I feel that I have lost connection to my life and myself. My life seems to be lived through compulsions and senseless thought & my emotions are not in line. Has anyone experienced a feeling of emotional detachment where your emotions are out of wack? Is there anything you have done to combat that?

So I’ve noticed that since my ocd started, every time I see something that triggers me like I can’t feel anything. For example, if I saw a case about a woman who murdered her kids I literally feel like I shoulf feel worse or something and sometimes the reaction comes after the rumination: What are you feeling? Do you feel bad enough? check body sensations, emotions etc… it’s scares me. Has anyone else had experience this?

The things that used to make me happy? The things that used to make me sad? I don't know how to connect with those anymore. I used to be happy just looking at the sunset and nature, I loved being present in the moment but now being present in the moment is scary because now I'm faced with my thoughts and new potential ones so I'd rather distract myself. I love kballads and I used to listen to them and just cry and be happy because they sound so beautiful but now I can't embrace these things that feel like beauty because I feel like the exact opposite. The only things I can enjoy are K-drama's! But I can't watch things with kids in it. So yah that's tricky! And the things that make me sad?! Well I used to be sad and terrified about loosing my loved ones but now it's a different kind of sad. I used to be sad because of miss them and all that but now I'm scared of facing now messed up my emotions have become. I'm scared of loosing someone I love and then not being able to feel sad because I'm just numb, or even worse...if it becomes something I'm okay with or what if OCD convinces me that I'm happy about it because honestly it would be weird moving around the world with such emotions. So not only has OCD made it hard for me to enjoy the good things but also hard for me to feel sad about the sad things or just to put it short...to experience emotions normally.

Around 10 years ago when I started getting violent OCD intrusive thoughts, I also started fearing that I was a sociopath. I began overanalyzing everything — especially my emotions. It's like if I could prove I had emotions it proved I wasn't a sociopath. I care deeply about my family — I worry about them, I want them to be safe and happy, I want them to get theit deepest desires — but I don’t know what love "feels" like, if its supposed to feel like anything. People describe love as this warm, obvious, fuzzy emotion, but I don’t experience it the way I think I’m supposed to. Is it supposed to be intense? Constant? Loud? Because I’m not sure I’ve ever felt that. My family isn’t very emotionally expressive either. I cherish hugs from them when I get them, I initiate most hugs with my parents (but I don't like hugs from other people, like co workers) but overall my family doesnt show affection much, and that’s made me question if I’m even capable of love. I overanalyze my feelings constantly — especially after realizing I don’t feel connected to God in the way my old church said I should. I don’t love God. I don’t feel anything toward Him — we’ve never met obviously so I just never got a connection with Him. But growing up, that felt like a sin in itself. As a teen, I felt ashamed knowing I cared more for my parents than for God, especially when church messages said God had to come first. There’s a song by Mary Mary that says, “I love you more than my mother, my father…” and it used to make me feel broken. My feelings were in direct contradiction with what I was taught, and that shame never fully left me. OCD latched onto that hard. It’s only after a coworker passed away — and I found myself crying multiple times over it — that I realized I do care deeply for people. But even that realization felt pathetic. Why did I need such an extreme moment to feel something “real”? & why didn't I care for another creepy bigoted co worker when his son was sick? I felt nothing. I’m scared my OCD is convincing me that I’m heartless, even though I want connection. I crave love. I like hugs. It’s exhausting and terrifying to doubt my own humanity like this. I hate this fear. I hate that I don’t trust myself. I hate that OCD makes me question my morality, my emotions — everything that makes me me. Has anyone else experienced anything like this? How do I even explain this to a therapist