I'm trying to get better at sitting with the uncomfortable anxiety sensations. Mornings are when the thoughts are so loud. I did fall into some compulsions but I am trying to delay them and not do them for so long. I know recovery is a process. The thoughts do get better when I don't do the compulsion but I hate the panicky feeling and the urge to listen to OCD's demands. It is so scary when it feels like you urgently need to do what it is telling you.

Resisting compulsions feels so wrong and dangerous, I’m trying my best but the anxiety of doing so is immense. Especially because my brain is still not allowing myself to believe that my obsession is OCD, it wants me to believe it is a threat, so even calling my compulsions “compulsions” is making me anxious because that is me calling this whole thing OCD and not real if that makes sense?

I still do not have an OFFICIAL diagnosis (I dont have the means to do so) but given my symptoms, past and present in my life hugely suggest OCD is what I am dealing with. I cannot be 100 percent certain but after searching for answers and researching for a long time now, I am fairly certain and confident this is what I am struggling with. Given this step forward, I am making more effort into giving up compulsions. at the current moment I believe to be dealing with ROCD, as I have been having several intrusive thoughts that conflict with my relationship. For starters, recently over the past month or 2, I have been struggling with intrusive thoughts like not being over my ex, being attracted to someone else, losing feelings for my partner and not being in love, etc. I can consciously identify that I dont believe these thoughts to be true but it causes me so much distress and anxiety. It gets extremely unbearable some days, and I have leaned into 2 main compulsions. I have relied on thought checking and googling as my source of relief. At first the googling was genuinely to start finding answers; hence why I have made some of the discoveries I have about OCD including this site. But it developed into every time I was anxious, I would whip my phone out and start googling strictly to find an answer that would reassure me or calm me down. As for thought checking, it acted as a way to reaffirm my love for my girlfriend in my head when I have had the thoughts that collide with my relationship and how I feel about my girlfriend. It worked at first but developed into a compulsion where every time a bad thought got me worked up id either do my normal googling or Id think about that in my head to calm myself down. Over time these compulsions have gotten less and less affective and now when I do them it only gets me more anxious and desperate for reassurance (strengthening the cycle or whatever it is lol). I did some more research and finally have accepted the very real fact that I am going to have to sit in heavy anxiety and not give into compulsions for a while in order to treat this. I have to sit in the thoughts that make me feel all this hightened anxiety and distress without giving into compulsion. to be honest I am scared, the thoughts are more rampant than ever, but I am ready to commit to this. I dont think I am gonna be able to go cold turkey on my compulsions so I am ready for the reality I might relapse on the compulsions sometimes, But am gonna keep going until I can break these shackles OCD has on my life right now. I wanna ask, what is everyones methods they use to avoid giving into compulsion when the thoughts get loud? any advice is welcome :)

So my ocd has been doing better, in the sense that I am able to resist compulsions, but the thoughts are still there. And I get so upset because some days I’m just constantly stuck in my own head. Like I went out to today with my mom, and for a solid hour I was spiraling. And my OCD has been trying to make it seem like this flare up is different, and that because things aren’t working out the way I want them to be regarding my recovery, that it’s not OCD and I’m just a crazy person. It causes me to just shut down and want to just go home. I get so upset that I want to cry. I get intrusive thoughts that something bad is gonna happen, or that something doesn’t feel right, and so it feels like I do something, anything, to make me feel better about it. I also can’t sleep in my own bed. I’m so afraid that I won’t fall asleep in it, and if I don’t sleep, I will go crazy. My thoughts are just so scary rn, I don’t know what to do. I don’t want anything bad to happen to me :(