Hi everyone! I have tried really hard to stop posting as much on this app. I realized that I was using it as a compulsion and posting on here almost everytime I had an anxious thought. It’s so nice to be met with compassion and understanding but I was also using it for reassurance/a crutch. But anyway, I’m REALLY stuck on something and I’ve already wasted my entire afternoon being really anxious about it so I’m just going to post it here as a way to salvage my mental health. My ex and I broke up 3 months ago and I am CONSTANTLY getting super triggered by things that happened in our past. Even things that occurred years ago, I seem to suddenly intrusively remember and then have to “solve them” all over again. What’s so frustrating is that my brain is so fuzzy and my memories are so blurry since it was so long ago, but I can’t seem to rely on my brain to accurately remember or decipher the situation. Today, I’m completely stuck as I remember a situation from one of the times him and I broke up temporarily. I remember being at a friends house and her and I were swiping through my Tinder for fun, when he popped up on my profile. When I went to his profile and checked his latest Instagram posts on his profile, it showed the latest Instagram photos of being from while we were still together. At the time, and now, this has led me down a rabbit hole of anxiety wondering if he was swiping on tinder while we were “madly in love“. I’ve googled everything I could about when Instagram and tinder update themselves. But now, everything I Google or look up about Instagram photos syncing with tinder makes it seem like there’s no way he wasn’t swiping while we were together. I’m pretty sure I confronted him about it at the time, even though him and I were broken up, because I was so upset and anxious. And I obviously worked through it at the time and let it go until now- 2 1/2 years later. Him and I are still great friends at this point, and all of me wants to call him and ask for reassurance but I know that that’s silly because it was so, so long ago. I feel like these things keep coming up because my anxiety is trying to still take this relationship away from me, even though it’s technically already over. In my mind, if I find out that he did bad things in the past, I can’t be friends with him in the present. I’m so tired of having these things come up on a daily basis and giving away my days to anxious thoughts from years ago, but I don’t know how to stop it from happening. Sorry this is so long, but thank you so much for reading. I really appreciate any advice and I’m crying as I write this. Thank you

Hi everyone. A couple years ago I struggled with harm ocd, quite literally thinking i will wake up one day and become a serial killer. Anyway, i struggled with that for 2 years and then i finally got over it. Now 4 years later and mind you i thought i completely battled ocd and was done with it, i started to deal with existenital ocd. This consumed me for a good month until i got over it and another thought came. I started thinking about how time goes by way to fast, and how thing's from 2 years ago feel like yesterday. I then started to to become obsessed with remembering everything. Then somehow this thought trickled into me and my boyfriends nearly 3 year relationship. I started saying to myself "omg, i can't remember every little hug, cuddle, kiss, laugh, touch, conversation from like 2 or 1 year ago", this then led to me panicking and thinking that, if i cant remember those memories then I don't really know my boyfriend. I know this is confusing to understand but basically my brain convinced me that I can't remember how my boyfriend acted exactly when we first started dating s well as a year ago. This then led to me thinking that because i cant remember exactly him a year ago, then i dont know him "is he the same?". Like i know him right now but i dont know that past him. This then led to me thinking that if he ever died, i wouldnt be able to grieve because i dont really know him and since i cant recall every interaction perfectly then i dont know him and i wont have any memories to remember him by. Like when he does something funny or acts a certain way im like "did he do this before" was he always like this. I feel like i need to remember everything from the past to validate the present moment. like i need to remember everything to know the present him. Then i was like i know he is my favourite person now and that i love him more then anyone, but did i think this a year ago or 2 years ago. Like i cant remember his laugh from a year ago, or how he acted. My relationship with him is something that i cherish most out of anything in my life and just 3 months ago this thought was never a thing. I hate this because i feel like im not in the moment with him because of these thoughts, constantly trying to compare to the past. I love him so much and i just want to go back to when this wasn't an issue. I don't know why i feel like i need to remember everything to know him even though ive ben dating him for 3 years and know him better then anyone else. It's like my brain is convincing me he is a different person even though i know thats false. please help me please

Hi Everyone! I hope whoever is reading this is having a good day so far :) So for years now I’ve had very bad intrusive thoughts about things that I have done or embarrassing things that I’ve said or have happened and it’s mortifying and debilitating on a daily basis. Specifically these thoughts are mainly things that have occurred from 2018-2020 and some are more simple just as a stupid joke I made or being way too loud on calls while my family was trying to sleep and others being way more complex such as past relationships and how I’ve hurt some of the people I care the most about and when I have acted on intrusive thoughts and these thoughts will appear with no triggers at all I’ll just wake up and already have something I did just nagging me. I don’t want to live like this anymore and I’ve tried working through it with self compassion but sometimes the things I said or did back then it’s very hard to forgive myself for and I’ll reminisce on it for hours on hours, gaslight myself into believing that’s not how it happened and try to change the memory itself, or just suppress it entirely. I know those habits aren’t healthy and truly I want to get better but I don’t know how to overcome some of these thoughts. I have talked to my fiancé about this a few times and even today we talked about it and he fully supports me and is helping me work through it. I might also contact my sister too, I don’t talk to her overly too much but ever since I was little she’s thought I’ve had ocd and was one of the people who made me consider that I might have it (I’m still undiagnosed but I’ll try to when I have the money and time) and I know she could maybe provide some insight. Another thing that is troublesome about the situation is my other family members specifically my mom aren’t the most helpful and can trigger thoughts. To put it in perspective on how her thought process is and some background info she is an ER nurse and has been for 30 years due to this she believes she knows mainly everything there is about mental health and she gets extremely upset when I don’t take her advice or set boundaries. She’ll force me to talk to her about my problems and when I don’t want to she’ll pin me in a corner where I’m forced to and last summer I had a really bad episode and was really overstimulated and I just finished taking a shower and due to the water on me, my hair being wet (my hair is naturally curly and it takes forever to dry and it’s very draining taking care of even with a keratin treatment) and all the intrusive thoughts I was having and she forced me to talk to her and I did open up for the first time about my thoughts and brought up how sometimes I have thoughts of hurting my animals and it makes me physically sick. Her response to this was threatening to call the cops on me saying it was a behavioral thing and I was doing it for attention. I have never hurt any of my animals but later that day my cat came into my room and a few minutes later she comes up just gives me the death stare and after a few seconds just asks me “are you going to go kill snickers?” In the most condescending tone and she’s always like this daily where she’ll force advice onto me or get upset and yell and then reinforce thoughts I’m having. I just want to know first how to stop the thoughts from so frequently and how to heal in an environmental where it keeps reopening wounds despite trying to place boundaries? I’m sorry this is really long I usually do go really in detail about things and it’s just how I’ve always been. If anyone has any questions feel free to ask and I’ll answer them to the best of my ability. I really appreciate the time you took to read this and thank you for your help! 🥰

Hi everyone! I have been having a rough time. So my boyfriend talks to his ex still as friends and I’ve been struggling with it lately and I can’t tell if it’s OCD or not but it does feel so distressing. She wasn’t texting him for about 2-3 months as she got into a relationship with this guy and they broke up. She had messaged him saying that she has no one else to talk to and needed to vent to someone. At first I felt okay, but my intrusive thoughts took over and it seemed like she was trying to get with him after the fact. It’s probably just my intrusive thoughts talking but he looks on Discord (the app where the message) constantly now and my intrusive thoughts convince me that he’s still in love with her. Then yesterday I saw one of his BeReals (a little photo app that shows a photo of the day) and I saw that he was watching one of her streams as she is a streamer. I struggled to talk about it because it made my worst thought feel like it came true where he is still in love with her. When we talked he gets a lil mad that I don’t tell him right away like straight up what I’m feeling but it’s hard to process because my thoughts flood in of all the worst things and I don’t want to come off as toxic at all and I know relationships are built on trust and I want to trust because this is literally the only thing that makes me nervous about him. It also doesn’t help that I’ve been cheated on before so I’m trying to protect myself but I’m lost. I get so depressed and so anxious because I feel like I have to grieve the relationship and it’s just so dramatic. I’ve never loved anyone like this before and I don’t wanna lose him by bringing this stuff up constantly when something occurs with his ex. I don’t know why I get triggered so easily and I just wanna heal from it and be the good girlfriend I’m supposed to be 😭