anyone else had ocd from a very young age? I’m talking like, I remember obsessions from when I was 6. and my family remembers my symptoms from even earlier. I didn’t get help until I was 15 because my family isn’t big on mental health. anyway, it frustrates me that I genuinely don’t know what it’s like to live without ocd. Sometimes I hear/see people talk about how they just wish things could back to how they were ‘before,’ or that imagining what their life was like before onset helps motivate them in recovery. But I don’t have anything like that. in fact, it’s almost scary to think about recovering completely because I don’t know anything else? it depresses me

Trying not to seek reassurance, but rather connect the dots on my OCD and possible reasons as to why I am the way I am. I have severe OCD (or at least I hope I do) mainly surrounding POCD. I've had symptoms of OCD the majority of my life but this theme has come up more recently. When I was a kid, and i'm talking 6-7, I was first exposed to some really gross adult content online. It was introduced to me by a friend of mine around the same age of me. I saw some really disgusting things that a 6-7 year old should definitely not see. This was not a one time occurrence, as I had been exposed to taboo topics online years to come after that, such as the same friend introducing me to Omegle... And i'm sure you can imagine how that went, theres a lot of genuinely disgusting human beings on there. Coming back to the reason for making this post; is it possible to early exposure to this content could be one of the reasons I struggle with POCD? It genuinely scares me to death because you hear that real p*dos dealt with simular situations when they were kids, so thats kind of making me feel that this could be more than OCD, and I could be a genuinely bad person. My POCD feels so real, that at times i'm fully convinced its not OCD. Sometimes I can't even distinguish the feelings of attraction between a younger person and an older person, except for the feeling of anxiety and fear. Its really hard to explain without going into detail, but it just feels so real. Some feedback on this would be great, thank you all.

Looking back, I realize I’ve had OCD since I was 7. though I wasn’t diagnosed until I was 30. As a kid, I was consumed by fears I couldn’t explain: "What if God isn’t real? What happens when we die? How do I know I’m real?" These existential thoughts terrified me, and while everyone has them from time to time, I felt like they were consuming my life. By 12, I was having daily panic attacks about death and war, feeling untethered from reality as depersonalization and derealization set in. At 15, I turned to drinking, spending the next 15 years drunk, trying to escape my mind. I hated myself, struggled with my body, and my intrusive thoughts. Sobriety forced me to face it all head-on. In May 2022, I finally learned I had OCD. I remember the exact date: May 10th. Reading about it, I thought, "Oh my God, this is it. This explains everything." My main themes were existential OCD and self-harm intrusive thoughts. The self-harm fears were the hardest: "What if I kill myself? What if I lose control?" These thoughts terrified me because I didn’t want to die. ERP changed everything. At first, I thought, "You want me to confront my worst fears? Are you kidding me?" But ERP is gradual and done at your pace. My therapist taught me to lean into uncertainty instead of fighting it. She’d say, "Maybe you’ll kill yourself—who knows?" At first, it felt scary, but for OCD, it was freeing. Slowly, I realized my thoughts were just thoughts. ERP gave me my life back. I’m working again, I’m sober, and for the first time, I can imagine a future. If you’re scared to try ERP, I get it. But if you’re already living in fear, why not try a set of tools that can give you hope?

My earliest memory of OCD was at five years old. Even short trips away from home made me physically sick with fear. I couldn’t stop thinking, What if something bad happens when I’m not with my mom? In class, I’d get so nervous I’d feel like throwing up. By the time I was ten, my school teacher talked openly about her illnesses, and suddenly I was terrified of cancer and diseases I didn’t even understand. I thought, What if this happens to me? As I got older, my fears shifted, but the cycle stayed the same. I couldn’t stop ruminating about my thoughts: What if I get sick? What if something terrible happens when I’m not home? Then came sexually intrusive thoughts that made me feel ashamed, like something was deeply wrong with me. I would replay scenarios, imagine every “what if,” and subtly ask friends or family for reassurance without ever saying what was really going on. I was drowning in fear and exhaustion. At 13, I was officially diagnosed with OCD. Therapy back then wasn’t what it is now. I only had access to talk therapy and I was able to vent, but I wasn’t given tools. By the time I found out about ERP in 2020, I thought, There’s no way this will work for me. My thoughts are too bad, too different. What if the therapist thinks I’m awful for having them? But my therapist didn’t judge me. She taught me that OCD thoughts aren’t important—they’re just noise. I won’t lie, ERP was terrifying at first. I had to sit with thoughts like, did I ever say or do something in the past that hurt or upset someone? I didn’t want to face my fears, but I knew OCD wasn’t going away on its own. My therapist taught me to sit with uncertainty and let those thoughts pass without reacting. It wasn’t easy—ERP felt like going to the gym for your brain—but slowly, I felt the weight of my thoughts dissipate. Today, I still have intrusive thoughts because OCD isn’t curable—but they don’t control me anymore. ERP wasn’t easy. Facing the fears I’d avoided for years felt impossible at first, but I realized that avoiding them only gave OCD more power. Slowly, I learned to sit with the discomfort and see my thoughts for what they are: just thoughts.