Hi my little community :) After a longggggggg journey I finally don't have OCD anymore and I know I will never have it again and I'm writing this post to share the secret to overcome it. I've had existential, HOCD, incest, POCD, contamination, ROCD depersonalisation, zoophilia, false memory, scrupulosity, harm, religious, real memory, somatic, and many other forms of ocd that would make me lose my mind with all the questioning. I've reached too many low points in my journey and at some points I wanted to end my life convinced that I was the worst person in the world. I've had it since I was 5 years old, but it got extremely serious around the age of 14. I finally sought treatment at 19, and fully recovered at 20. I started treatment on my own by watching YouTube until I then decided to do treatment with NOCD. Unfortunately it felt like my therapy sessions were just repeats of what I was learning on YouTube so I stopped and continued treatment on my own. I thought that I could do it by myself, but honestly it was so difficult and I hit so many discouraging low points, until I tried one last thing.....I discovered this man named Eckhart Tolle on YouTube. This man changed my life. Through his teachings, I learned that OCD is no different than anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and other anxiety related disorders. I've learned that they all result from letting your mind and thoughts control your mind. So the secret is: That you must practice becoming the observer of your thoughts, learn to stop interacting with them, learn that you are separate from your thoughts, and live your life through the lens of the presence rather than the narratives your mind makes about the presence. You see, your brain's job is to collect information and perceive it. However, at many times, the brain is just spitting out illogical information based on your fears, experiences, memories, etc. Once you learn that your thoughts are separate from you and your experiences, then will you be able to fully overcome "OCD" and anything life throws at you. Its a concept that's difficult to understand at first, but once you get it, you get it, and it will change your life.

❤️we all just want it to be over already, but do not set a deadline for your recovery (e.g. "i give myself 3 months to get better") and let yourself go at your own pace ❤️accept that healing is a very, very non-linear process with highs and very dark lows.. it's a lifelong process for us those with ocd, when you stop suffering you start learning ! ❤️WITHOUT ruminating on this, identify the root of your obsessive themes. they hurt so much because they go after your deepest wounds. clearing out the fear or pain that stands at the base of your obsessions will help (e.g. my sexual ocd came as an emotional outlet for my inability to accept a new family member in my life) (e.g. my solipsism ocd came from the deep fear of being alone and abandoned) ❤️the truth will always surface. even if you have no hope anymore and not even asking for reassurance helps, put that last bit of your trust in the other people that are in good states of mind and who are trying to help you. remember that you're living by a distorted mind and if you can't trust your own brain, have trust in others. those who love you are your life net when you're down in the slumps. trust me. ❤️ocd can be caused by chemical imbalance. if you feel like you need it, don't be reluctant to try medication. it's important to have the correct dose and the correct meds. it may change a lot before finally being effective, but it can help A LOT. it was lifesaving for me. (I personally took 125 mg sertraline at 14 years old) ❤️cliche, but the exposure part of erp is in you already. we get exposed to relentless obsessions and terrors already by our minds, our part is the response prevention. throw yourself into the depths of uncertainty and fear by refusing to act upon your compulsions. any learned behavior can be unlearned, our brains are changing! 🧠 it does feel like we can't risk because we can't "know for sure" and we better be safe than sorry, right? well, screw this. unlearn these behavior and live life your own way. ❤️connect with other people with ocd. community is our pillar as humans, especially those communities who share our suffering. ❤️we tend to ask for reassurance a lot and other just reassure us because it's rational to them, not being aware thar it only causes us more pain as we have distoerted thinking. teach your loved ones to respond to your reassurance in a way that doesn't feed the cycle. (e.g. reassurance seeking- "hey, are you ABSOLUTELY SURE that I didn't hit an animal on the way back home??" ❌️wrong response- "no, you didn't, I already told you, I don't remember hearing or seeing anything!" ✅️better response- "I can see you are really distressed right now, why don't we go cook something together/watch a movie/paint together/etc.." ❤️keep your faith close to you. there is something bigger around us that surrounds us with love and takes care of us. even if you don't believe in a god, spirituality goes beyond religion. for me, this higher being was the sky, and everytime I saw the giant clouds I'd tell myself that they felt my emotions and they're watching over in my suffering. strangely enough, this pillar i built in the clouds was strong and really did give me a helping hand. who's to tell these connections we make are not real?

Common posts on here are "i had a thought" "why am i thinking this" "what if" and these are all OCDs way of making you doubt yourself while taking you round and round in never ending circles at the same time. Regardless of the theme you are facing, there is no "figuring out" or "making sense" of a thought, because it isn't a real situation - it's a passing word or image or scenario without any meaning attached. You can't control your thoughts and the more you "don't want to have them" the more they will appear. For instance, tell yourself not to think about "apples", it will be the first thing that comes to your mind, because that's just how our minds work. Once you categorise a thought as "bad", every time it comes into your mind, your anxiety level will go up and this makes the thought seem real. Because if it "Feels" this bad, surely it must mean something or must have happened - But none of this is true. All we have to do is naturally notice thoughts as they come up, and rather than try to assess or ruminate over the content, we can almost shrug them off. It's the only way to accept thoughts as simply thoughts and nothing more. Anxiety drives the intense feeling and the more attention you give to thoughts, the more power they have over you. No random thought can change your real intentions. OCD is never ever satisfied, so the only way forward is to accept the uncertainty of never knowing "for sure" and to class the unwanted thought as irrelevant. OCD says "quick..bad thought..feels horrible.. what does it mean.. fix it". But in reality there is nothing bad here or nothing to be fixed, it's a false alarm. Once you learn to respond to a thought calmly by working on anxiety, it gets easier over time. It's your perception of your thoughts that needs to change, you believe they mean something about you, but random things pop into our heads all the time - both things we like and things we don't. OCD also latches onto what we care about most and it always comes with a feared consequence, so think about what yours is, e.g "what happens if my worst fear comes true" you can then practice imaginal exposure which is imagining your worst case scenario over and over until you become desensitised to it and no longer fear it - therapists use this technique in sessions. Everyone in the world has thoughts, the thoughts are not the issue, you just get more of what you focus on, up until the point that you can change your attitude towards the thought. If I asked you if you went upstairs today you would have an answer straight away, however if I asked you a question related to your OCD theme, your anxiety would increase and you would doubt yourself, because that's OCD doing the thinking for you. Once you give it less power it becomes a less significant part of your day. It's so easy to give into compulsions as they feel like a "quick fix".. but as I mentioned, ocd is never happy, which is why it wants us to continue to check and seek reassurance. Once you start reducing and gradually stopping compulsions, whether this is rumination, checking, or a physical action (whatever you falsely believe is "keeping you safe" from your feared consequence) you will see it's not necessary to do them, and that the time consuming little things you have taught yourself to do have no effect on what actually happens in real life. Thoughts prompt feelings and feelings prompt actions - meaning - thoughts cause anxiety and anxiety drives unnecessary actions. As a side note, I overcame contamination ocd (I was in a very very bad way and now the theme doesn't bother me anymore). I still have OCD and it can affect me slightly at times, but i can manage it in a way that it doesn't interfere with my day and without the need to carry out compulsions. Please practice, because I promise it helps, it's super scary at first and extremely difficult but the end result is worth it. ERP therapy is also very helpful.

Oh my god, where do I start? Trauma related OCD is the worst crap I've ever experienced in my life, hands down. It develops in some people after a traumatic experience. You can have both trauma related OCD and PTSD together or develop it after PTSD. Mine was like a transitionary phase and developed it after PTSD. I had every symptom of PTSD prior to this from witnessing a traumatic event which I will not go into detail about. But I will tell you how I went from PTSD to OCD and what I've experienced with all of this as some guy in their late 20s.  So, right after the traumatic event I developed poor concentration, reoccuring nightmares, fear, insomnia, restlessness, irritation, reoccurring thoughts about the event, forgetfulness and a faulty fight or flight response triggered by the thoughts. The freaking insomnia killed me for a year straight. Imagine going to sleep at 3 am and getting up at 7 am with a faulty fight or flight response kicking in right away for that whole entire day now. It felt like my body was boiling and radiating with the hottest energy you can imagine from my legs all the way up to my head. And I also felt weak, drunk and terribly lightheaded every single day. Rinse and repeat all of that for 1 year straight. Thank god that's over now. It was a damn nightmare of nightmares.  Most of those PTSD symptoms eventually disappeared but not all of them. I just found the will and mental strength in myself to let most of that PTSD crap go. But you know what happened pretty damn soon after that? It was all eventually replaced with trauma related OCD. It's like the PTSD evolved and didn't want me getting away so easily. For me, it's a mix of handwashing OCD and really bad somatic or sensorimotor OCD but that's not all. I also have distorted senses, bad forgetfulness, terrible concentration abilities, tension headaches and irritation every single day.  Here are some examples of what I go through; I'll turn the lights off, but my brain imagines the lights are on still. I'll stand there trying to process that the lights are off while fighting the distorted sense perception from my brain. So, I keep 'checking' to make sure the lights are indeed off. Not a good situation to be in. I have pretty much every somatic OCD symptom of breathing, swallowing, blinking, eye movements and most bodily functions. My brain's like telling me if you don't do it the 'right way' then I have to keep doing it until I feel like I did it the 'right way.' It's a 'feeling' issue, a really bad one I should say. All of this crap causes my fight or flight response to kick in, gives me some loss of sleep, irritation and mental agony. Also, if I 'feel' like I forgot to do something even though deep down I already know I did said thing, I feel compelled to do it again until that feeling subsides. It's like this, "I know I just did that but my brain wants me to feel like I didn't do it. Therefore, let's do it again." The handwashing is bad too. But I normally do it to 'feel good' about something in my head. Hence, the obsessive handwashing. The dfference between this OCD stuff and PTSD is that PTSD has you focused solely on the traumatic event while this OCD has me focused on many, many different compulsions which is much worse. One thing vs many compulsions? The latter is by far worse, trust me. Focusing on the compulsions screws up my ability to focus and think about what I'm doing at hand. If I ignore them, just imagine a tension headache with a really irritated hot spot forming in your head somewhere and coming in hard and fast. Now, I've successfully ignored many urges but... new ones just keep coming and forming. It's a constant battle. Every freaking day is a terrible battle with this stuff. If I slip up and let something become a compulsion and get out of hand, I fight it like fighting to the death and it then takes a while for me to climb back up out the hole I fell into. Once I'm out of the hole, the incessant battle of resisting continues. ​Here's some more weird things I do for example; basically, if I'm desperate to keep a compulsion away, I have to do other unrelated things a certain way or else I get the urge to go right back to doing said compulsion. And sometimes weird sensations, strain or pain I might feel while doing something throughout the day will alone trigger me to do an earlier compulsion. I also have to get a good night sleep after a battle with a compulsion. If I don't, that compulsion comes right back and I have to fight it the next day. It's a vicious cycle. I know, it's very screwed up. You don't have to tell me. I sometimes repeat myself over and over again out loud to make my brain "click" with what I'm saying. Now, this one started with the PTSD and I'm not sure if it's a cognitive and concentration issue or an OCD issue but it did actually get better over time thankfully. I hated that anyway. ​This is a glimpse of what I go through on a daily basis. And yeah, I do ERT all the time and it's not like a magic wand you can wave in the air and then everything's gone and back to normal. In my experience, it has worked for some things but other things, not so much. I've taken saffron, NAC, valerian root, passion flower, other supplements and other stuff to see if it would all help in some way. Saffron is touted as an SSRI equivalent but it did nothing for my OCD surprisingly except make me tired. I took it for a couple months and just hated the tired and drowsy feeling I got from it. The thing that actually worked somewhat for me is NAC. I took it for several months straight at a high dose and it actually altered my OCD behavior a little bit. I did 2600 MG of it everyday for several months. I stopped after a while because it really got my libido going. Yeah, won't go into that part. ​Anyway, I felt like I should share my story. As someone who's had the unfortunate pleasure of experiencing both PTSD and trauma related OCD, people truly do underestimate the terrible suffering that OCD can inflict on its victims. I don't believe an SSRI or any cognitive supplement will "fix" your OCD but I believe one can be liberated from it if they do resist the compulsions long enough to where their brain sort of very slowly recalibrates itself to be less OCD about things in the future. But it will take a lot of mental strength, will power and most of all, time. Distracting yourself and focusing on what makes you happy is very beneficial too and is honestly what helped me the most out of anything. Everyone's OCD is unique to themselves. What works for me might not work for you. What you are experiencing may not necessarily be the same as what I'm experiencing. For example, some people have terrible harm OCD where they are afraid of acting out on their thoughts. I cannot relate to that. But if any of you can relate to some degree with what I have, feel free to share. I'll give you some tips that I learned from my experience with all of this that helped me. But just remember, what works for me might not necessarily work for you. - Try to adopt an 'I don't care mentality' for your ocd rituals: Try to treat it as something that you refuse to have define you as a person and as if it's just nonsense that means nothing in the end. - Stop it in the initial stages: If you feel a compulsion coming on, I've found that ignoring it right then and there works the best. Even if you act on the compulsion once when it just starts, you have enough time to stop it right then and there still by ignoring it. My brain thinks that the compulsion was therefore not a compulsion and moves on to find sonething else to focus in on. Just rinse and repeat at that point then. - Distract yourself immediately: This is probably one of the best things I ever did to get control of my OCD. If your brain starts up right then and there about something OCD related, just immediately focus on something you like to do. - My 'leave it behind' method: Move away from the area where the compulsions are occurring and go to a different room. It helped me sort of refresh my mind and brain by going to a different area and I found that a lot of my compulsions no longer 'follow me' to that different room. I can then later return to the same room where it started and be fine again. - Go work out: Another great thing to boost your mental health and possibly rid your mind of OCD is working out whether that be hiking, the gym, jogging or simply taking a walk. It's really great for overall mental well being. It helped me a lot. I never was one to give up. I've been through hell for a while now. My conscience use to be stuck in this blackest of blackness, sort of like nothingness. But eventually it started becoming more clear and I was able to start seeing through and beyond this blackness. It's like pulling a large black curtain away which was obstructing your field of vision completely and seeing something on the other side. That's where I'm at right now. I see something but it's faint. I'm just glad that it's something though. I'm thankful for that. Peace.