To all the girls out there :) When your period is coming, does it increase your intrusive thoughts? If so, how do you cope with it? I mean, I clearly know it’s OCD and I know how not-to care about it after this time of the month but week before and during the cycle it’s like a nightmare… even tho I know it’s just this freaking ilness, I feel a huge anxiety and fear. How do you cope with that, girls? (Not looking for reassurance or anything, just being curious! :))

I'm roughly 2 months pregnant and I'm struggling so bad with OCD (specifically surrounding psychosis/postpartum psychosis, postpartum depression, postpartum anxiety, etc). I'm so discouraged because I was sub-clinical for over a year and this pregnancy and the hormones are undoing all of my progress. And it actually seems so much harder than BEFORE when I was at a low point. It feels like the hormones are ruining my brain and making me lose my mind. I keep looking over my shoulder, getting intrusive images of scary hallucinations that I might start to get, i fear hurting myself or my baby, etc. Psychosis in pregnancy is 1 in 1000. That's not that rare. I feel like I just upped my chances of my biggest fear happening and I have so much regret and fear around that. I'm also a Christian and I'm relying on God so much more now than ever, but I'm afraid of that too because people in psychosis often have religious delusions and I can't tell if I'm slipping into that or if God is really just using this trial to pull me closer to him. I just feel so defeated. I feel like ERP just isn't going to work for me because the hormones are a whole different animal that "normal" people with OCD don't have. Like they're making me immune to ERP or that ERP isn't for people like me and I'm hopeless.

How are your experiences during an ocd spike while going through a menstruation? It doesn't matter if you are afab, your experience is valid too! I noticed my thoughts get worsened and the spike intensified, but now that I'm taking sertraline I don't feel an panic attack as before but the throughs and feelings are definitely there so is an unpleasant situation

I was wondering why my ocd was so much worse and I think it’s the luteal phase. I got diagnosed with PMDD recently. For a couple cycles, the pre and during was brutal but I was put on supplements that I thought helped. Now, I think the luteal phase just started but my religious ocd is coming back at full force. It’s scary. It feels so urgent. Like I must figure out the answers to every problem because it is life and death. It’s hard to recognize it is OCD. I feel like if I don’t figure everything out, I’m sinning and disappointing God. Does anyone have advice for surviving the luteal phase?