“Post” OCD experience. During lockdown I had a painful year of pure obsessive HOCD, often spent fantasising about a time where I would be free of my obsession. A year later, having medicated and put my self through ERP, free of my OCD, I’m still painfully unsatisfied. I’m in a happy relationship, I go to university, I play football, have nice friends. etc… but life is so foggy now. I’m extremely out of touch with my emotions now(having previously been obsessively in touch with them), I can hardly remember each day that goes by, nothing seems real anymore. Can anyone else relate?

Hi, I’m new here!! I’m praying I don’t get judged for this. But, back in late May of 2022 ( literally right before I graduated high school), I added this one random girl from my school on Snapchat. She posted something about a graduation party , so I swiped up on her story basically saying how I can’t believe we’re almost graduated. She replied and we had a really short and simple conversation. The next day ( i believe) , we started talking a lot , and I just so happened to see her at the highschool when we were grabbing our graduation outfits and doing the rehearsal. When I saw her irl, I kinda got turned off ( I heard she was kinda crazy) , and on top of that , she was a little ugly irl. I remember seeing her Snapchat bio , and she was close friends with my female cousin ( a year younger than me) , who I happened to experiment sexually with when I was 10-11 years old. I remember going to work later that day and having sort of a lightbulb flick thought ( it wasn’t a good thought though) , what if my cousin told her about what happened when we were younger? So I started to kind of panic and immediately distanced myself from that girl. I also experimented sexually with one of my female friends when I was 10-11 , and from that day onwards, I’ve been pretty much living in paranoia and a little bit of guilt about someone finding out and my life being ruined . On top of that, It’s gotten worse to now sometimes I wonder if a girl I added off of quick add ( Snapchat) is underage even if they told me they were 18+ or had 18 and above in their bio, and I get so much guilt and anxiety about that. I even had a quick thought last February on what if I did something inappropriate with my younger cousin when I was 15-16 but I just can’t exactly remember when it happened , and it still eats me alive when I think about it, because I don’t know if it happened or not. I’m sorry for the long vent, I just wish I felt normal again. No matter how much I try to do things that old me used to do, life always feels “ off”. I always kept the top part about when I was younger a secret up until early (ish ) 2024, then I vented to one of my best friends and he told me that that’s a normal thing to do at a young age. Since then, I have told multiple friends and they all say they did similar stuff, but my brain just can’t accept that. Please help me, I quite literally overthink everything nowadays. 2021 was the last full year that I felt normal ( coincidentally, the best year of my life so far) . It’s not just about sexual related things either, sometimes I’ll wonder if I messed up something at work or hit a car while driving/hit someone and drove off. I just wanna live my life how I was supposed to live it after highschool ( carefree and happy) before whatever it is ( I think it’s ocd) hit me unexpectedly. Thanks to anyone who read this , I just needed to pour it out regardless of how negative I felt typing this, I hope someone can relate , because I feel so alone in my head at times.

So, I know my capacity to get fixated on things. And it's normally something that's relatively remote but, my latest issue is really getting to me and I was wondering if people have any advice. I'm avoiding getting too into specifics, as I don't want this to get reassurance-y but, in essence.. I came to the realisation recently that people who I'd been "friends" (feels like the wrong term now) when I was younger were not very nice people, and normalized a lot of very unpleasant behaviour towards other members of the group. They really normalized it, sold themselves as figures of authority, as older and more responsible and grown-up than others, and looking back, they acted horribly. And coming to this realisation, that I'd been manipulated into just accepting their behaviour has just... broken me. My OCD has latched onto it and I can't stop feeling irreversibly tainted by it. I've talked to others about it, and they've reassured me, told me it's not a big deal and that I hold myself to too high a standard, but none of that sticks. I feel better for a bit, then think 'Maybe when you told them you were skewing it to make yourself look better' or 'Did you leave out a crucial detail'. I keep ruminating over and over, trying to remember exactly how everything played out, trying to figure out if I fed into the behaviour, if I did something bad myself (because y'know, I feel like I was accepting of it at the time, so what does it say about my own values?). I know I need to stop doing all this if I want to improve, but then some part of me keeps saying 'So, you're just going to let yourself off the hook then?' Normally, I can rationalize my own fears to some degree, assure myself something won't happen, but the realness of the situation, and the fact I only came to understand the reality of it because the thought had been bothering me means it feels so much more all-encompassing. I know confessing in itself is a compulsion, but I keep feeling that if I'm not I'm somehow concealing what I 'really am' from others around me, and any positive interactions are me deceiving them in some way. I feel like I can't enjoy anything in life right now, and a good part of me feels I should not enjoy it ever again. If anybody has any advice on it, I'm all ears. Or even hearing if you relate to these feelings, I might appreciate the solidarity at least.

Looking back, my introverted nature and struggles to find belonging in high school may have set the stage for how OCD would later impact my relationships. I had my first relationship in high school, but OCD wasn’t a major factor then. It wasn’t until my longest relationship—six years from age 18 to 24—that OCD really took hold. The relationship itself wasn’t the issue; it was what happened after. When it ended, I became obsessed with confessing past mistakes, convinced I had to be completely transparent. Even when my partner was willing to work past them, I couldn’t let go of the intrusive thoughts, and that obsession landed me in the hospital. From there, my struggle with ROCD (Relationship OCD) fully emerged. For years, every time I tried to move forward in dating, doubts consumed me. I would start seeing someone and feel fine, but then the questions would creep in: Do I really like her? Do I find her attractive? Is she getting on my nerves? What if I’m with the wrong person? I’d break things off, thinking I was following my true feelings. But then I’d question: Was that really how I felt, or was it just OCD? I tried again and again, each time hoping I could “withstand it this time,” only to fall back into the same cycle. The back and forth hurt both me and the person I was with. By the time I realized it was ROCD, the damage had been done, and I still hadn’t built the tools to manage it. Now, at 28, I know I need to approach dating differently. I recently talked to someone from a dating app, and my OCD still showed up—questioning my every move, making me doubt my own decisions. I haven’t yet done ERP specifically for ROCD, but I know that’s my next step. Just like I’ve learned tools for managing my other OCD subtypes, I need a set of strategies for when intrusive doubts hit in relationships. My goal this year is to stop letting uncertainty control me—to learn how to sit with doubt instead of trying to “figure it out.” I want to break the cycle and be able to build something healthy without my OCD sabotaging it. I know I’m not alone in this, and I know healing is possible. I’m hopeful that working with a therapist will help me develop exposures and thought loops to practice. I don’t expect to eliminate doubt entirely—after all, doubt is a part of every relationship—but I want to reach a place where it doesn’t paralyze me. Where I can move forward without constantly questioning whether I should. And where I can be in a relationship without feeling like OCD is pulling the strings. I would appreciate hearing about your experiences with ROCD. Please share your thoughts or any questions in the comments below. I’d love to connect and offer my perspective. Thanks!