Hi everybody, I want to apologize in advance for the long post. I’m new here and, to be honest, I’ve never been diagnosed with OCD or been in therapy at all, but I’m going through a very difficult time and am in search of answers. If it’s alright I’d like to start with some background. I remember as a child experiencing intense, recurring anxiety on several occasions. I spent a summer with my grandmother and had moments of total panic when I didn’t know where she was. I’d come downstairs, wouldn’t be able to find her (inevitably she was outside or in the garden), and I was convinced something horrible had happened to her until I was able to find her. A few years later I had an episode where I began to focus intensely on my breathing and convinced myself I wasn’t able to breathe properly. These episodes also recurred from time to time. In college I began a long battle with hypochondriasis, and would obsess over the feeling that I had cancer or other chronic illnesses. These episodes would leave me completely panic-stricken and depressed for weeks, unable to think about anything other than my fear of being gravely ill and not knowing it. Reassurance-seeking would always leave me feeling like I had more unanswered questions, and I began to recognize in myself a real fear of situations where I would not be in control. For a long time I accepted these episodes as intermittent interruptions in my life, but I find myself unable to do that now. Earlier this year I began to notice my anxiety and looping thoughts worsening. I would be driving, hit a bump in the road, and convince myself that I had hit and killed someone. Once the feeling was so unshakeable that I actually turned around, re-tracing my path to check that there was no one hurt lying in the road. Currently I’m in a very distressing cycle of intrusive sexual thoughts that seem to be triggered by specific types of movement, touch, and even by opening my mouth to eat or drink—anything that feels like it could possibly be part of an intimate experience. Along with this—and please tell me if you’ve experienced this—I find myself having obsessive thoughts about obsessive thoughts themselves: fear they will recur at the worst possible moments or that they will continue happening the exact same way, with the same frequency, for the rest of my life. I am weighing different therapy options currently, and really would love to hear from other people who understand what I’m going through or who might be able to offer some hope. I feel alone and unable to speak openly about what I’m going through with the people close to me.