How do you explain your daily torment to your spouse in a way they'll understand? I have pure o and huge avoidance behaviors. My husband thinks I'm lazy or I feel too much or I overcomplicate everything. He tells me I'm negative and I always think the worst and I'm exhausting. :( I wish more than anything he understood that I procrastinate making dinner bc I picture poisoning my whole family and it scares me so much that I just order take out again. Or I ask him to clean my daughters ear piercings bc I pick at my own skin and if I touch her ears she'll get a horrible infection and get septic and die bc I touched her newly pierced ears (even with the alcohol stuff). Or I lay around playing games on my phone because I need distractions to numb out so I don't think about hurting anyone or cheating on him. How do you say that to the father of your kids without him trying to take them away from you? He doesn't even believe in mental illness. He sees it as weakness. :( Any help would be awesome bc I don't know what to do.

Having a really rough night tonight. Currently I'm having a lot of contamination obsessions and compulsions with using the bathroom and when I use it I usually end up spending at least an hour and a half including all the cleaning rituals and showering afterwards and I just started seeing a new therapist to help with this. Tonight it unfortunately hit me in the middle of the night at like starting at 1 am and finishing close to 3 am. This ended up making both my mom and dad really angry with me and this is not a new situation. For context, my dad doesn't believe in mental illnesses at all and my mother is better and much more understanding, but still doesn't believe it's real to an extent. With my mom being more supportive than my dad, it leads to arguments between them a lot especially ever since they brought me home (I recently graduated college and my OCD got to the point where I was unable to have a job or function normally in taking care of myself by living alone). My mom tends to lash out at me when she gets stressed about these arguments with my dad over me because she can't talk back to him and that in turn usually causes me to spiral and get worse and so the cycle continues. This recent time my dad started yelling at me from downstairs because I was flushing the toilet too much for his liking and my mom said some hurtful things to me. I understand that it's not easy living with me especially right now and I can see why they're upset but I really am trying to get better but I can't just get better overnight and automatically be able to control all my compulsions, especially with the severity they're at right now. I'm not really sure how to navigate my family situation like this with a lack of a support network or someone in my family who believes that what I'm going through with OCD is real and it's not just me choosing to do these things. Has anyone else experienced a similar home situation and have any tips on getting through it?

My ocd is ruining my relationship with my kids. Because of the intrusive thoughts I avoid being close to them, hugging or cuddling up to watch tv. My ocd is either telling me I wouldn’t care if harm came to them or it turns everything into something sexual or inappropriate. For example, my daughter wanted to show me how long her nails are so she started scratching my arm gently. It felt so nice and relaxing and I immediately panicked because I was scared the ocd would cause a groinal and I don’t ever, ever want a feeling like that connected with my child even though I know it’s the ocd causing it and not me i’d still feel horrible. I just want to be a normal loving affectionate mom and I can never be that for my kids because of ocd😪 I don’t see any other parents posting about going through this or commenting that they do and how they cope. I feel so alone and defeated.

Every day my ocd makes sure there’s a new reason for me to stay trapped in my mind rather than being the mom I want to be that my kids need. Instead i’m stuck in my head depressed and pushing them away. The other day I was braiding my daughter’s hair like I always do and her hair is really long so when I get to the end of the braid I can see her butt in my peripheral vision and I looked down and I immediately got upset asking myself why did I look down?(the ocd has made me question everything I do now). I know it’s just because I was at the end of the braid and I just looked because I was already looking in that direction. A normal person wouldn’t even think twice about it. There was no inappropriate reason behind it at all but of course my ocd latched onto the situation and said I looked down because I wanted to look at her butt. I was so upset and said to myself “I don’t understand how the ocd started an intrusive thought because she was wearing baggy pants. I could understand if she had on tight pants and her butt was more noticeable” and the only reason I said that is because usually the only time my ocd starts intrusive thoughts telling me i’m looking at my daughter in a wrong way is when she has on leggings or a crop top or bathing suit ect. Now my ocd twisted what I said to mean that I like looking at her in tight pants. Nooo! That’s not what I meant but now the ocd won’t stop trying to make me believe that. I don’t ever look at my children in any inappropriate way. I hate this. I hate ocd and I can’t live like this anymore.