I really want somewhere to vent so this might take some time to read, sorry. I’ve had an awful morning. It feels like I’ve gone back a step in recovery because I’m feeling the same way I felt a couple months ago when my hocd was at its worst. I had completely convinced myself that I’d be better for Christmas (which I know is wrong to do but I couldn’t help it- I got through some difficult times by telling myself that). I’ve got family coming round tomorrow so we can celebrate Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and I’m scared I’ll wake up tomorrow and feel the same as I do today. This times last year I was perfectly fine and it’s depressing knowing that I’ll never be free of this again (I’m only 15 so having to face the rest of my life with ocd, especially hocd, horrifies me). I feel utterly trapped and hopeless as well as being convinced my intrusive thoughts are true because my ocd doesn’t seem as bad as everyone else’s. Yesterday I was doing so much better and now I’m a mess but for some reason it still doesn’t feel like I have ocd and this is all one big denial. I’m not sure what I expect anyone to say but I just felt the need to tell someone since nobody in my life knows what I’m going through right now. I just want to be ok for Christmas because I haven’t seen my family in a while. This is all so overwhelmingly isolating:(

It’s getting so bad I think I’ve been dealing with scrupulosity but I’m always doubting if it’s actually ocd or if I’m just telling myself that as a excuse for being a “bad Christian”. It’s not only that, it’s everything I have had ocd thought loops in the past but they’ve been so unbearable lately and once one goes away another one starts. It’s been really focused on making me feel liek everything is my fault and I don’t know how to stop that when it actually could be. Then there’s this guy we were talking and he was telling me what he needed out of a relationship and asked me to tell him the same and now I’m so scared I’m gonna ruin something he said trust is really important to him. I was taking to one of our shared friends about us and I’m scared I said something he wouldn’t wanted me to say and that he’s not going to trust me now and I keep thinking about how I really should not have talked to her and it’s killing me. I’m also scared that I’m not gonna tell him something that happened in the past because I don’t think it’s important and he’s going to find out and be mad I feel like rocd is ruining my relationship that’s not even a relationship yet. I just keep thinking through all the different scenarios how I could ruin us up or it could work and I promise myself it will be the last time I think about it and it never is and it’s just constant from the moment I wake up to the moment I sleep and then I think maybe Gods just trying to warn me but I’m so exhausted or being this anxious because that doesn’t seem like Him but then maybe it is and I’m just trying to get what I want. I want to ask for help so bad but every time I do it feels like there really isn’t anything wrong and I don’t actually have any ocd. I don’t want to talk to my family about it, when it’s come up before they either make rude comments or make fun of me for it they really just don’t understand and I don’t know what to do anymore. sometimes it doesn’t even feel like it’s worth getting better tbh. Thank you for reading it all if you did :)

(Long post warning) Hi, I’ve been struggling with severe OCD for six years now. it started in 2019 with my theme being getting sick/emetophobia. it devastated my life. I almost didn’t graduate high school from it. I remember washing my hands for three hours one day until they were nearly bloody while crying and asking why I could not stop doing it. I remember id have to write and rewrite sentences when I did my English homework and that’s why I nearly failed that class. I remember how I would spend up to thirty minutes to an hour pacing the halls of my apartment while my mom was asleep until I neutralized the thoughts about throwing up and I could finally go to bed. I don’t know when it happened, but my theme switched. Sometimes in late 2020 or early 2021, it switched to POCD. It started with a single thought, and I focused on it and it’s been my theme since then for four years. It has been absolutely destroying me. I feel so disgusted and lost and just tired. My compulsions are severe now. I thought they were bad before, but now they’re ten times worse. I can’t eat, drink, change my clothes, walk, or even do things on my phone normally. I’ve developed so many mental compulsions that it’s so intricate and complicated yet at the same time I’ve done them so much that they’ve become normal. An example I have is if im putting on a shirt and I have a “bad” thought, I have to take it off and put it back on two more times (that’ll make it 3 times I put the shirt back on - odd numbers are my safe number). I have to have a good thought on the third time otherwise I have to take it off and put it on two more times to make it five times I put on that shirt. If not that then I just put on a different shirt because the original is now tainted with my bad thought. I can’t open apps on my phone. It’s with the numbers again. If I open TikTok once while having a bad thought - I have to close it and open it two more times and so on. Sometimes I do it up to 30 times. So I just don’t do things usually. I don’t turn on the TV because I know I’ll redo it. I don’t open a book or grab it off my shelf because I’ll have to repeat the action. I can’t even lay in bed without getting up and redoing it even if im exhausted. I just feel so helpless. I don’t know what to do. I feel disgusting and even now my minds screaming at me that I am dirty and what I think is true. I just wish I was free of this, I wish I could just live my life. I’ve wasted hours and days because of my compulsions. I mask it so well around my friends. I don’t do them in front of anyone or I’ve learned to hide it well. But when im back home alone, it goes haywire. I just want to live again.

Life has been so tough for me lately. I’ve been stuck in an OCD spiral since last December. Most of my fears come from incidentally causing harm to my family or others. I feel like every action is a moral conflict, or that any time I make a bad decision, act out of frustration, or self indulge in anything, I’m debating about whether I’m an awful person who doesn’t care about my kids, my wife, or other people. I’m a stay at home parent currently, and all three of my kids are neurodivergent, with my youngest being on the spectrum. My youngest is nonverbal, so my OCD loves to manipulate that, making it hard to know if my son is happy, sad, upset, etc. Always feeling like I’m worried I’ll make too many mistakes as a parent. That any time I lose my cool, it means I’m just this awful person and parent. I’m burnt out from the stress currently, so I always feel on edge, which makes it harder to have the mental power to resist compulsions. I am in OCD therapy, which has helped. But every time I feel like I’m taking steps in the right direction I get sucked back in. Every time I resist compulsions, I’m triggered almost immediately after. Because I’m a stay at home parent, and a lot of my triggers and themes involve harm to others, particularly my family, it’s just trigger after trigger after trigger. My wife is exhausted from my mental health, which just adds to the guilt I already feel. I hate that my mental health is affecting everyone, and it only reinforces the idea that I’m causing harm or suffering to those around me. I just need a break. I cannot keep living my life this way. This is the worst my OCD has been, and I feel so traumatized from all the days and hours I’ve spent feeling like I’m at my limit. Thanks for reading. Feel free to respond if you can relate. Just needed to vent.