Hi all, I will try to make it short (and will probably fail). I had my first real bout of pure ocd 15 years ago (I was 15). It started after smoking weed and a sort of depersonalization episode. Back then I did not understand what was happening so I spent almost a year keeping things to myself. The first obsessions I had centered around not being able to tell if I was real, or in a dream which created acute anxiety, I was also afraid of losing my mind as I did not understand what was happening. When I finally talked about it to my parents, they sent me to a therapist but he only wanted to give me meds and I was against it so I had to find another way. Through research and from experience I developed an habit of blocking thoughts that I started to recognize as obsessions by saying "I know this is all in my head". The disorder came and went throughout the years, I had many different themes, homosexual OCD, paedophile OCD, BDD. It was insufferable until I recognized it as a new theme (partly because it was listed as one on wikipedia) and then after a few weeks of telling myself this was just the disorder morphing I started to get better. I got a lot better, I went to study abroad, had the best year of my life, met my girlfriend who is wonderful. I think for three years I barely felt any deep anxiety, at least nothing compared to what I use to feel. But things got out of hand some months ago, I think due to life stressors (having to reconsider my career plans, feeling mike a failure, money and relationship problems). I think I went through a massive depressive episode, I lost interest in my creative passions, I was too anxious to feel anything anyway. I got a bit better but what I struggle with now is kind of hard to shake. See music as always been my main passion and it helped me a lot to get over ocd in the first place. But since this episode, I started to develop a fear of not being able to feel anything, especially toward music. I have tried to treat it as OCD and expose myself to the fear, but I can't help checking my feelings whenever I listen to or make music which I think might be a mental compulsion. I'll just tell myself "oh see you aren't feeling anything" or "you are feeling anxious listening to this song that you use to like so that must mean you don't love music anymore" and it makes me feel really anxious because I feel like it is a part of me dying and of course I can't enjoy the music because I'm constantly judging my feelings. It's kind of tricky because it is not really a typical theme, which maintains the doubt that it might just be real. Although I sort of see it as somewhere between ROCD (the loved one being music) and health OCD (the fear of having damaged my brain because of anxiety and thus being unable to feel joy anymore) So does anyone as ideas about what I should do if I want to use ERP for this thoughts ? Try to accept that maybe I lost my passion ? And do they sound like OCD at all ? Thank you ! (And sorry for the long post.)

I still do not have an OFFICIAL diagnosis (I dont have the means to do so) but given my symptoms, past and present in my life hugely suggest OCD is what I am dealing with. I cannot be 100 percent certain but after searching for answers and researching for a long time now, I am fairly certain and confident this is what I am struggling with. Given this step forward, I am making more effort into giving up compulsions. at the current moment I believe to be dealing with ROCD, as I have been having several intrusive thoughts that conflict with my relationship. For starters, recently over the past month or 2, I have been struggling with intrusive thoughts like not being over my ex, being attracted to someone else, losing feelings for my partner and not being in love, etc. I can consciously identify that I dont believe these thoughts to be true but it causes me so much distress and anxiety. It gets extremely unbearable some days, and I have leaned into 2 main compulsions. I have relied on thought checking and googling as my source of relief. At first the googling was genuinely to start finding answers; hence why I have made some of the discoveries I have about OCD including this site. But it developed into every time I was anxious, I would whip my phone out and start googling strictly to find an answer that would reassure me or calm me down. As for thought checking, it acted as a way to reaffirm my love for my girlfriend in my head when I have had the thoughts that collide with my relationship and how I feel about my girlfriend. It worked at first but developed into a compulsion where every time a bad thought got me worked up id either do my normal googling or Id think about that in my head to calm myself down. Over time these compulsions have gotten less and less affective and now when I do them it only gets me more anxious and desperate for reassurance (strengthening the cycle or whatever it is lol). I did some more research and finally have accepted the very real fact that I am going to have to sit in heavy anxiety and not give into compulsions for a while in order to treat this. I have to sit in the thoughts that make me feel all this hightened anxiety and distress without giving into compulsion. to be honest I am scared, the thoughts are more rampant than ever, but I am ready to commit to this. I dont think I am gonna be able to go cold turkey on my compulsions so I am ready for the reality I might relapse on the compulsions sometimes, But am gonna keep going until I can break these shackles OCD has on my life right now. I wanna ask, what is everyones methods they use to avoid giving into compulsion when the thoughts get loud? any advice is welcome :)

fyi: [x] - feared identity So I've had OCD for a while now and even though I'm on a different theme than I was, I find that I sometimes feel indifferent or numb to an act that is completely immoral, especially after desensitizaton and learning that there is nothing that I need to do about the thoughts. I even ask myself "What if one of my friends turned out to be [x]?" and instead of immediately saying "I'm completely cutting ties and never looking at them the same way again" I'm like "..that wouldn't be great, I'd stop talking to them but also encourage them to get help.". Pure OCD for some odd reason made me feel empathy for even the worst, most evil people - not that it excuses their actions, or makes them any less evil, but then it also took that and made me panic about it: "What if you're becoming antisocial?" "What if you're on your way to degeneration?" "Why do you not care as much as you used to?" "Are you corrupt?" "Are you [x]?" "Only [x] would feel empathy for [x]." "Are you justifying these actions?". I feel like it is concerning, it does feel like I'm ignoring something that goes against my values, or that I have lost all values and I'm just a bad person. Especially when I get arousal nonconcordance or GRs: "Maybe I'm just traumatized, maybe I'm okay" turns into "You're okay.. with what? With becoming aroused by these things at all? Have you lost your mind? What's next, you're gonna act on these thoughts and say "Oh I'm traumatized?"", and I don't know whether it's logical or not. When I started with sexual intrusive thoughts I immediately found them disturbing and horrifying, and now after ERP and just living with the disorder for so long I'm almost numb... it feels terrible. It feels like I'm justifying or have become legitimately okay with untolerable, horrible behavior, and I feel like that says something about who I am really. I feel like that makes me dangerously close to acting on the thoughts, or that the thoughts were an indication of some repressed desire all along, even when I know there's no evidence towards that... or is there? Pure OCD has convinced me I'm in denial about something horrible many times before, mainly by utilizing my reaction and moral stance around the intrusive thoughts. I still feel like "If I panic when I have these thoughts, that means I'm not [x] and I'm fine."; "If I'm disgusted by the idea of acting on these thoughts, then I'm fine"; "As long as I don't respond the wrong way to the thoughts, I'm fine".. so what happens when you're told not to react to the thoughts at all? Or on the other hand, not to try and analyze a reaction? Panic. Cognitive dissonance: "Something's wrong, I'm not reacting how I'm supposed to". At the end of the day, I really hope I'm not [x], I really do. I can't imagine not only living with the title of [x], but also with the insane levels of distress that title would cause because for all I know, I'm not really [x]. But I could be, like I don't know if I'm not, and even though I'd rather not be [x] I have to somehow accept uncertainty I guess. That's what I've been told to do - but I feel like it's backfiring. I feel like I'm either a) recovering and meta-obsessing, b) I'm still in poor insight OCD and I'm not actually [x] c) I'm [x] and in denial / having OCD about a real issue Speaking of insight, it tends to come and go but it's been poor for most of the time, even after I learned about OCD.

So for context me and my girlfriend have been together for closing in on 8 months. We're really happy! And we've always been happy. However I believe in am dealing with ROCD (ive had ocd symptoms all throughout my life) and its begun to affect me badly. First off a few months ago I randomly got the thought of "what if I am losing feelings?" Usually I can dismiss intrusive thoughts like this easily but this one stuck. This one would plague my mind and thoughts for weeks on end, it caused me anxiety and sadness and I was extremely scared. Then one day, the thoughts just went away. We carried on as usual, then one day we went to out friends Quince. We were there and dressed up nice eating with friends and during conversation the topic about our age gap came up. I wasn't thinking when i said this and then I ended up saying the age gap me and my ex had instead of the one me and my girlfriend now have. I am over my ex and i dont miss her and didnt ever miss her at all throughout me and my girlfriends entire relationship however I immediately felt awful. It was a slip of the tongue but intrusive thoughts flooded my mind of "what if im not over her?" Or stuff like "what if I miss her?". I told my girlfriend about the slip of the tongue and she insisted that it was ok and that we were ok, but the thoughts lingered. For months on end I proceeded to have those same intrusive thoughts about my ex, it branches off into intrusive memories and dreams as well. Its also caused me to have intrusive thoughts about other things as well. For example when talking to someone ill have the intrusive thought of being attracted to them and it makes me panic, or ill overthink getting s groinal response when I accidentally see something revealing, and other thoughts that IF they were true would heavily collide with my relationship. And worst of all, the thoughts of not being in love with my girlfriend have resurfaced stronger than ever. Every waking moment of every waking day have been filled with these thoughts ever since the incident and ive been in constant anxiety and when im not anxious im either discomforted or sometimes even numb. It scared me because my brain tries using it as proof that my thoughts are true and that I dont love my girlfriend. Last night I bawled my eyes out at the thought of losing her but these thoughts still continue. We have cute happy intimate moments where I feel madly in love and then my thoughts shatter that. Its miserable, and im scared, and drained. I do want to lose my girlfriend, she's been the greatest person to me ever and I do love her so much. I hate that I can rationalize my love for her because I wouldn't care this much if I didnt but also that these thoughts are extrenely powerful and cloud my mind. Any tips to manage this? I dont have access to therapy at least not for now and i need help