in a constant state of anxiety, because my ocd tells me that if i stop being anxious/ relax and enjoy the experience, something terrible will happen. it is so hard to let go of that idea! but i've put in so so much work with ERP and i want flying to not be such an anxiety inducing hellish time for me so i'm really going to try hard.

i could really do with some advice on how to keep myself distracted on the plane and any tips on how you make travelling easier for yourself. how do you move your thoughts on to something else and not let the fear take over? to be honest any support or advice will be appreciated. thank you very much <3

Help 😭

Can telling yourself you are faking symptoms be a compulsion? I find myself repeatively researching symptoms of things, making a list of my symptoms, then telling myself i am faking it even when I probably do have it. Example: hypermobility syndrome, OCD. Therapist suggested i may have OCD so i in turn went to researching and making a list of things that may be obessesions/compulsions. But i then convince myself i am faking them and want attention. Like i have a huge note in my phone about ocd and things i relate to but when it comes to talking to my therapist it feels as though I'm trying to create a problem i dont actually have so i do not bring the list up. Does anyone else feel this way?

I’ve been doing a lot of rumination recently. There’s a lot of things, specifically from my teenage years, that I feel shame over.

I don’t know why I did this to myself, but I wondered what my friends would think if they could see my whole life and everything I’ve ever done. Ended up reviewing all my mistakes. I fear they would all hate me and reject me. I worry that I am a bad person.

I’m like 99% sure that nobody in my friends or family cares or worries about my past mistakes so I don’t know why I torture myself like this. I feel the need to confess to new friends my mistakes, that I’m being fraudulent otherwise, but does everyone need to know my past? I KNOW who I am inside and the kind of person I want to be, but I feel like I have to defend myself and prove I’m good.

Anyway, I’ve been isolating myself and feeling like throwing up at the thought of rejection. I’ve always had really bad social anxiety. Meeting with therapist on Monday. Any advice until then would be appreciated.

I really don’t know if I have ocd. I used to be so certain about it but now it’s not so bad it feels like I’ve made things up just to live in denial of things for years. I think I’ve lied to the psychiatrist and been wrongly diagnosed because I convinced myself enough that I believed it. What do I do? Should I tell people I’ve been faking? I hate myself so much. I also took some online tests and they said ocd was unlikely which is even more evidence that I made everything up.

Hi!

First of all, thanks for reading :)

I have been suffering from OCD for a long time and have been receiving specialized help for this since October (ERP). I go to therapy every week and I feel like something more is wrong. I am a difficult person to open up so often the therapy sessions are dry, I am working with my therapist to open up more but I just don't know how. I have so much to say but I can't, which always slows down my process. I can never be open with anyone, even my very best friends/people closest to me. I simply don't understand feelings or how other people think.

I also wondered whether several people with OCD suffer from non-stop thoughts? I don't know if it's OCD related since they aren't always obsessions. I feel like there are always 2 voices or more in my head. One that sings things non-stop, the other that tells random thoughts and just jumps around in my head and the other that is my OCD. It ensures that my mind is never calm, even when I sleep I sometimes wake up and my mind is so busy that I can no longer sleep

I have no idea how to express this to my therapist because she is always focused on what I once said and my OCD, I feel like I can't say new things. As if it's a mental block.

I suffer from several types of OCD, including pure O

Real Event OCD, that started about 15 years back in 2009. I would appreciate people's genuine opinions about this. As a side note as well as OCD I am also Autistic and have ADHD. I feel like I have hyper/toxic empathy and feel a bit of a hero/saviour complex at times like the examples below.

Event one was on MySpace, (long time ago) and a girl got angry at me for buying her on some weird game/app. I was getting tired of her “buying my friend” and decided one stupid morning in Feb 09 to buy her back in retaliation. No big deal? In the evening a random ear sent a friend request and msg. Which I declined. So she sends me a big wall of text, aggressive and angry, some of it wasn’t in English. She was linked to the 1st girl who I will call B. This girl K was very angry and she said “now one of my friends is pregnant and two of my friends have tried to kill themselves” or “are trying to kill themselves” I felt fear like I’d never felt, I imagined them in a hospital dying with a heart attack monitor flatlining. I felt like a killer. Like I was a trigger for one, possibly two suicide attempts, that may result in death 💀

I had a lot of other profiles basically pile on to me. One time a name J got thrown around “two stupid kids hurt this girl real bad and I don’t know if she is going to be okay” my parents made me delete MySpace. I developed OCD around it and spent/ spend my day trying to get a resolution that relives my conscious.

Eventually two was a girl on a bus. This happened a few months after event one. Similar in some ways she told me her ex boyfriend was threatening suicide. The next time I see her she tells me he has died. I felt really bad like I should have called someone or told someone.

Here is where it gets weird. Years later I contact the bus girl. I tell her how bad I feel, I tell her near word for word what I remember. She tells me it was all a lie, made up for attention and sympathy. She apologised. People at school and my parents, even a policeman told me it was made up, that she was “bonkers” as one teacher put it 😒 I had wasted time.

My mind crossed it out, but I kept worrying about the MySpace thing. I searched obits, databases and other ways to see if I could locate them. Harder than it looked as I live in the uk 🇬🇧 and they all seemed to be in south Texas in the US. But recently I find a lot of the profiles including B & K on Facebook.

I do some digging and image searches. The photos are of models and they are catfish. So how do I feel about this? The catfish are pretty aggressive when I approach them “f**k off” was one response I got. I feel like the names are fake and the pictures aren’t of them, I sort of know the possible real identity of the catfish. I worry despite the identity being fake that what they told me, “now one of my friends is pregnant and two of my friends have tried to kill themselves” or “are trying to kill themselves” was true.

Anyone got a perspective on how I resolve this?

note: I posted this in the RealEventOCD reddit yesterday, but this community is bigger and seems more appropriate

I have terrible dreams quite often. At one point it was happening every night. A lot of them are me running away from people trying to unalive me or kidnap me. But I have had certain dreams that really stick with me relating to SA. Mind you I have never been SAd in my life. However I am having vivid nightmares of me being SAd. Tonight I am unable to look at myself because the dreams have made me feel so terrible. It is so debilitating because someone that did it to me in the dream I like a lot (I should clarify student teacher like, not crush). When I ask about whether nightmares are normal my parents always blamed what I had watched but then my friends say I need to seek help because of how severe they are.

in short, two days ago, my psychologist said she thinks, she said shes pretty sure, that i have ocd.

after i came home, all ive been doing is researching ocd, thinking about ocd, hyper analysing my thoughts and behaviour, constantly talking to ai psychologist if i really could have ocd (quite embarassing)..

so ive spent hours doing this, i dont think about anything else since i got home two days ago.

to be clear, im not scared of having ocd, i actually would be relieved to find out the problems in my life have an explanation.

but i cant help but feel that i made my psychologist think that i have it, and im not sure if i do. and the next appointment is next week.

i just cant leave it be and im so tired, im literally obsessed with ocd right now.

im not looking for a diagnosis or anything im just really tired of this and i dont know why im doing this..

Every minute everyday for almost 24 hours intrusive thoughts and severe anxiety haunt me I can't even watch a YouTube video without them annoying me, sometimes I can't even sleep either, I don't even know who I am anymore it feels like my soul got sucked out of my body, it's killing me on the inside I just wish I could just live without worrying, without being depressed

Took me at least half an hour to make a sandwich that I ate in 5 minutes. I threw away about three slices of vegan cheese and one slice of bread because I felt they were potentially contaminated but I don't want to risk it. I feel bad wasting food. And I annoy myself being aware of how ridiculous I am.
I was cutting up a mango yesterday morning. Took me at least 15 minutes, washing and carefully cutting it. I was not in a hurry and it didn't bother me but I was being watched by someone and they made a comment like "oh you're still doing that?"

Sometimes I procrastinate eating so I don't have to stress myself out and because it's such a pain and takes longer than it should.

I just can’t imagine feeling this way when I’m old, I don’t want to live my life miserable with this disease hanging over me, I feel like I’ll never be free from it. It’s made me push my partner, my family and my friends away and every time I feel like I make progress I feel like I lose it all in a matter of moments if I’m around a trigger. I just can’t do this anymore. I wasn’t made for this. I want to be who I was before this. I don’t think I’ll ever stop grieving the person I could’ve been if I’d never developed OCD, I just want it all to stop and to feel like my brain can be quiet for once. I just want to feel clean and like stepping out of my room isn’t an exposure.

I feel like I no longer can differentiate between roghft and wrong. Everything I do it feels like I'm doing the wrong thing and hurting people, for example, leaving a party early because I'm tired. I also feel selfish pretty much all the time. I feel selfish because I'm sad I wasn't asked to prom, or because I feel lonely at a large gathering. I guess I feel selfish because i had a great day and I should be grateful that I even got to go to a party or have people that love me. I just don't know if I'm being a selfish jerk or not. I need advice.

Only recently I've been diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder, and I feel like I am so hyper-aware of my behavior now and today I actually argued my case at the doctors to be medicated so they put me on quetiapine. I know that meds don't work overnight, but I feel like OCD is ruining my current relationship and it's driving me insane.

My boyfriend vapes, he doesn't own one, but he hits our roommates very frequently and in the past he told me he would stop smoking and then we walked into a shop where they weren't carding, my other roommate showed interest in vaping, and I kind of asked him "You aren't going to buy a vape are you?" he said no but then when my roommate turned around and asked if he wanted to buy one with him my bf instantly said yes and I was so upset I felt like my body was melting, and I wouldn't even kiss him or let him hug me. He argued back with me saying that he said he would "stop smoking cigarettes he never said anything about vaping" Vaping has ALWAYS been a huge no for me in a partner but I try to put up with it and his other use habits for him.

I have contamination OCD and probably a bit of relationship OCD, but I hate vaping so much and I've expressed it over and over that I think it's unattractive to down right saying I find vaping disgusting because of the toxins, metals, etc. that they put in vapes and today I felt like I had a small win where I could smell my boyfriend had been vaping while I wasn't looking, and I still hugged him and everything was fine and I even made a joke about it.

But then he just kept hitting it, and when he gets drunk some nights he will just stand there trying to do "smoke tricks" or just excessively hitting it and I literally feel horrible for asking him to stop but I hate the smell, I hate knowing the chemicals, I hate everything about it.

I'm a nursing major and I don't have an issue with cigarettes like American Spirits for some reason, or alcohol, weed, etc. but it's literally just vaping where I just think of collapsed lungs, the anti-freeze chemicals they use for flavoring and my boyfriend tries to argue that it's "not all vapes" it "depends on what you buy" and he tries to monitor it by "not actually buying one" even though he wants one and just "occasionally taking a hit off of C's vape".

I feel so alone and so upset because I feel like nobody understands how I think how I feel etc. and I know I can't let everything trigger me, but I've asked so many times (I feel like) and I just want to scream.

side note:

We have arguments about other stuff that are driven by triggers sometimes, but I feel like when I start melting down he doesn't take it seriously or he makes it clear that he's upset when I'm uncomfortable or triggered / beginning to trigger so I'm just conflicted on what to do or how to handle this because I want to stay together but I just feel like I'm ruining everything

I believe I've had ocd for a long time, but just got diagnosed a couple months ago. I honestly don't know how nobody caught on before.

The thing is, from what I know about ocd, the thoughts and feelings are ego-dystonic, right? But I spent so long assigning meaning to all of my thoughts so much so that I thought they were all true. I believed them. Because of that I don't feel like I have a very clear idea of who I am as a person, and how do I know what I want and don't want if I don't even know who I am? I feel like my every relationship has been sabotaged by seeds of doubt, doubts that I believed, because I didn't know what else to believe, because for so long it felt so real that I thought it was all true.

My parents told me that my mental issues warped my perspective of reality. And to find out after all this time that it was true? How much of my life has been based on these false beliefs? I feel like I'm an unreliable narrator in my own life. And how do I come back from this? How do I know what feelings and thoughts are real?

I guess right now I have a particularly sticky topic that is bothering me to no end. The idea of accepting that it might or might not be true sounds absolutely awful, because I don't think I could handle it if it was true. I'm terribly afraid of it being true, but my brain is saying I'm just in denial. I don't want it to be true, I really don't. I feel like accepting that it could be true is the same as accepting that it is true, and that I should remove the person that is the subject of these thoughts and fears from my life, or remove myself from theirs because of what it would mean if it were true.

I get so easily triggered and the anxiety of it and the related compulsions feel like they're completely consuming my life. I hate this I hate this I hate this. I wish I could just be happy and enjoy my life and my friendships without my brain trying to twist it into something I'm afraid of. It's really freaking hard to keep close relationships when that doubt and anxiety seeps in, especially when I feel like it makes me someone that I don't want to be. I feel like I have to keep a certain distance from people in order to not hurt them. And I feel like I have to keep my distance from people so my brain doesn't choose them or my relationship with them as my next target.

I'm just... I'm so tired.

My mother is the only other person in my life with OCD, and I just want someone who can hear me and understand me when I talk about my struggles with OCD. But she doesn't. Our OCD is so different, and what's more is that my mom doesn't even really understand OCD so she'll tell me things like "oh yeah I'm so OCD with the way that I love to organize and count things. It made me really good at logistics!!" And I have to tell her to please stop glorifying it because it's insulting when I'm talking about how it effects my life in such a negative way and it definitely has, for a lack of better words, RUINED hers. She was a hoarder for over ten years, homeless, lost custody of me and my siblings, extremely religious (scrupulous theme) to the point that she couldn't have casual conversations -much less conversations outside of God or sin- which ruined many relationships. If anything, it just scares me to think I have her DNA and might age into that same hoarding devout, homeless and unable to help her children when they seek vulnerability and understanding. She's come a long way from the way it has severely damaged her, but her advice to me is even obsessive compulsive in nature, too. I feel terrible when I have to explain to her I can't take her advice because it hurts me, but I don't think it's my place to tell her that she's being dysfunctional. It makes me feel really alone.

Sorry I will be rambling a bit but is there a correlation between kinks, fetishes and intrusive thoughts? I am so afraid i am going to DIE hahaha sorry I mean for some reason thinking about me getting killed is actually a huge paranoia thing for me and i actively avoid even going outdoors because I am so afraid but I also get a boner thinking about getting killed and it makes me sick to my stomach and i was wondering, kinda like with cnc, do you think if I act on it in a controlled space where it's just simulated, it'll calm those intrusive thoughts down??? But also what if theyre not intrusive thoughts and I am actually just a sick individual that wants that to happen to me for real and i am just morally struggling to wrap my head around it??? Sorry this doesnt make sense none of this makes sense oh and also like if it Does work to calm down intrusive thoughts what if it spirals into me thinking that all my intrusive thoughts need to be acted on somehow oh man thats so gross what the heck thats freaking me out jesus this literally makes no sense sorry

I'm also on meds so I'm sure that also plays a part. But over the past few months I feel significantly better day to day and like my OCD has somewhat taken a backseat and I feel this is related to some positive routines I've developed. Simple things like taking a walk in the morning, waiting for the bus, ordering a cappuccino to drink at work, doing guitar practice daily, and watching videos about personal finance daily. I still get brainfog and feel detached sometimes but I try to soldier through and still do the routines.

I have no official diagnosis but have been suffering with what I hope is pocd for a long time now. I just recently started having the most crazy and disgusting intrusive images that are so vile and graphic. I suffer especially at night. They won’t go away den im so worried I am creating them even though im doing everything I can to push them away or breathe through it or distract myself. During the day today I felt like I did good, I had it happen a few times but I was able to breathe and become present. I went shopping and there was kids around and I didn’t care because I know I don’t have any interest in them and don’t want to harm them. I avoid looking at them. I know this is against my morals but I don’t understand why this is happening to me. It’s almost 4am and I haven’t slept. It feels so feel and disgusting and everytime I image something happy it turns into something fucked up. I’m so worried I secretly like this. I’m attracted to grown men and women. I don’t want this I’m so desperate to seek therapy, but I feel like I’m too hopeful that they can help me because these thoughts are not ok. It’s not a joke it’s appalling but I’m worried I secretly think it’s amusing. I hate it so bad I’m so desperate for a normal life I miss life so bad. Everything good in life has been stolen from me I feel so alone.

My contamination OCD thought seems to me logical; I'm trying to stop my compulsive behaviour.
Every time I try my mind says what are you doing is a logical thing to do.

My oldest sister (25) has always treated me poorly and has a history of being physically violent towards me and my other family members. Long story short we got into an argument because I was done with her attitude and I called her out on her strange treatment towards me. I left house for a bit and when I came back somehow, she learnt that I get intrusive thoughts about her wanting to r*pe me. I was confused on how she learnt this at first but now I’m confident that she’s gone through my private messages between me and other sister who I trust where I joke or talk about the types of thoughts I get. Here’s the real kicker thought. She got OCD herself. She just wants to hurt me. Im not joking when I say this is the worst case scenario and I actually don’t think I can recover from this.

For the past 3 years I’ve been stuck in a loop where I’ve convinced myself that someone has somehow hacked my iPhone and taken over my digital life and is just waiting for the right moment to strike i.e make it known by doing something malicious with whatever data they’ve collected. It sounds silly but this has affected my life in a greater way than I wish to admit. I’ve deleted almost every social media account and started over, factory reset my phone so many times that I’ve lost count at this point. I’ve isolated myself, I’m a shell of a person, a timid hamster on a wheel chasing something they have no physical proof of but is convinced of its validity. I’ve managed to tame the anxiety to an extent by googling ways to check for suspicious activity. And although things seemed fine according to what I’ve read online, the thoughts still lingered at the back of my brain.

This morning I saw an article about an ios breach, people have been getting hacked and apparently it’s undetectable so you just wouldn’t know if you were a target. This sent me into a spiral as it took away my one source of reassurance (checking where I’m logged in on my Apple ID and making sure it’s just my device listed). So I factory reset my phone, changed all my passwords, and while I was doing so I got spammed with the same pop up alert to sign in to my Apple ID, over and over again, it was so abnormal and freaky because it was so fast that as soon as I tried clicking “sign in” I would get another one. And because factory resetting has become a routine for me (much to my dismay) I’ve basically memorized the process, it never does this, never randomly asks me to sign in and in such a dodgy way. Now I’m convinced that I’ve been hacked and I’m honestly not even freaking out like I usually do, I’m just feeling this dark sense of doom and I’m not sure which is worse haha. I’ve been laying in bed for I don’t know how long, haven’t spoken to anyone. I’m just exhausted. I’ve mustered up whatever energy I managed to store to write this post, I don’t know if it’s a cry for a help or just me trying to rationalize whatever this is in a way that isn’t destructive. Advice would be appreciated.