Very annoying and distressing when I’m enjoying dinner with my family and I get an intrusive thought that says my mom looked at me in a weird sexual way, which then snowballs into thoughts saying how I must be a huge pervert thinking that and I should be so shamed and commit suicide over it. Nice try suicidal OCD! You’re stupid!!

Isn’t that wild? Like before my onset I remember having random thoughts like that and I never thought twice about it. Yet now it just destroys me and have to keep telling myself how I don’t want that, I love my life, etc.

@Evelyn4416 You should not argue with it I think,it makes the struggle worse.I got over my fear of blasphemous thoughts because whenever one came,i thought i don't care and i didn't care anymore

@Stressed You are absolutely right. I just feel so compelled to have to “convince myself” or whatever that the thoughts I just had weren’t the truth, regardless of whatever thoughts, feelings, and urges OCD places inside. But I have heard that letting it be and not caring, no matter how hard, is the best route toward recovery

@Evelyn4416 I used to argue with blasphemous thoughts for years, saying no no i didn't mean that and praying for forgiveness,now I know blasphemous thoughts are not me and they come involuntarily so i don't care and i only think about them once a day for a second

@Stressed Blasphemous thoughts are another thing I deal with as well. It’s so much to the point where I can’t even read about another religion without having to do a prayer along the lines of how I have my own God I don’t believe in what I’m reading etc... other similar stuff as well, and that’s been things I’ve dealt with for years without even knowing it was OCD

@Evelyn4416 Same here.I have realised that ocd sufferers live in a lie, because we fear so many things but in real life we are braver than most people.For example,I fear sin, however when I had to I lied to someone.I am not proud of it.I fear embarrassing situations so much that I get nausea when I think about people making fun of me although when I was at school I got bullied a lot and was brave enough to beat my bullies up.All this ocd imagination is a total lie.

@Stressed It really is just constant lies being thrown at you. Looking back at my life I can definitely see instances of OCD popping up but it wasn’t so distressing to the point where it was running my life completely, just distressing at some points. Thought it was just anxiety or an attack on my spirit somehow. Then when I developed suicidal OCD that’s when I was like wait a second....that ain’t normal. It wasn’t until 6 months after that onset where I was officially diagnosed with OCD. I had suspected it too for a couple months but the therapist I was seeing at the time wouldnt go into that too much with me, so I switched to a specialist to get an official answer. Made so much sense, but then of course you get OCD attacking you in other ways such as “is that really OCD tho?” “You sure you aren’t just severely depressed, psychotic, or schizophrenic?” Etc. Sometimes I get torn between constant reminders that I’m okay and getting the help I need, or just ignoring what they say.

@Evelyn4416 It took me years to go to a doctor,until then I thought I was possessed and sometimes I doubted whether it was ocd or possession.It is after all,the disorder that makes you doubt.Do you do ERP?My therapist did nothing for me,no erp,it was just me talking forever.I am trying to do erp myself but I am not sure how and I don't know what to do to cope with ocd guilt.

@Stressed Absolutely I understand what you mean. Yes I do ERP I started about a month ago. My old therapist was just like what you’re describing. At some point I suspected I might have OCD because I wondered why I kept having the same thoughts focused on suicide for so long when I knew I wasn’t truly suicidal. I asked her one day to talk about it and all she did was read the symptoms of OCD straight out of the DSM-5 then said she wouldn’t diagnosis me because she didn’t want to “label” me, like girl what. From that moment on I was doing research and found NOCD, and after looking through these forums I found out I related so much and signed up to speak with a therapist here. Got connected to my new therapist and after doing assessments and an interview she did diagnosis me with OCD and that’s when we started ERP treatment since it’s the golden standard. Have you tried seeing if you could do therapy through NOCD? I know they’re limited to certain states right now but they’re expanding to more soon, if you’re in the US. I wasn’t sure how to even do ERP at first so my therapist now guides me and corrects me to make sure I’m doing it right so I can later do it on my own

@Evelyn4416 Unfortunately,I live in Greece.It would be awesome if you could give me some hints,I mean I write down my worst case scenario but is that all?What else?

@Stressed Hopefully I can explain this right haha. Okay so what my therapist had me do first was create a hierarchy, so a list of triggers in order of least to most distressing. Then you come up with exposure exercises because the goal is to get the initial fear you are feeling down to half on a scale of 1-10. So for example, if one of your triggers starts you off on a fear level of 8, you want to keep doing the exercise until the fear has dropped down to a 4, and once it has then you can end the exercise. You want to keep working on them too. Eventually you should see that the starting fear won’t be as high and you can get down to the half way fear in a shorter about of time. So let’s say after a week of doing that exercise, you don’t start at an 8 anymore but now you’re down to a 6 and you can get the fear down to a 3 or 2. Once you feel that that trigger doesn’t affect you anymore, then you can move in to the next exercise. I think you can work on multiple triggers at the same time too. I’m working on two of them right now. They can be in-person triggers or you can imagine the trigger first if it is a bit too intense and later on do in-person. When I do my exercises I like to keep a form and make a new line for each exercise, so I write the date of the exercise, how long it took from start to finish (I use a stopwatch to measure), what exposure exercise I am working on, and the fear levels at the beginning of the exercise, the middle, and the end. During the exercise itself you want to focus on the trigger and avoid doing compulsions no matter now hard that might be. Whatever feelings and thoughts come do you doing it you have to let them flow and don’t react with a ritual. What I do is focus on my breathing and how my body is doing, so I’ll notice my back feels tense or my arms feel numb etc. Focus on your levels of fear too, so you could say “right now it feels like a 7” and just let the exposure play out and you will notice that the fear and anxiety will start to decrease in its own. Once it gets the the halfway level you want, take a couple of deep breathes and end the exercise/remove the trigger etc. Afterwards you could feel raw, vulnerable, proud, tired etc. It’s important to congratulate yourself and do some self-care after, something you like to do that says good job to yourself! You can do these practices a few times a day if you like or even just once a day. I try to do at least 2 since I’m working on two triggers. I hope this clarifies!

@Evelyn4416 You also want to work on the least distressing triggers first and work up to the most distressing, bottom to top