- Date posted
- 6y
- Date posted
- 6y
That is precisely the "secret" to recovery, friend. Do NOTHING. When you leave the waters alone, they calm down on their own. When you are panicking, if you literally sit and wait without mental compulsions, just observing the pain, it will still be painful and it will grow but it will come a point where when it reaches its max will start do dwindle and you are going to feel a lot of peace. Anxiety cannot kill you - how you respond to it might.
- Date posted
- 6y
Oof. I have to admit I do this, like search around on the net and see if other people do the same sht I do because if I don't, I think my thoughts are actually true, and that this isn't OCD. But if I didn't realize that it was actually OCD, I would not have learned of how I should have tackled my worries, i.e. I wouldn't have learned about ERP. I guess, to some extent, these questions are helpful, but when done repetitively that's when it becomes a form of reassurance seeking and compulsion
- Date posted
- 6y
I feel though like asking if anyone else does something can also be a form of community seeking. Like ocd can be so lonely and I have no one else to talk to about it and I just want to know if people can relate.
- Date posted
- 6y
Here to support this message. Reassurance seeking is a cunning foe.
- Date posted
- 6y
I definitely do this! But it’s just nice to know you’re not alone
- Date posted
- 6y
When you ask once, that is support. When you ask more than once in different ways - that's a compulsion.
- Date posted
- 6y
Very true. You’ve made me realise that now! It’s so hard to sit and not find a way to deal with your overwhelming fear though :(
- Date posted
- 6y
Very true and helpful words!!! Please let me know any other tips you have. Especially when it’s based on real events.
- Date posted
- 6y
I don’t know how to explain it, but I’ll try. I see faces and shapes in random places or patterns, like when you see shapes in clouds, but I find them everywhere, I believe it’s called pareidolia. The sh*tty part, is that if I’m currently obsessing with let’s say death, my mind tricks me into seeing skulls, or when I was struggling with scrupulosity, I saw crosses, or the face of Jesus even on the pattern of bathroom tiles, or shadows or stains. I don’t know if that makes sense lol, but it really really sucks.
- Date posted
- 3y
Thank you so much for posting about your experience with pareidolia. I’m going through an extreme flare up of OCD, and my pareidolia has become out of hand. I suffer from an extreme fear of schizophrenia, and pareidolia was my OCD’s way of tricking me into believing I was hallucinating. I was not. It’s really common for OCD brains to make connections and habitually notice things until it’s all we see. For me, I can’t look anywhere without pareidolia popping up, but that’s because it’s become a compulsive thing to check that it’s pareidolia and not a hallucination, so I’ve basically invested hours into training my brain to be supper good at seeing Pareidolias.
- Date posted
- 6y
I have asked this type of questions in the past, but only cause I have a form of ocd (or at least I hope it’s also a part of ocd), that I’ve never heard of before. And actually when I post them, no one seems to relate with it ?
- Date posted
- 6y
What form of ocd is that tqh?
- Date posted
- 6y
Wow I’ve never heard of that! It sounds super difficult though, I can imagine how stressful that is every day :( hope you find help x
Related posts
- Date posted
- 22w
hi! i often fear im going to lose my job because i made a “mistake” (not really) that my manager caught and is waiting to tell me about or i fear im going to be kicked off the roster of a team im on for small mistakes that everyone makes. this often compels me to ask those people if i did good or not and gauge their reactions to see if theyre going to remove me and i fall into a cycle of asking and asking. how do you guys deal with these feelings / compulsions? when im flaring i often just spend as much time around these people as possible to gather “evidence” of their opinion on me, but then i get nervous that they hate me for being clingy. i also abandon other duties / tasks so i can spend time with these people to make sure they like me. what do you guys do? anyone else experience the sentiment?
- Date posted
- 20w
I told my OCD group about NOCD and one of the members brought up that this app, despite its intent to create a safe community for sharing OCD experiences could potentially be used for reassurance seeking, thus contributing to compulsions. I’ve noticed some posts about people venting and asking for reassurance and I wonder the same thing.
- Date posted
- 18w
I’m hoping to get some feedback or hear if anyone else experiences similar things. Lately, I’ve been noticing a lot of repetitive behaviors and thoughts that feel hard to control. Some of those things are: - I often get this uneasy feeling, and if I don’t do certain things in a specific way, it just doesn’t feel "just right." - I have to wash my hands until it feels "just right," and if I try not to, I get a thought that something bad will happen if I don’t. - I dislike using public bathrooms and even shared bathrooms at home. - When I shower, I have to wear socks before stepping on the floor. If my feet touch the ground, I feel like I have to shower again. - I get hyper-fixated on cuts, worrying about them getting infected, and I avoid touching water or anything else to prevent bacteria, even if I can’t cover them with a bandaid. - I can’t use dishes that have just been washed because I think they haven’t been cleaned properly. Instead, I use the ones that have already been dried and stored. When I type (like on emails or texts), I’ll fix what I write over and over, trying to make it "just right." - I have a strange dislike for certain numbers (7, 4, and 6) and feel uncomfortable around them. - I also have to follow routines, like making my bed in a certain way, and I can’t stop until everything is in the right order. - I get stuck on intrusive thoughts, like needing to wash my hands repeatedly or constantly checking things (like if I turned off the stove) because I fear something bad will happen if I don’t. - I’ll even repeat things in my head, like words or phrases, to make the "just right" feeling go away. - Sometimes, I treat inanimate objects like they have feelings and worry about hurting them, even though I know it's not real. - I’ve always felt like I’m being watched, which causes a lot of distress. There’s more, but these are some of the main things. I feel like these thoughts and behaviors control a lot of my day, and I just can’t stop them even when I know they’re kind of irrational. Does this sound like it could be signs of OCD, or is it something else? Or just normal behavior?
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