I'm scared to post this on here, but I haven't seen anyone else talk about it, so I'm wondering if anyone else on here suffers from POCD? I really need to know I'm not alone. If anyone has good tips/resources for coping that'd be great. I don't have an OCD specialist anywhere near where I live. I do see a therapist who has been helping, but I still feel incredibly alone.

I’m going through a really bad flare up. I developed ocd many years ago when I had my first child. Postpartum ocd. I suffer from harm and pocd. At first I had mostly mental and some physical compulsions but the physical faded away pretty early on and i’ve just done mental compulsions since. My ocd was in remission for alot of years and if the ocd would pop up now and again, I was easily able to shrug it off and not engage. A few years ago I went through a stressful time in my life and the ocd came back to stay. At first it was bad but then it got better and has been pretty mild until now. It’s been really bad this week and the physical compulsions are even back. I never thought it would ever get this bad again. My ocd is making me doubt who I am and how I feel. I know it’s all ocd and not real or true but the ocd makes it feel so real that I can’t easily dismiss or disprove it. The more I try to disprove it the more real the ocd makes it feel. I’m really struggling and don’t know how to get back on track. I don’t have access to a therapist because there are no ocd specialists near me and my insurance doesn’t cover online therapy. That’s why i’m reaching out here. Has anyone been through a rough relapse? How can I get through and past this??

Since I developed ocd as postpartum my ocd has mostly always targeted my kids. It started as harm and then switched to pocd. Both are equally very painful. For years I was mostly able to keep my ocd at bay but when it comes back it’s so bad. I have a son and a daughter and my ocd switches back and forth from kid to kid with horrible intrusive thoughts and now even intrusive ocd dreams. With each thought I get past and start to feel relief another one pops right up. The thoughts feel so real and true even though I know it’s just the ocd and not how I think or feel, the ocd always makes me doubt myself and question everything I think or do. I know other moms/dads go through this too. Please anyone who has or is going through this please tell me how you deal with this. 😪

This might contain triggering content, but I'm also wondering if others have dealt with this similar thought, and if so, how to deal with it? Overall, I've been doing so well these past few days. I'm able to eat again, which I hadn't been able to do because of how much anxiety I'd been experiencing. I'm spending time around loved ones and not just rotting in my room, and I've been able to wake up without immediately being bombarded by intrusive thoughts. When things first got really bad, I'd wake my mom up every night for reassurance, but I haven't done that in a while either. I'm really proud of myself, but there's still this nagging thought in my mind... While looking through others posts on here, hoping to find advice that'd fit my situation, I ended up making things worse. Someone mentioned how they had a fear that they'd purposely search for illegal content (related to POCD). I panicked, and "what ifs" flooded my thoughts. "What if the intrusive thoughts affect who I am as a person, and I do that?" I'm terrified that I'll search for those things, which I know means I wouldn't do it. But then, another person on here said they'd actually looked for those things, and that freaked me out even more. Does that mean it's possible for that to happen to me? I don't want to do that, but I keep having intrusive thoughts surrounding it. I've been doing so well these past few days. I'm just... stuck. I don't know what to do. I've spoken with other people who have the same fears, but how do I manage this? It's not something I've even thought about before seeing those posts. I've been practicing accepting the uncertainty, but I'm really struggling with this one. I hate this. This morning, I woke up, and the intrusive thoughts were back. It's just disheartening.