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Does anyone here do yoga? Every time I see exercise recommended the word yoga is usually following it. I’m aware it is also a prelude to meditation but I’ve done like one session. How is it for you?

When I was 16, I slept with a guy right after I got out of a two-year-long abusive relationship. We acted like we were dating but I told him I didn’t want to commit to a relationship, because it would make me feel trapped. My first relationship really messed me up and I thought all relationships meant I was “owned” or something. The guy I’m seeing said that’s okay. I was on different social medias and sometimes guys would message me flirty things and stuff and I’d kinda reciprocate. I had this constant need for validation because I didn’t like myself at all after how my first boyfriend treated me. I was on my phone a ton, sometimes responding to those texts from random people, and I think the guy I was seeing kinda suspected something was up. But we weren’t officially dating, and I didn’t think I was cheating, because we weren’t committed. Even though what I was doing was generally shitty behavior, I didn’t consider the messages themselves cheating. The guy I was seeing at 16 left after a couple months, both of us were immature but he said he left because of how I wouldn’t let him be my boyfriend. I really liked the guy, actually, I loved him, but he wasn’t coming back, I thought. In December that guy messaged me and now we’re dating, officially. I’m 18 and he’s 19 now. I told him recently, before we officially called each other boyfriend and girlfriend, that I was “sorry I didn’t want someone to have me all to themselves,” and that “I was immature and wanted to be a hoe.” He told me that he knew full well what he was getting into when he decided to start talking with me right after I got out of that terrible relationship I had beforehand. He also said he had a lot of changes to make, too. I mean, he’s right, he did have changes to make. He drank a lot, was pretty obsessed with porn, and screwed me over a lot and hurt me (emotionally) many times. But he’s very different now and I love him lots. Today I woke up and just had this terrible feeling. I started thinking and thinking and thinking and realized that I feel guilty. I feel like I cheated on him, and that I shouldn’t be with him now because of how shitty I was when we were younger. I feel like I have to “confess” to him or something, even though he says both of us changed and we love each other lots. I’m not saying that me being abused is an excuse for my behavior before but as an explanation, I was really messed up in the head after leaving my first boyfriend. I viewed relationships as some kind of weird power game like “get them before they get me” because I didn’t want to be the one getting hurt. And I’ve been in therapy for years since then, I’ve learned how to get over my obsessive need for validation, and I know how to have a truly healthy relationship now, and realize I had it all wrong. I don’t talk to hardly any guys except for me and my boyfriend’s mutual friends and I’m always checking myself to make sure I’m not “accidentally cheating” because I obsess over it. But I can’t shake this feeling that my boyfriend should leave me, because of how I was before. I love him so much and would never want to hurt him, so I can’t stand knowing that I hurt him in the past. What’s worse is the notion that maybe he has no idea about me flirting with people over text before, doesn’t really understand what I meant when I apologized for being how I was, and he thinks I’m amazing when really I was terrible when I was younger. I know I’ve told him I’m sorry for how I was, and I’m sorry that I wouldn’t let us be committed before, and he forgives me, but I still feel like I’m hiding something, like he just needs to know how awful I am. Even though that’s not me anymore! All I want is to make up for any pain I caused him and give him the world, because he deserves it. This whole thing feels catastrophic and it feels like my world is ending. I can’t stop crying and am so upset at myself. For the past couple weeks each day there’s been a new thing that I’m convinced I need to tell him about or I’m a liar and a bad person. Last week, I was completely sure I had HIV and was giving it to him despite me having no real reason to think I had HIV; I just remembered my doctor forgot to test me for it on my STD panel. My boyfriend asked in December if I was clean and I said yes, so when I saw I wasn’t tested for HIV I panicked, because what if I had it and gave it to him and he thinks I’m a liar because I told him I was clean and now both of our lives are ruined? So I went to Target, paid FOURTY dollars, and bought an HIV swab test. It came out negative. Then a few days later, I’m panicking about if I have syphilis, despite never sleeping with anyone who’s had it or having symptoms myself, because I found out that test wasn’t on my STD panel either. So I panicked over that for a good while, too. It’s like every day there’s something new I’m freaking out about and this latest thing about my past behavior is the worst, and I can’t tell if this amount of guilt is reasonable or if I’m just having an OCD spiral because I haven’t been in a relationship in forever and now it’s become my new focus. Do I seem like I should feel this guilty? Or do I sound like I’m overthinking? Maybe if I have to ask myself, it’s OCD but I genuinely can’t tell this time. I’ve been in therapy for my OCD too and this is the first spiral-ish type incident I’ve had in a very long time, although maybe it’s not OCD and I’m just guilty and trying to use OCD as an excuse. Sorry for the rant. I haven’t had a spiral like this in ages and I don’t see my therapist particularly soon so I’m just dumping stuff.

The past couple of days have been torture. Last night, visuals plagued my mind, thinking I would do something sexual with my friend. I hung out with her today and was anxious the entire time. I can’t even have fun anymore. Groinals, constant thoughts, checking, getting nervous and weird when she gets close to me, eye contact is hard. Does anyone else have sexual orientation ocd and find hanging out with your girl friends to be very difficult? I was doing alright for a while and wasn’t getting terribly triggered. (I have a bf btw)

hi everyone, welcome to my first post. i’m not exactly sure where to start so i’ll just share a little bit of my story. i always considered myself “normal” growing up, no issues mentally. then after covid hit, i was 17 when it started, i was severely depressed, and anxious; but it was manageable because it was situational, the world had been put on pause so it was easy for me to understand why i was feeling those ways. then it became general. the depression and anxiety weren’t geared towards covid or the loss of a normal life anymore, now it felt permanent. then, the OCD behaviors slowly started showing up. the urges and thoughts grew more and more intense and now it’s a couple years later and i’m 21 now and i learned to to pull myself out of my dark places but the one thing i can’t shake is the OCD. it paralyzes me, i live my life in fear and anger because i can’t go more than an hour without doing something because i feel like i HAVE to or else something bad will happen, or i’ll just simply feel so uncomfortable if i don’t complete the urge that it will consume my mind if i don’t give in. i have reoccurring urges that i know will come up when i do certain things (like i have to click my phone on and off and set and then unset my alarms 3 times before i go to bed and if i don’t do it perfectly or it doesn’t feel right then i have to do it again, BUT i don’t like the number 6 so if i do my alarms 3 more times then 3 + 3 = 6 and that feels uncomfortable. therefore i have to do it 3 additional times so that it lands on 9) OR i’ll get 1 time urges that just happen out of nowhere in the moment and i don’t do them religiously. if i were to make a list of every urge that i do everyday, it would take me years to write all of that. it is absolutely exhausting. i’m so tired of living this way and feeling like a prisoner in my own body. i feel like i’m a puppet and something is controlling me 24/7. i want control of my life again. i don’t want to be constantly consumed by these thoughts and urges. i don’t want to feel like my family is going to die just because i thought that in my head (it makes me scared even just typing that right now because i feel like it’s going to happen because of me). i live all day every day like this and i’m just drained. i really could use some help, i haven’t been able to see anyone about this and i don’t know where to start. please leave any advice on how you guys deal with your OCD and soothe your mind. i just want to be at peace in my own head. thank you guys so much for reading, it feels good to get this off my chest.

I was dating this guy for a couple months(we were NOT exclusive.). I had my birthday celebration last weekend where I got super drunk and blacked out, and had sex wigh a guy I met at the club. I told my FWB what happened and he got super upset. He said “sounds like this isn’t the first and second time this has happened and that hurts me.” He’s told me he can’t handle a relationship right now so I don’t know why he’s upset? I didn’t cheat bc I am still single, he knows that. Do I just distance myself from now on? He hasn’t talked to me since

Hello everyone, I am an 18 year old straight male who hopes he can continue being straight. For the past 5 months I’ve struggled with these unbearable thoughts of “what-ifs” all the way to thoughts simply TELLING me I am gay or bisexual to begin with. I have lived a happy life being straight and want nothing more than to marry a wife and have kids. This entity has stopped me from doing so. It interferes with everything, down to my most basic principles. I don’t want to be gay. I don’t want to be bisexual. I don’t feel genuinely attracted to men of any nature and feel immensely disgusted by it if I did. I don’t know what to do anymore. I’m seeing this wonderful girl that I’m holding off to ask out because my brain is in turmoil over these thoughts. Whenever I’m with her it feels like I’m constantly doubting my affection and love towards and of her, when I feel deep down I want to. Yet these ideas and thoughts push and push making it unbearable to enjoy anything, especially any sexual activity with her because whenever we do anything the thoughts of doing it with a man appear. I fear that because I love having sex or sexual activities that I’ll do it with any man for no apparent reason, or worse, I’d actually want it. Yet I never willingly or desirably look at a man and say I want that, or the stupid fucking bisexual phrase, “a hole is a hole,” always disgusted me. And I fear down to my deepest core values that I’ll somehow end up in a bed with a man. I just don’t want to and feel very uncomfortable over it, I don’t want to date or be intimate with any male and it’s driving me insane. Allowing these thoughts to come in and shrug them off is impossible for me as it feels equal to accepting them, someone who has conquered this please tell me if there is a way or similarity to your own struggles on defeating this identity killing beast.

Im having a horrible panic attack right now and have been because of rocd. I feel like a failure and my mom made it even worse. Please help me

I keep struggling. I have so many thoughts and if I do something like look at a picture and have these thoughts I feel like I’m awful. There are times some of the girls I teach and go to church with are wearing things shorter or not being careful and I still look and I know I’m not aroused or anything but I keep feeling as though that makes me a ped* help me. I’m in therapy but I can’t help but struggle.

I have just stumbled upon this app and am hoping it might help me feel less alone. I was diagnosed with (R) OCD this year and am now realising I have been suffering with OCD my whole life (in varying forms). However, this is the first time it’s causing me this level of distress. I have had a very bad time with men and relationships. Sexual abuse, domestic violence and up until the partner I have now- just being lied to, cheated on and treated terribly. I’m 26, have met the most wonderful man who I have been with for 2 years. My psychologist has supported me with my general recovery from abuse but I do think I will need to see someone who specialises in OCD, as this is the one thing that I can’t seem to crack even with her support and taking SSRIS for many months now. For me, it’s very vivid images of my partner having sex with other women, an intense disgust and judgement over his sexual/relationship past, analysing and ruminating over every word he’s ever told me and a general constant fear that he isn’t who he says he is in some way. I have had a bad couple of days with it, we are currently visiting my parents abroad, something I’ve been looking forward to- and since we’ve arrived I have just felt overcome with fear, doubt, disgust and an overwhelming desire and curiosity to ask him questions about his sexual past and then judge, analyse and continue to question every word. Even as I write this, I can’t let the ruminating and anxiety stop. Dreading him coming up to bed because these feelings build to the point where I feel so low, humiliated and that indescribable pain and fear that is all too familiar with OCD sufferers. The worst thing is he is my life, I want to spend the rest of my life with him and he is nothing but good to me, but those negative scary feelings, thoughts and compulsions are beyond difficult to live with and sustain a relationship and be at peace.

Feel like I may have done something that has harmed someone. I’ve been doing all the research on the legality today and even talked to the person about it and they said they don’t really care. It was 4 years ago and I can’t find anything about the statute of limitations on the crime so I feel like I should just tell the police now :(

i keep getting thoughts like ‘try being a p and see if you like it’ and stuff like that when i’d genuinely rather die than be like that. then i try not to think about it but i can’t stop thinking about it which makes it feel like im thinking about it on purpose

I’ve been struggling with what I hope to be HOCD for over 6 months now and I’m starting to loose hope…I had always been attracted to women, had plenty of crushes on women growing up, fantasies included, enjoyed spending time with the one I had a crush on, would avoid the usual things seen as “gay” or “feminine,” you know the usual kid stuff. I never had any issues or desires back then to be with a man but suddenly a few months back out of literal no where i got a thought and it’s stayed with me ever since. I know deep down that I don’t want to do these thoughts and that I’d rather die then be gay or bisexual but then the “what-ifs” come up and even when they don’t come up I have this underlying fear of “maybe it will happen. Maybe you are gay” and it scares me. Yet my brain still tries to lie straight to my face and say “oh no, you like this don’t you” it’s like I don’t know anymore and I couldn’t live with myself if I even experimented with it because I know for a fact I would be repulsed and don’t want it. Please help. Going about this with the idea of accepting uncertainty just makes me more anxious and feel as if I’m accepting these thoughts as facts for me and I don’t know what to do.

Anyone else feel like their brain starts to tell them they’d be happier if they were gay or trans? Like it feels that way and you feel like you’re living a lie or something is wrong. It feels like my thoughts have shifted to that making it hard to see if this is real or not.

I have a problem with saying affirmations in my head. Like for example I’ve had bad intrusive thoughts calling children hot, which is disgusting and I feel gross typing that. But I guess because I’m afraid of it happening again that sometimes if I have a bad thought I’ll affirm “I don’t find children ___” or “I don’t want to hurt them, I don’t want to harm them” to make myself feel better. But sometimes, like I just came across a tiktok about Coraline and I without thinking affirmed in my head that I don’t find her attractive. So then I was uncomfortable because I realized wait a minute, I didn’t even have a thought saying that she was, I literally don’t think she is at all she’s a child character. But it bothers me because I’ve done this without thinking several times now. So then I guess because I said that in my head, I feel like I brought on bad thoughts because I had the thought that she was attractive, which is a lie but I feel like I forced the thought on accident because I affirmed to myself that I don’t see her that way. And to make it worse then I had a thought saying “see, I can have intrusive thoughts saying that she is” and that really freaks me out because NO. If I want to have an intrusive thought saying that, then it’s not intrusive it’s wanted. And it’s completely unwanted. I feel so defeated this is so hard to deal with, it feel so real and that I’m just looking for excuses. I DONT like these thoughts and I don’t want them. It’s so frustrating I literally have no attraction to children and I have no desire to be this person my brain is trying to convince me I am. I don’t have an OCD diagnosis and it just makes me feel like I’m saying oh I probably have pocd as a coverup. I apologize I keep writing so much on here lately I need to take a break after this.

Hey guys, so these past 4 months I had a sudden onset of OCD after a concussion. It first started with HOCD which was super distressing as I’ve been in a 9 year relationship with my girlfriend. It then evolved into transgender OCD, which was horrible as well but it felt easier to disprove my intrusive thoughts. That and of course horrible health anxiety about my head. And it’s funny, as soon as I got comfortable with one topic, the OCD would jump to another. Basically over time I accepted all these negative thoughts about all these topics, so where does my mind go? I had a physical groinal response to an image of an underage person. It freaked me out so much that all day I was obsessing over it, I eventually told my girlfriend as she’s been supportive with me over the other topics. But this…. She’s angry with me, and doesn’t trust me anymore. And she doesn’t understand the groinal response. She did ask to sit in a therapy session with me to help her understand. But that’s about all the communication I’ve gotten from her. I feel so alone. And it’s literally ruining everything I’ve built up with her for the past 9 years. I wish I hadn’t told her. And instead just asked her to join a therapy session with me. Just making this post as I just need someone to talk to.

What to do? So now my mother is refusing my OCD therapy, despite it's chronic from where it has been untreated so long. Not to mention its causes heart attacks and panic attacks and mental breakdowns. She's puts pressure on me. No Idea why I'm here? And why she even adopted me at all? For this? This is bs. The treatment I am getting. Not to mention when I admitted needing help, seeing doctors and getting treatment. Dakira then desides she does as well, I'm like okay, take me Seriously, this isn't fun, or, funny at all, I am on the edge of going so insane. My therapist thank goodness changed my appointment from 29th to the 16th and she acts as if this isn't something to care about...I'm done she can neglect me like she has been most all my life. But, to avoid my appointment schedule and important mental assessment artenuary is another. This is important to me, my health and my mental state of being, of that doesn't matter to her, I will call 911 and we can settle this in a court room. They will see my missed appointment and if I go off well, easy, she should have took me to my appointment,bout to ask to see if a friend can. This whole thing, her lack of support isn't safe on my end, I don't feel safe. Normally I don't talk at all, that's me .but, this is to much pressure. I'm about to go nuts Not only this, but I need meds and a better lifestyle than my living style now. I don't feel safe at all, she doesn't even know what OCD is and why people have it, say I don't clean? Yeah, because she doesn't give me my money enough to clean and doesn't understand noone can offord this mental illness. She doesn't get it's a struggle, doesn't try to help. She just sits on her ass watching TV and doing other things, not even asking, "Do you jeed anything?" I never cross her mind, she doesn't even get it, I fear my son's safety as he may have this as well, as for him I know he's safe since he is small it's easier to catch it and treat it. But, to do this, to love this way chronic with no medication is doing me in mentally and physically. It's too much to handle. So if I go nuts, it's not My fault.

Idk why OCD has latched onto my sister but she’s my other half & I started comparing us out the blue one day.. and the dogs go to her more so i’ve been feeling so rejected and low.. and my mind said well what if she wasn’t here anymore? i would never harm my sister or ever want to.. i really want to be okay again.. i was just okay a couple weeks ago and now im so sad & scared!

The last couple of days i’ve been able to keep my ocd at bay and have been ocd free but now i’m having ocd in my dreams. This is so upsetting. 😪 Does this happen to anyone else?

Is this OCD? My brain will always say “if you don’t do this certain thing then this will happen” none of the stuff ever happens if I don’t do it but I always end up with this terrible feeling for days from resisting the compulsion. I’m still ruminating on the same thing. Anyone else feel this too?

Can someone tell me how meds vs no meds effects your OCD?