Hey y’all! Second post on this community and I can’t sleep, as usual. When you look back, do any of you guys see signs of ocd in your younger self that you wish you caught up on? For me, I hoarded a lot as early as 3 and made my family make my lunch and dinner I’m very specific ways or else they would have to start over. I’m a junior in high school now and a lot of my obsessions/compulsions are different, but looking back I definitely struggled with it my whole life.

Since when do you believe you have OCD? Anyone who would like to share what were the indications/symptoms in childhood?

One of my first memories of OCD was from when I was about 8-12 years old. I’ve always struggled with sleeping and prone to twisting and turning due to my brain going like 🧠 🗣️🗣️🗣️ Anyways once I couldn’t sleep and got out of bed one of my parents said, with compassion, ”oh it’s so late, why are you awake it’s school tomorrow” and when they followed me to my room I saw that the time was 22:22 and I felt a really scary feeling in my chest (today I know it was anxiety) and from that day on the time 22:22 🕰️ followed me for years. I was twisting and turning and feeling anxious about my digital clock (I’m a 90s girly) turning 22:22. I could get issues taking deep breaths, being sweaty, uncomfortable and scared and feeling like ”ITS SOON 22:22 AND WHEN THE TIME PASSES IT WILL BE TOO LATE”. I never really understood exactly what was going to be ”too late” but I’m guessing it was getting too little sleep absolutely blown out of proportion. As soon it passed 22:22 it was all good and I could fall asleep 😴 I don’t struggle with those numbers today instead I smile and feel compassionate towards little me. Still OCD sucks, I still struggle with sleep times to times and do have some magical thinking but the big difference is that I logically know that it’s not real even if it emotionally sometimes feel that way. Take care out there. If this made you feel less lonely, wanna share your first memories of OCD? ❤️

Hi I’m new to the community and I have such weird ocd tendencies I was curious to see if anyone else has so I’m just going to list them in no specific order: 1. My brain goes “I hope” every time I think of something bad happening. Like “I hope that pedestrian gets hit by a car” or “I hope a demon snatches me under the bed right now.” 2. I have dermatillomania mostly on my arms, chest, face, and shoulders. If I have a bunch of open wounds on my body, I make myself feel “cleaner” by doing an everything shave in the shower. Conversely, if I’m having a period of mostly healed skin, I like to leave my body hair growing out for a couple days as a way to gloat to myself how “clean” I am even without shaving. 3. After my whole life living with these symptoms, most of them I’m able to brush off. But this next one still shakes me and disturbs me to my core every time it happens and it’s picturing sex acts with people I would NEVER want to do sex acts with. My earliest memory of this is when I was a little kid, as young as 5 years old, I had an image in mind of what I thought God looked like. Every time I would imagine God, I would automatically imagine him naked and I would shove my head under the pillow and shut my eyes tightly and try to make the image go away because I thought I was being blasphemous by imagining such a thing. 4. This one is relatively new, the past year or two, but cutting my own bangs. The only reason I consider it an ocd tendency and not just self sufficiency is because I SUCK at it and botch it every time!!! But I keep trying to find the perfect parting that contours to all the existing cowlicks and kinks in my hair and try to carve out my “natural bangs.” I convince myself a hairdresser is just not familiar enough with my hair growth patterns to give me what I want. This one is particularly embarrassing because it’s like I’m wearing my mental illness on my face. I have been wearing a headband for the past year to try and hide it but it doesn’t stop me from cutting it again because I am so insistent to get it right. I always regret it after. 5. I don’t know if this one is ocd but I suspect it might be and it’s that I rarely ever am not drinking water. If I finish a glass I’m filling up another one. Sometimes it will be a different beverage like coffee or matcha but I almost always am sipping compulsively on something. I use the bathroom about once every hour and 3-4 each night. That’s all I can think of for now but I wanted to share some atypical traits to see if anyone relates! This isn’t by any means all of my ocd tendencies unfortunately:/ just the ones I’ve never heard anyone else share before!