Wondering if anyone is in the same boat… For a bit of background, I’m 21 now and am away at university and have finally taken the first steps towards getting mental health help, but I can’t help but wonder why none of my many signs of ocd were caught by those around me sooner 😕 Beginning at around the age of 8 years old (maybe even younger to be honest) I had a compulsion to step on cracks just the right way, if I didn’t step on the very middle of the crack I would stop, go back and do it over again. If I turned my head around once, I needed to do it on the other side to be even, same thing with bumping into doors or walls, if I did it to one arm I needed to go back and do it to the other for symmetry. At school during quizzes or assessments I was almost always the last one done as I would double check my answers 10-20 times as a compulsion. My biggest was and still is knocking on wood three times, at my worst I was doing this from 50-100 times a day. Needless to say some of these (plus many many more) were pretty obvious, and looking back now I’m just kind of frustrated that no adults noticed and, if they did, especially during my younger years, that therapy or ERP wasn’t considered or suggested. I’m in a place now where I’m finally able to seek out mental health support myself, however it’s just frustrating there’s a 7 month wait list at my school when this likely could’ve been addressed over a decade earlier 😔

I feel like in some ways receiving a diagnosis for OCD has in some ways made things worse. I’ve always had what I called “phases” throughout life, which I now know were ocd episodes, but I didn’t really make too much of them and even if it was over several long difficult months, they’d always seem to kind of just pass. Recently I’ve begun my worse flare up in the last few years and now that I’m older I seemed professional help which led to my diagnosis. This all sounds great of course but I can’t actually afford therapy right now so I kinda just have the diagnosis but not the support so now that I realize these phases are actually this incurable mental illness I just feel like I’ve lost all hope that I’ll ever be happy and I feel like I basically obsess about obsessing at this point and it just sucks. Has anyone else had this or a similar experience?

Hi I kept seeing this app on repeat on TikTok over and over and I thought I give it a shot. I have never been diagnosed with OCD but I know that I have it. I’m a young adult and I found out the first time I had OCD was watching lelelons truth video? I was 14 at the time She had to resist sitting back down in a chair after her having sat down she started having a mental break down when she was told to resist. That’s when I knew. It started with myself going up and down a staircase twice buckling unbuckling my seat belt everytime I’m in the car ect I have always been super anti social but trying my best I can socialize but my mind wants to make it sexual with family and friends ughhhh I hate it because that’s not me when I graduated thoughts of hurting my loved ones corrupted my mind I broke down outside of church one time asking if this was really me or not i question if I’m a good enough friend or person in this world to begin with thinking everyone is judging me so so close how can I make this situation better did I do something wrong I struggle with depression as well not to bad but it’s there I come from a loving family but broken as well i believe in god and my OCD makes me go often he’s not real that stuff isn’t real no one is there to save you the list goes on. Anyway I struggle a lot and I really hope that this will help me because I feel extremely hopeless. Lucky for me I do have the ability to seek therapy and I am excited. The only person I ever tell my thoughts to is God no other human has heard so I’m really really hoping this helps me out if your reading this thank you it means a lot because this is my first time ever admitting all this it’s a lot to take in I know and I hope you are ok and that you have a great night and know that we got this

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.