Why are some themes more "sticky" than others? I've struggled with HOCD for months now, but for about two weeks it shifted to TOCD. For me, I think TOCD was the most debilitating but HOCD sticks to my brain the most. I'm able to talk about my TOCD theme & my experience and can almost laugh at it now because it's so far from anything I would ever believe about myself. But now I'm even doubting if I ever felt anxiety from my HOCD because it wasn't as intense as my panic attacks from TOCD. Has anyone experienced this?

That makes sense

it’s interesting to me how different themes effect different people more. i’ve had hocd and tocd but what’s been worst for me is harm ocd and false memory ocd.

Same- I think I also have experienced some sort of mild ROCD alongside my HOCD/TOCD. But nothing comes close to the effect HOCD has on me

@emily_444 for me at the moment i have a mix of false memory, hocd, and rocd. it kinda sucks honestly. i do have good days and even weeks but these last 2 days haven’t been so great.

@Anonymous When did it all start for you? I had a good couple days and then as soon as I started my cycle it came back full force :(

@Anonymous omg same ! i just got my period and it’s been giving me old intrusive thoughts. it all started in august of this year for me. hbu?

@Anonymous Same my biggest attacks were from tocd and hocd has the biggest grip tho

@Anonymous My OCD seems to act up the most right before and during my period! As if we need anything else to deal with. For me the intrusive thoughts started probably in April and it was mild at first and I just did a shit ton of avoidance. It started getting really bad in the fall, like Sept

@Anonymous My started like March with hocd and then with tocd

@Anonymous omg same !! mine got super bad when i watched a show called ratchet and it had lesbian couple and it made me get the thought “what if i’m gay?” and you could guess what happened next lol ! it sucks honestly, i was doing so good lately too.

@Anonymous Ugh, I'm so sorry! OCD is seriously a little b*tch!! do you have access to treatment??

@Anonymous no, my parents don’t believe i have it. but i’ve done erp on my own like letting the thoughts be there and not reacting and it helped me a lot.

@Anonymous Same, my parents don’t know either.

For me, the fact that I'm not as anxious as I was about TOCD (it was seriously debilitating) as I am about HOCD even tho it's stickier , makes my OCD think I'm not anxious at all about it and that means it's true. Have u experienced anything like this w any of ur themes?

@Anonymous well i was super young when my themes would change all the time. but i definitely wasn’t as anxious about tocd. it was almost funny to me at some points. but ocd wouldn’t be debilitating unless it felt real. i always think about it like people who have cleaning ocd or health ocd and to us with other themes it seems so far fetched to be upset or obsessed about something like that, but to them they look at us and think it’s so odd to be obsessed with our sexuality or gender. when i think of it in that sense it takes a lot of weight off the thoughts. that’s the point is to not give your thoughts so much energy

@mh31 Yeah that's true, I've thought of things in that same way too. I feel really lucky to have this app! It makes this journey feel a lot lonely. Before I sought any kind of help I thought I was the only one! As I'm sure we all did

@Anonymous a lot less lonely **^ lol

@Anonymous What triggers me is that I had some gay thoughts when I was younger that make me scratch my head 😒

@ihateocd222 when were young we don’t understand the grasp of sexuality. it’s normal, especially when hormones are flowing, to have thoughts like that

@mh31 I was like 8-9 I think and it was like my friend wearing a dress but he has his normal face