Hi. I'm a 25 year old. I haven't been diagnosed with OCD but I've struggled with intrusive thoughts and anxiety for a long time. It comes and it goes. I first started obsessing about one direction (I know haha) to the point that it distressed me, then I started obsessively thinking about death and how much that scared me. Then I read about solipsism somewhere and I completely lost it. I got extremely scared, couldn't stop thinking about it, and then I convinced myself that even if I couldn't be sure of other people's presence, I would try to find evidence of anything wrong to prove to myself that everything was real. For example, when I would come out of the bath, I would look at my towel and see if it was wet, click pictures of it so that later my mind couldn't convince itself that it wasn't wet (and thus impossible and so everything was unreal). I had a lot of weird things that I would check. Then I got over it once I went to college. In college I started obsessing about relationship, that what if I didn't really love my partner etc etc, and then would check my feelings all the time, and judge my boyfriend's character. It's been four years since and slowly I got used to the feelings and stopped checking my feelings but still got the occasional flare upz nothing I couldn't handle though. Now the past month my boyfriend got very busy and I got scared that you know was he losing feelings for me, I was feeling very insecure, and then I started feeling like what if I wasn't comfortable around him anymore, couldn't be myself etc etc (which is a big deal for me cause I'm not comfortable around most people) and then I got so scared of that, that I thought that if I can feel like this for my boyfriend, I can feel like this for anyone. Then I started getting scared for other people also, and then I started feeling like this with my MOTHER! I got very scared. Shes my best friend and now I wasn't feeling comfortable around her, didn't know what to talk etc etc. Then I started thinking about solipsism again and while researching on it i came across a post on instagram where a guy was suffering with solipsism and harm ocd where he felt like if he felt nothing was real then what was stopping him from harming others. I got very scared on reading this, and then I started thinking about it. Currently it's like my mind alternates between thinking about not feeling comfortable around my boyfriend and my mom, or solipsism, or harming people if I feel like this. So I just don't know what to think, what to do. I feel very alone, and I don't even know what I'm dealing with! I tried therapy but I didn't like my therapist, she was a lot more concerned about the content of my thoughts than my patterns of thinking, which I don't think is the issue. I'm also trying hard not to click pictures of things to make myself believe that things are real or whatever. And so I have nothing to do other than sit with the thoughts. I don't even know what I'm looking for here, just want to find someone who understands.

Hello, I’m new to this app. I’ve always had an anxious brain, and I’ve had coping mechanisms for as long as I can remember. When I was a kid, from as early as I could spell, until I was probably early teens, I would constantly write words in my head along to the beat of music. It’s such a vivid memory because I never stopped doing it. The word had to perfectly match up to the lyric and I loved that it kept my brain busy. I grew out of that, but felt like good context. My anxiety increased drastically around ages 17-19, and I began therapy. I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety and panic disorder, due to having a panic attack nearly every day at that time. I overcame that as well, and now the panic attacks are every now and then, but the anxiety is constant, and some recent symptoms have led me to believe I might have some form of OCD. Maybe not. I’m trying to understand myself and get better so I joined this app to make sense of things. Lately I’ve been having really intense intrusive thoughts. I’m really embarassed and they make me feel like a bad person. Thoughts pop in my head seemingly out of nowhere. It will be an image of me harming myself or someone else in a really bad way. (Trigger warning) for example the other day I couldn’t shake the image of me putting a knife through my own forehead, although it’s not something I want to do. Or I’ll imagine someone killing me. I imagine my loved ones dying often. The thoughts feel so out of my control it’s insane. I hate them. Another persistent issue that isn’t as new is replaying social scenarios. I’m a hairstylist so this one is difficult since I meet a bunch of new people every day. I obsess over how I act and if people like me. I will impulsively say things all the time and they will haunt me for weeks. I question even my closest friends and family who show their love. I find myself so angry and numb and like I have so much built up emotion and a busy mind always. While doing my job I spiral really badly if any little thing goes wrong and it’s embarassing. I know there’s more but I can’t think of it now. I just want to feel better and like I’m not constantly battling my mind.

Hi! It’s pretty difficult for me to get the courage to post this but I’m really struggling to figure out if what I’m experiencing is OCD or Anxiety or neither. I think I have the “pure O” type of OCD where most of my compulsions take the form of ruminating and trying to figure out something all in my head. When I hear this talked about in forums or online the intrusive thoughts don’t really match mine- I worry often about things that seem more “grounded” if that makes sense. A common one for me is my own identity- i will spend long amounts of time stuck in my head trying to figure out my feelings (often sadness or other real emotions I have and patterns I have) and why I feel that way and what in my life caused that and how it’s impacting other things in my life. I also think often about which parts of my personality are the real me and which aren’t. Sometimes this takes the form of strictly ruminating and sometimes I have fake conversations with people I know. It’s intense and I feel I have to figure it out but with no specific intrusive thought that says something like “you have to figure this out or all of your loved ones will die” but it’s very intense. I think also often of all of the decisions I need to make in the future and how they’re going to affect those I love and care about as well as how much I’ll regret them. I imagine all of the ways I think my actions will emotionally hurt others and how to make the least harmful decision, but to me this feels like a valid concern but go over and over and never come to a conclusion. I often just get scared and never make any move because I don’t see an option that doesn’t hurt someone somehow. But again I’m having a hard time identifying the intrusive thought behind it. But I also don’t choose to think about these things most of the time. This is almost all decisions but especially big life decisions. It’s such a struggle because they are things I eventually do have to make decisions about. There is so much more to it that would take too long to explain but in general a lot of my fears revolve around pleasing others/ understanding others emotions to ensure they’re okay, my own identity and personality, and work/school performance. Someone mentioned OCD to me because in my head it feels like I have to solve these things and will go over and over them but I seriously can’t figure out if it’s anxiety, OCD, or none of the above. It’s all very disruptive to my life. I am never not thinking or not trying to figure something out and I feel as if I have no control over it Anyone have any insight?

Hello. I joined this app because I realised my experiences might be due to OCD. I often have these really disgusting and terrible pictures of me becoming someone horrible, doing horrible things to others. These ideas really disturb me, and often in my mind, and physically sometimes, I literally scream quitely to myself, "Shut up!" Over and over until the image goes away, but unless I distract myself with something else immediately after, it comes back and gets worse. I also end up looking back on these thoughts, and being terrified that maybe I am thinking of this because it is what I truly want, so I end up desperately trying to filter my thoughts, and this ends up carrying into something like SO-OCD, even though I am confident that I am a straight male, and there is no evidence that I am not, I keep trying to prove to myself that I am straight to make the thought go away. I also get the fear that after I maybe do something and say something I know I maybe shouldn't have to someone, that when they leave, or I can't find them for a bit, they have gone to commit suicide. Likewise, I also get intrusive thoughts of me killing myself, even though I have no desire to, and this scares me a lot as well. I used to occasionally get these thoughts in chunks like maybe for 2 weeks and then I wouldn't for another few weeks, but they have gotten worse and more frequent this past semester. They are still not bad enough to actively effect my daily life and routine, but they definitely come frequently enough to distract me, disrupt what I'm doing and make me take a break, and it has dramatically effected my mood and mental state lately. Do you guys recommend any ways to deal with this, is this really severe enough to even call OCD? Would love to hear, thanks! ❤️