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I've been constantly exposing myself to triggers for months now and I just get overwhelmed and worse. I'm so tired and my nerves just feel shot, even though I'm tired my head keeps going... What am I missing?

I gotta share this because I think we can all get through this OCD! But you gotta put the work in! The homework therapist gives is to help us, and for me, i think i had a breakthrough. So I am a month into my ERP therapy through here and let me tell you… it sucks most days. What i like about my therapist I got on here is she told me she’s been working in hospital and prison wards, so she’s probably heard and seen some stuff and what I got probably ain’t that bad. I started with CBT but my OCD was getting rough after about a year so now I’m giving ERP a try. I was asked to write a letter to someone that I believed was triggering my OCD and so I did. I went through a whole spiral with my POCD, honestly I feel like a monster. But! I’m also recalling some stuff I have kept suppressed and never wanted to mention in therapy, and I think it’s probably time I process that stuff, no matter how ashamed or guilty I feel. Ultimately, it’s probably what is causing the doubt disorder to overtake me. So for those of you struggling, keep going! And be completely open! I promise you your therapist has heard some stuff and you are probably far from what they have heard.

Hi! I'm in therapy right now, my therapist is fine but she doesn't do ERP... I'm always afraid I will get worse, but unfortunately I don't know what else I can do. For all of you who are in therapy with an Erp specialist, may I ask what do you do during sessions? Do you do exercises together? Do you have to do some exercises at home? Thanks to everyone who will answer!♡♡

I want to beat OCD/GAD? because I'm tired of being this shell of my former self. My brain has been hollowed out by the chainsaw of fears while my body remains fixed in place, unable to run. I once loved to sing and write. I once remembered conversations with others. I once was actually able to hold them myself. Now, I can barely complete coherent sentences without my thoughts veering off. My OCD leaves me exhausted. It's so hard to feel rested when you think something awful is going to happen all the time. I have started to affectionately call it Chicken Little Syndrome. However, it doesn't deserve any affection. I am supposed to be savoring the little songs my toddler sings or the jokes my husband cracks, but I am worrying about making ends meet or about inadvertently not being able to help my patients. Why did I have such issues with time management last shift? Why couldn't I focus on other simple tasks? People have shown me so much love and I can't even think of the proper way to respond, nevermind coming up with something clever, eloquent, or creative. I am a shell. A chainsaw of fear. My family is so good. They deserve to have me back.

My my name Brendan Simons. I first learned about my OCD when I was around 6 years old. It all started when I was in my daycare, and one of the kids was talking about the scary ghost of bloody Mary, and spinning three times in the mirror while saying her name will make her appear and harm you. As a kid, this horrified me as someone that was very afraid of ghost this led to my first experience with OCD. My OCD took this to a new extreme touching doing or saying anything threes times would cause harm to me or somebody that I love and care about this lasted around five years it seems to be a theme in my OCD that keeps coming back, but not always in the way of numbers are doing things multiple times. Later, on in life in my teenage years, it seemed to change from Numbers to that just right feeling. As I’m sure some of you as experienced as I’ve looked online and many people have had that just right feeling, it’s very hard to explain what we’re talking about but I would repeatedly do my actions over and over many times of whether that’s turning on and off water touching closing a door multiple times until I felt just right and if it didn’t feel right, I thought something bad again what happened to me or somebody I care about. More recently, my OCD has come along with intrusive thoughts, and it kind of like what was going on as a teenager with the just right feeling but now my mind tells me to think of harm to somebody that I do not care about so that way it will not affect somebody that I do care about. As family ages my worries continue to grow and I have just recently moved out and live on my own now and I’m very very stressed about my family back home. Now recently, my OCD has started to take over my life. I was prescribed Zoloft for anxiety and OCD and have noticed small changes in my personality. I feel like I have been able to resist the compulsions, but it hasn’t fully taken this anxiety feeling fully out of the picture. It really takes over my day-to-day activities and I still find myself doing multiple compulsions and rituals to try and prevent these things from happening. I understand and I’m self aware that me doing something or a ritual multiple times will have no effect on anybody at all in the world, but for some reason my brain overpowers that and gives you that what a feeling what if this were to happen. Join this app to find people who have possibly has similar experiences just like mine or any advice to help me get through this. As I live in a town that I’m unfamiliar with I know nobody here and I’m just trying to make friends. Please don’t hesitate to reach out.

Hi everyone, i’ve never done this before and I have a lot of trouble accepting help thinking I can do everything on my own. Due to some stressful life circumstances lately I have had a flare up after almost 5 years without any major flare ups. It has been extremely difficult to cope with the deep panic and physical symptoms that come along with it lately and I have taken the first step to getting help from a professional on here. I know I am not alone and I already have a lot of tools and tips that have worked for me in the past but sometimes you just need an extra hand to guide you. Trying to be hopeful and am proud of myself and grateful those around me support me getting extra help during a trying time such as this. 🤍

Does OCD ever make it seem that if you follow your dreams, preferences and goals you will punished by God. I get that feeling a lot that God will punish me if I do and that I’m getting thoughts of God telling me to give up my desires and goals. It’s really stressing me out and getting me sad, anxious, disappointed and angry

I have germ OCD/Emetophobia, and death OCD. I just started Luvox, but my OCD and anxiety has me scared something bad will happen if I take it so I haven’t been consistent. It’s ruining my marriage..I feel guilt 24/7. Can anyone relate…

Please , please… someone give me some advice who is or has been in similar situation?? I need to stop confessing to my partner. I know it hurts him, he said he knows I cannot control that I have a mental illness, or that I have these thoughts in my head but not to put them in his head, he doesn’t want to think about them which is understandable it’s not just random thoughts it’s intrusive thoughts revolved around ROCD, SOCD mostly are my ocd themes that I confess to him… we have spilt up over this before and he gave me another chance and just continues to do that, because I just keep doing it, I know what I’m doing, I know it’s wrong, but the anxiety ocd gives me nothing else will calm me until I confess either to him or if it’s not him it’s my mum, either way I’m still confessing the difference is it doesn’t hurt my mum when I confess, she can handle it, my partner cannot. I hate myself for doing this, I don’t know how to get out of the OCD haze… best way I can describe when I feel anxious over ocd is a feeling of DOOM. 😔😭 please pray for me… please pray for my partner, my daughter, mother, everyone who is affected because of my mental illness… 🤎

I was on an anonymous erotic site and this woman wanted to do stuff with me. She was in a relationship with another woman on the website. She said that she wanted it and that she hadnt done it with her wife in a long time. Long story short we explicitly chatted online but i feel guilty because of the experience. She said i didnt ruin her relationship but i feel like an evil person for doing it. Am i a bad person for this? Someone told me that because its an online chat site, that i have nothing to be sorry about but... i still feel like a horrible bad person who doesnt deserve love...

does anyone remember what their first experience with OCD felt like? im pretty sure i know the exact minute it happened. I was nine and my cousin was over for a sleep over, i remember she was on my bed watching a youtube video, and i was on the floor watching a youtube video. Then all of a sudden i got this horrible feeling it felt almost like deja vu? but i was terrified and i was so anxious i went and threw up. After that my mind was never the same, at the time i was so scared that i had been possessed because thats what i imagined it would feel/ look like, i became obsessed with the thought that i had become possessed. i kept asking my mom for reassurance that I hadn’t gotten possessed or had “made god angry.” im just wondering if anyone else has had a similar experience or if maybe that wasn’t OCD? Part of me still wonders if maybe i actually am possessed and i don’t have OCD even after 10 years. I obviously know thats not true but it’s always the “what if” ya know?

And if so what does that look like to you. I think i may have and I can't figure out if I have or not.

Idk what is wrong with me. For so long I was so strong in my sexual preference for women as a straight man but after I was 17 I had a really bad experience where a girl told people around my school I sexually assaulted her and it fucking killed me. For years, massive depression couldn’t touch a women for years afterwards until after I graduated when in 2021. 2 months in my first trust gf when we had sex my anxiety went so far up that it put me in a panic attack or “fight or flight” reaction and my erection went soft immediately and couldn’t be put back up. I think also I was scared of sex itself and being good at it, I suck at calming my mind down in those situations and just being on the moment. Now since a young teenager I’ve always found women attractive and had crushes on them. Always fantasized about having sex with them and got aroused by it, just the act of making out with women gets me going or sometimes just being close to one. Mental attraction also goes a lot into my attraction to a women. But after that one altercation with my first gf out of fear I was gay i dumped her and left. Been struggling with it for years now. Never knew that I have HOCD till a couple years ago when I reading up on it. Then my past little fling past “situationship” ended horribly but I did have brief sex with her in my car but it ended fast because it was just too uncomfortable in the back of a Mustang😂but yeah then the next time after we had broke things off multiple times I just had no attraction to her anymore as a person although at one point I was almost in love with the girl and wanted to make her my gf. When I was younger I started a horrible addiction to porn that has horribly affected me. It’s comes to the point where straight porn doesn’t get me going anymore so I started resorting to stuff like trans porn. I always look for the most female looking one because the “manly” ones always just turn me off. So now I have stopped watching porn because I realized it was just turning was I truly liked and making it something it isn’t. My brain was just looking do true quick fix of a ejaculation. When I was younger I always watched straight porn and it always turned me on but as I got older watching it 3 to 4 times a day it started to attracted me less and less. Where now some days I struggle finding women attractive when before hand I adored and always found women attractive as long in my type range you know. Hope that all makes sense but yeah it’s brutal as man dealing with this problems because it just make you feel less than and like you are gay when as a young man this problem was not a problem. I was never attracted to men as a young teenager or even older teenager.

It’s as if I had a huge wave of realization that I actually am lesbian. Up until this point it was like part of me knew I wasn’t lesbian but now it feels like my body and mind is just accepting it, as if I’m too tired to fight it and the “proof” in my past is too much now. My mind is already putting scenarios in my head of how to tell my parents and the anxiety of having to tell my bf :( I don’t know what this is and I don’t know who I am anymore

i wish i could get diagnosed. i feel really guilty whenever i try to talk on this app because i think im faking it. i’ve done my research but what if it’s not real? what if i’ve just slowly shifted my habits into fitting the mold of the symptoms so im convinced i have it? i think it would make me a bad person to even think i have something that im not diagnosed for. and if i do get diagnosed and it turns out i dont have it, then i’ll be a horrible horrible person. i wish i could diagnosed. i dont want to deal with this ontop of every other thing my brain forces me to think about. i think im faking it everyday and it makes me so anxious i find it hard to breathe sometimes

Travelling has been so good for me. At first I felt like my life was in danger, I was skittish as hell and like a scared puppy. There have been times I’ve gone to hospital with injuries and times where I’ve had deadly diseases but I’m through that. I took the advice of travelling slowly so I’ve been in this village for eight months. I’ve weeded out the riff raff and I have friends now. In the UK I was finding it so hard to connect with people as friends. There were people I spoke to and visited regularly but since I left they stopped all communication giving strong “you are a nutter” vibes because I had a panic attack. Anyway people aren’t judging me here and they have religion so are kind natured and accommodating. I move on to the next place in two weeks where I will see less foreigners. I’m not particularly bothered about this as I only really speak to Indians anyway and it will be good to practice my Hindi. My best friends here are the street dogs and the little children who sell fish food and flowers come a close second. Those children will be getting a bumper parcel of coloured chalk before I leave. Best activity was going down to the ghat (steps leading to the river) and just watching the Ganges flow by while people are meditating and doing yoga. This was the best activity by far and it was free. I came here to see if I liked travelling before committing to full time travel. I love travelling solo and I’m more at ease with my own company than I thought I’d be. I’ve done a short course in English teaching and the next step for me would be to do a diploma in that. I can earn £1,000-£3,000 a month teaching English in India at a school but tbh I can more than cover my expenses by teaching for a couple of hours a day online. I have to leave in March to sort out some finances but I’m sure I will return whatever. When I’m back I’m going to begin the process of learning yoga. Yoga is always the suggested form of exercise for my illness and Rishikesh is yoga central. I’d like to learn to teach it and there are teaching courses everywhere here. I don’t know what I’d like to do then if anything. I’d have English and yoga teaching under my belt and I do have other irons firmly in the fire. Maybe I’d like to just wander and help those that need it. That is the thing that most comes to mind. I’ve been homeless, in homeless hostels, lived on council estates and in the drugs world and I’m old enough and wise enough to know who needs help and who is just taking advantage. I know money isn’t always the best form of help unless you are wise enough to give it to an organisation with the experience to know how best to spend it. Hmm yes, I am just sitting by the Ganges with meditators and yoga practitioners contemplating life and the future… I hope everyone’s recoveries are going well.

Hi! These past few days I think my theme had switched to some sort of time based OCD. I have spent my days looking at the clock and thinking back to earlier in the day, a few days ago, or even months ago and being extremely stressed about the fact that time is passing. Two hours can pass and I will be extremely anxious about the fact that time has passed and I will never get that time back again. I know this is OCD because even if I am doing fulfilling fun things during my days I still am constantly thinking about how it will be over and how time will never stop and it brings me great anxiety. I also have just come back to college after being home for 3 weeks. I do not do well with change whatsoever and I had a really great break and I’m wondering if break ending is what triggered this. I have spent my days wanting just to go back in time. I can’t figure out what ERP i can do for this to try to nip it in the bud. I’m sure overtime it will calm down but I really don’t want to ruin all these good days ahead being sad that time is passing. Just needed to vent i guess and is wondering if anyone has any advice. Thank you!

Has anyone had intrusive thoughts triggered from emotions such as frustration? When I start to get irritated or frustrated I get blasphemous intrusive thoughts. It makes me more distressed and panicked when the intrusive thoughts occur with that emotion vs just random.

I'm struggling with myself esteem right now. I'm wondering how I can raise my self esteem without giving into compulsions and ruminating on obsessions. I know that if one has OCD they should not seek reassurance. I could be wrong with this definition or perspective on what self esteem is, but isn't a big part of self esteem based on having reassurances or having schemas about one's self that they are a good person, deserve love, and have good things happen to them? Deserve may be loaded word but for simplicity I'm using it in this context to describe feeling that I or one should feel good about themselves and have good things happen to them. What I mean to say is doesn't self esteem take into account evidence of whether one is a good person, that one holds values that make them virtuous, or one has qualities that make them a lovable person, and one uses such perceptions of one's self to re themselves that to maintain or raise their self esteem a form of reassurance? I may be wrong but reassurance with people who do not have OCD may be a few quick mental reviews of what happened in the past or whats happening in the present to asses themselves, however the people without OCD only need a reassurance or two to accept their persecutive on themselves based on the events that have happened or are happening; and such reassurances in people who do not have OCD do not become obsessions of needing to know for certain that how one assessed themselves is correct. I know someone with OCD needs to sit with the discomfort of doubt and uncertainty that obsessions remind one of, then refrain doing compulsions to make one's self feel less anxiety along with being ok with the idea that one's obsessions may or may not be true or can become true if one doesn't do their compulsions. This makes erp tough but so important and necessary. So then how can I, a person with OCD, have good schemas or conceptions about myself, that I may look to for evidence that I use to reassure myself enough to accept them as a fact, and that which would help me then have better self esteem without giving into my compulsions of reassurance to alleviate the stress I feel from the doubt I have of from my obsessions of whether I'm a good person that should be loved and respected? In other words, how can I do ERP and become comfortable with being uncomfortable with the uncertainty that arises from preventing myself from doing compulsions, while also reminding and/or reassuring myself that I'm a good person enough to feel and think of myself as a good person? I think that my low self esteem comes from partly that I'm always obsessing over whether I'm a good person or not. If the feeling and/or obsession of being a bad person spikes, then I feel I deserve to have bad things happen to me at worse, have good things not happen at best, feel undeserving of love, feel I'm a failure of a man, and etc.. I think another major of component is I was bullied a lot in middle school and high school and I use to be very sensitive and cry. Then I went to college, and when someone would bully me or do something to me that was akin to bullying, I would get angry instead of crying partly to feel more masculine and partly because I had had enough of people treating me like that. If my rambling and run on sentences are hard to follow, I can try to explain further if you ask me to explain what I'm asking. tldr: I think someone, whether they have OCD or not, needs to reassure themselves of certain perceptions they have of their qualities that will raise their self esteem. My question is when does that become the compulsion of reassurance or seeking certainty about making sure they don't have qualities that they feel may be indicative of them being a bad person or reminding themselves they have good qualities that would lead to a improved self esteem, and when is just one stating their perception of themselves to themselves to have evidence that would raise their self esteem?

I’ve been dealing with feelings that feel so true and so genuine that idk how I can be the straight and girl crazy person I used to be . It feels like I’m actually gay and I just can’t comprehend it. It doesn’t feel a disorder like when these feelings happen. Anyone have experience with this?