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I feel so alone with what I’ve been going through. I am constantly bombarded with thoughts like “what if you’re sinning?” “What if God’s mad at you?” “What if you’re going to hell because of who you’re with?” My OCD latched onto something my fiancé can’t control and I’m constantly worried it’s a sin to be with him. It feels like it’s the only thing I can think about and it’s robbed the joy I used to feel being around him and being intimate with him. My OCD has made me terrified of God and being punished by Him if I make any wrong decision. He’s become this cruel judge constantly looming over me waiting to send me to hell. I feel like He wont love or forgive me until I’m the perfect Christian. I just wish I could see Him the way I did before my OCD. I know it’s OCD because of the compulsions. I started googling things and talking to Chat GPT for hours (even though I don’t like AI) asking the same questions over and over and it only made the constant anxiety worse. I would research and research until I was sobbing on the floor begging God to make it stop. Begging for Him to give me the answers. It feels like there’s a pit in my stomach all of the time. I would research and then pray for hours for Jesus to forgive me for any sin I was committing. I’d see any post about God or sin on social media and it would start a spiral. I’d think “is this about me?” What’s even worse is I started compulsively asking my fiancé for reassurance about if it was a sin to be with him and I almost broke up with him in an OCD episode because I just wanted the pain to stop. And that really hurt him. But I just felt like I needed to do anything to soothe the anxiety. At one point my OCD was even waking me up in the middle of the night and giving me terrible nightmares, and that would start another compulsive prayer and research loop. It’s gotten a little better recently but I know I need help because the thoughts are constant and bring me a lot of pain. I’m suffering everyday and can’t wait to be on some sort of medication to help. I just want to feel normal again. Does anyone else deal with something similar?

So sometimes when I’m on Instagram I’ll randomly save things to show people later or I’ll save videos where women feel confident in their bodies because I tend to get really insecure in my own etc. I was going through my saved Instagram posts because I was having such a bad flare up and I came across this one post I saved in 2024 of this girl who was wearing like a purple top that was slightly revealing and she had on a low rise skirt and was belly dancing. She obviously was an only fans creator and the caption on the video said something like “if we were the only two left at the tavern would you stay” i dont know it was so weird and just i was weirded out when i saw it 😭 but I think I saved the video to show my fiancé or my friend and be like look what the heck popped up on my page or either I saved it because even though she is an only fans creator, she was very confident in her body and she felt confident in her body and like a lot of times I’ve saved posts where curvy women will wear outfits and be confident and you can feel the confidence radiating off the screen even if it’s like a video like that and it just makes me feel good and feel better about myself because as a very insecure woman, confidence feels great, but with this certain post it didn’t. I was convinced that I had saved it for the wrong reasons and I was being so disrespectful to my fiancé even though I was weirded out when I saw it in my saved. As a compulsion I had to screen record the comments to make sure I didn’t like any of them and then since there were so many comments my Instagram like shut down and I freaked because I still had to make sure I didn’t like every single comment. Unfortunately, I had to go look up the Instagram page because I was like “I have to find the post. I have to make sure I did not like all 10,000 comments, I have to screen record them to be sure, I have to make sure.” And it was just making me so uncomfortable to scroll through her page because all of her page was just filled with only fans stuff and just so much weird and disgusting things and even that made me feel like I was being disrespectful to my fiancé and I just was like I have to find that certain video because I have to make sure I did not like any of the comments. To some this may seem like not a big deal but to me it is. My fiancé is my world and any post I see dealing with that stuff or even anything it’s like my brain tells me “You have to screen record the comments and make sure you didn’t like them.” Etc. I just know as a woman, I get really insecure in my body, so seeing women who are either my size or who are even bigger than me, be confident in a bikini a crop top or even an outfit that shows a lot of of their body, it’s inspirational to me because it’s like they’re curvier than me and they’re more confident than I am and it’s like you can feel the confidence radiating off the screen, but this certain time really messed with my OCD bad and like it’s just messing with my head making me think I wanted to see this even though I didn’t because I only have eyes for my fiancé. It’s just my OCD convinces me of all this stuff and it’s like it’s so stressful. I know this post is long but I’ve been dealing with this struggle for awhile and I wanted to share and see if anyone else has too, i definitely will be getting a therapist but this theme I have is one of the worst :(

Does anyone else specifically with ROCD build this narrative as to why you cannot be with your bf due to a ton of factors starting from the beginning of the relationship? and now they're personal, like i now am convinced need to heal from all my past patterns before i can be in a relationship. and like honestly that could be true and that terrifies me, because why now?? why do i have to discover that when im with such an awesome guy. my ocd about this relationship genuinely never goes away. like it's 24/7. i find myself wondering if im stupid at this point for pursuing it when i'm in my head constantly, with him or not. i've completely lost myself and i can't make a decision about a job either. the pain this is causing me is unbelievable and it all feels like my fault because if i would just break up with him all of this would be over. it's like i have to do this a specific way (break up, be alone for a long time, find myself) or else i think ill have eternal doubt about who i am with.

So I’ve recently changed my medication and for now it’s seemed to have quieted my urges to ruminate and check old events and stuff. But now my brain tells me that not thinking about these things makes me a bad person and that I’m accepting horrible things that I’ve done.

Any other grown men out there that struggle with this Theme? I feel like am alone on this one being that I’m going through it in my early to mid 30’s. Feel like this is something most people struggle with earlier in life. The loneliness is real 😞

Had another panic attack last night, and it was the one that lasted an hour. That was probably the scariest moment of my life cuz I thought I couldn't calm myself down and needed to go to the hospital. I was starting to lose faith in myself but my family (brother, nephew, and sister) was there for me; and I'm glad my brother made sure not to give in to my compulsive fear and call 911 despite me begging him to. It did happen when I least expected cuz I'm taking a supplement for anxiety, so I thought I would be able to at least avoid having this happened again despite OCD, and I was wrong. It still happened because I was basically facing my fears all day yesterday with the doctor's appointment, to stress about my living situation, to my neck. And I think that panic attack happened as a result of me trying to combat those thoughts by doing the skills I've learned, but I didn't fully believe them because I was too stubborn too, I was too SCARED to. I think this is a lesson to how you gotta learn to trust yourself and to allow yourself to accept the things you can't control; even if the face of your worst case scenario coming true. Idk if this is normal to have a panic attack after trying to do some ERP through stressing moments, but I still manage to make it through somehow. Having another panic attack at MIDNIGHT was probably my worst case scenario, but I got through it! Idk, I still lack a bit of confidence, but despite how messed up this feels, it revealed so many truths now. In a weird way, it helped me understand why I gotta learn to trust myself again. I'm still scared asl, but, weirdly enough, I feel like I got this now

How does everyone try to combat their real event OCD? I keep remembering this certain memory where an old friend of mine from a group years ago who was a guy messaged me on Snapchat last year on Halloween he said something to me. I don’t remember what he said and I responded and I don’t remember what I said, but I do remember that I removed him right after, as well as one other guy, I am pretty sure I remember why I removed them and it was because Im pretty sure I had seen a TikTok or reel or something where this person said you shouldn’t have guys on your snap in a relationship etc, and I had a thought where I was like “I don’t want my fiance seeing these guys that I used to talk to on my snap and think that I’m doing something wrong or anything.” I know I removed them out of respect for our relationship and I remembered because I remembered I had gotten an anxious and nervous because they were still on my snap, but 2 months after I un added that guy off my snap(December 2024) I panicked because I don’t remember what I said or he said and I got worried about what if I flirted, sent a nude or if I said something wrong. I spoke to my fiancé about it and he pretty much reassured me and he told me that if I had actually done something out of that intent, I wouldn’t have told him about it at all, so that helped me and reassured me for a little bit, and then my OCD moved on to another theme for months. Fast forward to now, I remembered the same thing and my thought was “What if I cheated and flirted, sent a nude or even worse? Etc.” And I started freaking out again and I started panicking. I told my fiancé about it again and he reassured me again but recently my OCD has been really bad and every theme I’ve had has caused me to just avoid it just sucks because I can’t go check if I actually said something flirty and I just didn’t realize it because I removed the guy last year right after I talked to him. I hate this ocd theme so much. My fiancé is the best man I have ever met and he is a god sent the last thing I’d ever want to do is hurt him, but ocd constantly convinces me I did and I don’t remember. I know if I genuinely did something like that. I’d remember, but when I try to ruminate and think back to what went down, my OCD will give me like visuals or flashes of me committing the intrusive thought and it just makes everything so much worse has anyone else dealt with this?

I have always been scared of meds incase they don’t work and then it means it’s true. I tried meds in the past and was constantly checking how I was feeling and why I wasn’t feeling better and what that meant. I developed an obsession around meds. For example, I read it often take higher doses and a longer amount of time for meds to work on ocd (up to 3 months and over). Anyway, I started on the lowest dose of citalopram and then I worked my way up to 40, but I kept on changing my doses up and down, as I was scared that it wasn’t working and then at least if it wasn’t working I could blame it on being inconsistent with the doses, opposed to it being “true”. I also stopped all together before reaching 3 months as I was scared that if I went to 3 months or beyond and it still wasn’t working then it would mean it’s true, so if it didn’t work I could blame it on not being on them for long enough and also messing with the doses. It became obsessional and I was scared all the time about them not working and it meaning it’s all real. After I stopped a few months later I started on Sertraline (Zoloft) but would not go above 25mg (smallest dose) as I was scared to go higher incase it didn’t work and then I’d run out of excuses and have to accept its true. 25mg didn’t really do anything, maybe reduced anxiety slightly, but the thoughts stayed the same. I wasn’t on it that long, but I was terrified all the time as to why it wasn’t getting better, but was comforted to know I was only on a small dose so could maybe blame that as the reason, opposed to it being true. Forward a year or so, I went back on Sertraline (Zoloft) 25mg a week ago and the thoughts have been worse and I’m obsessing over what this means and it’s making it feel more real and I’m convinced because meds haven’t worked for me, it means it’s all real. My biggest fear was to go on meds and for it all to still feel true and then me having to accept it’s real, as why would they not work? Admittedly, I haven’t taken them correctly, but I have this deep rooted fear that it’s all real/true and meds not working is more “evidence”. I get obsessional about meds and them not working and it meaning it’s “real”. I feel like the exception. Anyone have any advice?

We’ve been seeing one another a little over a month so it’s early days, jusr had our second date where we booked somewhere for us to stay, however he’s jusr changed his hinge profile pictures. So this probably means he’s talking to other girls? Now this has really freaked me out like what do I do now? This man suffers from ocd, adhd and burnouts and has explained to me several times that if he disappears it’s nothing perosnal but now seeing that I feel slightly like it’s personal. I know I need to ask him what we’re working towards but I’m scared it’s gonna overstimulate him. I’m unsure what to do

Hello again, It's 1 thing after another & OCD & autism/adhd has worn me down to feeling more depressed than I can remember & sleeping almost non stop. Can't seem to muster the fight these days. I feel more shame posting on here & I don't know how to stop seeing myself as a bad person or that i've done a bad thing that needs self examination or worse. An old theme has come back with a vengeance, way worse than before as the previous 1 I posted about hovers in the background. In 2016/17 when I was 22 & 23 I tried to date or hook up with three 18 or 19 year olds. These were all dating app chats over the course of a few hours and 2 of the girls were doing their final year school exams, 1 working. 1 of the girls got really upset with me as I briefly didnt believe why she couldnt meet up & she was stressed with exam prep. There seemed to be a gap in maturity (I wasnt very mature myself) which put me off & looking back makes me feel even worse about pursuing that to begin with before we spoke. Maybe it's cause she was in school and i was in uni. It's hard to get my head past. The other 2 petered out & I tried to persuade 1 of the other girls to come meet me & it was a bit sexual over the app. Even with the 1/2 your age plus 7 age gap "rule" I feel like I was a predator without meaning to be. Where is the generally accepted line when things like these are immoral when it's a hotly debated subject in places like reddit? How does 1 face ERP (ive meant to be doing it for the last 6 weeks) when you know if you posted about what you done on another forum many would label you a creep or even a predator? It feels like I'm just letting myself off the hook. Have any of you faced this & how did you overcome?

I've been doing a huge amount of self therapy for my OCD. Gone through ERP, and journaling + a bit of therapy where I could afford it. Realized I also have a lot of codependency. My "findings" can be categorized into these 3 areas. Mindfullness (Being aware of your body mind and spirit, or in my case emotion thoughts and awareness), the idea that the emotion I feel to a thought is me choosing the story I believe in and finally the fact that I seem to be choosing stories which build off the fundemental premise that im worthless, not worthy, or evil in some fashion. The central theme/core fear is that I'm fundementally bad. Like I'm deserving of the worst things happening to me. It's not right logically, of course I made mistakes, my intentions are always though to be better and get better. I find myself being hypervigilant about my own behaviour. I ruminate a huge amount about my thoughts etc. Grew up basically in a fundementalist christian cult, was bullied severely and grew up in a very dysfunctional family. Needless to say, had to unlearn a huge amount of cognitive distortions and behaviour. I'm just tired. So tired. Sometimes I see the light and im like "Wait this is the story im believing! I believe im evil and bad" and then the clarity brings peace. Then the thoughts creep back in, and my awareness is on them. I'm trying to analyze/pinpoint where that belief comes from. It's like naming where the feeling comes from. I get a thought "___, you're a piece of shit, if others knew you they would hate you, what if one day they will?" then I notice it's just a thought but in my head, like skull I feel something. It's like the top of my head or behind my eyes. It's not pain, more of a "click" or awareness shift. I can't stop myself from not believing that im exactly that. I try to sit with the uncertainty but it's so annoying that I can't seem to control my belief. I believe im horrible. I don't know if it's me, or more of an impression. I'm leaning to it being an impression imparted on me through my life experiences. I just don't know how to unclick myself. I do mindfullness and small tricks to ground myself. It's only temporary though and that click shortly comes back. At this point I just try to accept it and be like "Well maybe!". That also gives me just a slight numbing effect until at one point the feeling fully comes back. I'm really tired boss. How much more healing do I have to do. Is there anything else I could maybe try?

I finally figured it out, I was assaulted at work and i currently still work there but ever since then ive been having anxiety that it can happen again or i can be one which scared me the most because I have really bad intrusive thoughts and images to the point where it’s real and now those images are coming back and I’m convinced I really did those things like what that man did to me what do I do??

Is there an ocd them that makes u feel like u can’t do life anymore? Every second of everyday is thoughts consumed in see this is why u can’t do life, this is something else you’re failing at, here’s another area you suck at, you’ll never be able to do life, nothing will be easy, as soon as things get good they’ll get bad again. Nobody wants you to win. I mean it’s hard to shut it off bc it’s not wrong……

Today has been a shitty day. I got triggered this evening about the same intrusive thought and scenario I always worry about. Its scary because I try to think logically and realistically. But I really don't trust myself and am unsure if these things happened or not. It's very frightening and idk how much more I can take

(20, mdni!) okay, so this is abt my real event ocd, but I can totally see ppl w/ other types of ocd being affected by this too, so feedback from ANYONE is appreciated. do you guys ever wipe your hand when you bump into/graze against something on accident? like let’s say you’re talking to somebody, they’re showing you something, you reach for it, and your knuckle accidentally brushes against their boob. when it’s over, and you go back to whatever you were doing before, would you also wipe your hand on a rough surface repeatedly or scrape at the places you touched something with using your teeth to get rid of the lingering sensation? bc that’s something I do on top of rumination. it happened a lot when I was younger, too. I’d be reading a book/playing a game abt nature, and when something like a picture of a bug or fungus came up, I’d get spooked, drop what I was doing and wipe my hands on my pants. I have a good feeling I’m not alone in this, but I haven’t seen a lot of people talk abt it. pls let me know if I’m right!!

I’d RLLY like some advice if possible. I want to get the most help i can and I’m not sure if my new therapist is a good fit. Idk im just too sensitive but he’s every session session he says “if it’s true you have ocd” “if you have adhd” and it just irks me like idk 😭 he’s says it because he can’t diagnose me but like… I’ve been diagnosed for around 10 years at this point. like if my back hurts bc i have scoliosis or like if i tell him I’ve had a tonsillectomy i feel like he wouldn’t say “well if those things happened or were true” like idk 😭 I’ve never had anyone talk to me like that? I’ve brought it up once and he was like “ok i see i have to hedge w you” and im like??? What confuses me the most is that my psychiatrist is giving me new meds for ocd and SHES the one who reccomended him so im like??? Okay?! I feel that almost everything he says i already try to do. Except for an OCD worksheet. But my psychiatrist is the one who gave him the worksheet anyways. So when i flip the ocd paper over and see a thing that’s literally OCD why i don’t drive like ITS ON THE PAPER it just feels almost invalidating to be told yeah you might have issues. I want to keep going to therapy but im think maybe i should try again? And hes my first male therapist so i feel really awkward. I’d be willing to wait a long time if i have to even. OR im overthinking things and maybe i should go back and try to talk about him again even though it seems he doesnt want to.

The more I talk to people with ocd and the good brave sufferers on this app I’m starting to see a bad trail of miss information and poor therapy execution. Also can we please be honest with the sufferers, medication is not going to properly fix anything. Medication that pumps unnatural amounts of a neural transmitter, numbing emotions, causing loss of libido, genital numbness, weight gain, migraines is not fixing any biology, it is artificially changing biology. What changes real biology is good therapy. The biology of ocd is not what people think it is, and to be honest science is not solid on it either. What causes ocd in a individual is not black and white, Is it the chicken or the egg with ocd science, but the good news is science shows it doesn’t matter, and it is not a rd block to recovery. Now I am not against people taking meds. I’m not against people doing anything that brings them relief and gets them freedom, I don’t want anyone to suffer and everyone is in a different position in life, with different life stressors, and meds are necessary to stabilise and get them out of a dark hole. I was in one myself once and meds got me out of it, but meds never fixed my problem, meds masked my problem and gave me others. Please let’s be honest with them. Neural plasticity is a real science, meds are a poor understood one. Therapists please make it your goal and please remind yourself to Execute your therapy well and with passion and clarity. Some people want to try do it without the meds, but they just don’t know how. So please encourage them and show them the way, they are stronger then you think. Lots of love. From Former OCD sufferer who loves the power of psychology.

Does anyone have a before/after story? How to OCD start for you? I haven't always had OCD. I would say that before OCD I was an over-analyzer and liked to debate things. Also hyper concerned about "integrity." So maybe those are traits that make people susceptible to OCD. Mine started as a slow but steady addiction to confessing things to my g/f. You can say it was initiated by a mistake I made in the relationship. I felt bad about it, so I went on this mission to confess every little minuscule detail or potential thing e.g. "OMG I glanced at a girl once!" etc. Stupid stuff like that. I specifically remember the period of time where this "switch" happened. This was organically created OCD. This issue caused it. It switched from rumination and "problem solving" into an overwhelming NEED / "you must confess" every little thing ELSE anxiety, guilt, shame. OCD attacks things we care about. I cared / care about my integrity to g/f to build trust. "Not confessing" went directly against that. So you're left in purgatory. But the point is Idk if everyone has that same "origin story." I think this gives insight on what OCD actually is. At the end of the day, it's a mental addiction that needs to be broken somehow.

I have an urge to correct something I feel I made a mistake on. I keep ruminating about it. If I don’t engage in what OCD is telling me to do, how long will this last? I feel like it’s going to haunt me forever, and guess I’m supposed to sit with that discomfort; however, I’m looking for peer support. I guess my question is… if you don’t give into your OCD, how long does one specific thing last for you?

I wish for this to find the right people. Reddit is tricky, one of those sites where it’s a hit or miss. ( 23M ) I’m here to talk about something that will certainly give people who suffer with health anxiety/ GAD /panic reassurance that they will be fine. They will be okay, they are safe. I as well hope to find anyone or people who have experienced anything similar to me or close to identical. For this journey has been really grueling and very scary to say the least. In high school in 2018 I was depressed and terrified of being myself being my true self so much that I wouldn’t even act myself at home. I was terrified on going to public school I thought the kids there were meaner and more violent then the ones in catholic school which I traditionally went to before HS. For a whole 4 years I experienced non stop stress, non stop anxiety for the next day the next week. I am not exaggerating it was actually hell. I couldn’t focus on academics and I was too afraid to ask my parents to transfer me to another school, so everyday at school for 4 years I was in total misery and physical agony. I developed dpdr really bad because I was incredibly constant fight or flight everyday. Once I graduated in 2021 I was incredibly depressed, incredibly traumatized and anxious a few years after still the same level of angst and fight or flight everyday along with tachycardia that seemed to not let up for years it seems unless I was sleep. in 2023 I smoked weed because I wanted to feel “calmer” “at peace” that was a really bad decision, I had my first panic attack that lasted hours and was the worst thing I’ve ever felt. I started to have this phobia around my heartbeat and started to change my lifestyle to combat any possibilities I had a disease. Which is so sad and ironic because the anxiety wasn’t helping. Ever since then they have been happening over and over for a long long time until. 2025 they started to lose fuel and potency and I wasn’t experiencing as much high anxiety and panic as much anymore. Now here in 2026 I am now starting to discover the root of all of these episodes of anxiety and it stems from high school. When I never asked for help and struggled greatly in silence for years. I am currently working through my trauma to best I can. I forgot to mention but in 2024 I got almost all required tests done and they all came back fine ultrasound, 14 day Holter monitor, Trans Echo, EKG. Normal despite the agony I’ve been in for YEARS. none of my current doctors want to give me tests because the ones I did already were normal. so weird has anyone ever gone through something similar to this or very similar to this ? I am a worried about what these Prolonged experiences could have done to my health. Has anyone ever experienced anything close to the terrifying degree as me ? I feel alone and have felt very scared about my life as a whole because of what I think I’ve done to my health. So I am here at NOCD looking for support as a lot of my health fears stem from checking, compulsions, and intrusive thoughts about what my past has done to my health. So I’m seeking help. Hope someone, even just one person out there, can relate or know what this is like long-term.