this is how everything’s been going for me. my pocd started off as, only anxiety around kids and minor thoughts such as “oh no you just look at her wrong” and i would let it pass. it was like this for 3 years. i noticed my anxiety starting being more terribly stressful when my dad was admitted to the hospital & we were in n out of there for months straight constantly hearing “he’s dying then oh he’s good again” & it was a endless cycle i started questioning why i felt the way i felt and why i couldn’t get a correct answer. i hid this from everyone. i didn’t tell anyone about what i was experiencing bc of the fear of being judged. he lost his battle in august😞 i was experiencing alot of stress and anxiety already it was affecting my job. i couldn’t do nails anymore because my thoughts convinced me i was i touching my clients hands wrong. or when it came down to one of my little sisters friends booking an appointment to get their nails done with me i would panic and cancel their appointments bc of the fear that not only are they a minor but that my thoughts would make me think i touched their hands wrong. i started having severe false memories that led me to almost take my life. i was always crying, anxiety attacks, panicking, stay up at nights questioning where i went wrong, wondering what i did to deserve this or if i did something in the the past that i wasn’t aware of. that escalated quickly to “what ifs, urges, anxiety & etc” my thoughts were torturing me again and i ended up isolating myself away from my siblings bc my thoughts convinced me i couldn’t be alone with them or id lose control. i made my older sister stay with me at all times to be sure i wouldn’t act on my thoughts. thankfully she & my mom understood everything i was going through & didn’t judge me for anything. i was doing okay for a little, my siblings were able to be around me. i was able to take my siblings to school and pick them up on my own. i felt so accomplished. i almost screamed of excitement bc i thought i had my life back. until ocd creeped up back on me. and now i’m absolutely worried to even be near them or alone by myself anymore. my thoughts convince me this time i was going to act on them bc i had no more strength to fight. yesterday my mom asked me if i could babysit her friends kids & my siblings while she went to the store and i said “i can’t mom i can’t.” and she told me it’s okay you’re gonna be okay. so i was doing okay until i got an urge and a thought telling me to get up and hurt them. i panicked and locked myself in my room. i sat there and cried and cried on top of my lungs bc i thought i was really going to follow through with it. pocd has been eating me up inside. im so depressed & stressed out. but what worries me more is the thought of “possibly” acting on those thoughts..

I’ve always had OCD, and for most of my life it was little things that seemed manageable at the time or something that would phase out of my head within a couple days/weeks/months. But, the older I got the more severe it became, I’d find myself collapsing deeper and deeper within my own head trying to out think the thoughts that bothered me. About a year ago I had a thought that rattled me to my core. My brothers and I were watching a movie in our mother’s room when my youngest brother turned to me to say something. His close proximity to me triggered a fleeting sexually explicit image in my head and that thought caused me to spiral. Asking questions like, “are you attracted to your minor brother? Are you attracted to minors? Are you gay? Etc.” a couple days went by and my mental stability continued to crumble until I broke down to my mother, she was understanding and we found a a psychiatrist. I got on medication and for a while everything was slowly but surely trending in a positive direction. The thoughts would still pop into my head but they were becoming more manageable. As we all know OCD and mental illness comes in waves. Currently my OCD has been pretty severe. I feel those intrusive thoughts latching on in my head and it’s been very hard to kick them. It’s gotten to the point where I find myself being uncomfortable being in close proximity with my little brother because I feel as though I am capable of harming him in any way. And the more uncomfortable I become being around him the more I find myself lashing out in anger towards the people I care about the most. Those moments of anger cause me to spiral even farther as my head fills with ideas like “what if you are capable of hurting someone or even murdering them?” There’s times where these thoughts rattle me so much that I feel like it would be better to be in prison where I couldn’t harm someone or that even being dead would be a better solution than possibly running the risk of hurting someone in my life I care about. This is about the jist of it, a majority of the OCD I have is centered around the idea that I am capable of harming my little brother physically, mentally, sexually. It’s been exhausting and it feels like there is no end in sight.

So I dealt with something a couple weeks ago that's caused me DEBILITATING anxiety. I just want to know if this follows the OCD pattern. I talked with my therapist and she confused me. Just say if follows along the OCD pattern or not. I don't need reassurance per se! My daughter was laying across me and every time I breathed a certain way I was getting a groinal sensation. I kept breathing like that anyways (ugh idk why), and then my mind told me I had hurt her that I might as well do something else to hurt because what's more. So idk why or what overcame me other than the thought of doing it because my mind told me I had hurt her already ("my mind literally made me question what to do and I guess the only thing I could come up with was using my elbow) and causing another feeling but it came across my mind to elbow her, and I elbowed her crotch or side/thigh area. Which caused another very unwanted groinal sensation. Then I began FREAKING smooth out. And I've been stressing since. I feel like as a mom I don't deserve to be hers anymore. I was doing SO well! Is this really the POCD I was diagnosed with?

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.