OCD can be hell. I know what it’s like. I have lived with it since I was five years old. I am going to celebrate my 57th birthday in June. I suffer from Pure-O. My latest battle involves dealing with living on the second floor. I just moved to an apartment which I love, but my OCD brain has been nagging me night and day. This wouldn’t make sense to anyone, but to me it’s business as usual with OCD. The more something me as to me, the harder it is to deal with. I find myself recalling every time I have been on a second floor and thinking about how I felt and remembering the persons that were with me each time. It’s a different way of living, a different condition, my brain tells me. I get saturated and snap at people. Then I think about how time is passing and I am wasting it with those ruminating thoughts and I get even more anxious. Then I think about work and my commitments and I feel worse. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. What I am doing right now is like massaging my brain. I let it out, I tell everyone what is going on inside my head and I feel better. When I am really feeling bad, I may need several sessions, but it always works sooner or later. I hope my story helps more than one person and I pray that it will not cause anyone’s symptoms to worsen. Please keep in my mind that we must give our condition, the importance that it warrants. By addressing our OCD we will defeat it. I am not an expert by any means, so please get help with the experts on this site. Kindest regards

My struggles with OCD began in childhood, but it wasn’t until after giving birth to my first child at 30 that I finally received a diagnosis. For years, I suffered in silence with intense anxiety, insomnia, and intrusive thoughts, but because my compulsions were mostly mental—constant rumination, reassurance-seeking, and avoidance—I didn’t realize I had OCD. I experienced Pure O, where my mind would latch onto terrifying thoughts, convincing me something was deeply wrong with me. After my son was born, I was consumed by intrusive fears of harming him, even though I loved him more than anything. Seven weeks into postpartum, I hit a breaking point and ended up in the emergency room, where I was finally diagnosed. For the first time, everything made sense. I didn’t discover exposure and response prevention (ERP) until years later when my son developed Germ OCD during COVID. I went through the program myself first, and it completely changed my life. ERP helped me sit with my intrusive thoughts instead of reacting to them, breaking the cycle that had controlled me for so long. Life isn’t perfect, but it’s so much better than before. I can finally be present instead of trapped in my head. Now, I’m working on trusting myself more and handling challenges without fear of “losing control.” As I prepare to help my daughter start therapy, I feel empowered knowing I’m giving my children the support I never had. If you know you have OCD but haven’t started therapy yet, what’s holding you back?

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 few years ago, I did self-harm a few times, and then I got super into spirituality, and about a year ago, I remembered I did self-harm and ever since haven't been able to shake the guilt off... Constantly, every day, my mind would make me feel guilty about it and think about it all day. It's like my brain knew the thought that I could/ have cut myself scared me, so it kept bringing it up. My family had no idea I had ever done this, so my OCD told me I was a liar for not telling them about every day. I was afraid that they wouldn't love me anymore and send me to a mental hospital if I told them. About 2-3 months ago, I had gotten so fed up with having these thoughts every day and confessed to my mom what I had done, and her reaction was great. And I thought I'd never have thoughts about when I did self-harm again because I finally confessed. I was wrong. Even with people telling me that it's okay, I did that, I can't shake the guilt I had around this event, and even more so the fear/guilt around my own thoughts... My therapist and I talk about how the problem isn't the thoughts but what the OCD does to them. I try to create positive neural pathways, but that just makes me more stressed about it. There are things I'm supposed to tell myself when I feel negative, but I think I get that confused and tell myself those things every time I have thoughts about what I did. Which is feeding into a mental compulsion (replacing every "bad" thought with a "good" one. What works for me is (if I can) do nothing and have the thoughts... It's been hard to get better because I have had no idea what's been happening to me and felt like for the last year I was going crazy... I always thought OCD was cleaning stuff and physical compulsions . Everything that happened to me happened in my head. On the worst days when my OCD is really bad, every single time I was conscious and aware, I was thinking about the fact that I did self-harm. I would lie in bed all day trying to figure out my thoughts because I thought if I watched TV, I would be avoiding important things. I thought I had to figure out all my thoughts. I would ruminate, replay, and second-guess all. day. long. It was hard to do any of the things I loved; OCD took the joy out of it. It was hard to recognize it was OCD because I thought I had done something seriously bad and wrong, and that I must deserve these thoughts. I think the trick is that you feel like you must have positive thoughts, and the most distressing thing wasn't necessarily the fact that I did self-harm, but the fact that I couldn't stop thinking about it. I find the best thing you can do is just have all your thoughts in your head and try not to separate them from good and bad, if you can. It's nice to have people who understand!!!! More to come, about the journey. My favorite thing to say when I'm stuck is "that sly devil... OCD. Silly OCD is getting to me right now, but it won't last forever. That sneaky guy tricked me again." Love you!!!