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I’m in denial I really like this guy and I really want to tell him that I love him but he just does small talk with me I keep doubting what to text him I really wish I could just get a boyfriend and not have to deal with all of this

People know that I’m a germaphobe. They think it’s funny. They purposely will cough on me or touch me with contaminated hands. They know me. They know how I am. Today I had someone hug me and then shortly after told me that they weren’t feeling well. They KNOW that I am scared of getting sick. I’m also a new mom to a 4 month old. We JUST got over being horribly sick (horrible time for all of us) and she’s even still on antibiotics. When I told him I was not happy he just said “you’re going to be around germs all the time.” Like duh… I know… that’s like a whole things for me. And there is this really really gross lady (sorry that’s rude) at much church. She is a hoarder of trash, so fat she can’t breath, she NEVER bathes, her house is FULL of cats and is so messy she didn’t even know one of them was dead. She trapped me and hugged me today. I had to change my shirt because the whole side of my body she touched felt heavy. It set me off for the day I think. I couldn’t get my hands clean enough. I’m just frustrated with how rude people are to me about this. They know but they think it’s just a cute quirk. It makes me sick. For clarification, the lady didn’t do anything particularly wrong… I just can’t stand to be around her, even though that’s rude.

Hi. I was recently diagnosed with ROCD by my therapist. Which is a relief, because I’ve been dealing with intrusive thoughts in all my relationships, but even though I was in therapy, I had never been diagnosed and I didn’t know if there was a name for what I was experiencing. So, we are barely starting to work on it. I’m recently married to a man that has only showed me I can trust him, he re assures me and respects me. But I still tend to have the need to make sure all the time he’s not cheating or lying, paying attention to every single detail. At the same time I have the fear that I’ll ruin my marriage with my obsessions. I don’t want him to know about the diagnosis, cause I feel he’s gonna get scared and run away. Has anyone here recovered from ROCD? How’s life on the other side?

this is going to be a bit of a vent and is also a bit gross, so please read at your own risk but if anyone has any advice id really appreciate it as i dont know what to do anymore. im 15 years old and currently live mainly with my mother, stepdad, brother and younger sister and go to my fathers house on the weekends with my brother. Please dont view this as me saying my family are filthy or anything, as thats not what i mean at all and i dont want this to come across as me throwing them under the bus. but my mother and stepdad have alot of unclean habits like not washing their hands after touching dirty things (e.g underwear or things like that) which means everything they touch = contaminated to me. i dont entirely blame them for this, since they both didnt have alot of money growing up and often didnt have soap or even toothpaste, but times are different now and i cant take it much more. this has gotten in the way of ALOT of things. i cant touch most things in the fridge because they touched it meaning i cant make food, sometimes i cant even eat the lunches my mom packs for me for school anymore, i cant touch alot of things in my room, i cant use my tv, i basically cant do anything. and around last year someone sat down on our sofa with no pants at all on (sounds really weird and gross i know) and i dont think they ever cleaned it after that so now i genuinley cannot touch anything on that couch or anything that has touched that couch which you can imagine makes my life very difficult because its our main sofa and they spend alot of time in the sitting room. i have a cat and she ofcourse is going to often go on the sofa because shes a cat, and while i do still play with her and love her all the same ofcourse, its really exhausting to have to wash my hands every single time i play with her or pet her and not be able to use my phone and other things while doing so. she never really goes into my room or specifically onto my bed, but today she did and she sat on my phone and walked on my pillow and my charger and i had to scrub my phone with 2 types of soap since we didnt have any anti bacterial wipes left and i still dont feel as if its clean and i dont know what im going to do tonight when going to sleep. i know this may sound bizarre but my life has genuinley become so difficult to the point where i dont know what to do or how im going to continue on with this everyday. i feel way more comfortable and relaxed at my fathers house because none of those problems are there but i dont know how my mother would react if i asked her if i could stay there, or if i even could because of how id get to and from school everyday. but i feel like she would be hurt and may not understand and i dont even know if he would say yes. and also his lease says that he cannot have pets, and i dont want to leave my cat behind. my mother is aware that i think i have ocd (i know i have it but to her she just thinks im thinking about it) and we are currently on the waiting list for camhs, yet she doesnt understand it at all and i have yet to have a conversation with her about how it actually affects my life everyday. i know this is lengthy but im so unbelievably exhausted and i really dont know what to do. any help or reply is appreciated ^_^

I have been struggling with pure ocd symptoms for years, constantly fighting with myself and ruining relationships because of things that aren’t real. I’m not physically strong and I’m introverted and quiet, yet I constantly have intrusive thoughts about hurting my friends and family. I’ve had sexual images pop into my head or my dreams about every person, relative, animal that I’ve ever known. At 14 I had my first sleepover, where I locked myself in the bathroom all night because I thought I’d hurt my friend in her sleep. It didn’t help that I didn’t understand I was gay and that liking her was normal. I thought I was sick and twisted. At 21 I did the same thing, I was dating a girl and at her birthday party we shared a room for the first time. Even though we slept on different sofas, I still didn’t trust myself so I stayed awake all night. At 22 I went to a tattoo place and a massive storm happened, where all the roads closed due to crashes everywhere, so I couldn’t get a taxi home. My tattoo artist let me stay on his sofa. For the next few weeks I had intrusive thoughts that we’d had sex, or that he had watched me sleep and done things to himself at the same time. At 22 I slept with someone I thought was out of my league. I convinced myself for weeks that I never got consent even though I did. At 23 I was home for Christmas and had to share a bed with my little sister. I begged my parents to let me have the sofa to myself. I’d been having multiple pocd intrusions for a couple of months. At 24 I’m in my first relationship and I still continue to have these nightmares about everyone I know. It makes me feel like I’ve been unfaithful. My partner doesn’t trust me either. She wakes up and tells me she’s had dreams of me cheating on her, whilst i did indeed, have dreams about cheating on her. After drinking heavily one night I blacked out, and convinced myself I’d cheated through false memories. Cheating is the worst thing in the world to me so why would I do it.

I feel less emotions now. Being stoic is different, and i feel like having less emotions. The more amount of emotions i feel normally now are sadness and irritation. Ocd takes a toll on a person. When the thoughts and images decrease, i still don't feel improvement in my condition. I am sure it takes time to get normal, but by then i relapse. This feels like a constant in my life now, and now i actually feel as if it's a part of me, and that i have to always fight it without any recovery. My relationship/singlehood life isn't any good either, and hocd just makes it worse. The thoughts and images are so frustrating, but when they decrease, i don't even know what to do then. It's as if i hsve forgotten how to live without struggling against ocd. I don't take meds. Meds feel like living well with ocd and not actually recovering from it. For the past 3 out 4 months i didn't take it meds, it still felt good and like progress in my recovery. I just want to defeat ocd and live my life as per my own choices.

hey everyone! so from July to start of November I had extremely intense rocd with intrusive thoughts compulsions and all, however now I feel that I hardly get the intrusive thoughts and now I’m just left with the lingering feeling and anxiety of not loving my partner. I think this is due to the fact I’ve had rocd thoughts for a while and now my brains almost in limbo ? I’m not sure what this is and I’m panicking as I don’t feel as much anxiety as I did with the thoughts, this is a major trigger for me as I want to feel attraction and for things to go back to normal but how can I get this lingering “I don’t live my partner” thought away, it seems like the only thing keeping me from recovering :)

WHY CAN'T THEY GO AWAY ? I understand that is the point of ocd attacking you, but it's still so frustrating. I do acceptance therapy and to a degree erp, and it works. But after a point, the thoughts and images should decrease. When they do, fixation and overthinking ruin things again.

I don’t watch porn often, but if I do, and if I ever go on to porn websites I just feel so uncomfortable and dirty afterwards. I clicked on one of the main porn websites and clicked out after seeing the titles because I just felt so uncomfortable. Now I feel dirty for even searching up porn. I can’t really take that back as it’s done now. How can I get over the dirty feeling though?

I was told by my therapist that it's possible that I'm a covert narcissist. Since then I started feeling very anxious and ruminating when I did something that could be a symptom of narcissism. For example today, I was editing my social media profile and I started going over my posts and looking at them. I got a thought "why do you like looking at this? Why do you do this so frequently?" and started ruminating that I'm a narcissist so I must be a horrible person. So I wanna know if anybody also obsesses over mental illnesses (not particularly npd)? It's really making my state worse because everything there is on npd online is written in a vibe that all narcissist are manipulating monsters who know what they're doing and can't be helped so break your contact with them. I wanna cry when I see this because I didn't know what I was doing until the diagnosis, also I'm terribly scared of being left alone

So lately I’ve been feeling better and happy I’ve been laughing with family and friends but sometimes when I do laugh because I get a burst of happiness I instantly get anxious and get intrusive thoughts trying to tell me that it’s weird that I’m happy.. that something must be wrong because I feel happy.. or I feel happy it must not be real My brain goes through everything trying to convince myself that my happiness isn’t real and it ruins the whole moment for me when I feel the happiness… it scares me. Any reason why this is happening or can anyone relate and give some advice?

TW I always feel lonely. Then again, I don't really have any friends, so it kinda makes sense. I'm just kinda depressed about that. And I don't really know about making friends -- I haven't found "my type" of person, and besides, it seems that people really don't want to keep in touch with me, and then of course they leave

Any Christians can you please reply. Me and my partner have recently discovered a like for Role playing, we have always dirty talked etc, but have been finding an interest in doing something new (role play) as much as I enjoy doing this with my partner, and he does too, I’m worried what if God resents me for these acts? Surely just because you’re religious, doesn’t mean you can’t have kinks right? I believe god may think that sex is a private matter between the couple & as long as this act is shared with my person I will spend the rest of my life with, I don’t think it is bad necessarily? I know god may not think everything said or done in intimate times is “holy” or something, but I don’t want to stop doing things I love with my partner, and neither does he, but we are both religious. Just wondering if there’s any Christian’s who may give me a bit of perspective. (When me and my partner are “role playing” we are not pretending we are other people, we are still ourself, not pretending to “be someone else” just acting out different scenarios) some insight would be good, from someone who is religious themself?

I haven’t been diagnosed with existential ocd but I have every single one of the symptoms. Death/afterlife and the meaning of life is 90% of what I think about day after day. I really hate it. I wish I could go back to the days when I never thought about death. I really just want it to stop. The worst part is know that no matter what it’s inevitable and nobody can stop it😞 any suggestions on how to feel better??

Why do I have the urge to off myself when having ocd thoughts? But I dont want to die.

When I had a meal today, I noticed that my stomach was aching afterwards. That's never happened before. I also read that not having good bacteria in your gut can take a toll on your overall health. I feel great fatigue in my head if I'm not moving or if I'm laying down, and it's connected to my gut. Has anyone else had this problem?

Hey! Hello. I'm a guy from Spain who wants to help his girlfriend with OCD. Any advice? Lately, she's been struggling a lot with relationship ocd. She questions herself if she loves me or if I could want to be with other people... She doesn't even leave her house for fear of seeing other people and her body reacting as if she liked them. Excuse me if I made mistakes writting in english! Plus: If someone here talks spanish and want to share experiences with her, please let me know! It would be great if she could meet more people with OCD... Now she is creating her own account♡.

Does the idea of marriage scare anyone else? I’m 20 and have a bf of 2 years. Everyone around me is getting engaged, and although I love my bf, I’m not ready to get married. It causes me anxiety when I think about it. Anyone else?

So, the last 2 days I have been running an experiment on myself with what food and drinks I consume to see of it would have an effect. I haven't had a single intrusive thought in weeks before this. So I know refined carbs, caffeine and food with E numbers are all neuroinflammatories which makes the neuropathways on your brain harder to use. Making it harder for people with ocd to rationalise. For the last 2 days I drank nothing but carbonated drinks and processed food high in saturated fats and f***, the intrusive thoughts came in like a tsunami and were hard to deal with even with the knowledge I have on how to deal with it. Highly recommend not to do the same experiment. So this can cause high levels of homocysteine. Vit B12 is used to break this down but I didn't have any B12 during this. I also planned to upset my methylation as this is the method on which our gut usually digests stuff and creates hormones. I've been looking into something called the brain-gut dysfunction as it's linked to bowel problems and stress/ depression etc, a of which can make ocd harder to manage. I don't expect you to analyse everything but when you eat, especially junk food or snacks consider what may be healthy for your brain. The healthier your brain is, the better it works.

Has anyone else’s contamination OCD just gone through the roof since living through a pandemic? I didn’t even realize that’s what it was until the other day. My themes are primarily health and existential… But now I realize it’s also contamination, or at least I think so. I avoid public places, still try not to eat indoors, and if I do, I literally go into a countdown of how many days it’s been since being around people to know when I’m in the “safe zone.” How do y’all deal with it?