My OCD story

Hey there! I’m new to the NOCD community. Just joined today, but in desperate need of encouragement from my fellow relationship OCD subtypes and scrupulosity subtypes. In the summer of 2023, I was a youth pastor and dated a guy from my church. I quickly broke it off because i felt lustful, sinful, and he didn’t meet my high standards. I quickly fell into depression and guilt, seeing this guy at my church. I felt like I had disappointed God by kissing a man he didn’t tell me to, or kissing someone I wasn’t going to marry. Fall and winter of 2023, I was having panic attacks. Dry heaving because of anxiety. I was obsessing over the end times and if I was going to be with Jesus for eternity or not. January and February of 2024, I was suicidal. Yet I thought it was spiritual warfare. I was spiritualizing everything, crying, dry heaving, having intense panic attacks. End of March and April, I was admitted into the hospital for my mental health by my pastor/boss and his wife from my church. They got me on sertraline but I was suicidal, delusional, and violent. So I admitted myself into a psych ward. During my time in the psych ward, I hallucinated, was delusional, acted out parables and experienced what’s called catatonic psychosis.. look it up lol. I was put on heavy doses of Haldol, an antipsychotic, which made me extremely high and antsy. I was hospitalized 4 times in April due to delusions, catatonic psychosis, and antipsychotics. I was extremely afraid of the devil, demonic spirits, thought I was the antichrist and had hallucinations. It was an extremely scary part of my life. All while this is happening, I had started dating my ex bf again. Who turned out to be a Godly man that I rushed things with and who had been praying and waiting for me. I stayed with my family over the summer of 2024 as I reacclimatized to real life again. And eventually moved back to where I was living as a youth pastor.. except I got a different job. When I moved back home.. it was really hard for me to get back into church. It was hard for me to see my church family who had seen me as a spiritual leader. I didn’t want to do church anymore. My bf and I then starting to sleep together, and I felt so broken and nauseous knowing it was wrong and we were sinning against God. We had given into temptation, and my ocd was running wild sometimes. I had been diagnosed with scrupulosity after being hospitalized. We’re still together to this day, are engaged and getting married, but I feel awful. I resigned my pastoral license because of fornication. I just feel paralyzed by shame. We’ve told multiple people we’ve slept together, whether it was a confession compulsion of mine or not.. idk. But are going through purity and pre marital counseling with that same pastor/former boss of mine. I just.. need encouragement. Anyone?

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.

(Long post warning) Hi, I’ve been struggling with severe OCD for six years now. it started in 2019 with my theme being getting sick/emetophobia. it devastated my life. I almost didn’t graduate high school from it. I remember washing my hands for three hours one day until they were nearly bloody while crying and asking why I could not stop doing it. I remember id have to write and rewrite sentences when I did my English homework and that’s why I nearly failed that class. I remember how I would spend up to thirty minutes to an hour pacing the halls of my apartment while my mom was asleep until I neutralized the thoughts about throwing up and I could finally go to bed. I don’t know when it happened, but my theme switched. Sometimes in late 2020 or early 2021, it switched to POCD. It started with a single thought, and I focused on it and it’s been my theme since then for four years. It has been absolutely destroying me. I feel so disgusted and lost and just tired. My compulsions are severe now. I thought they were bad before, but now they’re ten times worse. I can’t eat, drink, change my clothes, walk, or even do things on my phone normally. I’ve developed so many mental compulsions that it’s so intricate and complicated yet at the same time I’ve done them so much that they’ve become normal. An example I have is if im putting on a shirt and I have a “bad” thought, I have to take it off and put it back on two more times (that’ll make it 3 times I put the shirt back on - odd numbers are my safe number). I have to have a good thought on the third time otherwise I have to take it off and put it on two more times to make it five times I put on that shirt. If not that then I just put on a different shirt because the original is now tainted with my bad thought. I can’t open apps on my phone. It’s with the numbers again. If I open TikTok once while having a bad thought - I have to close it and open it two more times and so on. Sometimes I do it up to 30 times. So I just don’t do things usually. I don’t turn on the TV because I know I’ll redo it. I don’t open a book or grab it off my shelf because I’ll have to repeat the action. I can’t even lay in bed without getting up and redoing it even if im exhausted. I just feel so helpless. I don’t know what to do. I feel disgusting and even now my minds screaming at me that I am dirty and what I think is true. I just wish I was free of this, I wish I could just live my life. I’ve wasted hours and days because of my compulsions. I mask it so well around my friends. I don’t do them in front of anyone or I’ve learned to hide it well. But when im back home alone, it goes haywire. I just want to live again.