im a little bored so im going to tell you all my ocd story. it all started in elementary school when i thought “what if my siblings stop breathing?” this caused me to stay up late to ensure they were still breathing in there sleep. on road trips i would always be the one to stay up while my siblings were sleeping so that i can make sure they were ok. then it turned to another theme where everything i did on one side of my body i had to do on the other. for example, if i opened a door using one hand then i had to do it with the other hand. then it turned into religious ocd. i thought that everything i did would cause me to sell my soul to the devil. if i blinked 5 times i would sell my soul and it would be a bunch of ridiculous things like that. when i fell asleep i would feel as if my body was being possessed and that there was a demon in the corner of my room. now onto the worst theme i have had to go through, hocd. this began in quarantine while i was on tik tok. i would see these tik toks where the person would be like “if your favorite movie was tangled then you are gay now” “if you like drinking sprite then you are gay” the most ridiculous things right? well sometimes i related to what they were saying and that got me worried. around that time i rejoined the one direction fandom. a running joke in the fandom is that everyone is gay. that is what took the worry to another level. i live in miami so i have been exposed to homosexuality my entire life and many of my friends identify as lgbtq+. i have nothing against homosexuality and have been a proud ally my entire life. but i dont personally identify as gay (umbrella term) so when this began it caused me mass amounts of worry and anxiety cause its not me at all. i have been boy crazy my entire life and it made me feel amazing when i had a crush on a boy. so the thought of losing that and my future doing a complete 180° terrified me. what took it to another level is my insecurities. i have never been the thinnest person in the class so i always admired the girls that matched the beauty standards. i would often compare myself to the tik tok girls that had perfect bodies. i thought they were beautiful and i aspired to look like them. then ocd put the thought in my head “what if you actually want to date them?” that caused me to get so scared. i soon developed all these compulsions where i would check if i was attracted to every woman i saw, would look back on my memories and see if anything i did showed signs of me being gay, and spend hours researching sexuality. i never felt connected with any of them except for heterosexuality because i have always only been romantically, sexually, and emotionally attracted to men. but i never felt like i had a definitive answer cause my mind would think “i cant be straight if im having these thoughts. why wont these thoughts stop?” i felt like i had to accept me being gay even if it didnt feel like me at all. i spent months living this torment of not knowing who i was until i found ocd. i thought ocd was the stereotype of uncontrollably cleaning. i read more into it and found hocd. it made complete sense. before i knew about it i would always look back at my past and would say “dang this feels a lot like what happened with my siblings breathing.” so i have always had ocd but i didnt find out til this theme. im still working toward being recovered but i feel much better knowing i am not alone and that there is tons of people experiencing this. this just goes to show that we as a society have to do more to educate others on ocd because there are hundreds of people that are suffering in silence due to the fear of being judged. im sorry that was long just wanted to say that:)

Last year during April I started to experience groinal responses when I looked at kids. I was terrified of what it could mean and decided to attempt two weeks later. The very next day I had those responses I decided to attempt. I didn’t really have the courage to do so at that time but I started experiencing images about disturbing things done to kids and as days went by it got worse. April 16 was the last straw and I couldn’t take it anymore. I ended up in a mental hospital but before I ended up there I had searched up what I was experiencing. That’s when I started to understand that it was OCD. I felt relieved for a few moments until I felt the urge to get more information. I saw lots and lots of things and many comments saying that it wasn’t normal and that people who went through this were disgusting people who shouldn’t be allowed to roam free. That’s when my anxiety and fear became worse and I tried to get rid of it but nothing worked. I shook the entire time I was awake, I didn’t have motivation for anything anymore, I just felt so disgusting. In the end, I’m so glad I ended up in that mental hospital or else I wouldn’t be here with my friends and family. Thank you for reading my story, I’m so glad that I’m not alone

I’ve always had OCD, and for most of my life it was little things that seemed manageable at the time or something that would phase out of my head within a couple days/weeks/months. But, the older I got the more severe it became, I’d find myself collapsing deeper and deeper within my own head trying to out think the thoughts that bothered me. About a year ago I had a thought that rattled me to my core. My brothers and I were watching a movie in our mother’s room when my youngest brother turned to me to say something. His close proximity to me triggered a fleeting sexually explicit image in my head and that thought caused me to spiral. Asking questions like, “are you attracted to your minor brother? Are you attracted to minors? Are you gay? Etc.” a couple days went by and my mental stability continued to crumble until I broke down to my mother, she was understanding and we found a a psychiatrist. I got on medication and for a while everything was slowly but surely trending in a positive direction. The thoughts would still pop into my head but they were becoming more manageable. As we all know OCD and mental illness comes in waves. Currently my OCD has been pretty severe. I feel those intrusive thoughts latching on in my head and it’s been very hard to kick them. It’s gotten to the point where I find myself being uncomfortable being in close proximity with my little brother because I feel as though I am capable of harming him in any way. And the more uncomfortable I become being around him the more I find myself lashing out in anger towards the people I care about the most. Those moments of anger cause me to spiral even farther as my head fills with ideas like “what if you are capable of hurting someone or even murdering them?” There’s times where these thoughts rattle me so much that I feel like it would be better to be in prison where I couldn’t harm someone or that even being dead would be a better solution than possibly running the risk of hurting someone in my life I care about. This is about the jist of it, a majority of the OCD I have is centered around the idea that I am capable of harming my little brother physically, mentally, sexually. It’s been exhausting and it feels like there is no end in sight.

Hey everyone. I wanted to share my story and some of the things I have/am experiencing in my journey with OCD- particularly with Sexual Orientation OCD. My goal is not to use this as a means for reassurance for myself or for any other, rather as to be a reminder for myself and you all that you are NOT alone. No matter what you are experiencing you aren’t alone, and we have all gone through the same thoughts and feelings as you, in whatever form they may have been. For personal reasons I will not share my name, but I do want to share about me and my journey with what has truly been one of the hardest things I’ve ever experienced. I am a 24 year old female and for as long as I’ve remembered I’ve always been a “worrier”. My dad used to tell me that worrying will be the fastest way I’d die lol. Oh! How I wish I could go back to those days of just simply worry. For the past few years I have struggled with what I now know is intrusive thoughts. But, luckily for me they were a little calmer than what I’ve experienced now. They were the occasional worrying that my boyfriend died but I would get over it rather quickly. Well, in may of 2024, I had just graduated college, was about to get married and about to move out. So, that triggered some switch in my brain and thus began this horrible disease of OCD. My main type has been SO-OCD but I have found some moments that I’ve also struggled with ROCD as well as some existential crisis OCD. I have unfortunately not been able to go to therapy because of money but I am on meds and have been using tips and tricks I’ve found online. My goal is to still go to therapy when I can find the right time. And I, like many of you have months of great “freedom” from the disease; and then, like I find myself now, fall back into its trap. I wanted to share some of the things I’ve experienced with this to see if y’all have experienced the same things and to let you know you are not alone. For reference, I am straight (I am happily married to my wonderful husband). 1. Thoughts from the past: I slightly remember having a thought that I’d be gay when I was around 12-13… that was around the time I actually first figured out what that meant. Even then, I (more easily than now) brushed it off. Continued to have about a million crushes on boys and never thought of it again. But now, with my OCD, I feel “convinced” that that was a sign that I was gay. 2. I have always been a girls girl. Me and my friend have a joke that we are worse than men! Meaning that when we see a pretty girl with a nice body, we stare. We say they are pretty. Never have I ever thought anything of it. It was always from a place of envy and admiration. Never a place of lust or anything along those lines. But NOW. OH! If I even look that direction I feel guilty, I feel like that’s confirmation that I am gay. And even worse- that is one of my compulsions. To look and make myself “prove” I’m not gay. 3. I have lost “feeling” for my partner. I love my husband. More than anything else. I could not live without him. But since this all happened, my emotions and fears have been all over the place that I’ve somewhat lost that feeling. It doesn’t help that I’m on medicine that can have that effect. I have to just remind myself that love isn’t always feelings, it’s a choice. And I choose him every single day. 4. sex life issues: bc/ of the OCD fear as well as my medication, I don’t have much sex drive or pleasure in the bedroom as I did before OCD… and, my OCD likes to convince me that that is because I would be better off with a woman (even tho I don’t want that) and then, OH THEN, I proceed to experience some groinal sensation from that though. So- cue even more “proof” that I am gay. well- that’s all I can think of now. Let me know if any one yall struggle with those. And I hope you know, YOU ARE NOT ALONE. YOU ARE NOT YOUR THOUGHTS. YOU ARE NOT YOUR OCD 💚