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How do I not shut down and go quiet and cry when my partner is trying to have an uncomfortable conversation with me is anyone else dealing or dealt with this ?

Hi, I’ve been thinking about opening up to some of the people in my life who I am really close with about my ocd. There are two things that I’m worried about. One is that I feel like since my ocd and my anxiety in general to make so much to be happening in my head and it’s seems to be jumping from theme, thought, or worry to another that I won’t be able to clearly explain it in a way that they will understand. I’m also worried about this turning into a confessing compulsion, confessing was one of my worst compulsions and was super hard to get under control and I don’t want to lose the progress I’ve made. Does anyone have any tips for this?

Hey yall I have pocd and one of the symptoms I have is the intrusive groinal response; it seems to be a pretty common one and from my personal experience seems to be more of a stress reaction. But lately I keep having nightmares where in the dream my fake dream self is actually distressingly “aroused” by minors and I wake up freaking out bc I’m worried I might have felt that arousal irl as well and it wasn’t just hallucinatory. I feel violated by myself and haven’t been able to stop thinking about it and these dreams keep coming up. Does anybody else deal with this or have tips on how to let this go?

I’m so nervous, and sick to my stomach. I don’t know if I accidentally said a slur out loud when answering a question in class, and I’m trying so hard to remember all of the details. I know that I thought it the same time I answered but I’m still not sure. I’m trying so hard not to email my teacher to ask him if I did say something inappropriate or not, but it’s so hard. I just need to know—for certain.

Good night from Armenia, I wish us to overcome our intrusive bad feelings. Please share with me with your experience, have you had the feeling that the cause of having OCD was the wrong attitude toward you in childhood, it maybe children from school, from yard or members of family? Are there people that think that if something had not been hapenned to them in the past, now they would not being sufferred from OCD problems. Please share with your experience. I wish you good night and sooner overcoming of OCD. I share with you with one picture of our capital of Armenia in January 28 night.

hi ok so since I turned 16 I’ve wanted a tattoo or a couple and I’m currently 22 so I’ve been able to get one for a while, and my religious ocd is making it hard for me to get one or makes me go back and forth a lot with it. I think god will punish me for getting a tattoo. i grew up Mormon and I remember one time when I was a kid my mom was really sick (probably with the flu or something) and my mom prayed and said to Heavenly Father that if he made her feel better she would take out her piercings. and she felt better and so she did. And I kept wondering did god really do that? was that sickness punishment for the piercing? I want to get a tattoo of a flashlight. there’s a book I’ve loved since I was 16 where the main character has ocd (turtles all the way down by John green) and when she’s starting to recover or at least feel better in a moment her and her friend are going in a dark drain and her friend says she’s terrrified and it’s so dark and the main character grabs her and turns off her flashlight and says, this is scary, and then turns it back on and says this is control, we just don’t see it that way because things feel so heavy right now but we have a lot more willpower and say then we think. and ever since then I wanted to get a flashlight. I’m just scared I’ll be punished.

I recently started pulling my hair out, and it’s getting kinda bad. I have a small bald spot on the back of my head, which is embarrassing, and it also just hurts a lot. Not to mention I have scabs on my scalp that I keep picking until they bleed. Gross. And it’s probably going to leave scars. I just can’t stop hurting myself and it’s getting to be too much. I’ve tried fidgeting, and it helps for a bit until I get distracted and go right back to it (I also have ADHD so I get distracted easily). Another thing that helps a lot is playing video games, but I can only play them for so long.

I’m 17F and have always had a huge problem biting my nails, ever since I was young from my anxiety and OCD. Ive been becoming very insecure of how my nails look and It’s extremely difficult not to chew my nails though I know it’s unhygienic and in healthy. Is there any advice on how to stop this?

How do you stop mental checking???? I dooooo this all day to the point I don’t even know when a normal intrusive thought happens becuse I check they are there that often I cause a lot myself. I don’t want these thoughts but feel like I’m making them happen all time because I check for the thought without even realising

Hello 👋 I'm new here and wanted to share my story. I'm 27 and struggle daily with OCD. I've had it for many years and got diagnosed 3 years ago. I have intrusive thoughts daily and constantly washing my hands because I feel contaminated. My hands are so sore they crack and bleed. When I get my food shop delivery I have to clean the kitchen floor where items have been and for days after I wash my hands after touching the food items because they are dirty to me. I wear PJ'S when I'm on my sofa but I have to change into different PJ'S when I get in bed, I cannot wear the same ones because I feel the sofa has germs on that I can't put in my bed. I clean my phone everyday when I get home from work because of the work germs. It's very rare if I use the toilets at work because of other colleagues using them. I get behind on jobs at work because I have to re read things a lot. I struggle very much leaving the house by myself. My last job I had to leave due to constantly being late because I had to check all the windows, doors, switches, cooker, ect. Luckily now my husband is at home when I leave for work. But times where I've had to leave by myself I've had panic attacks and cannot stop crying because I cannot leave the house. I think something bad will happen. I freeze at the door, I know I've locked it but the OCD bully in my head is saying I need to keep checking it until it feels right. And a lot of the time it never feels right. I have accidentally broken door/window handles because of checking them so many times. A few years ago I struggled that much to leave the house I had to film myself locking the door and I also wrote on paper "locked" "off" ect. Take a photo/video and send it to my husband who then stopped work to look and reply. A lot of the time it didn't help at all. At night I have to check everything is switched off and locked up, that can take a long time and a lot I ask my husband to do the checks either with me or by himself. This is so difficult. I have been having therapy for about 3 months, it's helped a little so that's something. Some days are ok and other days are horrible. I know I'm not alone but it does feel like that a lot. Thank you for reading :)

Harm OCD has always been my main theme and I've been dealing with it from the age of 15 but a new theme appeared a few years ago of the fear of schizophrenia. Its the commands during an OCD theme that gave me the new obsession that its actually voices when it isn't. It's so annoying and I just wondered if anyone else here experiences or has experienced this?

Can others with suicidal ocd share some common symptoms they noticed/experience with this theme?

so, i wake up every morning feeling anxious and like i need to start ruminating. it’s like that feeling when your thoughts are jumbled and immediately start to race the second you get up. for me lately my focus has been on my rocd per my latest post. i feel like ill settle into the fact and idea that i love my girlfriend, that i like her and that i want to be in the relationship blah blah but the second i wake up the loop of doubt continues. it obviously makes me feel like im lying to myself. that im convincing myself that i have basic feelings of attraction and connection to my partner, at this point the thoughts are so loud that im beginning to believe them. it feels so hard to access my true feelings and beliefs and when i do it just feels like i have to try so so hard and that i dont even believe it! i feel like im struggling to let her in. we had a really good conversation about my rocd last night, but i still worry about being a liar, secretly just staying in the relationship and not being attracted! ugh!! you can imagine this makes me feel like i dont even have rocd or ocd. the thought/compulsion of even breaking up with her comes to mind, but i know i would just feel unhappy and think about her then too. i dont want to do that obviously but those with rocd know sometimes it feels like the only way out. (we’ve broken up before because of this) which def adds a level. though i know doing that would alleviate this anxiety/ocd source, it would just come back and form itself in different ocd themes until i got back into a relationship and then the whole loop would start over. Does anyone have any advice for how you cope with this? I do my exposures and try to accept my uncertainty and thoughts but i’m wondering if any other methods that help anyone get through these struggles.

I am constantly thinking about my breathing because if I don’t I feel like I won’t be able to breathe. I think about my heart beat because when I’m calm I worry because I think that it’s stopping. Somatic OCD is obsessively thinking about bodily functions. Am I alone? Does anyone else go through this?

I realized recently my intrusive thoughts have been adapting to be “more realistic”. I’ve now become more obsessed with my life safety, work social environment, and first true love? (Apparently I’m demiromantic and he really feels like my soulmate. I’m the one not letting us be a couple for, I think a good reason, and he respects that decision.) Point is they’re getting harder to ID as OCD, which although never stopped the intrusive thoughts, it helped me apply personal tactics I’ve learned that have alleviated some distress and prevent thought spiraling in the past. Is it possible for the thoughts to adapt like this, I can’t ID them as quick this way and get in thought spirals way too far before I realize what’s happening. I even had a spout of my classical religious OCD thoughts, began repetitively praying “Jesus” to block them out which I’m sure is a compulsion. I ended up effectively distracting myself from it, so thank God. I don’t want to go down that road again. Avoidance has been the main compulsion for the ones listed before that side tangent above, I literally was not going to my apartment for months because a neighbor had creeped me out so bad. I sorta overcame avoidance with the relationship to truthfully talk to my love, but I worry my reason for staying apart has a secret reason in this… idk. It seemed reasonable to us both? The thoughts started targeting the guy I love even more yesterday, and I knew trying to fight them would make them worse, but I really didn’t want them anywhere near that. Somehow I got to a point where instead of the worries, I could literally feel nothing. Nothing bad but also nothing good and I thought I broke my brain and almost called a mental health hotline because I was concerned I lost my emotions forever and I wanted them all back. Even the negative ones. Luckily I had the awareness to at least try the emergency anxiety medicine my doctor gave me (even though I couldn’t feel anxiety), and I think this is what broke me out of that. But now I’m worried I’ll trigger that again. I hesitate to self diagnose, but given my experience and past, I definitely have primarily obsessional OCD (pure O). I couldn’t tell any of the mental health professionals I saw before because I thought I was the only one like this and that if I said anything about the worse thoughts they’d take me away from family or… well that they would do something, disgusted by my very existence. For a while my mom was the only one I let hear some of the worse thoughts and I swore her to secrecy about them. Luckily she had experienced some intrusive thoughts (not to my level but) with her GAD and she understood enough these were distressing things I didn’t want. But yea, I’ve been through a slew of the themes in my life. My biggest being religious OCD and OCD with sexual themes (I am aroace so the lack of sexual desire was very confusing, especially at first, and I didn’t know I was or that people could be that, so I guess my core worry became that my other forms of love ie familial, friend, etc had been secretly perverted and corrupted the whole time) Ugh.

I’m having a hard time figuring out if my feelings about my romantic relationship are ROCD or true feelings. For context, me and my bf have been together for 4 years, broken up once before (about a year ago) and almost again a few weeks ago. I’ve been feeling so disconnected from him, despite his efforts to change and make things better in our relationship. I’ve also been feeling like I want to date other people, but at the same time feel like he’s it for me… is there a way to tell ROCD from regular feelings?

So I’m married, but I’ve always had these thoughts about other people. Everything feels like a romantic connection to me and I’ve tried to place it to the back of my mind. However, every time I meet someone new through my husband, I think “maybe I’m with my husband to meet my soulmate.” I’m struggling with this even more because I found out one of his work friends is interested in me and now I can’t stop thinking about said friend. I found him attractive at first, but now he consumes almost every one of my thoughts. This has happened multiple times through my relationship. I love my husband and want to spend the rest of my life with him. We have children together. I don’t know how to get these thoughts to stop. It has happened every relationship I’ve ever been in and I feel miserable. Even someone smiling at me in public makes me think maybe they’re the one and I made a wrong choice. It’s miserable. Please help.

I have been with my partner for over a year. I have a long history of abuse and pain, and he is my first healthy relationship. It truly feels this is the person I want to marry. Recently though, I made a new friend (male) and we’ve been talking almost daily over text. This friend is older than me and has two kids, but is single. I love our conversations, and I find myself looking forward to talking with him. I made it clear multiple times I have a boyfriend, I’ve also actively talked about my boyfriend to make sure he is super aware that I’m not being flirty, that I’m just a friendly person. He has never made a move on me or anything. Recently however, I’ve been plagued with these thoughts that I am emotionally cheating on my boyfriend, and I’ll also get intrusive thoughts about me cheating on him with this person. I don’t have any romantic or sexual feelings on this person, but then my brain is like “you sure? You do like talking to them a lot!” And then it spirals. At some points the image of us having sex has come to mind and it’s been seriously scary. I hate it so much because now I’m feeling disconnected from my own relationship because I’m too scared that I’m cheating. I of course talked about this with my partner and he was very supportive, even reassured me, but now the thoughts have gotten stronger and I am honestly scared. I’ve thought of just not texting this person anymore, or moving away (they are my neighbor), and I’ve actively avoided talking to them in person much. I’m so afraid. I’ve never cheated on anyone, and I don’t want to ever lose or hurt my partner. Sometimes I worry maybe I don’t have ocd, maybe I’m just a bad person. I don’t know. I’m just scared. Any advice?

i honestly don’t know what to do anymore and i feel hopeless. i’m so uncomfortable as a girl now, i look at my body and i get extremely uncomfortable wtf? i used to love my body. i get uncomfortable when people call me a girl and by my name. there’s no way this isn’t becoming real im so sad it feels like the only way out of this is to die or become a boy. every morning i wake up feeling off? idk how to explain it but i just feel weird the second i wake up. i find no joy in anything i used to do i cant even relate to things about girls anymore. i feel so sad and i really need advice. if this is real please straight up tell me that i need to be transgender and don’t sugar coat it.

There’s times where I just wanna escape from reality . So I tried smoking marijuana and I didn’t even smoke alot . And 4 days later after smoking , I feel very odd. Like something is wrong with me and I’m worried I’m going to be stuck like this forever . I don’t know what to do and I’m so scared . I can’t sleep , I can’t relax , my whole body is tensed up. I’m afraid . I don’t know what to do anymore