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hi everyone. will there really be a life after recovery? i feel so depressed. will i have ever know that i love my boyfriend? will i have ever be attracted to him? i can’t even feel in love with him and it breaks my heart. i feel hopeless

I have intrusive thoughts every single second. Even when I am in shower there is monologue in my head that I am lost and went crazy. I question my every decision. My thoughts are absolutely nonsensical like I am gonna put socks on me than I have thought if that is normal after that I get thought if I was putting same socks before. Its complete madness. I fear schizophrenia and thats my main obsession. Seems like whatever I do i can not get out of that circle because my mind comes with another nonsense second after. I fear I will be stucked like this forever and that I need to be institutionalised. I feel like i have to question my every thought or I will act insanely. I feel like i am daydreaming, out of reality, with no memory or power over my mind. Can anyone relate ? Did anyone overcome it ?

I’m finding it frustrating to get a post seen here. I’ve asked about anyone jn my age range (midlife) and also if anyone has been healed from body-focused repetitive behaviors (like nail biting or hair pulling), and haven’t received a response. It’s left me feeling extremely alone on this platform. Is it 99% age preteen to 20-somethings? Not to diminish their very real OCD issues, but we face different challenges as older adults. I am looking for peers. And I’m looking for anyone really of any age that has found help for their BFRBs. Mine are out of control. My nails are awful. I’ve had to file teeth a few times in the last year due to chipping and creating grooves due to nail biting, and I can’t seem to stop. It’s getting WORSE. I literally have tendinitis in my elbow that’s due to nail and cheek biting. Last time I had to get a cortisone shot in it due to a fluid collection that was caused! I need HELP.

Hi guys ! I am a new member of the community and this is my first post. I'm sorry for its length, I'll try to sum up as clearly as possible (english is not my first language). So, I think I have OCD for nearly 10 years now. I realised what it was maybe 1 year ago and I started therapy just after that. (My therapist is not ERP trained but we're currently looking for one).  It all started pretty abruptly when I was around 13/14 years old. I was having pretty bad intrusive thoughts, almost 24/7, very dark and violent. A majority of them were about sexuality and it turned quickly into obsessions, especially POCD. I was telling all the thoughts I was having to my mother and it was, for both of us, a rough period. It has stuck with me since then, with ups and downs.  Since I realised what it was, and started therapy, my POCD fell deeply asleep. Other obsessions started to rise when I met my boyfriend (ROCD, obsession about STI/STD, ...). It is my first loving and serious relationship and I met him while I was starting therapy so I thought that it was maybe normal for my OCD to be on fire since it's a lot of changes at once. It has been a rough year because even if my POCD was almost nonexistent, my OCD spread to other themes and symptoms were pretty intense.  But several weeks ago, my POCD woke up again.  I always had groinal responses linked to that and it made me very very anxious and depressed. It had a great impact on my sex life because I was experiencing intrusive thoughts during intimacy with partners and on my own. They were always happening because I was anxious to have intrusive thoughts beforehand, or because I suddenly felt anxious, in the middle of a moment, and was scared about having intrusive thoughts. I was feeling such shame and guilt, because these intrusive thoughts were sometimes followed by orgasms. For some periods of time, I stopped having some alone time and any sexual activities because of that. Before I knew about OCD, I felt like a monster and I was experiencing so much distress. What calmed me down was thinking that maybe, during all these years, I got my brain used to feel arousal when thinking about children and that it was just a body reflex and nothing more. When I heard about groinal response, it was such a relief, because I could read about people that were experiencing the same thing and that it was directly linked to anxiety.  Before knowing about OCD, I was living through cycles. I could sometimes go through a whole year without falling down into the spiral, without obsessing over the thought that I was a monster, without having almost any intrusive thoughts. And then just like that, in the blink of an eye, it would fall on me again without any warning. It would then have me stuck in my head for months. It was an endless cycle, and I knew, everytime when I was getting back onto my feet, that it was just a matter of time before falling again. When my POCD fell asleep again (when I started therapy), the groinal responses faded and my sex life wasn't impacted anymore. It was great. I was breathing again because I wasn't feeling like such a horrible person. Yes my OCD was latching onto other themes but they were not making me feel like I was a monster. But several weeks ago, I realised that, during a moment with my boyfriend, I thought about children but it didn't feel like intrusive thoughts. It felt like some wandering random thoughts and it was not even sexual. It was some images of children in a classroom, or in school, images of a random family... The fact that it didn't happen the way it always did made me anxious. Because it didn't feel like OCD, but just my thoughts wandering around. And after that, it happened again several times in a row. I tried to not think too much of it but I failed. Was it OCD ? Why did my thoughts wander in these places ? And why did it happen several times ? Now I am afraid that I don't even have OCD and that they were here for a reason. I'm exhausted. Has this already happened to anyone ? These kinds of thoughts ? And is it really "normal" to experience orgasm after having intrusive thoughts ? I feel like I just convinced myself that I have OCD because it would mean that I am not a fucked up person... I don't have a lot of physical compulsions, and I am starting to doubt my mental ones, are they really compulsions ?  Also, one of the reasons I doubt my OCD is because I don't feel like my thoughts are irrational. For example my obsession about STD/STI started because I got diagnosed with HPV, my ROCD started after my boyfriend and I had a deep unsettling conversation and he proposed to me. I know OCD is irrational and I don't feel irrational. When I went to my therapist for the first time, I told her that I was thinking about OCD and after a while she told me that she was thinking about it too, but I am afraid that I led her to this path. I know she is a professional and she has a (short) training for OCD. But I'm afraid that I biased her thinking. Thank you if you read through it all, I hope my english is not too bad and if you're struggling, I am with you <3.

Scared about starting erp. Afraid I'll become a different person or that I'll become what I've been fearing and obessessing over. Will the therapy depress me and lead me to something like suicide. Not that I am suicidal but I am afraid I would get so sad or disheartened that I become that.

What are things to do to help with Body dysmorphia and self confidence ? I find myself being hateful to others because of the way I feel about myself. I obsess over pictures and ask my boyfriend constantly about my body. I stress over going to events and taking pictures. Lately it’s been harder to lose weight too, so some clothes haven’t been fitting which does NOT help. I feel so depressed over it. I’ll never be happy with myself.

going through a breakup and my intrusive thoughts are having a field day. making me feel like everything is my fault when that wasn’t the case at all. im struggling so much.

I wish I hadn’t have deliberately imagined the the thoughts to test myself. It feels like I’ve confused myself and now there’s no answers. I think while testing myself with these thoughts to see how I would react, I was hoping I would have a strong negative reaction to them with bad anxiety, which did happen but somehow I’ve confused myself into thinking the anxiety made the thought feel like an urge and my body went into fight or flight mode and now I’m thinking that reaction was me liking the feeling of doing that horrible thing in my thought. Now every time I have an intrusive thought and I get anxiety, I no longer feel like it’s anxiety and instead think it’s me desperate to do that because I l understood what it feels like and now I want to do that. Before i deliberately imagined the thoughts and got myself in this mess I would just brush all thoughts off as intrusive and felt okay but now I’ve got myself in this tangled mess of no answers, and it’s more scary than ever because I’m mistaking my own feelings. I feel so sick to the core that I’ve started believing that I like the feeling of doing that and this has all happened because of experimenting with the thoughts in my mind. I’m worried what if I’ve understood something I shouldn’t have and now I want to carry those evil things out but I’m not bad at the same time or the main thing that worries me. When it feels like an urge it feels like that’s about to happen and I keep thinking what if I’m desperate to do that and I’m the future I give in and it’s horrible, how did my life become like this.out of all the intrusive thoughts I’ve ever had this is the worst thing, I was saying it out loud to my dad for the first time yesterday ‘I imagined doing that to test myself and now It feels like I like the feeling of doing that’ and it just sounded so strange like what am I even saying what am I voicing out, what the hell is going on, how did my life get like this, I definitely must be confusing my feelings, I mean is that a thing? Can you have false feelings or can you confuse your feelings and feel like you like imagining something. I know that I don’t want to do that I hate it it’s disgusting but my anxiety and feelings are making me feel like I like imaging doing that and when I get an urge with an intrusive thought it feels like I would like the feeling of doing that, how can I like the feeling of doing something I have never done and that I am crying everyday about and is making me feel so terrible, I’m so confused, I mean people on here say ‘ocd tries to convince me I like the thoughts’ but idk if mine is ocd or me, because it feels like my feelings are making me convinced or that, what if it’s true? I feel so terrible. This problem all started because of this horrible documentary I watched but the man who done the evil things was living a normal life he was married and had kids and suddenly killed them and then I started worrying because why was he living a normal life then did that. I use to think the normal things I do mean that I’m not bad but now I’m thinking what if living a normal life you can still be bad 😞😞😞😞

learning about ocd and specifically pure o has made me think that maybe, just maybe, i’m not crazy

does anyone else have the urge to resend or repost something when you mess up? like if i’m replying to a comment on instagram and accidentally spell something wrong i delete it and re-comment it bc i messed up but since 2 isn’t one of my ritual numbers right now i have to have it be 3 bc it just feels right, so i delete the 2’nd comment and comment a 3’rd. i hate doing that bc i feel like the other person already got 2 notifications and now 3 but i can’t just not do it. i need help to get over this ritual. i feel like something bad will happen if i don’t do it.

Does anyone else struggle with schizophrenia ocd?

I hate this and I hate me. I have real event ocd where I did really bad stuff in my relationship while I was manic. I know I hurt my husband. And he tells me to let it go that he forgives me. But I still dwell on the past. I can’t get over the thoughts I was having…. Now I have this memory that I might have done something bad to my daughter. I have images and these images and “memories” are attached to a real event so it’s so damn hard trying to find the truth. I’m so tired. I feel uneasy all the time. It didn’t feel real at first it was just an image and now it’s a whole damn movie…how?!? I hate this so much… I feel so immoral and disgusting.

Hi everyone. This is my second post here, I think there’s a part of me that is just desperately seeking reassurance for probably the millionth time. I have terrible health anxiety and OCD. I am always hyper focused on my health, mainly my heart, and have constant intrusive thoughts about my own death, that most of the time come with terrible images of my dead body or my family in mourning. I am recently starting to struggling with looking toward the future. I am supposed to be getting married in May of 2023, and am making myself sick with worry as my intrusive thoughts are telling me I am going to die sometime between now and then, and will not live to see my wedding. I am terrified day in and day out that any day is going to be my last, and my intrusive thoughts aren’t helping in the slightest. They, if anything, bring me a sense of confirmation. They feel so true and so real. I have convinced myself that I am sensing my own death before it happens. I have been checked by a dozen doctors and other than having mental health issues and a brain condition called Chiari malformation, they all tell me I am healthy! I am so scared. I am worried that I’m going to feel like this forever. Has anyone ever dealt with this and come out on the other side? I don’t know how to beat this, but I want to be able to live my life without the fear that at 24 years old, my life is about to come to an end. Thank you all in advance.

hello !! usually i dissapear for like three months and come back, but i’m gonna try to stay active lol :) i’m ingrid, and i had SEVEREEE sexual orientation for two years, and it’s been a year or so of post-recovery !! i used exposure and response therapy, so if anyone would like to ask anything i would LOVE to answer !

I can’t do this anymore I’m done fighting

The ROCD advice in a recent video was to decide what you want and do it - without determining what is right or wrong. This was helpful but then I started thinking how I want to do both options so ended up being triggered thinking how if I don’t know what I want how could I have made any correct choices. I want to leave and I want to stay. What if you are married and falling back into the worst of ROCD? Obviously it’s not an easy decision with that much commitment. Last night I told my partner that if I could just let myself I could be happy, almost if I could turn off a part of my brain. However it’s like I’m triggered by some annoyance or other multiple times a day. And it’s getting really intense in my head. I question everything including my decision to marry. I’m scared and exhausted and only a few months into marriage. Has anyone overcome ROCD in marriage? Or even broken up and has experience? I’m trying to avoid reassurance/checking but I don’t how to not feel so alone and awful of a person.

Has anyone experienced rocd in relation to the intelligence of their partner? I am very frustrated as I feel like I’m watching my partner’s every move and when they do or say something that isn’t intelligent my anxiety and fear grows stronger and tells me that I should break up with them and I can’t handle it. I pay such close attention and feel like I’m waiting for my partner to do or say something wrong. For instance we were at a Christmas event the other day and he didn’t know what a “spiked” drink meant and my brain took it as how could you not know what that means, you are 34 years old. And while watching a football game he didn’t realize they cover the field due to snow and he has watched and played football his whole life. Anytime things happen like this I get so triggered and feel like there is no way I can be with a person that isn’t “intelligent” . Please help. He is super sweet and amazing and is reading books on OCD to try to help me and he knows that I am struggling though this. I have been told I’m smarter than him by others and now I’m so stuck on that comment and his intelligence. Anyone else experience this ?

Has anyone ever had a misdiagnosis interact with their OCD? I currently have an official diagnosis of schizophrenia, which I’ve had since 2007. My current doctor thinks I may only have mild autism or OCD. I have done my research and I’m pretty sure I have both of these… in fact it is only the schizophrenia that I’m unsure of. I am delusional for sure but I do not hallucinate technically. All this has got me thinking that for all these years I’ve been diagnosed was it just the diagnosis feeding the health OCD? Any stories relating to anything about this would be a great help.

I believe I don’t love him anymore… That I am lying to him… using him… I believe I actually wanna break up… 😢 Watching law and order.. I know it’s a show but I can see how you can convince yourself of anything… I am scared what if I convinced myself I don’t love him… I don’t love anyone right now.. I don’t feel numb… I love my family but not that much.. I don’t wanna break up with my partner 😭😭😭💔