So I was doing an exposure and I think I finally nailed down the exact obsession even though it takes on different forms. I was in a toxic relationship in the past so I fear that since I still struggle at times to make sure I don’t fall into any bad habits I formed that it will cause something bad. The biggest one is that I fear being attracted to or wanting to date other people. One of them is my toxic ex so I just fear that he will try to inch his way back into my life and I’ll lose control in some way. The fact that that is something that *could* happen theoretically is terrifying and creates a lot of confusing compulsions.

Hi everyone! I have been having a rough time. So my boyfriend talks to his ex still as friends and I’ve been struggling with it lately and I can’t tell if it’s OCD or not but it does feel so distressing. She wasn’t texting him for about 2-3 months as she got into a relationship with this guy and they broke up. She had messaged him saying that she has no one else to talk to and needed to vent to someone. At first I felt okay, but my intrusive thoughts took over and it seemed like she was trying to get with him after the fact. It’s probably just my intrusive thoughts talking but he looks on Discord (the app where the message) constantly now and my intrusive thoughts convince me that he’s still in love with her. Then yesterday I saw one of his BeReals (a little photo app that shows a photo of the day) and I saw that he was watching one of her streams as she is a streamer. I struggled to talk about it because it made my worst thought feel like it came true where he is still in love with her. When we talked he gets a lil mad that I don’t tell him right away like straight up what I’m feeling but it’s hard to process because my thoughts flood in of all the worst things and I don’t want to come off as toxic at all and I know relationships are built on trust and I want to trust because this is literally the only thing that makes me nervous about him. It also doesn’t help that I’ve been cheated on before so I’m trying to protect myself but I’m lost. I get so depressed and so anxious because I feel like I have to grieve the relationship and it’s just so dramatic. I’ve never loved anyone like this before and I don’t wanna lose him by bringing this stuff up constantly when something occurs with his ex. I don’t know why I get triggered so easily and I just wanna heal from it and be the good girlfriend I’m supposed to be 😭

Ok, so when I was in high school I became very obsessive with love. I didn’t love myself and I found this boy who I wanted to love me. I had myself convinced we would get married. He didn’t even know who I was and I’ll admit, I completely invaded his privacy. I memorized his schedule, I put myself in places I knew he’d be or if I knew he was somewhere I’d go. I truly never meant harm, I just wanted him to love me and I thought that me stalking his life would get me into it and get him to love me. It got to the point where I even stalked other girls I thought he liked and told them that we were a “thing” so that they would stop talking to him even though we were definitely not a thing. I struggle to release the guilt of that overall because I feel so so so awful about it, but I know I never meant harm. Anyways, now that we are no longer together, I have this fear that if he never would’ve given me the attention I desired that I would’ve kept going. I would’ve started to get harmful and that I would’ve gone as far as harming people around him in order to get myself into his life. It makes me feel so awful but I truly do feel like I would’ve kept going and kept myself in his life even if he would’ve gotten a different girlfriend. Idk, I just really struggle because I don’t feel as though this was ocd and that maybe I truthfully am a horrible person who does need serious help because I stalked him so much and obsessed over him and crossed his privacy boundary. I’m so afraid to the extent that I would’ve gone had it not become us dating.

I know I'm not one. But there is one OCD episode that destroyed my life. September 2024 I was obsessing over attraction, and one night I compulsively imagined a sensual seductive scenario and I was shocked that a trigger could emanate the gaze of seduction and sensuality, and I thought that it was proof of attraction, then I think that for a moment that I felt like I was attracted, I think I self sabotaged myself into accepting attraction and I think like it worked. I still don't know if it was genuine attraction. I felt suicidal immediately later and thought about ending my life until I discovered on my notes that it was a "short moment" and I assumed that it was just OCD; but now I don't believe so. I have confused memories, maybe some are fabricated. I have different versions of what happened: 1. The attraction part was simply me perceiveing the objective seduction and sensuality look and instead of feeling distressed i felt that it looked seductive and I got shocked and that was what I thought it was attraction in my memory. 2. I was actually seducted and I'm in denial 3. I felt seduction but I wasnt seducted 4. I felt egosyntonic attraction and I'm in denial 5. It was a fabricated sense of egosyntoncness, it wasn't genuine attraction but a fabrication, it was a "dare" from the brain, a self sabotage hence why I felt suicidal. I asked an expert and she simply told me that what happens inside the OCD Bubble belongs only to OCD and it has no value, it is not real. And while it's true its entirety happened as a compulsion, as a result of testing an obsessional fear and doubt, I don't know if the content of what happened inside is simply not real. Like when I had triggering POCD dreams. I don't know if it's the same thing when I was worrying abt me being attracted to my mother and I compulsively imagined my parent coming to my bed and felt like I could do it, that I wouldn't refuse, like literally felt like it not hypothetically, maybe because it was a twisted version of it? I don't know. I lost my sense of reality a while ago. Different scenarios too happened where I felt like I could say yes or I was tempted over doing something I find immoral, all of them were a direct consequence of a compulsion but I don't know still, seems too easy. I fear that the human brain is complex enough to allow both things to happen, that is neutral enough to allow a grey area that I cannot tolerate.