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I took 15mg of my medicine and my chest started burning terribly and it’s not going away it’s getting much worse. What do I do? It’s never done this to me before and I’ve taken this much normally

how do you remain hopeful during dark times? what keeps you going? for me it’s my boyfriend and his optimism. he reminds me that things always tend to work out fine. since i can be so pessimistic, his words are very refreshing.

Out of curiosity, has anyone ever overcame a tough obsession/fear where you were able to move past it completely? I’m talking to the point of it not bothering you at all anymore or even forgetting about it all together? I once had magical thinking as a kid and overcame it completely to where it hasn’t crossed my mind in years and if it ever does, I just find it silly. Has this been the case for anyone here? Thanks! Xx

I'm currently experiencing really bad Existential OCD and I'm looking for ways to practice ERP for it. My intrusive thoughts are "What if life isn't real" What if you don't really exist" "What if your family is just imagined" "What if it's all pointless" "What if life is just a dream". I'm horrified of believing these thoughts and I'm afraid ERP will convince me that theyre they're true. I'm reaching out in hopes of tips and possible ideas and scripts for my OCD. Thank you.

I didn’t know I had OCD until this year but I’ve know from a young age that I have disordered eating habits. My cousin thought I was anorexic when I was 7 but at that point I just had ADHD and my appetite couldn’t hold my attention. My life kinda stayed that way, very unintentional, but always commented on, until I was 12 or 13, and grasped the concept of body image and what food intake meant for it in the early 2000’s. I learned to count calories at 15. It wasn’t all the time. My ADHD was going untreated so I guess I would hyperfixate for a while and then lose interest. Looking back, my OCD has had steady, overarching themes that live in the background until the ADHD part of me craves the stimulation from them and latches on. Morality, existentialism, crisis prevention, lack of control. When I feel like I have no control, I start restricting food intake. When I perceive a crisis situation, I act accordingly and then catalogue minute details so that I might preempt the next one. When I feel amoral, I ask for reassurance. When I can’t get a grip on reality or think of how boring the afterlife sounds, I ruminate, because who can reassure me when the answers lie with the dead? Everything went out the window when I had my first kid. All of it. Like starting from scratch. Except. I vowed to never let my disordered eating affect my children. I fucked up in the first week. My baby had lost weight because I was starving myself and trying to exclusively breastfeed. I fixed the problem. A crisis situation, and I’m good at reacting, even if I suck at preventing. I ate, I drank, I supplemented formula until I didn’t need to anymore. But now I was checking. Every day, putting my baby on a scale, logging numbers, feeding times, naps, spit-ups, diaper changes, convinced my spouse to get an echo dot so I could log feeding times hands-free. Logging my own meals and fluid intake and pumping sessions. Watching my child’s growth chart on the app as though it would change moment by moment. When I stopped having to supplement formula, I was probably overproducing, but baby didn’t think so. Started outright rejecting the formula and seemed to want to nurse 24/7, even after introducing food. I had succeeded, but I was still checking. After going from the 63rd percentile at birth to the 6th, in his first week of life, my child reached the 97th percentile for growth by 8 months old. I did it. There was nothing more to check. But had I overdone it? That felt like a dangerous thought. All I did was augment my milk supply. The rest of the time I went by baby’s appetite. He sure did spit up a lot from months 3-5. But that was because I was doing both breastmilk and formula, right? I started going round and round in my head to find something to confirm. Solid proof that I had not overdone it. Doctors approval at visits did nothing for me. Didn’t trust those fuckers at the time, because I’d TOLD them I had history of disordered eating. I’d TOLD them I was scared of how it would affect my baby. They just said my body wouldn’t limit milk production based on calorie intake. (So for anyone struggling with that, YOUR BODY WONT PRIORITIZE FEEDING A BABY IF IT THINKS YOU ARE DYING. So if you’re starving yourself you won’t make milk. Maybe this is common sense for people without eating disorders, but I was up front about mine, and it took a long time for me to stop holding my doctors responsible for my failings. I drank like a liter of Gatorade and then filled it with water after and drank that too, every day. Easy calories to start and then the more you nurse, the less you can ignore your appetite) Anyway, I was at this point and already had been, inflicting my disordered eating habits on my child. That was the only thing I knew without a doubt. For his entire first year of life, checking his weight, logging his food, checking his weight chart in the app religiously. It seemed so normal. The doctor recommended I track his weight daily when he was diagnosed with “failure to thrive.” Failure. This child couldn’t fail at anything. One week old. There was nothing that he was supposed to do on his own. The source of a “failure” is the person on whom responsibility falls. So aligned with what I always see clearest in my mind: my failure. And I was doing it again. I put the scale away. Deleted the app. Stopped drinking Gatorade every day and stopped tracking my food and water. One way or another, I was being led by my child’s appetite now. I set up a snack cabinet that he could reach and showed him how to get a snack and bring it to be opened. Nursing only on his time. Lunch and dinner whenever I thought of it, or when he showed interest. And now he’s 3. And he has a brother. And I don’t know how to find a happy medium. They need stricter routine and so do I and so does my spouse, but I’m so afraid of taking it too far. My spouse had a manic/psychotic episode last year and got diagnosed bipolar 1. He’d been having cyclical anger management issues for about a year and a half that I’d chalked up to my fault and having to do with my own cycles, but the cycle started shrinking steadily the more stress he was under. Then I got pregnant again. It was happening almost weekly and I knew it wasn’t me by now, but when his disorder is in control, he speaks with the words of my own. It was really hard to deal with. He took it too far once. There are places my doubts can’t touch, and he spoke his venom on my child, in front of my child. I made him cry. I was so mean to him. I laid into him with every vulnerability he’d ever shared. Every insecurity. Shamed him. He deserved it then. I want to feel bad, but I don’t to this day. There was no delusion to hide behind, only his abhorrent behavior and lackluster emotional regulation, suddenly a crystal clear pattern. Because by then, I knew what tantrums looked like. I calmed down enough to deescalate and we agreed he needed to get help. He did. His doctor put him on an antidepressant and it sent him straight into mania. It was like nothing I’d ever seen before. Now my OCD has its claws in something it never did before, and I experienced so much trauma that I don’t know what is rational and healthy coping behavior half the time. But it is so apparent that part of it is not, because up to this point, I’d gone my whole life undiagnosed. I’m scared to take the actions I need to get our family back on the path to stability because I am afraid I will create an unsustainable system, or that it will be sustainable but my spouse won’t adhere to it, cause stress that could send my spouse into an episode. Worst of all, I worry that he doesn’t or shouldn’t love me, that I am always making things worse for him, and by extension, our kids. Just venting, but if anyone has advice I’m open.

My therapist that I see for trauma told me she doesn't think I have ROCD because I have rational reasons for feeling disconnected from my now ex boyfriend. I'm seeing my ex tomorrow at his request after 8 months broken up with the last 3 months having no contact. I'm not feeling excited. He doesn't feel like a best friend to me. How can I stay centered during talking to him. I don't want to spiral

My boyfriend has two daughters with two different women, he doesn’t get to see them very often due to custody reasons. His first ex moved 8 hours away with his daughter and things ended very badly with his second ex and she won’t let him see his daughter (he went to court and everything). Anyways I love him more than anything in the entire world but I can’t stop thinking that what if they come back and they want him to get back together with him so they can be a family again or something like that happens where they’ll only let him see his daughter if he gets back together with them. He has told me in the past that we are a family and that he loves me and wants to be with me for a long time but I just can’t stop having these intrusive thoughts. I am not at all bothered by his daughters and if at any point he gets fully custody I would treat them as if they were my own and care for them but I’m worried about his ex’s trying to manipulate him into coming back. He loves his daughters and he’s a great dad, I just cannot stop with the intrusive thoughts that one day one of his ex’s are gonna come back and manipulate him and then he’ll leave me. I just don’t know how to stop these thoughts and I hate asking him for reassurance because I don’t want to make him feel like I don’t trust him or annoy him. If anyone has dealt with this situation please let me know if there’s anything you did to help calm down the thoughts, I’m still in therapy and on medication but lately I’ve been having really bad ROCD. :(

i was having a good day but when i was returning from school i saw on the window of a bar something that i didn't recognize and when i looked closer i realised it was a k**. I should have inmediately looked away but instead i kept staring at this trigger trying to check if I was looking at an inappropriate part, so that implies that I was voluntarily searching for that inappropriate part. I need help. Whenever I see a k** I feel like I'm staring at their b*tts and I have to make sure that I'm not, so I've become very vigilant and sometimes it happens that i end up staring at the very thing i don't want to see while checking that I'm not looking at an inappropriate part of the body. I know it doesn't make sense. This time for example when i saw that trigger instead of looking away I realised that while I was staring at the k** I was checking if there was that inappropriate part. A while ago in a museum I was walking and then I came across a triggering view. It was a young girl that was wearing i think something tight and my mind instantly se*ualized her, I was triggered because I noticed that the trigger had a prominent b**t... I didn't voluntarily look at it, i noticed it because it entered in my field of view. If I could go back I would have walked the other way. The other bad thing is that I couldn't believe that i saw something so triggering and I gave a second glance. I wasn't attracted from, I was disgusting of what happened but that scenery is burned in my mind. Nothing can change that. I feel like I checked out a poor girl and se*ualized her. I felt miserable for the whole day and it ruined my school field trip. Even if I didn't mean too or there was no bad intention behind it, it doesn't change those actions. These two triggering episodes are unforgivable, there is no excuse, i don't think that other pocd sufferers have had such serious and disgusting unforgivable actions. maybe this isn't ocd and i'm just that monster that im afraid of being.

So I had an appointment with my therapist on Wednesday, and we booked appointments all the way until April. Totally normal, no mention of anything. Later THAT SAME DAY I got a message and email that she's no longer with NOCD. Has this happened to anyone before? Is it a mistake? I can't get a hold of anyone and I'm very confused.

For those of you who have worked with a general therapist and a therapist that specializes in OCD, how did the 2 compare? I have only worked with a general therapist for the past year, but I am starting to wonder if I shouldn’t work with a therapist that specializes in OCD in order to make more progress. I do like my current therapist, but sometimes I feel they don’t necessarily understand how badly OCD impacts my everyday life and how hard OCD makes it for me to improve my overall mental health. Just curious what anyone has experienced with this.

It’s making me think that I’m more scared of telling people that “I’m a chomo” for my extremely horrible real events when I was 13 instead of me never wanting to be a chomo because it’s morally disgusting and evil…

Curious about a persons likes/dislikes. Lately I've been asking the same person random fact questions about themselves. And after I get an answer, my intrusive thoughts find more questions to ask about what they like. And if I don't ask them, I ruminate wondering what it is and that's what causes anxiety until I get an answer. I truly don't care not one bit about this persons likes or dislikes, but my ocd does for some weird reason. It makes me feel crazy. Anyone else deal with something like this? Or know someone who does?

Generally manage my recovery extremely well when I focus completely on my health but can't seem to balance my recovery with pursuing new hobbies or skills that I want to learn. Once I find something that I want to become good at, it consumes me and I devote most of my attention to the pursuit. Invaraibly, compulsions arise, despite my very best efforts, and I find myself having to abandon my ambitions and commit to my recovery again. I don't want to have to spend the rest of my life managing my OCD and never achieving my potential. I'm exhausted.

😮‍💨so i’ve been dealing with pocd for about five going on six years and i can definitely say this point in my life is the worst experience i’ve had living with it. before, it was an annoyance and i didn’t need much “reassurance”, from 17-21 i had been working with/teaching kids here and there. i’d feel very gross and anxious having groinal response but interacting with them kinda alleviated that anxiety because they can be very sweet and some can just be cruel. but whatever it took not to hurt them, i’d face it because no child should have to go through being perverted or sexualized. and now….i feel like that’s all i do whenever i see them. i recently graduated college, going for my goals in life, surrounded myself by creatives/artsy people, i thought i was going to just eventually get a grip. but i’ve had very triggering experiences. like nothing i’ve accomplished matters bc i’m inhumane and worthless.

It feels as if I don’t wanna be around my boyfriend anymore :( I don’t wanna feel that. I know tomorrow he wanted me to go to school with him but I don’t wanna go and it made me feel as in why? And I kept thinking does it mean I don’t wanna be with him? Or do I just not feel like going to school? I don’t wanna go to school that’s for sure I have no reason to other than be with him but I just don’t wanna be in school because I don’t need to be there. I just can’t stop and feel as if the reason I don’t wanna go is because I don’t wanna be with him :/ and that sucks I don’t wanna feel that way. I sometimes don’t feel like being around him but I don’t know why i don’t know if that’s bad it feels bad. We’ve been together for more than a year this semester we have over 4 classes together so I would say for like 4 hours and that’s all but sometimes after a while I wanna be alone or don’t wanna be with him but then I think I don’t wanna feel that way cause it’s just 4 hours and if I wanna be with him in the future I need to get used to being more with him. I know he says that when him and I are together for a long while he doesn’t wanna be with me anymore he wants to go with his friends.I love him to death I wouldn’t leave him it just feels terrible feeling this way and plus I’ve never had this feeling I only felt that way about being together to much because we once broke up and it was cause sometimes he just wanted to go with his friends and I wouldn’t really let him and he said we don’t always need to be together.

I think my ocd is making me have an urge to “just admit something”. Has anyone else had this feeling?

I have been with my SO going in 13 years now. We met in college and have been together ever since. We got married in 2021 and welcomed a baby girl in the world last year. I had a severe mental breakdown in 2013 that landed me in the hospital because I was contemplating suicide. That breakdown nearly destroyed our relationship. I had severe intrusive thoughts and felt the need to tell him all of them. I felt like if I didn’t tell him, I was lying. I destroyed his self esteem, telling him all of the mean thoughts I had about him. I would feel the need to tell him anytime I saw an attractive guy in public, I questioned our relationship and told him I wasn’t sure if I loved him anymore. It was bad and very dark. Fast forward to now and I feel like I’m letting him down in different ways. I don’t feel the need to tell him every thought I have now but since having my daughter my OCD and depression seem to be getting worse. I just feel like I’m no longer happy and my daughter should’ve had a mom that wasn’t damaged like me. Didn’t have the abusive childhood like me. Wasn’t broken like me. I feel so much guilt. It’s putting such a strain on our relationship and I feel like my husband deserves someone better. Someone whose happier.

I have been having obsessive thoughts on life and what the point there is to anything as we all die. It started as an anxiety attack from thinking about death and how quickly time goes then lead on to these thoughts about questioning absolutely everything. There isnt a minute in the day where I don’t think about this 😞 When I try to sit with that thought of things being pointless and meaningless and act normal it’s like my brain is saying that I’m putting on act, that I should be sad and depressed by this. I just think constantly why am I thinking these things or why am I always thinking about how I’m feeling or if I have become a different person. I’ve just started Sertraline and found my thoughts have just got more worse. Just looking for words of encouragement and support.

Does anyone here have harm OCD that tries to attack every single action and thought they do during the day? Mine is about killing my spouse. Now every time I hear something that entails the future or “doing what I gotta do” I am afraid if the thoughts showing up. And as I try to think “do therapy”, “find hobbies”, “get into yoga” the intrusive though appears and it’s “kill your wife” or “kill your wife and yourself afterwards”. It could attack a happy event to. Like you finally get that reimbursement you were waiting for on an online shopping return. And now you get it and you’re like : “Nice, thats done” and the the intrusive thought comes “cool, now you can kill your wife”. I’m under the impression I am becoming schizophrenic. I don’t hear a voice or see things though, and some days there are less occurrences than other days. It’s days where I don’t work and have a day out with the wife doing fun activities that the occurrences are less. But if I sit alone working in my office all they they appear all the time. This is very distressing and causes severe anxiety. Loosing appetite, head aches, becoming extremely irritable. This is the hardest thing I have ever go through.

does anybody get false memories of them cheating on their partner that feel real? but yk u never did it it just feels real? like a memory?