I’m eighteen and have had harm OCD since august. I’m in therapy but every time I feel good and try to act like myself I sometimes feel sick because I feel like this isn’t my true self. When I also get calls from friends I feel anxious because they don’t know about my ocd. So I feel like that guilt for not replying to them when my ocd was really bad and debilitating. And now when I get their calls it makes me feel sad because it reminds me of who I used to be and how I didn’t have to worry about or even had the ocd thoughts of hurting someone. I sometimes feel like I lost those memories of being just a teenager. This is why I hold back on hanging out with them but I’m working on not holding back anymore. Does anyone else experience the same thing?

(Long post warning) Hi, I’ve been struggling with severe OCD for six years now. it started in 2019 with my theme being getting sick/emetophobia. it devastated my life. I almost didn’t graduate high school from it. I remember washing my hands for three hours one day until they were nearly bloody while crying and asking why I could not stop doing it. I remember id have to write and rewrite sentences when I did my English homework and that’s why I nearly failed that class. I remember how I would spend up to thirty minutes to an hour pacing the halls of my apartment while my mom was asleep until I neutralized the thoughts about throwing up and I could finally go to bed. I don’t know when it happened, but my theme switched. Sometimes in late 2020 or early 2021, it switched to POCD. It started with a single thought, and I focused on it and it’s been my theme since then for four years. It has been absolutely destroying me. I feel so disgusted and lost and just tired. My compulsions are severe now. I thought they were bad before, but now they’re ten times worse. I can’t eat, drink, change my clothes, walk, or even do things on my phone normally. I’ve developed so many mental compulsions that it’s so intricate and complicated yet at the same time I’ve done them so much that they’ve become normal. An example I have is if im putting on a shirt and I have a “bad” thought, I have to take it off and put it back on two more times (that’ll make it 3 times I put the shirt back on - odd numbers are my safe number). I have to have a good thought on the third time otherwise I have to take it off and put it on two more times to make it five times I put on that shirt. If not that then I just put on a different shirt because the original is now tainted with my bad thought. I can’t open apps on my phone. It’s with the numbers again. If I open TikTok once while having a bad thought - I have to close it and open it two more times and so on. Sometimes I do it up to 30 times. So I just don’t do things usually. I don’t turn on the TV because I know I’ll redo it. I don’t open a book or grab it off my shelf because I’ll have to repeat the action. I can’t even lay in bed without getting up and redoing it even if im exhausted. I just feel so helpless. I don’t know what to do. I feel disgusting and even now my minds screaming at me that I am dirty and what I think is true. I just wish I was free of this, I wish I could just live my life. I’ve wasted hours and days because of my compulsions. I mask it so well around my friends. I don’t do them in front of anyone or I’ve learned to hide it well. But when im back home alone, it goes haywire. I just want to live again.

I few years ago, I did self-harm a few times, and then I got super into spirituality, and about a year ago, I remembered I did self-harm and ever since haven't been able to shake the guilt off... Constantly, every day, my mind would make me feel guilty about it and think about it all day. It's like my brain knew the thought that I could/ have cut myself scared me, so it kept bringing it up. My family had no idea I had ever done this, so my OCD told me I was a liar for not telling them about every day. I was afraid that they wouldn't love me anymore and send me to a mental hospital if I told them. About 2-3 months ago, I had gotten so fed up with having these thoughts every day and confessed to my mom what I had done, and her reaction was great. And I thought I'd never have thoughts about when I did self-harm again because I finally confessed. I was wrong. Even with people telling me that it's okay, I did that, I can't shake the guilt I had around this event, and even more so the fear/guilt around my own thoughts... My therapist and I talk about how the problem isn't the thoughts but what the OCD does to them. I try to create positive neural pathways, but that just makes me more stressed about it. There are things I'm supposed to tell myself when I feel negative, but I think I get that confused and tell myself those things every time I have thoughts about what I did. Which is feeding into a mental compulsion (replacing every "bad" thought with a "good" one. What works for me is (if I can) do nothing and have the thoughts... It's been hard to get better because I have had no idea what's been happening to me and felt like for the last year I was going crazy... I always thought OCD was cleaning stuff and physical compulsions . Everything that happened to me happened in my head. On the worst days when my OCD is really bad, every single time I was conscious and aware, I was thinking about the fact that I did self-harm. I would lie in bed all day trying to figure out my thoughts because I thought if I watched TV, I would be avoiding important things. I thought I had to figure out all my thoughts. I would ruminate, replay, and second-guess all. day. long. It was hard to recognize it was OCD because I thought I had done something seriously bad and wrong, and that I must deserve these thoughts. I think the trick is that you feel like you must have positive thoughts, and the most distressing thing wasn't necessarily the fact that I did self-harm, but the fact that I couldn't stop thinking about it. I find the best thing you can do is just have all your thoughts in your head and try not to separate them from good and bad, if you can. It's nice to have people who understand!!!! More to come, about the journey. My favorite thing to say when I'm stuck is "that sly devil... OCD. Silly OCD is getting to me right now, but it won't last forever. That sneaky guy tricked me again" Love you!!!

Hi my names Abby and i’m 16 years old. (I am undiagnosed) Everything that’s lead me and my therapist to potentially believe I have ocd has been the worst experience of my life so far. For my childhood and my teenage years up until I was 15, we’re really difficult. I was bullied a lot growing up and I had a lot of family dynamics that were really hard. (I have 2 siblings that were my half siblings, whom I have no relationship with anymore due to them being much older than me and them disliking my parents for many reasons) but I always felt super alone growing up. I was always told growing up to “stop” or to “shut up” from them and sometimes “stop” from my parents because I was very energetic and excited all the time. So I learned to stay quiet a lot. I was exposed to a lot of gore/pornographic material around age 7-8, which I realize now lead me to have sexual experiences at a young age with females the same gender as me when I was very young. I started masturbating when I was super young. I find that I have forgotten most of my childhood, but sometimes random memories come up in my mind and I remember, or I dream about them. I have very weird dreams that disturb me heavily. I am an INFP personality, and have always loved to help others and care. I love music/ art and guitar so heavily, and love writing poetry. My dream is to become a psychologist and help others whom struggle the same as me. I am very sensitive. I love reading. But recently the past 2 months I haven’t been writing or reading a lot, and when I do it feels inauthentic. The same with playing guitar. I don’t know what triggered this major change in my life, but it all started a few days after my boyfriend left on a trip with his family from the U.S (where we are) to travel across Europe for 3 weeks. He’s been back for about 2 months now but the whatever triggered is still the same. I’ve been dissociating heavily and my memory is terrible. Time passes by so quickly, and I don’t know why but I am now struggling every second of the day with these horrible harmful thoughts (mostly triggered by seeing weapons or example: say my eye is hurting really bad I imagine my eye popping out of my head) these horrible images, whether this be hurting my family or other people. When I first started having these thoughts I panicked and cried and had major panic attacks for weeks, but i’ve been dealing with them for so long now I become really numb and try to avoid going to places that have items of harm. I feel like i’ve lost my identity completely, and I don’t know who I am anymore, I just want to go back to who I was. I really need help. I’ve been worrying i’m a psychopath and that what if I actually desire to do those bad things? Even though I know i’d never ever do them. Please help me.