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I’m stuck on breathing and blinking manually 😭😭😭😭😭

i just need to ramble i’m a 19 year old amateur self-taught digital artist with major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety, and of course, obsessive compulsive disorder. i see art as my passion, my only talent and purpose. i want to use that art to inspire, bring happiness and create something new for people to enjoy but i’ve always been so negative and panicky about my art, i know logically negativity isn’t going to help, but i think you’ll all agree ocd sucks. I have wanted to start doing art commissions for people since i was 15, and it took four years until i recently got the courage to get myself together and figure out how to be an adult. this year i recently opened commissions and this is rare of me to say but i’m kinda proud to say i’ve made 140$ :) despite this success my brain likes to continue to punch me, usually bringing me down to a place where i once again feel worthless, incapable and terrified. I’ve tried my best to manage myself despite all the “kill yourself”stuff my head wouldn’t stop yelling about. today i got another commission. i was happy and i was friends with that person, but they are so much more talented and creative than i am myself, and so now i feel panic. the conversation was totally fine too, we were just friends talking, and they gave me a totally manageable and a a well explained request and i agreed, but i’m terrified. i don’t want to disappoint them, take too long, make a mistake, embarrass myself somehow (i always find a way), or give them something that looks like crap. I guess my thought process is i really don’t believe my stuff is worth money. “it’s a disgusting absolute disappointment why are you wasting your life” says the brain chatter. I guess i just gotta go with it. just try to wait out the anxiety that will consume me for the next couple days. it’s total agony though, my ocd rots me from the inside. keeps telling me to just kill myself (everything stirs the pot) do these moments of pain ever truly go away? or do we live the rest of our lives getting better, then getting worse, then getting better ocd is telling me to apologize for wasting the time of people reading this. so um yeah, i’m sorry.

Anyone that has harm ocd not get the “what if” thoughts anymore and your thoughts are just straight out “do it” which obviously id never and I don’t want the thoughts. Just so scary and time consuming because I spend hours telling myself “I’d never do that, it’s okay”

I told my parents today I have POCD and they flat out didn't believe me. They also told me that all I have are demons swarming around me and that I should pray the demons away. I felt like I wasted my time explaining everything I worked on.

This year, I met a person who I really like. He was all I thought about, but after the end of school I can't see him very often and my OCD became worse. I thought that I made a lot of progress with my OCD this year, but now I think that he just filled the space in my head where my OCD used to be. Should I distance myself from him? But I don't want ruin our relationship. He made me more open. Introduced me to his friends. School didn't feel that dreadful anymore. But my mind says this relationship is bad for me and my ocd i don't know what to do

Can a fear of something/someone always behind you be a sign of OCD or am I just freaking crazy??? I’m nauseous just thinking that I could be crazy.

Does anyone get over a thought but still feel the anxiety over it so you go back to the thought? If so, any tips for it? I’m desperate and tired 😓

Hi everyone, I’m a 17 year old teenage girl and have been struggling immensely with my OCD. I have suicidal OCD and I can’t seem to get better no matter what I try. It’s exhausting to have to deal with and I want it to stop.

I am ruining my relationship as I can’t stop mentioning my boyfriends ex. And got it into my head he’s cheated on mr with her. I am going on and on and have it in my head that I have to message her for confirmation and reassurance even though there’s no evidence he has cheated

Hello there ! I have been suffering from ocd problem since about 10 years old. I think it will pass when I grow up, but now I am 20 years old and nothing has changed. I have no idea what to do, think or feel anymore. i need help maybe you can give some advice? When I went to the psychiatrist last year, she told me I had bipolar disorder. I started taking medications for bipolar disorder but it didn't help my ocd. The drugs just made me sleep more than usual. My anxiety is fear of loving things I don't like and not knowing it. i.e. disturbing thoughts.To give an example, I think that something bad should happen to someone I love. And I'm not impressed because I know it's just a thought. but ocd tells me. "You didn't feel any anxiety because you want it to happen and you let it happen. In your heart you wish it would happen" this time I'm filled with serious anxiety and I start to fear and regret "How can I accept this, do I really want it". When I relieve myself by saying "no no I don't want to" which I think is the compulsive part. my brain or ocd says "No, you accepted this" while struggling with it as a result of long efforts, yesterday I stopped doing ocd by saying "yes, I didn't bother and I accepted it, but that doesn't mean I want it". I was relieved and thought the whole OCD was over. but ocd squeezes me again saying "why did you relax? because you already want it". I say "Yes I want" just to not do ocd. This time I'm going into serious regret, self-loathing, and depression for admitting something I hate.If I still hate it after accepting it, do I really accept it? Or do I just want to accept that I accept? I don't know if I really want these. I really need someone to tell me that I don't want any of this. but this is the compulsiveness of getting approval from others. I don't know what to do, believe what to believe. I know it was a silly fight with myself. I'm sorry to bother you, but I don't share my problem with anyone because I'm embarrassed. I'm slowly drifting into depression. I don't enjoy anything, I question the meaning of life. I always had a tendency to melancholy. Even now ocd is putting pressure on me saying "you love depression, you actually want it, you don't actually want to get better". To sum it up, I need help. thank you for reading. I hope it didn't affect your ocd. with best wishes for your recovery.

Sorry for the long post but I wanted to give a full explanation if my ocd hell. It started at 13 with harm ocd , rituals , magical thinking . It then moved to pocd…. The last and current theme I have is making me feel really ill. I basically had a panic attack 11 years or so ago and a thought / sensation came into my mind ‘ I don’t feel like mea’ … this then extended to ‘ if I’m not me , who am I , who’s reality is this? Am I in a dream ‘ … I went into full panic mode with dp for months . Took myself to a and e to be told it was high level ocd and anxiety . Since then I have been on fluoxetine for 10 years but every 6 months or so this comes back. It’s now extended to me convincing myself I am in someone else’s dream trapped in a false reality … how the hell does this get reinforced by feelings? I feel like someone else !!! The brain is a crazy thing . I have a full time Hugh level job and a beautiful daughter but feel like I can’t relax because as soon as I do I get the panic thought/feeling ‘ I am ‘ a another ‘ I need to panic and address this paranormal episode I know deep down this isn’t real or right but it doesn’t stop the horrible sensations and questioning hitting me hard I have had cbt but not erp… if someone can relate or help I would really appreciate it ‘ a final note is I think this is all fuelled from being scared of psychosis and researching how a psychotic person wouldn’t question thee Ed thought but be adamant of false beliefs ‘ Urgh

Does anyone have their past “proofs” and make it feel like denial because of the past

I’ve had a couple bad days this week. Anyone have tips to not ruminate and how to learn to just accept OCD and not take it as a thing that’ll just ruin my life..I’ve got 3 boys and my beautiful wife and I just want them to get the most out of me and enjoy life with them. OCD as of late has made some events kind of hard..I do find joy in being around them. But at times the anxiety that comes with it can be tough. Please only share positive feedback! God bless everyone

Do any of y’all feel like your focus is gone because of OCD? I’m in school for law and currently working through a couple month long OCD episode after getting Covid and I find my focus is gone. Or my mind just feels so tired and forgetful. Is this common? It’s making anxious as I obviously over analyze everything I feel. And also a question for women do you find that closer to your cycle you get more anxious and triggered?

for the longest my ocd had been fixated on harm ocd and then on developing schizophrenia and then on psychotic disorder in general. I first feared that maybe I would start hallucinating. But I never did and the ocd got board and moved on to delusions. I've read so many delusions that my ocd intrusive thoughts have "mimiced" it's not even funny. The one about the world being a simulation/people poisoning things/what if people are out to get me/cotards. All ONLY appearing after I've read them However I also have bouts of exestinal ocd and dpdr the fuels the fire to not only the exestinal theme but the psychosis one as well. Sometimes when the dpdr kicks in it feel as if my husband (who I love very much) is a stranger or a different version of himself. I also have moments where his face is completely unrecognizable. But I still know who he is. I feel disconnected from my emotions at times as well as my memories. I have worked with many people with my mental helath. It used to be a compulsion of mine to seek reassurance from New provoiders. All of them had said I'm absolutely not suffering from anything on the psychotic spectrum nor am I close. But you know ocd makes you doubt. Anyway before I started seeing my ocd specialist I looked up "mental helath problems that can cause people to feel like stranger" of course dp/dr came up but so did a "fun" little delusion called the capgras delusion. I had never heard of this so I was like huh let me read about it. BAD.DECISON. instantly I was convinced that that was what I was suffering from. I freaked out then my intrusive thoughts switched. "What if your husband has been replaced" I didn't know wether to laugh or cry because of course he hasn't been that doesn't happen so then why was I thinking it? Did I beleive it ? Is that why I was thinking it over and over again? I told myself of course not. It's not like I was trying to get away from him/aliens don't exist and I don't beleive in clones or doppelganger. And I definitely don't think even if they were real someone would waste their time with fucking with my life. But the thought kept creeping in making me anxious and worried that I was going psychotic and the feeling of disconnect from the dpdr didn't help. When I got calmed down I was like duh I never beleived that it was just my ocd playing with my fears. People don't get replaced But then the ocd was like "what if they do though" and the cycle started again. I don't beleive it but sometimes the fear makes me wonder if I do. This is so stupid I want it to stop. My therapist and psych again said this is all ocd not a delusion or capgras. I've also had a mri done and my brain is perfectly healthy. I guess I'm just looking for anyone with a similar experience?

I’m on the way to recovery and as I’m accepting and ignoring my thoughts so they don’t affect me anymore, I realised that I actually used to have intrusive thoughts even before I developed POCD, and I’d have them DAILY! The only difference was that I had never given them the power to scare me — stuff like “grab that cigarette and smoke!” when I’m not a smoker, or something inappropriate about my family that I just always scroll off. The fact that I scrolled them off made it possible that they’d never come and bother me again, so that I could easily pass my friends their cigarette without feeling the urge to smoke it myself. The only difference is that I never feared those things because I know where my true intentions lay. I’d probably had POCD thoughts even before, I simply didn’t care about them enough to become so repetitive. That is to say, intrusive thoughts happen all the time; even when we’re “normal” (and trust me, I used to lead such a happy normal life when I had those random thoughts, or even URGES). It’s your reaction to them that needs to change.

Sometimes I have these moments where I'll have a hard time being intimate with my boyfriend and then I look in the mirror and it feels like I'm lying to myself that I like him, that I don't like him, nothing is real. And it's like an empty feeling that settles in my stomach and it feels like realization and like truth. So real. But I don't want it to be. I'm scared that my resistance to it isn't because it's not true but because it is. I experienced this yesterday. I experienced the same to this level over a year ago, prompted me to break up with bf, instant regret. Called back 30 min later to fix everything. I keep getting intrusive thoughts on the reason behind why I called him back and my head is pushing because I didn't want to be single. Idk how to work through any of this. Recently, We've been having a difficult time. We are not technically long distance but aren't able to see each other often/at all (constraints due to family's opposition to relationship on my side) which has caused him to feel unseen and he feels like I don't care a lot. Sometimes I feel guilty for feeling like I don't care. But it's not that I don't, I feel like I'm not myself. I'm not present and I'm emotionally drained (I also struggle with depression 👍). I want to be here, and love him, and care for him in all the ways he needs me to and that I want to but it's so damn hard. I feel like I'm forcing myself myself and love shouldn't really be forced right? It makes me feel guilty for not being able to say "I love you" after a few years together. Idk if there's a time limit to that, but it f**king feels like it. Constantly battling with so many negative thoughts about my relationship and it's making everything so difficult for me. At the same time, I feel like the fact that I have no answers for why I'm so detached is proof enough that I don't actually like him. That makes me uncomfortable. I don't know if I'm making sense.

Im going through a crisis. Its immediate and severe. Is there any way I can get emergency OCD therapy?

Had the intrusive thought that I was going to go home and right a suicide note and then smiled after. Not sure if I should be concerned or not

Years ago I used to have a whole bunch of OCD themes that I worked through one by one in therapy, the worst being harm OCD and POCD. Harm OCD doesn’t bother me anymore, but somehow years later POCD is still an on and off thing that I deal with. It got worse when I was in a rut this past winter, but better when I upped my anxiety meds. I also had a therapist to talk to, that I can still reach out to if needed. She didn’t do ERT therapy, and to my knowledge wasn’t an OCD specialist, but she knew about OCD and how it worked and didn’t judge me, so it was nice to have someone to talk to about it. I feel the same right now where I just want to get this off my chest. I have tried to do ERT on my own, but I guess I haven’t been consistent enough with it because POCD keeps coming and going. I was trying to do ERT consistently on top of getting through my college semester, with mixed results, but then when I upped my anxiety meds I felt great and didn’t feel the need to keep doing it. And it’s been bothering me a bit but for the most part I’ve been doing great with just letting it be there, but then recently my anxiety spiked all the sudden and I’m not sure why. Maybe the stress of having an unexpected road trip I had to take or the fact that my job is starting soon? My job being a summer camp counselor, which I’ve been doing for years, which is ironic considering my OCD theme. I guess it’s because it attacks the things we care about most, which is probably the reason why this is the most difficult one that just hasn’t gone away. In past years I’ve been fine doing summer camp, it’s so busy I barely have time to think haha. When I’m busy, out in the sunshine, I’m perfectly fine, but it’s when I’m not doing anything and by myself that OCD bothers me. I’m sure a lot of you can relate. I think maybe I’ve been subconsciously worried about camp this year since I had an unexpected spike in my OCD over winter break? Not really sure but it’s just REALLY frustrating right now. I just want to focus on enjoying my summer and looking forward to camp. Since I’m feeling this spike all the sudden I plan to use the tools in this app to work on ERT. It also just helps to get this off my chest, and hopefully someone out there can relate to this and it will help them. I’m also just confused on my spike in anxiety, especially since I upped my meds? I take the max dose, 40 mg of citalopram. If you guys have tried medication, what have you taken and what has worked the best with OCD?