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How do you guys manage compulsive self-talk?

I’ve been going through a weird phase where I’m not feeling much anxiety, the thoughts are still there but it feels weird not feeling anxious about them, I have harm ocd and it feels too real when the thoughts come without the anxiety, after feeling anxious almost every morning.

I have been getting better and better but I've been experiencing this one theme, i'll refrain from mentioning it so I don't trigger anyone accidentally. It is something I know is against my values, beliefs, what I know to be true, and it is something i'd never do but the moment the OCD happens the urge i'd of course never act upon that is there is so profound it is honestly so distressing and then I do not know what to do other than wanting to lock myself in my bedroom and hope for this to pass. What do you guys do when a comand-like/urge intrusive thought pops into your mind? I know it is not my thought, and I would never act upon it of course. But how can I calm myself and be rational in such a moment?

I've battled OCD since I was a little kid. Until a couple of years ago, I sort of learnt to live with it. The last 2 years, intrusive thoughts have ruined my life. Let's just say, everything I dont want to think about, pops into my mind. This leads to immense guilt, shame and fear I will feel like this forever. Ive done ERP, seen roughly 8 psychologists, did a 3 weeks stay as an impatient OCD program and am taking Fluoxetine daily. I know all there is to know about OCD therapy, minimising compulsions, ACT, mindfulness etc. Why cant I seem to get on top of this? I know it takes time and practice and eventually I will change the way my brain is wired. It's days like today I feel that I will never be able to forgive myself for the content of the thoughts that have resided in my mind. Sometimes I wish I could use the memory wiping device used in Men in Black, so I can forget everything Ive ever thought. I will keep fighting and hopefully one day I can use what I have learnt to help others OCD sufferers. You are all so frickin brave for getting out of bed every day knowing what awaits you. I wish nothing but happiness, peace and a clear mind to you all xxx

I am honestly feeling terrified and here’s why… My partner is currently in New York with his family and while that is more than okay, I feel anxious. It has nothing to do with him being there but instead it has everything to do with me. I play this game online and came across someone. I started playing with them, we played for about six hours. I am not sure if it’s because this person is a guy but I have this fear that I will cheat or leave my partner even when that is the last thing I want. I thought about never playing with this person again but I enjoy playing with them. I just can’t stand the intrusive thoughts my mind creates about this person. I have no clue how this person even looks, I don’t know why my mind is playing these tricks on me and causing me these intense feelings of anxiety. Help?

This is a very specific and unique situation that I don’t think many (if any) will be able to relate….and I am not sharing this to get validation. Its more of a lack of connection and lack of understanding situation. I feel really alone. I have had OCD since I was a child. I truthfully think it happened because of some not okay sexual things happening at home. To add fuel to the fire God decided to give me type 1 diabetes as a child…which only intensified the OCD. Especially because the mother he assigned to me is extremely controlling and emotionally abusive. I am 33 years old living at home- I would have never dreamed my life would have ended up as terrible as it did and I have no words to express that. It isn’t for lack of trying, ive been working since I was 14 years old. But With the economy and the cost of my disease (that is out of control) and disability only offering me $800 a month, i am stuck at home. Pity party starting now: Imagine for a moment your OCD is cleanliness. And you have a disease that not only causes you severe pain; but causes other issues such as but not limited to, issues with going to the bathroom. ie: if my sugar is 400 like it is currently the piss Will spray out of me like a broken faucet and get on my inner thigh like it has just done. Not only this but anyone who has experienced blood sugar this high would know it causes scary cognitive function issues and dark thoughts, spiraling thoughts. So I can’t just work through the thought of being dirty..ive tried..i spiral. Then my sugar gets worse, i faint and have to call the ambulance. Imagine having a mother who after 20 years of you being sick can’t understand it. And doesn’t care how sick you are or how you feel in regards to your diabetes. And who laughs and makes fun of you in regards to your OCD. And now imagine you live in America where everything is so expensive that you can’t leave.

I smoke pretty regularly (420) and am unsure if it’s impacting my OCD or meds. Anyone have any experiences or thoughts to share on this?

*big sigh* I’ve gotten in contact with a therapist for my POCD AND harm ocd. I know with ERP the therapy is just meant to assess the behavior part of OCD but they don’t really pay attention to the emotions we feel about the OCD itself. Lately I been kinda on reserve emotionally with my kids. Example, im so scared with my OCD and how to properly react with my kids that I’ve scripted a few ways to interact with them because I thought to myself “well I haven’t received the therapy yet and I do t want to react in a way I shouldn’t” so I kinda fake these scripted behaviors so that people think im still functioning normally. My POCD has scared me to my fucking core to the point that I can’t even think straight when I’m around my kid sometimes because I’m so frozen with fear and I used to enough being around her and now I almost get uncomfortable with her around because I already expect the thoughts or worse the groinals. I want to feel like her protective mama bear again but like some sicko. I’m so filled with guilt shame and hate towards myself but also I feel like I’m not working to be her mother. I want to feel happiness around my family not this high stressed and ugly feeling. I’m emotionally disconnected from my family. OCD has stolen my life from me.

So my SO OCD has been crazy today. I’m in a very committed relationship with a boy I love but now I think that I may have a crush on a girl I see in rehearsals for this play I’m in. Funny, but I didn’t think of her that way before I started ruminating. I feel like I sort of willed this “crush” into happening as a sort of way to figure out my sexuality. She is very pretty and there are aspects I like about her, but there are also things about her personality I don’t like. Granted, I’ve never felt romantic or sexual attraction to women. All my crushes have been men and I’m 27. Has anyone ever felt this way? I feel a tremendous amount of fear and guilt. “What if I like this person?” “What if I’m Bi or Bi-curious?” “Should I leave my partner?” I don’t feel like I align with dating women and I don’t feel comfortable having romantic feelings for a woman, but I feel like I do. I certainly don’t want to have a crush on someone while in a committed relationship. Any advice or well wishes would be nice….

i remember feeling more hopeless in the past, having lower moments, mentally, you know, in 2022 i completely lost it. and i remember being 14 in 2020 and for the first time really considering ending my life. but still every day i wake up and go to sleep in the ocd prison, i am so tired, no one understands the patterns are the same, have been the same for years and yet i don’t know how to cope. it’s so exhausting.

I’m scared that I got my girlfriend pregnant or gonna get her pregnant. We had sex for the first time and I keep getting scared that ima get her pregnant. I climaxed outside of her and I was wearing a condom too but I’m still scared that I can get her pregnant. I know the chances are low but I’m scared still and it’s so hard to resist because my girlfriend is always turned on and turns me on.

I have really bad intrusive thoughts and I feel like I can never get rid of them they’re always there and I can never get them of my mind can someone help me ?

I take a fashion a level and I'm so behind on work. It's all my fault. I look around me, and everyone else can just get on with work. And now, because of my inability to do anything right, I'm sat here at 2am trying to get all of my missed work done, because my teacher is marking our project tomorrow. I just to cry because it's all my fault. But even now, I'm just sitting here unable to do it. I knew WEEKS AGO that I would have to do it at some point, even had days off because I felt too scared to go in because I'm so behind on all my work. I still didn't do it. It doesn't help that it's practical work too, so I'm sitting here trying to sew things and make jewellery and get everything done. I know it's my own fault. I wish I could tell my teacher I'm just so overwhelmed. She's nice, and friendly, so I probably could, but I'm just too terrified. I might as well just quit while I'm at it. Go in tomorrow with barely completed work and just tell her I tried my best, even though I didn't really. I just want to cry. I don't know why I'm posting this, it's not related to OCD. I just don't know where else to turn.

i obsess over God. I know it’s good to have a relationship with Him, but I feel like I go overboard and am constantly worried about making Him angry. I know this is my ocd, but i was just wondering like how much do Christians without ocd like do it? bc I don’t see them praying constantly like i do. I like to have a set time where I settle down and talk to God and read the bible sometimes (when my brain isn’t acting crazy) and read the daily verse. but my brain either says i need to that way before like sometime in the day rather than at night. And i do talk to God periodically throughout the day, but I gotta say it’s mostly my ocd rituals. Idek what i’m asking here but I just don’t know. Sometimes i’m too overwhelmed to even talk to God or read the Bible. and also i’m constantly worrying if what i’m doing is right or wrong. People say if it feels wrong it usually is, but my brain tells me almost everything i do is wrong. I want to please God and I’d give these things up for him bc I love him way more than anything. But it stresses me out trying to guess if it’s God or just all in my head.

After that triggering dream where the worst thing could have happened, I don't feel legimitated anymore to feel genuinely distressed by triggers, to call compulsions as such. It all feels disingenuous. They don't feel valid anymore. Like crocodile tears. Because the one thing I didn't want to happen probably happened, that undoes everything else. I feel like a hypocrite, to feel distress and worry about those things, being anxious of that particular fear because in that dream it happened. I felt arousal and probably genuine attraction, I'm afraid that I could have agreed with it. Maybe it isn't true, maybe it didn't happen, maybe I'm misinterpreting, but then why I was left with that impression? All because of a damn dream, because ocd, all my triggers intrude even in my sleep, because I can't even be safe in my dreams. This is the worst mental illness.

This is really dumb probably, and maybe aimed at people around my age and possibly older. But how many of you are familiar with vocaloid? Basically if your not then maybe you won’t know what I’m talking about but when I was in middle school I got really into vocaloid and like all people at some point I discovered the really popular song “magnet”. It’s a song between the two robot girls “Miku & Luka” the song itself is really dumb but cute it’s about two girls who can’t be in love because-their girls-(it’s dumb Ik) this is their oldest song it’s like 15 yrs old. And because of this song so many more spawned of these two girls being in love. And I liked them a lot when I was a kid and into early high school and lowkey discovered my sexuality through them? (One of many reasons) Point is a lot of ppl in this community ship them together because of this song and many others. When i was like 16 I uploaded a lot of ship art of them on my Pinterest and saved them so I can look at them. I’m not really into vocaloid all that much anymore but today I saw a comment on one of the pictures I uploaded saying that “but luka is 20..” and that’s when I remembered that ppl don’t like this ship because miku is said to be 16 and Luka 20 years old. When I was younger I never really thought about it because the community loves them together and even still today like millions of ppl have watched their songs- and now as I got older and lost interest I realize that maybe it is really bad that I liked them? And what if that person that uploaded that comment thinks I support P’s or worse that IAM one. I’m in a lot of destress because of it I don’t support P’s I’m not a P I don’t ever want to be one I’m so scared that this person will spread around that I’m a P or worse and I’m not. I want to delete all the pictures I uploaded because I’m scared. I don’t really know what to do. I never really thought about them like that. Sorry if this is a dumb I already spoke to my mom but I’m still freaking out-what do I do? What do I need to do?

Am I the only one who gets truly terrible and graphic intrusive images? They're too much.

I think I have suffered from some forms of pure ‘o’ OCD for a while now, but I am not sure as they come and go and change with time. At the moment I cannot stop obsessing over the thought that I must be a pedophile, despite having no desire to harm children and no attraction to children. Now even the thought of the word ‘children’ or the sight of them makes me feel anxious and on edge that I will for some reason harm them or everyone will know that I am a molester even though I am not and would never want to be. I also cannot stop trying to look into the past to see if I ever behaved inappropriately around children and testing/bargaining with myself when there are children around to prove to myself that I am in fact normal. It is very hard to focus on anything, so sometimes performing weird rituals like counting to 8 and not stepping on the cracks helps to soothe me, but I have resorted to harming myself at worse moments. Also, when I was growing up, I thought I had sexuality based OCD or anxiety because I was terrified of being a lesbian. I would try and bargain and explain myself out of the idea that I could be gay, and try to find evidence that would prove to myself that I was straight. However, I have since accepted that part of myself and dismissed it as denial, but now I am experiencing similar anxiety levels with this suspected POCD. Now I am afraid that this means I am not truly queer, or even worse, that it is not POCD and I am in danger of becoming a pedophile in the future. However, when I was anxious over my sexuality I think I did on some level know that I was attracted to women, whereas I don’t have a clue where these thoughts that I would harm children have come from. However it was a while ago and I can’t stop obsessing that they are the same thing; these thoughts are extremely distressing so I don’t know what to do.

Last night my friend and I did edibles for the first time. We accidentally did too much and we both became incredibly anxious. For me it made my ocd bad I started constantly checking to see if I was aroused and I got paranoid that I was and then kept checking and it really just triggered my ocd. I was wondering if anyone else has gone through similar things? I got really bad sexual and violent intrusive thoughts.

Me and my long-distance boyfriend are meeting for the first time in 2 days! I'm so excited. I'm also starting to have an ROCD flare up right now. The thoughts aren't flooding in too bad but I can feel it coming. I think the flare up may be related to nerves? But basically, one of my worst themes in 2022 when my OCD was at its worst was ROCD because I was constantly worrying whether or not I had cheated on my boyfriend, every little thing sent me into a state of panic, I started having false memories and sometimes they still feel real to me if I think about them long enough. I’m starting to have a feeling of anxiety and guilt right now, like I don’t deserve to be happy or to even be meeting my sweet boyfriend. I love him more than anything and then thought of hurting him makes me sick, you know? I am resisting the urge to confess all my thoughts and feelings to people I know, because that will just make things worse. I think what I need right now is someone to talk to/relate to. Does anyone else relate? I’m feeling kind of disappointed in myself that it’s been 2 whole years of me suffering on and off with this same theme. And, with my OCD meds that I’m on, I’m gonna have to go off of them when I want to start having babies. Just thinking of that scares me because me and my boyfriend want to get married and have children, but the thought of being unmedicated while I’m pregnant/breastfeeding scares me so bad. I’ve warned my boyfriend that when we have kids I may be a bit delusional while I’m pregnant/off my meds and he told me he would take care of me when that happens. I’m grateful for him, so so grateful.. I’m just feeling like I don’t deserve any of this. My mind wants to go back to that place of ruminating and reassurance-seeking. Although I’ve been free of most of my awful compulsions for a while, my body wants to go back to it, almost like instinct. Sigh. Please pray for me. 🥺