Am I just off in the world?

Hi all, I’m brand new to this app. I’ve never had any mental disorders. I’ve never been diagnosed or even suspected that I had some kind of issue going on. But recently my partner gently pointed out to me that I’ve developed some weird tendencies that are progressively getting worse. I’m getting overly anxious about the smallest of things. Every time he leaves for work, I stare at the tracker on my phone until he gets through his 25 minute commute because I’m convinced there will be a wreck. I’m terrified that someone is constantly taking pictures of me through my windows and even feel like people can see through my (solid) blinds at night. Every time I hear someone in the hallway of my apartment complex I stare out the peephole because I’m convinced they’re going to break in, even if it’s a neighbor that I recognize. I check myself for lumps in my body every morning and every night, and my partner too, even though neither of us have any scary medical history. I unplug everything with a cord every night before I go to bed because I’m terrified that something is faulty and my apartment will catch on fire. I am constantly afraid of being sued by people I don’t know even though the worst thing I’ve ever done is gotten a speeding ticket. I have dreams that people are sending me threatening mail and it stops me from opening my actual mail. There are so many more, I could go on forever. Writing it all down, I know it’s stupid. I just don’t know if feeling this way is normal. There are people out there that have actual stressors and here I am working myself up a million times a day over nothing. Do normal people feel like this? I thought it was normal.

I have OCD around being a bad or a “weird,” person. I use to be in therapy twice a week for two hours at a time because I was in such bad shape with it. Eventually I moved to once a week at two hours at a time, and now I’m down to just once a week, an hour at a time! I was also put on Lexapro, stayed on it for a year and just weened myself off in Nov. I do feel proud of myself, but today someone said something that was pretty triggering and I’m feeling funny now. Since I was a little girl, if I find someone I liked a lot, I wanted to know everything about them. This typically only happened with older adults and always women. It was always very harmless. I just lived in my head a lot with them always on my mind. Then Facebook came out where you could find out anything about anyone. I could go on to someone’s Facebook page, scroll through their page, pictures, and if I was really interested in them, could find out who their family was through their friends list, etc. Then I’d visit their families FB pages all the time out of just interest (or I guess you could call it being nosy, I don’t really know.) If I really felt interested in them, Id google them, look up their house, just weird stuff like that. I could end up knowing everything about them or their family. It had never caused me any harm or them any harm. I never really thought about it being weird or anything. But one day I woke up and was like, “what if I’m a stalker. What if this person knew that I knew who their parents are, their siblings, etc., etc.?” I got in to an absolute downward spiral about it and felt like such a weirdo, a creep, a freak. Seriously, I’m a pretty normal person. I’m married, kids, husband, stay at home mom, have the same friends I’ve had since middle school, high school, whatever. My therapist didn’t think this was a big deal and I was always scared she was just being nice. I made her promise me to tell me if anything I told her sounded off. Anyway, I was on the phone tonight and the person I was talking to, was talking about someone else and she said, “yeah, I mean she just looks people up and needs to know everything about them. That’s why she could be so good at being a private detective, or something like that. She’s kinda stalkerish.” It hit me hard. I felt like I needed to tell her that maybe she wouldn’t like me either because I can be the same way. I didn’t though. I didn’t get off the phone or do anything with it. If this was a year ago, I’d be in the bathroom vomiting, pacing the floor, taking my anti anxiety med. Today, I just dealt with the uncertainty of her not knowing that I can be the same way. I’m doing ok, but I’m so curious, is it just me that does this kind of thing? Is there anyone else that does this kind of thing? Is this abnormal? I know that it is what it is, but my phone conversation tonight kinda opened up that stuff for me a little bit and now I’m feeling like a freak. Thank you if read this and if you respond.😊

Ok, so when I was in high school I became very obsessive with love. I didn’t love myself and I found this boy who I wanted to love me. I had myself convinced we would get married. He didn’t even know who I was and I’ll admit, I completely invaded his privacy. I memorized his schedule, I put myself in places I knew he’d be or if I knew he was somewhere I’d go. I truly never meant harm, I just wanted him to love me and I thought that me stalking his life would get me into it and get him to love me. It got to the point where I even stalked other girls I thought he liked and told them that we were a “thing” so that they would stop talking to him even though we were definitely not a thing. I struggle to release the guilt of that overall because I feel so so so awful about it, but I know I never meant harm. Anyways, now that we are no longer together, I have this fear that if he never would’ve given me the attention I desired that I would’ve kept going. I would’ve started to get harmful and that I would’ve gone as far as harming people around him in order to get myself into his life. It makes me feel so awful but I truly do feel like I would’ve kept going and kept myself in his life even if he would’ve gotten a different girlfriend. Idk, I just really struggle because I don’t feel as though this was ocd and that maybe I truthfully am a horrible person who does need serious help because I stalked him so much and obsessed over him and crossed his privacy boundary. I’m so afraid to the extent that I would’ve gone had it not become us dating.