Do you guys ever feel like you're doing well and you're intrusive thoughts starts to settle down and all of a sudden it comes back. I dont feel well mentally. In the beginning, I had a OCD flare up because of a nightmare I had a few days ago and now I just feel depressed. I'm a content creator and I'm just really afraid that no one will like my work. I feel like a nobody and I feel like I won't be successful because of my intrusive thoughts or the way I look like (i also suffer from body dysmorphia). I just feel like I shouldn't be on this earth.

Where do I begin with this…….. so my OCD has been around since childhood and has had many themes over the years. I only realised I have it just over 2 years ago. I’ve tried many things to help it not be such a monster and thought I had a good grip on it for a length of time until now! Some of my strategies have been acceptance, change of perception of thoughts and sometimes on hard days just telling myself that no matter what, I have to be brave and go out and live life. In the last few months I’ve developed none OCD related anxiety as well and so have been looking at ways to help with that. Sunday morning I was just casually scrolling TikTok and a video only about 30 seconds long or so comes up, seemingly a therapist of some kind, straight away the video began something like “you cannot replace a thought with another thought” along the lines of “you can’t THINK your way out anxiety” I don’t know the full context of the video it wasn’t long enough, I don’t know who the therapist was I didn’t look but now purely because of that one sentence my OCD has gripped onto it so badly and is trying to tear down some of my strategies because I have used changing my thought patterns a lot to help me, self compassion etc but now because of that video I’m struggling! I’m not looking for answers but I am just really upset and it feels like I’m in an impossible grip of OCD again

I’ve been dealing with a really bad flare up the last 2 weeks and i’ve been dealing with ocd on and off for years. I was finally feeling better today, So of course my ocd decided to bring up an old intrusive thought that was really upsetting and now i’m stuck on it again. The reason why I struggle so much to conquer my ocd is because I developed ocd as postpartum so my ocd targets my kids, the ones that mean everything to me. The intrusive thoughts range from mild to really disturbing. While I know deep down the intrusive thoughts aren’t true or me, the ocd makes it feel SO real and true which makes me feel like I HAVE to disprove the thoughts and with confidence but the ocd won’t let me. It also makes me question analyze and judge everything I do. It’s an endless cycle of pain and I just want to be a mom without ocd telling me i’m a horrible person all day every day. 😪

This might contain triggering content, but I'm also wondering if others have dealt with this similar thought, and if so, how to deal with it? Overall, I've been doing so well these past few days. I'm able to eat again, which I hadn't been able to do because of how much anxiety I'd been experiencing. I'm spending time around loved ones and not just rotting in my room, and I've been able to wake up without immediately being bombarded by intrusive thoughts. When things first got really bad, I'd wake my mom up every night for reassurance, but I haven't done that in a while either. I'm really proud of myself, but there's still this nagging thought in my mind... While looking through others posts on here, hoping to find advice that'd fit my situation, I ended up making things worse. Someone mentioned how they had a fear that they'd purposely search for illegal content (related to POCD). I panicked, and "what ifs" flooded my thoughts. "What if the intrusive thoughts affect who I am as a person, and I do that?" I'm terrified that I'll search for those things, which I know means I wouldn't do it. But then, another person on here said they'd actually looked for those things, and that freaked me out even more. Does that mean it's possible for that to happen to me? I don't want to do that, but I keep having intrusive thoughts surrounding it. I've been doing so well these past few days. I'm just... stuck. I don't know what to do. I've spoken with other people who have the same fears, but how do I manage this? It's not something I've even thought about before seeing those posts. I've been practicing accepting the uncertainty, but I'm really struggling with this one. I hate this. This morning, I woke up, and the intrusive thoughts were back. It's just disheartening.