I think I may be pregnant but it’s still too early to tell. It scares me because I think due to my ocd I may not be a very good mother. I think what if I have to be hospitalized again and can’t be there for my child? Or what if I get the intrusive thoughts about them? The ones about my husband have been coming back slightly but it’s definitely focused on health right now. My friend’s lung collapsed two days ago and she’s my age! (27) and now I’m terrified that it may happen to me or worse I may have a heart attack and die. If I am pregnant I may choose to abort. Idk yet, a part of me thinks that those of us with mental illnesses should be sterilized. I’m curious to know other ppls opinions on this subject...

I haven't been officially diagnosed with OCD but when I learned more about it, I never related to anything more. A little back story: when I was younger, there were a couple of youth suicides in my area and the schools felt the need to have someone come in and talk about suicide. Well the person they had come in did a horrible job teaching it and basically made it seem like the smallest negative emotion or feeling or change in behavior made you suicidal. This ended up scaring me so much that I got horrid anxiety. Fast forward to now, Everytime I feel anxiety and panic, I fear I'm going to kill myself. Everytime I feel down and depressed, I fear I'll end it all. I'm scared to be around anything sharp because the "What if" I hurt myself comes into my mind. There are always intrusive thoughts at almost every point of the day. And it's not only for me. Everytime I hear someone being negative, I fear they will be suicidal. I know in my heart that none of this is true but it's terrifying me that it's stuck around so much that it makes me scared that maybe it is true. I've had a lot of death in my family in the past year and a half and a lot of other family drama that I'd never had before that is now also bringing up existential intrusive thoughts. And I'd never questioned anything about life before but now I get the "why is life like this?" and "does anything we do matter?" and I hate it. I don't want to think like that. I just want to go through life being able to handle things normally again. It terrifies me even right now going "what if you give up?"

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. 😪

Hey all, This is so strange to share this, and I have been judged by others and misdiagnosed many times. About a year ago I worked with an OCD therapist and it was really triggering. For me my thoughts are mainly about suicidal ocd and harm ocd centered around my children of all things. Fear that I could or would want to hurt them, then feeling so horrible that I believe I’m suicidal then I go back and forth on that. After reading a few of your posts, it makes me truly have a bit of hope that I can overcome this.