Don’t see many people with existential OCD posting on here. I have bad existential (am I real, are the people around me real, am I in some kind of Truman show/matrix world etc.). With existential I think reassurance from other people is basically impossible because we understand that you can never know if the world is real, and I think that’s why doing something even like posting on this forum for support can feel unhelpful and meaningless. But maybe that can be a good exposure for us, like by allowing this forum to mean something we will fight against our OCD? Idk just a thought. Also these thoughts are just so scary that talking to people about them can seem very scary. Like how do you tell somebody you think they might not be real? I avoided talking to anybody about this for years until recently because I thought I was going crazy (I have some schiz-ocd as well) after this thought came to me after an LSD trip. Wondering if anybody relates to this, and maybe we can get some more existential posts in this forum as I think it’s under-talked about, and it’s something that probably will get worse as a society with all the dystopian tech themes in movies and stuff. Also how have you been doing ERP exposures? I’m just starting

Looking back, I realize I’ve had OCD since I was 7. though I wasn’t diagnosed until I was 30. As a kid, I was consumed by fears I couldn’t explain: "What if God isn’t real? What happens when we die? How do I know I’m real?" These existential thoughts terrified me, and while everyone has them from time to time, I felt like they were consuming my life. By 12, I was having daily panic attacks about death and war, feeling untethered from reality as depersonalization and derealization set in. At 15, I turned to drinking, spending the next 15 years drunk, trying to escape my mind. I hated myself, struggled with my body, and my intrusive thoughts. Sobriety forced me to face it all head-on. In May 2022, I finally learned I had OCD. I remember the exact date: May 10th. Reading about it, I thought, "Oh my God, this is it. This explains everything." My main themes were existential OCD and self-harm intrusive thoughts. The self-harm fears were the hardest: "What if I kill myself? What if I lose control?" These thoughts terrified me because I didn’t want to die. ERP changed everything. At first, I thought, "You want me to confront my worst fears? Are you kidding me?" But ERP is gradual and done at your pace. My therapist taught me to lean into uncertainty instead of fighting it. She’d say, "Maybe you’ll kill yourself—who knows?" At first, it felt scary, but for OCD, it was freeing. Slowly, I realized my thoughts were just thoughts. ERP gave me my life back. I’m working again, I’m sober, and for the first time, I can imagine a future. If you’re scared to try ERP, I get it. But if you’re already living in fear, why not try a set of tools that can give you hope?

So, I know my capacity to get fixated on things. And it's normally something that's relatively remote but, my latest issue is really getting to me and I was wondering if people have any advice. I'm avoiding getting too into specifics, as I don't want this to get reassurance-y but, in essence.. I came to the realisation recently that people who I'd been "friends" (feels like the wrong term now) when I was younger were not very nice people, and normalized a lot of very unpleasant behaviour towards other members of the group. They really normalized it, sold themselves as figures of authority, as older and more responsible and grown-up than others, and looking back, they acted horribly. And coming to this realisation, that I'd been manipulated into just accepting their behaviour has just... broken me. My OCD has latched onto it and I can't stop feeling irreversibly tainted by it. I've talked to others about it, and they've reassured me, told me it's not a big deal and that I hold myself to too high a standard, but none of that sticks. I feel better for a bit, then think 'Maybe when you told them you were skewing it to make yourself look better' or 'Did you leave out a crucial detail'. I keep ruminating over and over, trying to remember exactly how everything played out, trying to figure out if I fed into the behaviour, if I did something bad myself (because y'know, I feel like I was accepting of it at the time, so what does it say about my own values?). I know I need to stop doing all this if I want to improve, but then some part of me keeps saying 'So, you're just going to let yourself off the hook then?' Normally, I can rationalize my own fears to some degree, assure myself something won't happen, but the realness of the situation, and the fact I only came to understand the reality of it because the thought had been bothering me means it feels so much more all-encompassing. I know confessing in itself is a compulsion, but I keep feeling that if I'm not I'm somehow concealing what I 'really am' from others around me, and any positive interactions are me deceiving them in some way. I feel like I can't enjoy anything in life right now, and a good part of me feels I should not enjoy it ever again. If anybody has any advice on it, I'm all ears. Or even hearing if you relate to these feelings, I might appreciate the solidarity at least.

Medication for OCD? Hello all, 19 male here, this seems like a cool community that isn’t nearly as triggering as reddit. I have pretty severe bouts of existential thinking or fear of going crazy ( psychosis ) after some pretty heavy mushroom trips a few years ago, I know logically I should be fine but I do know what it’s like to lose it and it’s scary. Currently I deal with relationship focused OCD, it’s all day from before I even open my eyes. I want things to work out with my girlfriend badly. Also I can come close to a panic attack sometimes which perpetuates everything. Anyway, I mention the fear of going crazy because the way my anxiety/derealization makes me feel is that I’m not mentally stable cause I feel out of it or unreal. I saw that a lot of anxiety and depression medication can cause psychosis and I feel like I could use some help in getting ahead of my OCD because the compulsions are had not to give into when I’m in such distress/not knowing. Plus overall I just feel like I have no idea how I feel about close to anything. Anyone relate about that ?