is it possible to ONLY have rocd and only experience it for the first time in your 20's?? maybe i had ocd growing up and i just didn't know but i still don't really know where i would've had it, but it feels like this came out of no where and my life isn't my own anymore
My ROCD first appeared full force a few months before my wedding. I had been very sure about the relationship before that - probably more sure than my partner. However, prior to dating him I had gotten out of an abusive relationship. The year of our wedding I was experiencing major transitions - we bought a house, I sold my business, and I was starting a new career. In hindsight I can see that those transitions of identity were a huge part of the ocd appearing. I did some work and my ocd got better and I didn’t think about it much but earlier this year it came back again with a vengeance. This comes on the heels of a miscarriage, my beloved dog dying, and restarting ivf treatments. Again - MAJOR transitions! So yes. OCD can appear seemingly randomly - but I can see now that it is often related to stress in my life. I’ve also had OCD morph from ROCD to health ocd and skip around. OCD goes after what you care about most - for me it’s health and relationships. Hope that is helpful!
@Anonymous aw thank you for sharing your story! that does help, i met my boyfriend in highschool and now im 21 so ive been through transitions of identity since then, and another guy confessed his love for me while im with my boyfriend so that didn't help, completely turned my world upside down and got raging rocd, I definitely care a lot about my own identity but i'm also a people pleaser so those can get complicated because i put my all into people but then lose myself in the process, so it makes sense that ocd is coming for me lol i could only imagine having ocd while going through what you explained, i hope you feel strong for overcoming all those obstacles in your life! :) and i wish you the best moving forward
@Anonymous I feel this 100%. Thank you for sharing.
@Pandora_2003 Thank you, you too! ROCD is very upsetting. As a fellow people pleaser I can relate to you. It’s difficult to balance your own shifting identity through life and wanting to make people around you happy. This is a big part of my struggle. I continue to work through ERP and challenging my upsetting thoughts.
@Anonymous First time I’ve seen someone with a similar timeline of onset for ROCD to mine. Thank you for sharing!
@NatSwai I really haven’t talked to people with a similar timeline as mint ROCD either so thanks for sharing! It feels like an island so much of the time.
@Anonymous Yes it definitely does! And OCD likes to use that uniqueness and rarity to add fuel to the fire. If you ever wanna chat just let me know!
@NatSwai Yea would love to! I was traveling for the last couple weeks but back now. It’s so meaningful to know someone is going through something similar
Hey there, for me it seemed like the ROCD came out of nowhere too. I hear OCD can be like that. It was years ago I was in a long-term relationship but out of the blue I had intense fear that I wasn’t in love with him and wasn’t supposed to be with him. I may have had OCD as a kid too, with having an irrational fear that haunted me every time I tried to go to bed. But I don’t remember OCD flaring up between the years of 10-23ish. We don’t fully know what causes OCD, a variety of factors but for me I suspect trauma is a contributor. I almost wonder if it like flips a switch in the brain, that’s what it’s felt like for me.
@SeptemberSky THANK YOU, that's literally what it feels like, i somehow feel like im dying while being in a healthy long term relationship, idk how much longer i can deal with feeling like this, it would be much easier for me to be on my own yet it's incredibly hard to walk away do you still have other ocd subtypes after leaving your long term relationship?
@Pandora_2003 Ugh I am so sorry you’re going through that 😞 yeah it sucks so much. It really hijacks and feels so real. I do have other subtypes like scrupulosity (religious ocd). But that also blends with ROCD bc my relationship with God is often my most important relationship. Sometimes I get responsibility ocd. It’s fascinating how when you learn more about ocd, you find you do sometimes have other subtypes, they can just be subtle or you might not realize you were obsessing in a different area too.
@SeptemberSky exactly, i do relate to the other ones in a way, but not as intense as rocd, what did you end up doing in your long term relationship? how did it end? if you don't mind me asking
@Pandora_2003 I actually stayed with him for about 7 months through the anxiety, I told myself that love is a choice not just a feeling. I didn’t know it was ROCD tho and didn’t know about ERP, so it was miserable. But during that I started to seek God and my bf didn’t want to be a Christian, so I took that as confirmation we weren’t supposed to be together. Only because that was essentially a dealbreaker for me at that point- my belief was that I wanted to be in a relationship with a Christian. That could be a slippery slope for someone looking for incompatibility though, which is what my ROCD is doing currently even though I’m getting to know a guy who is Christian and has many great qualities.
@SeptemberSky thank you for sharing, i get the miserable feeling as that's how i feel, but my bf doesn't have any deal breakers as of now😭, which should be a good thing but i really want to go back to a life without rocd thank you for responding i feel less alone
@Pandora_2003 You are definitely not alone 💛 and yeah, the anxiety is awful until we’re able to do ERP and rewire a bit! At one point, I had avoided dating for years because every time it gave me awful anxiety that I was idolizing someone and sinning against God. But right now I’ve gotten to a point where I can actually go on dates, I never thought I would get to this point! So there is hope, even though it’s painful and difficult to work through, it’s worth it.
@Pandora_2003 This whole thread was so validating and I relate so much to a lot of these comments. New ROCD mid 20s , long term healthy relationship, big life transitions and BOOM it appeared out of thin air and has been harassing my brain for almost a year now. But finally starting therapy to try and get help so I don’t break up with a great person I was planning on marrying for last 5/6 years !!!
@AnonymousAmy so glad this helped!! i'm in therapy too and it's been helping🫶 just remember it'll be hard and it'll take time
Yes. I think I had to ROCD when I started dating my husband in my 20s, but I didn't know it (I only knew ocd as TV portrayed it). I just knew I was stressed about my relationship with my boyfriend, God, and everyone else I was trying to people please. It didn't show up in a majorly debilitating way until 11 years later when we bought our first home, my husband lost his job, and I found out I was pregnant again (major life stressors). It took me another 3 +years to finally get diagnosed. I can see OCD affecting other areas, but nothing as debilitating as ROCD for me.
@Maeday oh wow, you went a lot of time without being diagnosed or getting treatment, how did you cope? mines weird, i only have rocd with my boyfriend and no one else, we had a major life stressor happen where another guy tested our relationship, and now my ocd has gone crazy
@Pandora_2003 I'm religious, so I don't believe in divorce unless it's for adultery or abuse. I coped because I married a good man, but I did feel God was punishing me for not listening (I'm realizing that's an OCD story). So I didn't cope very well. It's really discouraging trying to find the belief that I can undo that story.
Hi there, recently diagnosed with ocd. Now i do recognise some behaviors being a child that were associated with ocd but i could live with them and they never caused me harm. Ocd flared up out of nowhere due to my life being stressful 2 months ago and now i haven’t been the same since. Did it just appear out of nowhere for everyone else. Im so worried it wont get better and it will always be this bad. I constantly have existential thoughts and health w suicide ocd.
So basically I didn’t know till my hocd started. But looking back at my life I had ocd since I was a kid. Like 6-7 years old. First time happening I remember that when I was doing stuff many times I had to say something like a little poem in my head to stop it. Then I had this thing were if I felt my left foot touch the floor 5 times I had to do the touch the floor with my right foot too. Then I had something I guess contamination??? Basically after washing my hands I had a sensation on my hand like I could still “feel” the germs and I had to wash them again. Then I started having thoughts of my family members getting hurt. I had intrusive thoughts about me hurting my dog. Then I had this obsession that a guy who used to be in my school is looking for me to beat me up. And how it’s this obsession about my sexuality even tho I never doubted or questioned it before. Is that possible??? Like can you be born with it? I’m pretty sure both my parents have it too. At least at some level. Take my father for example he had an obsession that he was going to die the moment he turned 30.
I’ve had different themes of ocd throughout my life. Can they all differ such as how the thoughts may present? Currently my thoughts feel so true immediately (like they genuinely feel like what I think) but in the last theme I feel like it may have been more of a “what if I think this” type of situation
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