- Date posted
- 18w
can someone help me gauge this situation
i’m not sure (genuinely) if it’s a situation that needs to be addressed or if it’s ocd
i’m not sure (genuinely) if it’s a situation that needs to be addressed or if it’s ocd
Hey! What’s going on?
@viee I’m sorry you are experiencing so much stress. If you think you are on the verge of a panic attack, try stabilizing your breathing (inhale while counting to ten then exhale while counting to ten). Btw this is absolutely OCD. You were already posting a message on Reddit asking for help for something which I can tell means your mind was already vulnerable, then you started worrying about gender (again you’re brain was vulnerable and latched onto something) and then it found something else. It’s the dangerous nature of OCD. I noticed you said asked “why I didn’t feel repulsed at the idea of cheating” this entire message shows you are extremely uncomfortable at the idea of cheating! I’m in a relationship myself and know exactly how you feel. There are times that I see people who are attractive and feel terrible about it but then I think about how sure, other people that aren’t my fiance may look nice, but it doesn’t mean I find them more attractive or suddenly want to leave my fiance! And that trail of thinking typically has me thinking about ALL of the qualities I find attractive about my man. Attraction is so much more than looks, just like a relationship is so much more than physical.
@viee Of course! But you had intrusive thoughts and maybe even intrusive physical reactions. If it wasn’t so, you wouldn’t be so overwhelmed rn as you have been for a few days. Here’s an article on intrusive physical reactions: https://www.treatmyocd.com/what-is-ocd/info/ocd-stats-and-science/why-ocd-can-cause-a-groinal-response-and-what-you-can-do-about-it Here’s an article about intrusive thoughts regarding cheating: https://www.treatmyocd.com/what-is-ocd/common-fears/fear-of-cheating-ocd Remember OCD will always try to attack what you care most about. I hope this helps you!
@RadiantlyRedeemed thanks so much!
Prior to coming to college, I knew that I was having thoughts that other people weren’t having and that it controlled my actions or feelings of guilt in a way that I just couldn’t see in my friends but I ignored it. Since coming to college, my compulsions and stressful thoughts have gotten a lot harder to handle and my new friends have started pointing out that they think I have OCD. I’ll try to explain some of the reasons people have pointed out or I’ve noticed but at the end of the day I always question if I’m just doing these things for some sort of attention or something. I have this strong belief that when I’m walking on pavement, the amount of times that I start stepping on a tile with either my right or left foot have to match. And people always ask me if I’m just superstitious about stepping on the cracks but I don’t mind that as long as I make it match with my other foot. The problem is that whenever I’m unable to “make the tiles or cracks match” I feel like I’ve left some universal channel open and something extremely bad will happen to me in the next 24 hours (after that it resets). Sometimes it makes me look weird when I’m walking and it’s really embarrassing when people ask me about it and I can’t fully explain the concept to them. People generally just get confused and I feel like they just regret asking and think I’m weird. Once, when I was walking down the street with some of my friends, i ran out of tiles to make my steps even and totally FREAKED OUT. I got really anxious and I couldn’t stop bouncing my leg. One of the people I was with made me feel terrible about it when he said “wait that’s actually real?” So now my fears of faking OCD just because has become a bit more real to me since my friends don’t understand the full extent of how it makes me feel, even when they’re actively seeing me break down. Besides this, which is really the most inconvenient part of my potential OCD, there’s a multitude of other things I’ve noticed that show signs of it. Whenever I take a test, I have to be wearing at least 2 hairbands on my wrist and be wearing a sweater in order to do well. Numbers really matter a lot to me because they each have a different meaning and I’m scared of some of them. When I was little, and even now in other instances besides sleeping, I used to count how many times I rolled over before I fell asleep in fear that I would land on one of the bad numbers. For example, 1 would mean a serial killer was in my room, 3 would mean something would come out of the mirror, 4 would mean a doll came to life and was trying to murder me with a knife, etc. They all sound like stupid fears and are highly improbable but it used to feel very real to me. Now I still associate those numbers with the bad things but I’ve worked on trying to expose myself to certain numbers some nights and find some safe ones. Now the number 4 has changed in meaning and evolved into my worst fear, the zombie apocalypse. This all ties back to my tile crack issue because when I “leave the channel open” by making my steps uneven, the number I mess up at (ex: 4 tiles started on the right means I need to start the next four with my left) is the chaos that the channel will bring. Also, I constantly feel like a terrible person because I’m scared that I’m faking my sexuality even though I only like girls. I’ve been closeted for so long throughout high school that sometimes I feel like my current shame and fear of telling important people in my life (ie. parents, family friends, people who I feel are slightly homophobic) is a sign that I’m not like devoted enough to my sexuality – making me scared of calling myself a lesbian. I’ve also never been with a girl because I only recently came out at college and it fuels my rumination that I subconsciously must just be asexual or once again doing it for attention. I’ve tried dating guys to make my mom believe I wasn’t lesbian but kissing them or the thought of spending the rest of my life with a man always makes me literally cry. I go to Virginia Tech and the lack of an LGBTQ+ community here is making my coming out process and search for a true relationship extremely difficult and bleak. Whenever I see a girl I don’t find attractive (even though I see a bunch that I do) it scares me and makes me think I might not actually be lesbian even though I like girls. Idk what to even say about this it just sucks. There’s so much more that I can relate to based on the discussion board such as fears of accidentally having pdophelia and cheating on people I’m not even dating. But at this point I feel like I’ve already written an essay and I don’t even know where to start with the different types of OCD and where to seek a diagnosis. The hardest part about asking for help or guidance is the fact that I never attempted to get diagnosed, making it feel like I can’t even claim that I have it. Thanks for reading this, please write back if you can relate at all :)
Hey, so idk if I have ocd, I would like to think I’m a very self aware person but I don’t wanna self diagnose at all, lmk what you guys think. So pretty much my whole life since I was young I remember having irrational fears im sure it was all trauma induced but when I was a kid I thought my father was poisoning me until I asked him, he started crying and was so shocked that I could ever even think that, my parents broke up when I was legit fresh out the womb, mom worked two jobs and disciplined me, dad let me do whatever on the weekends and got me snacks so I was obsessed with him so obsessed that it was mandatory for me to kiss his picture 20x everyday before school. Growing up I always felt followed by cameras or like someone out there was recording me waiting for me to do something embarrassing to expose me in front of the whole world and my life was over 🤣🤣 I thought my abusive ex bf was stalking me through my I phone camera after we broke up and it would truly stress me out, it made me believe that it was the reason he never reached out again bc I probably looked ugly in the camera he was stalking me through. If I fall out with a friend Ill over analyze everything to see if I did anything wrong and god forbid while I’m self reflecting I realize I did something wrong I feel like an evil person, verbatim the people I fall out with is bc they’ve done me wrong in some way and it has to b something hurtful or repeated mistakes for me to really stay away for good, so I’ll beat myself up for making mistakes with another person who’s made the same amount of mistakes if not more and in most cases I always fall short, and this when I question if it’s ocd or I’m just to self aware and see the ugly in me bc I’m not perfect and it’s just makes me feel so unsettled but again that’s a normal feeling and the next step is to forgive yourself and do better moving forward, not obsess over it like your trying to convince yourself you’re a good person. I’m also hot tempered and will say hurtful things when I’m mad I’m definitely a crash out in the way, you push my bottoms way too many times and I will shred you, and I’ll say things ik will hurt you and that’s just so low, then the anger goes away and I have to face the guilt, which makes my “ocd” 100x worse, it almost feels like I have to do everything right to not trigger it yet again I don’t have the self control to do it all right, I actually have a lot bpd tendencies again not diagnosing but I’m just trying to understand my brain. I worry about dying, getting a terminal illness. uti turning into kidney infection then into cancer kind of thing, knowing that life in general can b tragic is so scary to me, like what will be my story? What will be my life experience?. I believe that people see right through me and discuss it amongst each other, I always tell myself I am not that important but I can’t seem to shake it off sometimes. When I would break up with my ex I would have pre written paragraphs ready to b send if he ever decided to reach back and I would do this to make sure I didn’t forget a single thought, that every point i felt I need to prove was there, and that bothers me bc do I want win an argument or fix the issue. All of these feelings make me feel so pathetic and embarrassed people move on with their lives and I’m still stuck on something that happened 3 yrs ago. Then I’ll get manic get a tattoo, change my hair, go out clubbing do what I can to b the sexy young girl that I am and it helps in the moment but it worsens my mental after the euphoria is gone. I’m currently staying home, not going out, have only 1 friend so I feel like ocd progressively got worse now, I don’t remember it getting this bad in a while. lmk what you guys think don’t judge or think I’m embarrassing I’m actually so cool and if have to convince you I’m cool I will LMFAOO no but fr help
Hi everyone, I’ve already been diagnosed with OCD, and I strongly suspect that I’ve developed a ROCD pattern. I wanted to share a specific situation that just won’t leave me alone – even though it’s objectively been cleared up. I’m in a relationship with a man who is, by nature, a very transparent, honest, and loyal person. Rationally, I know I can trust him. Recently, he got a phone call while I was with him. I asked him to check who it was. He hesitated briefly and then checked kind of slowly – the number wasn’t saved. To me, the whole thing just felt a bit strange. It didn’t seem like “open behavior,” even though he told me afterward that he simply didn’t have the energy to deal with it, since he had generally had a bad day. The problem is: Even after this explanation – which makes sense – the thoughts won’t go away. I keep replaying the situation in my head, analyzing his reaction, wondering if that hesitation meant something – even though I know he didn’t do anything wrong. I feel like I need to bring it up again to feel at ease. But I also know that would only bring temporary relief, and then the cycle would start all over again. It feels just like other OCD loops – only this time, it’s centered around my relationship. Have any of you experienced something like this? How do you stop yourself from falling into the reassurance trap over and over again? I don’t want to overwhelm or hurt my partner unnecessarily – I just want to learn how to manage this inner tension better. did it sound like ocd?? Rocd?? Thanks for reading. It really helps to know I’m not alone. (edited)
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