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.)

So, I know my capacity to get fixated on things. And it's normally something that's relatively remote but, my latest issue is really getting to me and I was wondering if people have any advice. I'm avoiding getting too into specifics, as I don't want this to get reassurance-y but, in essence.. I came to the realisation recently that people who I'd been "friends" (feels like the wrong term now) when I was younger were not very nice people, and normalized a lot of very unpleasant behaviour towards other members of the group. They really normalized it, sold themselves as figures of authority, as older and more responsible and grown-up than others, and looking back, they acted horribly. And coming to this realisation, that I'd been manipulated into just accepting their behaviour has just... broken me. My OCD has latched onto it and I can't stop feeling irreversibly tainted by it. I've talked to others about it, and they've reassured me, told me it's not a big deal and that I hold myself to too high a standard, but none of that sticks. I feel better for a bit, then think 'Maybe when you told them you were skewing it to make yourself look better' or 'Did you leave out a crucial detail'. I keep ruminating over and over, trying to remember exactly how everything played out, trying to figure out if I fed into the behaviour, if I did something bad myself (because y'know, I feel like I was accepting of it at the time, so what does it say about my own values?). I know I need to stop doing all this if I want to improve, but then some part of me keeps saying 'So, you're just going to let yourself off the hook then?' Normally, I can rationalize my own fears to some degree, assure myself something won't happen, but the realness of the situation, and the fact I only came to understand the reality of it because the thought had been bothering me means it feels so much more all-encompassing. I know confessing in itself is a compulsion, but I keep feeling that if I'm not I'm somehow concealing what I 'really am' from others around me, and any positive interactions are me deceiving them in some way. I feel like I can't enjoy anything in life right now, and a good part of me feels I should not enjoy it ever again. If anybody has any advice on it, I'm all ears. Or even hearing if you relate to these feelings, I might appreciate the solidarity at least.

Hi, I'm 17,about to be 18. I've been struggling with these thoughts for the past 8 months. I was wondering if someone experienced ever the same because I feel im "different". BACKGROUND: (I'm not diagnosed with Ocd but seeing a local counselor) About 9 months ago I cheated on my boyfriend with this guy S (who blackmailed, manipulated and molested me). Since then when I realized that what i did was very WRONG and so I started ruminating picking apart every single interaction and telling my boyfriend, i tried to remember every single detail because otherwise I felt like i was being a fraud and hiding things to save myself, i had many crisis about it because I had also what i think was false memory ocd. My boyfriend forgave me idk how tbh I still wonder. CURRENT STRUGGLE: Months ago I was sure I didn't wanna S in any way and i was sure even when everything happened. For the past 2 months tho I've been having thoughts like " Do I love S?" "I love S" "S is hot" "Would S find me hot?" "What if I want S?" " What if I don't love my boyfriend enough?" "What if I secretly want S?" "What if I see my boyfriend as a friend only?Do I?" And I tried testing my reaction to intimate scenarios with S, I'm scared I like it i dont really wanna love S or have any secret attraction, I wish I didn't have any of this and I want to be sure of my feelings for my boyfriend because I know I wanna be with him and I see a future with him like he brings me comfort. But a part of me keeps trying to convince me otherwise. Sometimes I think I'd rather die than have these thoughts. Im so scared of not being able to control my feelings, im scared I can't resist S and its giving me anxiety and making me cry. Sometimes when i think of those sexual scenarios with S or I get those thoughts my mind tells me to smile because i like it because I find it funny. It makes me doubt myself all over again. Like I'm always like I need to test if I'd feel aroused to intimate scenarios with S, lately im trying to fight this urge to test and test but my mind is like "just do it this once so you can be sure. I can never watch anything romantic or sexual or whatever because my mind would be like "you and S" or sometimes I'm just enjoying time with my bf and im like " yes we can just have a sneaky cheating thing thats ok" and it makes me want to figure it out to find an answer a solution because idk it just does like I need to find the meaning of it if it means the truth and all. Im worried im just an awful person and these thoughts just ruin my quality of life . Today i had a crisis where i ended up doinf swlf harm, I'm so scared of finding someone that's not my boyfriend desirable or sexual appealing or whatever it is, I also have bodily reactions when I try to imagine and test my reaction to scenarios. Now i keep groing everytime and I dont know why but i have this sensation and I dont want to havebit especially when its something S related. Does someone experience the same thoughts? Am I alone in this? Is this ROCD? What should i do?

So I’m 16 years old, currently going through my sophomore year of highschool. I’ve recently quit nicotine and weed after chronic use for about 4 years (has affected my development extremely). I quit because I wanted a better life for myself because I knew that I was using nicotine and weed for short term happiness and long term made me very depressed about this life. I was also experiencing trouble concentrating on simple tasks and what I wanted to do currently in my life. Which was learning about life and having more knowledge about life in general so i could feel more comfortable and happy in the future. So I quit nicotine I thought I was going to be able to overcome it and be more comfortable with myself knowing that I’m not in a constant loop of short term happiness, long term making me less happy overall. Although I have quit nicotine and haven’t touched it in about 3 weeks I expected to have some major withdrawals because I’m still in adolescence and used nicotine about everyday for 4 years. Sorry I’m rambling about this but through those years of always suppressing my anxiety with nicotine when anything came up that triggered it. I started noticing that on vacation in very stressful moments like at the airport and there were people around me when using the bathroom I felt as though it was nearly impossible to go but after sometime I eventually went and shrugged it off. Now that I’ve quit though I’m my 4th week it’s almost like my brain really latched onto that fear of not being able to go around people publicly (paruresis shy bladder syndrome) and that’s also what addiction does to you I’ve acknowledged. But when I started coming home from school I started thinking about not being able to pee more and more to the point i haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since which now every time i feel a slight trigger of having to use the bathroom i start obsessing over it like everything I would try and do that i usually do my brain would draw me away from it and go back to the fear of not being able to go which created a lot of anxiety and thoughts like “would if im not able to stop going” which made me think about it more and more I would just wake up with that thought in my head each day to the point where i was really thinking about killing my self because I thought i would have such a better life without nicotine and weed but ultimately made me feel like i was going crazy and I really wanted to go back to vaping and weed but i knew that this was the cycle of addiction and that i may have a more underlying problem here i need to overcome somatic ocd. I haven’t been diagnosed with it yet and I know a lot of people go through a cycle of self diagnosing. But as I’ve slowly started to mentally figure out ways to get through this obsession over peeing and fight it, it’s like my brain is now trying to look for a new bodily sensation to obsess over. My breathing. I noticed this as well while using that sometimes I would think about my breathing a little bit to much for example saying to myself am I breathing right should I breath this certain way would if I can’t stop thinking about it. But as I was thinking about that I just hit my vape talked to my brother about it and just slept it off. Now that I don’t have a vape I’ve had to go through these expierences but with it feeling more real and not really having something to run to, to suppress like my vape. I’m writing this today as I feel better to myself talking about it and opening up about it as I’m trying to not respond to this fear with anxiety and go throughout my days ignoring these obsessive thoughts leading to extreme anxiety that I don’t have anything to suppress it with anymore besides my own mental. Maybe someone here will have some more knowledge about it than I do and can give me some advice to try to keep me more motivated to deal with this ocd I feel as though I’m having so I don’t end up in a dark place. Thank you.