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feel deflated today i a haas such bad anxiety about a past event and my anxiety has gone now but the memory of the event is still on my mind what else can i do it's bringing me down bewcause it's still there and i want to move past it

In today’s session, we did ERP and read out loud an article of a woman’s coming out story. Even though I’m a straight male battling with this theme, the words coming out and other trigger words were in the article. Definitely something I wasn’t expecting to do in todays session and now my mind is telling me I want that and that It was a sign for me to come out as gay. So many intrusive feelings, urges, thoughts today. ERP really sucked. I know this is all part of the process but it feels so scary and dangerous to expose myself to this. I don’t want to be gay. I just want OCD to go away and stop making this all feel so real. I do my best to not engage with OCD but I feel so overwhelmed because If I let the thoughts sit there, it feels I will eventually act on them or believe them.

I was just watching tv and I saw a character and I was like "I wish I was straight as him" and I was like "that's a though only someone in denial about not being straight would have" and to he honest it does seem like I just don't wanna accept the truth

Does anyone feel like ‘anxiety’ is what makes the thoughts feel like you ‘like them’ ? Yesterday I made a point of not having any caffeine and I was able to ignore the thoughts and ‘feelings’ all day no matter how they were I just it irem them but today I don’t know what I’ve had that had caffeine in it but I started feeling this anxiousness in my chest and now it’s back to feeling like I ‘like the feeling’ of ‘smothering my cat’ like my cat came near me and rubbed his nose on me and the anxiety made it feel like I ‘like the feeling of smothering’ (even though I have obviously never done that’ but through having the thoughts and ‘testing myself’ by deliberately imagining them it feel like I know how it feels to do that and ‘enjoy/like the feeling’ and it’s been so horrible experience but feels really real like I enjoy the feeling of squashing someone’s face with a pillow and stopping them from breathing (sorry that’s graphic) but that’s what it feels like I ‘like the feeling of doing that’ and just now it felt like that with my cat and then I start deliberately imagining the smothering thoughts about my cat to ‘test myself’ to see if it feels like I actually ‘like’ the feeling and I think maybe that ‘urge feeling’ is making it feel like i like it and I’ve gotten use to it that’s why it don’t feel alarming anymore but maybe I’m taking the urge feeling as ‘I want to do that and like the feeling’ or that ‘acting on it would feeling good’ and it’s horrible and feels real then I keep imagining it till it feels like I get anxiety or screw up my face or my body feels tense so I know I don’t like it 😞

Hi everyone. Today at work (I’m an infant teacher), I was doing diapers. This is always triggering for me but I just focus on the task at hand and get it done. Sometimes I’ll talk with the baby or my coworkers to ease the anxiety. While buttoning up the onesie today, I kept having repeating thoughts that my finger was so close to the baby’s private area. The thoughts were along the lines of you’re so close you can touch the area, no one will know. And I could feel my fingers reach towards the area , I got a drop of anxiety in my stomach and nearly walked away from the change table. My coworker had gone home so I had no choice but to finish the onesie , once I was done I put the baby down and took a moment to breathe. Has anyone felt like they were about to do the action? I’m not feeling okay and my therapist is off on vacation, I just could really use someone to talk to

TW: Health concern/cancer ………………………….. I’ve been so tired lately. Like last night I got 7 hours of sleep but have been exhausted all day. It scares me to be tired, because I’ve seen people on tik tok talk about early signs they had cancer and a lot of them say extreme fatigue. My family says it’s probably because I just started a new job 4 months ago and am adjusting to working a 9-5 since I was just babysitting half days before I got this job. I just get so worried and then I’m like maybe I should go get my blood drawn. But a) I’m scared of getting blood drawn because last time I did I felt like I was going to faint but didn’t. B) I’m scared about to anxiety of waiting to get the results back and what if something is wrong? Wondering if anyone else has these fears surrounding tiredness?

As someone trying to close the door on Protestantism, Catholicism seems to make more logical sense. Unfortunately, OCD rarely bows to logic. I’ve believed since I was little if I prayed to anyone other than God I’d go to hell. Even though I know understand the confusion between Protestant and Catholic interpretations of prayer and worship, my old childhood beliefs seem almost cemented in my brain. I’ve been attempting to pray the Rosary every day for a week in an effort to start a relationship with Mary. I’ve also found another prayer that I like that’s directed to Jesus asking for help in this area. Every day it’s become a little easier. I even woke up excited to pray the Rosary after having a dream about it last night. But this time I tried to allow myself to participate with the Hail Marys which I had previously been skipping. I say allow because several times I wanted to, but held myself back. Well, first one or two weren’t so bad. But as the rosary continued, so did my anxiety. I think I bit off more that I could chew because by the end of it I had to go straight to the SOS section of the app. I am trying to resist the urge to figure out if this anxiety and chest pains are God saying he’s displeased with me or if they are natural physical responses to stress. I look forward to being able to pray the Rosary without this distress, but I’m hesitant to attempt it again. Which is a bummer cause I thought I was on a roll.

This is one of the main theme why I have SOOCD? do you deal with this? If yes can we talk about it please

I dont want to ask for reassurance but i feel like i need some emotional support right now. Im so sensitive right now, and that makes my ocd worse... We are going to the beach tomorrow for 4 days, and for a reason today i got so anxious, sensitive. This is the 4th time that we are going to the beach yet im still worried about the trip and it makes me worry more. Its a really long trip, like 8-10 hours, and im so afraid that i will be sick bc of the sensitiveness... At the first time when we went there, it was 6 years ago, i got so stressed that i vomited and i felt so sick the entire vacation, it was really bad, since then im afraid when we go to the beach that i will be sick... Another thing that makes me really sensitive is that we got a dog 5 months ago and its the first time that I wont see him for days...it makes me so sad, i know its just a dog but for me its like my child...and this sadness makes me worry again that i will be sick or i will not enjoy the vacation... Idk i didnt felt this level of stress a long time ago, this doesnt even felt like ocd, its just many stressors came and made me sensitive...Im a christian but these things made me even feel like God isnt here right now and i cant lean on Him...I know its just a feeling but it was soo strong I couldnt feel like He will help me... So yeah idk what happened but i didnt felt this bad a long time ago...

I’ve suffered from this theme on and off now for years. And it’s focused around this one stupid event in the past. I’ve explained it in a previous post. Short story I feel I micro-cheated on my wife by putting on deodorant before going out the door to help a friend of hers who I find attractive. Her friend asked me. I didn’t go out of my way to ask her. I didn’t do anything questionable on that day besides put deodorant on and somehow my mind has latched onto it. My wife even knew who I was with and where we were going. I feel I was trying to gain attention because I know it smells good. I found an article online that emphasized “micro cheating”. A list item in there says “Dressing up or wearing perfume to impress someone” and now I equate that to what I did. I feel that this is cheating. It’s bad and I need to confess to my wife. I broke down and confessed to her last year that I wore deodorant to “impress” someone but didn’t specify who. I didn’t want to mess up their friendship. She seemed to gloss over what I said and wasn’t really affected by it. I keep going back to it thinking “If only you knew it was THIS person it would be 1000 times worse! You didn’t tell her the whole truth! You’re trickle-truthing!” I’m my mind she would be be devastated if I told her and divorce me so the fact that I haven’t told her is living a lie”. I hate this so much. I feel my entire life with her is riding on me keeping this inside and if I let it out it’s game over. Divorce. Homeless. Custody battles. Financial ruin. Everything. Any time divorce is brought up in movies or anything I am triggered. I just want this to go away. But the fact that it hasn’t leads me to believe it’s legit guilt and not just OCD and I’m using OCD as an excuse. Has anyone successfully conquered this type of theme? Or does it only really end in a confession.

How long will this go on for? I’m so tired. I don’t know how much more of this I can take. I just want it to go away. It’s hard to accept uncertainty when you were once so sure and confident about yourself. Why did this happen to me? How did it happen to me? I feel so sick and unsure and alone and fraudulent. I feel like the only solution is just to not exist anymore. I don’t want reassurance. I already know who I am and what I want. I just want my fucking brain to shut up. I want it to stop convincing me that I’m someone I’m not. I want the night terrors and migraines to go away. I want the pit and aches in my stomach to stop. I want to be able to breathe without my breath shuddering. I want to be able to read lesbian media again without my brain telling me that I’m faking my sexuality and that I’m not actually a lesbian. I want to be able to listen to songs again without my brain giving me intrusive thoughts about being with men and liking it. I want to be proud about who I am without my brain telling me that I’m going to fuck/end up with a man and be happy. I want the straight fantasies to go away. I want to be able to cry about something that isn’t ocd again. I want to stop being numb after crying and accepting my “straightness” bc I know I’m not no matter how much my brain tells me “your heart knows you’re straight. You know you’re straight. You were never attracted to women.” I want to stop picturing being happy with men and being “ok” with it. And then getting anxious the very next second and not know why. I want it all to fucking stop. I want to be able to at least tolerate living again.

long post ahead and trigger warning: a few years ago I started talking to/ dating this person and right at the beginning I did something horribly disrespectful and invasive to them. At the time I thought nothing of it. We ended up falling in love and had a committed relationship. Everything was amazing. As the months went on, I had learned more about their previous hardships they’ve faced in their life and with that the realization of the weight of my actions along with the shame and guilt and regret that came with it started to tear me apart. I owned up to my actions and confessed to my partner. They were rightfully very upset, but we worked through it! I did everything I could to show them the value they had and how much I truly loved and cared for them. We dated for almost 2 years after that. One day they became distant, and a week or so after that they had told me essentially that the incident from years ago came back up and, they didn’t truly heal from my actions, and that they had just pushed them to the side and tried to take care of it themselves but were suffering in silence the whole time. They vocalized that they loved me, but also how much weight my actions carried and how they didn’t know if they could trust me ever again and that they felt uncomfortable to be near me. Ultimately it started with a break then full breakup and ended it on a “it’s not forever” note and that we’d stay in contact, but as the months have gone on they have completely stopped communicating with me. I had made a couple attempts to reach out every few weeks to no word. Now I’m in distress because I feel crippling shame over my careless shitty behavior I had all those years ago. It came back even worse than before. I keep worrying about whether I’ve become this vile irredeemable person, and I think about what they said about the weight of my actions and I just can’t forgive myself. I want to be judged harshly because I feel I deserve it. But I also have to deal with the moral scrupulosity of whether or not I confessed or apologized too much or too little over the whole situation. And I had loved this person so much and planned our futures together and now that’s gone. It just feels like I’ve ruined my entire being. My life goal was to be a good father and husband and now the person I planned that with has left me and is disgusted by me. At least that’s how it feels. I’ve done what I can to give myself self respect and give them their space. And maybe one day they will reach out and we will clear things up. It’s possible. But maybe they won’t. And that’s also possible and completely understandable. My moods flip on a dime to either ‘fine’ or just crippled with shame and regret to the point of feeling suicidal. I’m just so tired of feeling like shit all the time over something i did all those years ago that in that moment I didn’t give a second thought over their repercussions. Now I’ve hurt myself and the person I’ve loved most and I’m just scared if either will be able to heal or if it’s even worth me healing because I feel like my whole life now is just pointless and aimless. It’s terrible. I started therapy again and have talked to my therapist about this. It just comes and goes in waves of anger shame. Ugh. If you read all that thanks. I know I’m probably not supposed to do this for real event ocd and I hope this wasn’t just a huge compulsion.

Hi all! I’ve gotten all my physical compulsions under control, but I’m still fighting the intrusive thoughts (and by fighting, I mean welcoming and acknowledgment them but not interacting). I thought once the compulsions went away, the OCD goes away or at least decreases. Ruminating is my mental compulsion that my brain is stuck on - yes, I’ve always been an over thinker. Any techniques that you’ve found helpful?

My pocd has been so so awful this year i absolutely hate it. it gives me so many intrusive thoughts that plays into real events / false memories. An incident happened today and i cannot stop panicking. I was laying on the sofa as my head was sort of hurting and i was sleeping. My younger cousin came to get the remote from me and before she did i moved my head away from her and then closed my eyes and waited for her to move bc close contact makes me anxious. But here’s the thing. i’m freaking out because what if i moved my head back so it brushes past her private area? did it brush past her? were my intentions bad?? 😭 and the thing that makes this feel more real is the fact before she came over to pick the remote up, she called my name to change the channel but i didn’t reply and i think i knew she’d come over to get it. i think maybe that’s why i opened my eyes to move the control but by that time she had already come over. am i a bad person? literally an hour before this i was holding my breath when she was next to me because i didn’t want to breathe too much as it may make the sofa move underneath me which she was sitting on too. i feel like the worst person ever & i deserve to die 😭💔

Trigger warning for mention of suicide, getting sick, weight loss, generally heavy topics It’s the one year anniversary of when my OCD started to get extremely bad. This is my story if you care to read it! In August of 2022, I suddenly started having severe relationship OCD. I was nauseous all the time, I didn’t sleep well, I lost a lot of weight because I could barely eat, and anything I did eat, I got sick immediately after. I had convinced myself I was a cheater, that I was lying to my boyfriend about who I really was, that he would be much better off without me. In September of 2022, my religious OCD came back after about 9 years. I was constantly back and forth between religious OCD and relationship OCD every single day. I was so tired. In October of 2022, my OCD had progressed to the point where I started contemplating suicide. I thought that the world would be better without me in it and that I was too horrible of a person. I contemplated ruining my relationships with my boyfriend and my friends to “save them” from me. December of 2022 was the absolute worst it got. Every night I was taking way too many pills so that I would sleep all throughout the next day to avoid my OCD and severe anxiety (which is extremely dangerous with the medication I was taking). I had convinced myself that if I got therapy, even my therapist would think I’m too far gone. Every day I was on the brink of ending my own life. I stopped caring about my health or wellbeing because “I didn’t deserve to be happy”. It got to the point where my mom kept asking me to “please never leave [her]” You know what I did? I stayed. It was not easy, at all, but it was so incredibly worth it. I told my parents about my OCD and they supported me and helped me to get therapy. I have started to heal my relationship with Jesus, I can finally read the Bible without becoming extremely nauseous, and I have once again found comfort in His arms. 🤍 I got to see my nephew get older, he is starting to talk and calls me “tee tee” (auntie). He’s become such a wonderful boy, and he’s also gonna be a big brother! 🤍🤍🤍 I also opened up to my boyfriend about my OCD, my past traumas, my general mental health, and he has supported me and loved me every step of the way. I am so happy with him and so in love, I’ve made so many memories with him this year. 🤍🤍🤍 I know this post is long, and if you read this far, please stay! You have no clue what you will miss out on. Life will be beautiful again, you are beautiful and the world needs you. It may be hard to see for yourself sometimes, but you are so loved. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. Take things one moment at a time, and remember that while life may not always be easy, the bad times make the good ones just so wonderful. 🤍🤍🤍

Does anyone else sometimes just think about ending their good relationship that they enjoy just to avoid the cycle of constant relationship anxiety? We’ve been together 8 years. He’s never given me any reason to doubt him, but still the smallest thing will happen, like he starts a new job and it just sends me into a tailspin. I start getting intrusive thoughts like “what if he meets someone? He’s got to be sick of me by now. Why wouldn’t he want her? (A new coworker) She’s much more attractive than me..” I’ll manage to go a day or two without bringing it up and asking for reassurance but it’s like every single thing that happens will just become “evidence” to me that my worst fear is coming true: his tone sounded a little different. I’m probably right and should get ready for this to end. Asking for reassurance just comes across as accusations, and he gets angry and frustrated. People would say “oh if he gets defensive, he’s guilty”. So then the anxiety gets worse. But what he’s telling me is he’s exhausted and frustrated from me “always doubting him”. And he doesn’t deserve that. I hate it and often suggest just breaking up due to my feelings of guilt over constantly asking for reassurance and that just makes him more mad as he doesn’t want to break up. I’m just exhausted. So I think “maybe I should just leave. Be alone. He deserves better”. But that just sounds like punishment for both of us because it’s not what either of us wants.

I have an issue with evaluating people’s attractiveness when I see them. Usually it’s because I’m afraid that I am attracted to them and I don’t want to be because I’m in a relationship. So it’s like checking and mental review and it’s strangely difficult to overcome. I even evaluate ugly people and feel relief when I can’t see attractiveness. I have recently started to focus on thinking about someone’s emotions/intentions when I see them instead. When I’m scanning the room I purposely focus on this and it actually keeps me from evaluating people’s appearance and attractiveness because I’m focusing on empathy and understanding. My question is this actually a solution and productive? Or is it some kind of compulsion or avoidance? Looking for someone closer to recovery or recovered to answer.

Hey guys. I feel like you all are the right people to ask because you’re going through this as well. Do you have any tips for helping with the loneliness that ocd can bring? What helps you? Oftentimes I feel like when I’m struggling I don’t want to bring it up all of the time to my family, because ocd is the same thing to explain every time. I realized that I was becoming really isolated, especially because my themes are SOOCD and ROCD, which make me avoid relationships and friends sometimes, even though doing so is making me lonely. Any tips? Thanks guys ❤️

Does anyone else notice their anxiety and OCD is a million times worse when their partner/loved one is away? My partner has to leave for 3 weeks at a time for work out of province and I’ve been struggling HARD lately, the lowest I had ever been in my life but have been feeling a lot better this past week. Today he left for 3 weeks and it just feels like my anxiety is so much worse because it started to get bad (this past episode) when he was away, and my themes have been targeting him lately but when he’s home he’s my safe space and makes me feel so loved and understood and when he’s gone I just feel so alone again, I’m scared this will be another 3 weeks of hell on earth until he’s home again. Then when he leaves will it be another 3 weeks of hell? I feel like I don’t really have anyone except my mom and she’s the best but my best friend just moved across the country, I can’t spend time with her and my other friend who I’m close with and used to tell everything to because she would always give me the best advice and I felt like she understands and never judged, well I just found out that I was WAY WRONG ABOUT THAT! I’m not even speaking to her about anything personal because she doesn’t get it. I was explaining to her about my OCD and she was like “oh ok, we’ll my family members son has REAL ocd where everything has to be clean and turns the stove off a bunch of times?” Then had the nerve to say last week that maybe I don’t actually have OCD and it’s just a byproduct of my father not being there for me when I was younger and I’m trying to get attention because i lacked a father figure….

This isn't exactly totally about my OCD, it's a story about my life. So it's related, but it's also not. When I was 19 Harm OCD first manifested. Back in 1995 Harm OCD wasn't a thing. I lived with intense guilt and shame, I thought I was going crazy. And even when it ebbed and I could focus more, the OCD permanently changed who I was. Much more gun shy to do anything, always having to watch for triggers and stress, I lost any future I had. I mean at 19 many people don't know what they want to do, what their destiny is, etc. I still don't. After having to retake 2 years of classes I got a BA in English in 1999. I know a liberal arts degree won't get you a good job, so I applied to graduate school and got in on a free ride. My recommendations were great. I thought I had a handle on what I was going to do with my life. Then on November 13, 1999 I Had a relapse. Harm OCD. I flunked all my courses and came home in 2000 . And I've been home ever since. I started Paxil in 2006. I worked as a substitute teacher, then at Wal Mart for 7 years. I lost my job at Wal Mart because of intense anger. I discovered after mom died in 2008 that I have Borderline Personality Disorder. I worked in 2013, and that's been it. I haven't worked since. Being so miserable, I prayed repeatedly for death in 2014. My life just never turned out the way I wanted it to. I could never get it together. Never make it work. In January of 2015 I actually made a New Year's resolution, that I would lose weight, get a job, and re-start my life. I had to smile a little and shake my head when I broke my back a couple of weeks later. So 2015 I spent most of my time in bed and walking with a cane. In January, 2016 I had a successful back surgery, but it came at a cost. I have a partially disabled back and the anesthesia screwed me up for 3 years. From 2016-2019 I dealt with coming out of my anesthesia fog, going to my ailing grandma's once a week and applying for work. I applied for hundreds of jobs but, I don't know if it's because of my age, or being out of the workforce for so long, but I didn' t anything. Grandma died at almost 97 in 2019. We were very close. The "pandemic" hurt a lot of people's psyches, and I was no exception. My niece left home so it was just me and dad. Even though I didn't work, the zeitgeist was different and is now. Nothing has been right in the world since 2019. Our dog died in 2021 at the age of 14. In early 2022 my dad got rectal cancer, and things started to get worse for me. For some reason in early 2022 I took a friend's advice and decided to take Xanax to help me sleep. It didn't work. So after just five weeks of 1mg a night I decided to quit cold turkey. I am convinced that broke my brain. The withdrawal was so bad. I've never actually been in terror before, but I was. I felt incredibly depressed. It was hard to be the caretaker I had to be for dad. As the weeks went on I started feeling like everything was meaningless. Nothing meant anything to me anymore. Past memories, family, etc., meant zero to me. It was an awful feeling, one I still struggle with. I also started having either caregiver burnout or resentment. In August of last year I decided to quit Paxil, which I had been on since 2006. Again, cold turkey. I don't know if I did this because I wasn't thinking right or whatever, but as soon as I did this, the problems I was already having got worse. My Harm OCD came back worse than ever. Over the past 8 months I've been battling two types of intrusive thoughts. The ones I recognize from Harm OCD and ones from depression/anger/burnout, I'm not sure. I feel absolutely empty. I have no friends anymore, I Have no money, no car, no sense of purpose, no direction. I have ahnedonia, anger, and so forth. I can only "sleep" 2-3 hours a night. I go to bed with intrusive thoughts, feelings, etc., and I wake up with them. I stay in bed 12 hours...9 of them is me afraid to get up and go downstairs because of my harm OCD. I feel trapped in my role as a caregiver, and yet I have no idea what I would do if I wasn't doing this. I take 4-6 OTC sleeping pills each night, plus l theanine, magnesium, etc. For the past 10 years I've tried to take things in stride, but I hit a wall or something. I cannot stand the constant thoughts, I feel hopeless. No one takes my insurance. No one in my family can possibly fathom what I'm going through. I'm afraid to kill myself , and then I feel guilty because I think I should do it bc of my intrusive thoughts but can't. The past year I truly lost the rest of my mind. I think it was the trauma of dad's cancer and assuming a caregiver role, realizing I have nowhere to go, nothing to do, the Xanax and Paxil withdrawal, the misery of this world, and maybe years of repressed anger. I Don't know, I truly don't know. But wow I never thought things would be like this. I feel completely trapped, hopeless. That's all, I had to vent.