Does anyone have ocd so severe that it feels like no matter what you’re doing, you’re doing something wrong? For example, no matter how I’m holding my daughter I feel like it’s wrong. If I hold her close to me, far away from me, where my hands are placed, etc. I had to unbuckle her seat straps on her high chair and I felt like i went in too aggressive. The buckle lays right in her crotch and allll I could about, was my fingers being near her crotch. I start to hyper focus on it and it makes me soooo uncomfortable. 😓. If she’s laying on my chest I start to hyper focus on my breasts and how they feel and I start to focus so hard on making sure they don’t move or anything. The slightest twitch will send me into a spiral. Same thing when she’s sitting on my lap. I’m constantly telling myself “don’t move don’t move don’t move” and if my leg does move even the slightest bit I freak out and rush of guilt runs over me. Sometimes I don’t even know if I actually move or not, or if I just imagine it. It’s getting really out of hand. I feel so anxious all of the time and I feel like every move I make is wrong. I’m so stiff around her. She’s two so she crawls all over me and if she straddles my leg or my foot or lap or anything I feel this brush of guilt take over me that makes me want to vomit. Like I could’ve done something to prevent it. And when I don’t take the steps to prevent it, I feel so guilty. Like I didn’t move out of the way because I wanted it. When doing diaper changes, I’m so careful about where my hands are, where the diaper is, etc. My mind and heart are just racing and I literally have to think about what my next Move is, strategically place my hands so that they aren’t anywhere near anything conceivably dangerous. My stomach is in knots right now because I just feel so guilty about every single movement I’ve made today. I’m constantly on edge and ruminating/preparing for every move I make all of the time.

Struggling. My mind/OCD told me I had already abused my child by breathing when they were laying across me and that I might as well do something else to hurt them. I had to think for a second, but the only thing that came to mind was to move my elbow towards their groin area to cause a "feeling". Well I did just that, and I ended up grazing their groinal area and it caused a disgusting unwanted feeling. I IMMEDIATELY wanted to throw up and panicked. I also asked my child to move off of me immediately. It went against my morals, beliefs, and values as an individual and mother. I can't stop thinking about it and it's very debilitating. I didn't enjoy a single moment of it. But my question to you guys is am the monster that I've always been scared of being? Do I belong in the ground? Do I deserve to have a wonderful life and wonderful, perfect child?

Hi NOCD community, I was hoping to get some advice from fellow sufferers. In December we welcomed the first baby into the family, my beautiful niece. Since then, my POCD has been awful, which I know is probably very normal. Last week, in the middle of a very high stress day in my family, I was changing my niece and as usually happens, I got intrusive thoughts about awful things people do to babies when changing them. The thoughts were so harrowing to have as I was also changing her at the exact same time, and I felt my hands just quickly want to finish patting her dry before putting her nappy on, and for some reason, my heart dropped with that hand movement, because I was afraid that I had acted out the awful thoughts in my head, in a moment of mania because my morals, values and heart do not align with abuse of any kind, especially to children. My niece is my everything, and I know I would never want harm to come to her in any way, shape or form. I love her endlessly. I am having therapy, but have only had a couple of sessions. But, I cannot shake the 'what if'. I am tortured over trying to remember what it was I did that made my heart drop, but I can't, and its getting fuzzier and fuzzier the more I try to remember. Could anyone offer any advice on this please? Thank you.

Let me start by prefacing that I developed ocd as postpartum ocd after having my first child. I had harm and pocd. I had it on and off for years and then it just eventually went away completely for many years until recently after a stressful life event. Now that it’s back it again targets my children but now my grandchildren also. It’s been horrible and makes me pull away from them. Last night my 6 year old granddaughter threw up in the car when my daughter was about to take her home so my daughter brought her back in the house and asked me to clean her up while she cleaned her car. I had some anxiety about it because of my ocd but I couldn’t say no to helping so I opened the bathroom door and my granddaughter was standing in her underwear waiting for me to clean and dress her. Everything was fine and normal but then for some reason, I have no idea why, I looked down at her chest area. I immediately got so upset and didn’t know why I looked there and now my ocd is saying it’s because i’m a monster. I tried to tell myself it’s just normal human behavior when someone is standing there naked that you look where you shouldn’t simply because it’s just there in front of you but I feel horrible. I don’t feel any inappropriate way about her or any child but my ocd is saying it was inappropriate. Has anyone else been through this?