There is one thing I realized after a year of suffering from HOCD and POCD, my two most prominent and reoccuring themes. It's been really hard to put into words and it has been causing me much pain through rumination. The thing is, I know who I am, I'm not going to do anything suddenly out of character and completely against my values. It's stressful when those thoughts occur, sure, but my only instinct is to avoid the triggers, which is the complete opposite of my feared scenarios. I've been exposing myself not through ERP (currently working on getting a therapist, you can't get NOCD therapist where I live) but by almost forcefully resuming my social activities and working/studying more. It's a simple way of dealing with OCD, you ask yourself what would I be doing right now if I didn't have OCD. The other part is asking yourself what wouldn't I be doing if I didn't have OCD. Of course, after asking yourself you do the opposite of your OCD. That way you can identify various compulsions (such as avoidance in the first or rumination/mental compulsions for the second part, atleast for me) and by avoiding the compulsions you'll be able to bring up the thoughts you've been avoiding. That way I was able to bring up almost one year old thoughts which I thought were gone, only to find out I've been doing avoidance compulsions all this time to avoid being triggered. When you bring them up it's up to you to prove the value of habituation and avoid further compulsions (which you would have identified this way), however unpleasant it may seem. It's not a complete solution but one that keeps me in a somewhat functional state. But going back to the original thing that I wanted to say, I do not fear having a different sexual orientation. It's a somewhat okay thing in todays world and I'm sure I would be able to make it work somehow. Likewise, I'm not afraid I would hurt or abuse children/underage people, just writing it feels laughable. Yes, people sometimes do impulsive things and peoples thoughts attach to that micro possibility of you being a threat to other people but deep down I know that I would avoid doing such things with all my strength. Those thoughts of death being a preferred scenario are just mental reassurance. I do not believe I'm at risk any more than anyone else, I would even go as far as saying I'm a lower risk. The thing I realized is that all of my themes can be boiled down to the fear of losing my identity. It's not the acting out the thoughts part, I'm the one in control of my body. It's been a huge part of my rumination because I would worry why am I not afraid of the thoughts? Are you not afraid of acting out your thoughts? You damn should be, you just had a thought involving a 14 year old, how dare you! You should feel like absolute shit, you SHOULD be afraid of acting out the thoughts! That was the difficult part of explaining it to a psychiatrist that I was talking to a few months ago. Of course I can have any thought pop up. I can actively think about chopping your head off with an axe, won't make it any more probable than before having the thought. It is the easy to understand part. The feared scenario is the possibility of having those devious attractions (referring to POCD here, not HOCD) and it's feared because it completely contradicts my character and identity, the acting out part is not so much the feared part which at first glance seems atleast irresponsible. Although the manifestation is different, those two themes feed of the same fear of losing my identity. I could write much more but I just realized how long this already is, thank you for reading my rambling if you got this far 😅. Excuse my english, I'm not a native speaker.

Struggling with TOCD has probably been the hardest theme I’ve had to deal with so far For reference. I’m a gay male 20yr old Before this theme I was so open with my gender expression, love drag and used to do it for a time. A lot of my friends are trans women and my whole life is queer When this theme hit. It’s like I completely lost who I was. Questioning everything I enjoyed, not participating in anything because it triggered me so heavily. I went through a whole gender journey awhile back and the trans path never spoke to me when I looked into it. I love my physique and my face but now when I look into the mirror i feel like a shell of who I was. I can’t find any sort of pure enjoyment without the accompanying “what if” or “you’re this” intrusive thought I still enjoy how I look. I’ve not looked in the mirror and felt like anything is missing from me or needs to be taken away I just feel like a spectator in my life while this disease tells me I’m not who I know myself to be I affirm myself every day I know who I am and it may change in the future but that’s not important. It’s highly unlikely it will but it may! Giving into the uncertainty has been so hard but it’s worth it! My ocd has really picked up since getting into my first serious relationship I care about my boyfriend with my whole heart but over the course of our relationship my themes have included Health Relationship Irreality Harm I just want to be who I was again before this current theme it feels unbearable to live like this BUT! I’m seeking appropriate treatment and not giving into a majority of compulsions I just wanted to write this to see if anyone can relate and if they do. Know that you will overcome this! I know I will and you will too

Hey folks, I know I shouldn’t post here and I know what I’m looking for when I do but I just feel so at a loss and OCD is playing the old trick of telling me I don’t have it which I guess is what it’s been doing for a while. My OCD started with a health obsession when I was 12 (I’m 22 now) but went away after a couple of months but didn’t present itself again until I was 17. I thought I had a degenerative disease and struggled with that day in and day out until I eventually accepted that I was going to die and made peace with it and then of course I kept living. OCD was pretty quiet for a few months after that. It would show itself when I had headaches and random aches and pains but it never hooked me as bad. Quite funny actually but I had a weird thing for a couple of months where every time I would go out for a drink I thought I’d wet myself so I’d stand in the bathroom for like 20-30 minutes at a time and that was multiple times across the night. Then in 2021, the theme shifted. I remember it distinctly, I was just lying in bed and a question appeared and that was it. My anxiety was really bad for about a year and then I met my girlfriend and we started dating. OCD went quiet until she moved to another city for university and I started to worry she was being unfaithful or didn’t love me anymore and things like that. With that obsession it kind of came to a head where I realised I either had to fully trust everything despite any doubt I felt or I’d lose her and so it just eventually started to pass. I’ve had a few occasions where I question my love for her and that really hurts because I’m pretty sure I’d be lost without her. That comes and goes though and it usually has to do with a general numbness that I feel after an OCD spike. The theme from 2021 (which I won’t say because I’m somehow worried that someone I know will see this and I will definitely wonder if people near me have seen this post despite it being pretty closed off.) never left but I was somehow able to put it to the back of my mind and get to a point where I was okay. I got a new job in 2024 at a point where I maybe was not ready. New place, new people and for the first 2 months or so it was fine. I even saw some potential triggers before they happened and did my best to ignore them. I got really drunk on a staff night out and when I woke up a lot of what ifs filled my head and I’ve been on my back since then. That brings us to now, my OCD has been pretty bad for about a year now but the weird part (and what I’m making this post about I guess) is that it feels different this time. I know that’s a super common phrase for people with OCD that therapists hear all the time and I have actually taken that piece of information as reassurance a few times over the years but it’s true. I feel so much more confused. I can’t even really explain it. It feels like my brain doesn’t engage or deny the obsession the same way as it used to and of course that makes me believe it’s real and I never actually had OCD. Instead, I’m left with thoughts that don’t give me that sharp feeling of anxiety that they used to and instead just leave me feeling super low and often angry just wishing it would go away. I think it’s probably because I’ve been at this for so long and had the same theme for years and so I’ve in a way habituated to the anxiety and that’s what rationally makes sense to me but like you all know, you can’t reason with this thing. It’s like it gives me just enough anxiety and depression to keep me on the hook and make it feel real but not enough send me into panic like it used to. I used to lie in bed, unable to get up and wishing that I was dead. I guess that now because I don’t feel that way, at least most of the time, my ocd is using that as a way to tell me I never really had it. Also I think I used to rely so heavily on reassurance but now know that I shouldn’t have it I try to avoid it. Without it though, it all feels real and I feel like eventually I will lose myself fully and that’s a fear that makes me feel unfathomably hopeless and makes me dread the future when I used to have dreams and hopes for myself that I looked forward to fulfilling. I don’t want to be big-headed, I just genuinely feel like I could’ve had a really great life and that’s gone now because of this thing. Anyway I just wanted to kind of use this post to get my head straight and map out something that I couldn’t quite explain effectively in therapy. I appreciate everyone who sees this but ask not to give me reassurance, I know we all empathise with each other but I’ve been at this long enough to know that it does none of us any good. I hope everyone is doing well, keep your head up. They tell me there’s a light at the end of this tunnel.

I have struggled with the darkest thoughts for a long time that rip me apart and have shattered my identity or attempts to create an identity. The worst part is they latch on to what feels most important to me at a point in time, or very important parts of who I am/my family is. Now that I write it out it helps put it in a bit of a perspective, of just how far my ridiculous ruinations have gone. Essentially the obsessive thoughts center on the fear of being a murderer, and have ruined my life for 15 years. This is totally ridiculous, but it developed so bad I was analyzing every good or bad instinct or personality trait of myself and even my family. This makes me cry but it has changed how I even view my whole family. The instinct to even just say Hi to someone, turned into 'you're not actually friendly, you're a murderer.' The worst part is it latches on to the positive aspects of ourselves: For instance, the ongoing deep desire I get to invent/create something outside of my work life and start a creative project, (this is a lifelong passion of one of my parents), Is disrupted by thoughts that somehow this passion is driven by a darker thing such as being a murderer. It's so horrible because it clouds my view of my own parent who I know I deeply love, and view of people in general. This leaves me broken inside and it is hard to get through every day, especially when the thought process starts positive (I want to start a creative project) then quickly devolves into extremely disturbing thoughts about oneself and even my family. Writing this out has helped I will say because it helps me see the thoughts for how ridiculous they are, and see how OCD really works by latching on to what you value/care about most. Essentially its like the most ultimate fear of fearing yourself, which makes it so hard to develop a sense of identity, do the things you actually would enjoy, enjoy relationships, and in general live your best life.