- Username
- DealingwithOCD_
- Date posted
- 3y ago
I am triggered by trolling bigtime. Scrupulosity ocd - I have sent paragraphs of explanation to loose acquantainces and complete strangers when I have felt misunderstood or like I upset someone. Been off SM for almost a year. Going to be working on that with my therapist because I want to be able to speak my mind and write and be out there. Can’t do that if I’m terrified of vitriol.
Thank you for sharing 🙏🏼 my very first episode had something to do with social media. Never in a million years did I think i would experience something like I did in my first episode. I had posted a picture and tagged someone who has a huge following and for some reason I noticed they saw my tag in their DM on IG and I began to over think why they didn’t repost it but reposted others tagged post. I rationalized every possible reason why they didn’t repost my post. I judged myself for even caring. I thought okay hmmmm maybe I’m just overthinking, I’ll get over it BUT after sometime I became aware that I was really overthinking and started to fear that the thought of them not reposting my post will never leave. I thought I was stuck. I even told myself that when I had tagged them it was not my intention to be seen or be reposted so i was confused as to why I was overthinking it. And i also began to doubt my intentions. I got irrational fears. It was super scary. It was when I did research and got a diagnosis that it was ocd that I found relief. But ocd made me believe I was crazy and that maybe I just need validation and that I’m too sensitive which I wont lie …. I am sensitive and have struggled with wanting to be seen and validation but that episode was on a whole other level! Starting to share more in detail my story little by little to expose my ocd as Im starting to feel way better about my first episode 🙏🏼 super long but wanted to share 🙏🏼 thank you for reading!
god, i feel like i have a whole subtype around "social media ocd" it's really messing me up. i've barely been going on social media other than reddit (& even that's just for r/OCD) & a big chunk of my intrusive thoughts are social media/internet themed, maybe this is just a side effect of growing up in this era & being online since a very, very young age but it's so difficult for me to handle i might make a whole post about it
I hear you! Thank you for sharing. Hoping to see your post to learn more about your experience and hoping you find the tools to feel and cope better 🙏🏼
Hi Itsanina, thanks for sharing your story about your first episode related to social media. You are definitely not alone. I have had similar experiences with obsessions much like the first episode you described, except with posts on my friends’ you tube channels or during live streams. I ended up going down a rabbit hole overthinking and got stuck ruminating on it like you were. Also, much like @Blueskybird, I have always struggled with making sure my texts, emails, posts were not misunderstood by someone, or I misunderstood ones sent to me, to make sure nobody would be angry at me or hurt, even when deep down I knew I was being ridiculous. However, my OCD would cause me to doubt that fact and had me reread the messages until I could recite them verbatim, but yet I still needed to check them because the doubt would not go away. I did the same thing with you tube videos, needed to rewatch to make sure I understood everything correctIy, sometimes rewatching enough until I could memorize everything and repeat it back until it just “felt right”….I know ridiculous, but yet that’s what I did. I ended up avoiding SM as much as possible when first starting my OCD recovery journey. Best wishes in all of your OCD journeys and stay strong.
Thank you SO much for sharing your experience! Truly! It helps so much to know I’m not alone in the experience I had. I seriously kept think out of all things whyyy this thought!!!!! It was the worst seriously. I thought I was going crazy. So happy to hear you are honoring your needs on ur recovery journey. I myself take time away from the socials. It’s so important! Rooting for you! 🙌🏼✨🙏🏼
Holy yes. Especially for SOOCD social media really triggers me cuz I analyze all of their behaviors and compare them to mjne
Thank you for sharing 🙏🏼 my very first episode was obsessing over something I noticed after I posted and tagged someone and truthfully did not think anything of it when I posted it but once I caught myself overthinking it and feeling like that thought would never leave is when I started to loose my mind. It was scary.
I shared my experience in more detail in my comment down below if you would like to read 🙏🏼
Than you both for sharing your experiences. I asked this question about OCD with social media because my first episode had something to do with social media. And I often feel like I’m the only one that struggled with this kind of theme. And I know OCD makes you feel like your obsession is unique therefore maybe it isn’t OCD. So it just always feels good that others could potentially relate 🙏🏼
I think SM is designed to be addictive which overlaps with some of the wiring of OCD. Totally agree with you both!
Is anyone dealing with responsibility OCD? I don’t see it talked about much, but it’s one of the subtypes I struggle with the most. I just feel like everything I do is in order to “protect” my family and friends. That means everything from magical thinking, to repeatedly calling people to make sure they’re ok, to bargaining with god to keep them safe (even though i’m not religious at all). I spend A LOT of my time worrying about other people and trying to control what they do. For example, I’ll try to talk someone out of taking a trip because I feel like something bad will happen, or I’ll stalk someone’s Instagram to make sure they’re posting regularly, because that means they’re ok. Logically I know I have no control over other people, but OCD tells me there’s always at least SOMETHING I can be doing to keep them from getting hurt or sick. And obviously the pandemic has made this 1000x worse. Can anyone relate?
Has anybody else been exposed to harmful content online? Like, as a child, being online I came across a lot of gross, graphic content. In middle school, I remember my best friend showing me a really messed up video and we would “laugh” at it because it was so “crazy”. I look back and realize we didn’t really fully grasp what we were watching. I’m so scared for gen alpha because when I was a kid online I was seeing a lot of messed up content on twitter and other apps and I didn’t have the tools to understand what was happening. Like not too long ago back in 2020 a man committed suicide on camera and I saw so many teenagers and children asking for the link to watch the video, and then people replying back to them “you don’t actually want to watch this, don’t be stupid” & etc. I’ve also seen a lot of people from my generation (gen z) talk about how they’ve seen gore amongst other things simply being a child on the internet. My unhealthy relationship to the internet has really traumatized me and it feeds into my OCD daily. I’m super over protective of any kids who are online and I make sure to set parental locks & stuff. I’ve been online since I was like 7 and I’ve seen way too much. People would post crazy shit & be laughing at it and stuff and now that I look back I realize none of that shit was normal but I was being exposed to it so much that it kind of became just a trending “internet spectacle” amongst teenagers specifically. I wish I was being protected as a child but a lot of kids have parents who don’t give af about them and I was one of them lmfaoo and I was just being exposed to hella harmful content and thought it was normal up until I reached like 16. A lot of people still act like it’s normal. Like I’ve seen a popular ig baddie post on her story that she goes on gore websites to watch real autopsy’s (and that’s not even the worst I’ve seen people talk about). It’s really scary and I think my generation (gen z) is the first to face this generational and cultural shift in the way that children are being raised because we were the first generation of children to have 24/7 access to the internet. Anybody else relate and does it also affect your OCD?
this is something ive been struggling with for a long time but didnt realize it was also another part of my ocd until yesterday. i tried googling to see if theres a name for it. the only thing that comes up is Moral Scrupulosity but thats not really what i struggle with. anyway, social media is making my ocd go absolutely haywire and its a similar feeling to how i felt in 2020-2022. going online makes me feel like im this horrible person while i see others posting things like “if you dont do ____ then ur ugly/a horrible person/etc”. do you guys have any methods on how to deal with this? one of my solutions im gonna do soon is completely log off on certain social media sites to help ease the mental anguish.
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