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Hi all, I’m just coming off of a bad cold and I think my husband is sick too and I feel so much guilt around making him sick. He keeps trying to assure me it happens but, I can’t help but spiral a bit about it.

Is there a correlation between a hormone imbalance and ocd? I have low testosterone and ocd and didn't know if there may be a link between the two. I'm just trying to figure out why I have ocd, how long I've had it, and when it might have started. I've been suffering for years now but was told it was bipolar disorder (early 2000s) since I was in high school (I'm 37 now). It wasn't until this last year that I was diagnosed with ocd and never was bipolar to begin with. I still can't believe I have ocd. I always thought that those were people who panicked about germs and washed their hands way to much. I've always had bizarre and intrusive thoughts but I just thought that's the way I was. I'm just trying to figure out a link or if it's something I've had since birth.

I posted about this yesterday but I’ve felt sick about it literally all day. I was talking to my friend about a tiktoker I said was hot. They said the person looked too young. I started freaking out because I never thought of that and ended up finding the person’s age. Turns out they are 17. I’m 24. I feel like a monster. My heart has been stuck in my throat for over 24 hours. I keep going back to look at the person’s profile to see if I still think they’re attractive after knowing their age and it’s confusing/scaring me even more because when they wear makeup I feel like they only look a few years younger than me. I had nightmares all night last night. I feel like I’m not a normal person, I’m like one of those people that hit on teens online. I feel so depressed. My gf thinks I’m being ridiculous for worrying so much about this. But I’m 24 YEARS OLD and this person is 17. What is wrong with me? How could I think something like this? I’m scared that what if I didn’t stop thinking they’re attractive. I just want to sleep and cry all day. I hate myself and I feel disgusting. I just don’t know what to do.

I used to love commentary youtube in the background but now I cant watch it because it always making me spiral into epsiodes of thinking that I am being talked about in the visdeo/have done all these things the people that are being talked about in the video. I get scared that they will mention me or talk about me in the video and say that Ive done all the things theyre talking about, even though I havent. Is the ocd related

Please share you story if you feel comfortable. I’m posting way too much on here but I’m feeling absolutely defeated lately and I’m just wondering if anyone on here has been dealing with pocd for a long time, has it gotten any better for you? Do you have a therapist, and how did you bring it up to them? How do you deal with it? I’m looking for a therapist now on psychology today and I’m relieved to have found people I’m interested in working with. I’m so scared. This is the worst my life has ever felt I really hope one day I will be recovered. I miss being happy to be alive

i suffer from limerence so badly that i legit want to merge souls and become one with the people i fall into limerence with. i understand that ocd plays a part in this as well but if anyone has experience on how to NOT DO THIS please …it needs to end i fear its creepy and just weird. i just want to like people to the normal extent

It's been so long full of ups and downs and multiple themes but this theme has been destroying me mentally the most. I'm not a homophobic person but I've always been woman crazy, loads of crushes on women, dreamed of being sexual with a women and have strong sexual fantasies about doing things with women and have had multiple girlfriends it made me happy truly happy I'm not homophobic I don't care what people do but for me personally imagining doing sexual things with a man gives me icky feelings like I said not because it's wrong (it's not wrong) but because I prefer women it makes me feel comfortable, happy unlike when I imagine being with a man I get depressed, anxiety, panic etc because it's not something I authentically truly want. During this time while hocd has been ruining me mentally I've also noticed alot more good looking men and became insecure about my appearance which has ruined me even more this has done nothing but ruin my identity and mental health. I'm a handsome man, my girlfriend thinks so too and I think she's beautiful I'm able to egknowledge a handsome man or pretty women but when it comes to who I feel the urge to have sex and feel good about its always veen women. Whenever I workout, go out or feel like myself I begin to not care and feel straight again but it's moments like this where I'm losing myself and becoming confused. I also have a porn addiction too idk if that plays a role in this but I'm looking to stop and better myself I want my life back I want to have money, be in good shape, be with my girlfriend without having any of these doubts I just want this to all go away :(. One of the biggest reasons I haven't gotten therapy is my fear that I'm actually bisexual which I'm afraid of because being bisexual wouldn't make me happy or comfortable seeing men that way in real life. I can't imaging being romantic with a man it would make me cringe and being sexual with a man wouldn't make me orgasm I'd have a Intense ick feeling during the whole thing I wouldn't have the pleasure I'd have with women. I'm sorry for typing so much but I just needed a vent it's truly so exhausting to be dealing with this at times but I'll always fight and never stop fighting until this all goes away and I can be happy with my amazing beautiful girlfriend who I'm one day going to marry.

I’ve been overthinking this for the last few days, me and the guy I’ve been seeing ended things a week and a bit ago, since then we’ve been talking like normal and I’m worried it’s not giving us the space we need to heal. Over and over again in my mind I’ve been calling myself pathetic, ridiculous, annoying. I see images of him laughing at me with his friends calling me a psycho (this has happened before and was a big rumour spread about me), the thing is neither of us are ending the talking, I’ve tried, I’ve said to him that I might need to stop talking to him as it’s not doing us any good and he said “you’ve gotta do what’s best for you” I then said if we could say goodbye in person so that when we see one another around town it’s not awkward and we don’t feel like we have to avoid one another or thing the other hates the other one. He agreed but since hasn’t said when he’s free. I wanna have the conversation so bad because my obsessive brain keeps saying I’m not giving him the space he asked for. Even though he’s messaging me back! He asked for space a couple months ago while I was off traveling and we both just keeps messaging the same way, nobody stopped or anything which I guess we should’ve done. Even when I went on an island with no service for 3 days he double messages me and told me about his day! So I guess I’m trying to figure out if I’m the issue, if I’ve not listened, if I’m a psycho. I’m really worried that I’ve done something wrong here. Even though the way we handle it is our own. I’m just so confused and it’s making me feel that I’m a problem

Hello everyone. The past 2 1/2 weeks I’ve been in day care clinic and they offered me to take meds. I think they talked about Citaprolam. I don’t know what to do. Lately I’ve been pretty stable and I have also been taking Johannis Herbs and it really has been helping me. But I wonder if a real antidepressant would hell me more?? I am just so scared. Everyone I ask either says I should take it or I absolutely should not take it. Would it be helpful even though I am stable right now? Do you have any advice?

So after ruminating on a memory for hours everyday for the last two months i stopped since I was getting quite confused. I was driving when I suddenly had this familiar feeling and then I had like a flashback and I recalled what ACTUALLY happened and this feels true but I’m unsure if I should trust it.

I’m not feeling too well today because these intrusive thoughts in my head keep cycling and cycling even though I don’t want to have these thoughts and I want them to go away. My girlfriend is getting so tired of having to hear what girl I thought abt and what situation i’m reflecting on even though I don’t even mean to be thinking those things. I feel so guilty and horrible these things come into my brain. I don’t want to think things about other women, my girlfriend is amazing and is very patient and has been so patient ever since i’ve been having obscure or other thoughts about women wether it be just a thought or even sexually. It’s not on purpose. It just keeps happening and I can’t explain how my brain keeps doing it. I just came across so much research about Pure O Ocd and I think I have that. I’m very new to this but my twin brother also has OCD and Bipolar and I feel as though i’m the same way. I’m so tired of having unwanted thoughts come into my head. I feel so upset and hurt knowing I have to tell my girlfriend exactly what it is that came into my head. I feel like a failure.

To see my life now compared to two years ago is unbelievable. There has been such a dramatic shift between who I was then and who I am now. I had my first intrusive thought at age 11. I wasn’t officially diagnosed with OCD until I was 36. I never knew what it was but was glad to put a name to it. A lifetime of suffering. I have struggled with at least four subtypes of OCD. POCD, SO-OCD, Self-Harm/ Suicide OCD, and ROCD. I can now look back on moments throughout my life and say, “wow, that was OCD and I didn’t even know it.” Regardless of the subtype, it’s all OCD. And when you learn how to adjust your behavior and response accordingly, you can heal. I started with my NOCD therapist in January of 2023. I avoided everything-people, places, church, things I loved…all because of OCD. I used sleeping as an avoidance behavior. I couldn’t even drive down the road and go grocery shopping without feeling anxious and triggered. I was ready to do something different. The meds were not working for me. Sure they helped the anxiety and depression to a degree, but they didn’t stop the intrusive thoughts which is what I wanted them to do. I now know and fully understand that you cannot stop your thoughts. You cant stop your obsessions BUT you can control how you react to them. Recovery is not linear by any means and I’ve had MANY ups and downs the past year and a half. But I’m here. I have made it to the other side. And it’s a beautiful place. If you made it this far in reading this, thank you. I want you to know there is hope. You can reach recovery and you can begin to heal. ERP saved my life. I can now step out into situations and settings without totally falling apart. I have learned to handle discomfort. I can spend time with my family, do the things I love and enjoy my life again. Most importantly, I have learned to be self-compassionate. If you’ve been hesitating to start ERP with an OCD specialist, I hope I can encourage you to make that step. It changed me in a wonderful way and I’m so thankful to be equipped with the tools to manage OCD for life!

Do you just be like yeah this could happen? Do you just be like yeah this is possible?

For a while now - like the last 6 months - I’ve been getting intrusive thoughts about SA, Pedophilia, and overall disturbing things but for some reason I’ve been sort of numb to them? Like they’ll come up and I’ll just look at them with indifference won’t feel anything and it scares me because it makes me feel like I’m sort of embracing the thoughts. Like I’ll have an intrusive thought such as “I’m glad they went through this horrible thing” and I’ll just say ok and move on??? How do I not feel numb when it comes to intrusive thoughts 😭 I don’t like it one bit. Makes me miss when I had those horrible ocd episodes because I at least felt SOMETHING.

For anyone who has suffered from this, how do you manage this type of OCD on a daily basis? It’s crippling my day to day life and sometimes i even avoid driving to places.

I’m so devastated. I made an appointment through NOCD and they cancelled me. I have Medicaid and at first they said they took it but I got an email back saying they don’t. I offered to pay out of pocket because at this point I’m willing to pay the amount but they still rejected me. The place where I was supposed to find help and they turn me away and I’m drowning mentally. I feel so hurt and ignored. I finally reach out. Where else am I supposed to find a OCD specialist??

Because of the harm ocd.. anybody else think about that all the time? 😫😫 I’m in therapy and she doesn’t think that way but I’m obsessing about it

My ex and I broke up about 8 months ago. At first I was terrified to go anywhere, I’d avoid places. When I would try to go to the places we would go together it would trigger me to thinking I was a stalker or that I was trying ti see him, when I was trying g to reclaim places just for me. I would get so anxious that it would make me through up and shake from anxiety. Reassurance stopped working. Fast forward to yesterday I caught up with an old friend and I told them about all the bad things that happened in our relationship. I ended up looking up his instagram and found his work instagram. The page had a shared public google drive link to a file with photos from an event they had last week. I clicked on it and began to think I was being crazy. I admit I should not have been looking , but i already did it. I began to think they’re gonna be able to track me and have been looking for reassurance on chat gpt all morning. Ultimately what I found is that they can’t figure out I specifically saw the pictures since it’s a public link unless they have a third party monitoring system. I feel like this is a huge exposure. I am not deleting the account even though I tried to this morning. It la a huge uncertainty if they saw me and I will never know. The internet is saying no, but I am trying to sit in the uncertainty of now being certain that they can’t specifically see that I viewed their profile. What do y’all think about this being an exposure? Just for reference, I am actively working with an erp therapist outside of NOCD

Idk if this is the right place to post this. But i feel like such a burden to the people around me because of my anxiety. I woke up this morning super stressed over a dream that reminded me of some messed up moments from my past. My girlfriends kinda listened but i mostly felt ignored. Then we all got in the car to drive my sister to the airport. And on the way, i started to get anxious cus of al the traffic. But it wasnt rlly that, it was the fact that no one seemed to care or wanna help me when i said i was anxious. So i asked if i could just hop out of the car and walk. I felt like such an attention seeker, and my girlfriend got annoyed and took the next exit and dropped me off. But i feel like such a little bitch cus my girlfriend was able to handle everything n i left her to come back alone from the airport. I dont feel like a man or like im capable of anything right now. I wish i could redo it all so that it never happened. I feel like i gave up so easily when tryna handle my anxiety n im ashamed of myself

For as long as I can remember I’ve always counted the syllables of the words said by myself and others - even just thoughts in my head. For example, is someone says “hell-o-how-are-you?” I use my teeth on either side of my mouth and tap twice on one side, then the other, then back again etc to see if the amount of syllables in the sentence is even. If it isn’t, I would respond with an odd number of syllables such as “good-thank-you”. This habit is so engrained into my life I have no idea how anyone else’s mind works and I am constantly fighting myself to stop it but it’s impossible. I will even admit that I am doing it right now writing this 😭 . Does anyone else have a similar problem? I am still in education and feel like it’s affecting the way I listen to my teachers etc.