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Reassurance used to “help” me feel better and now it doesn’t. Does anyone know why that is?

So I was hanging out with my friends the other night, and whenever we get into the topic, I usually talk about how I think I have OCD and I need to go to a therapist about it. So that came up again and my friend (who isn’t even diagnosed herself) just immediately was like “oh let me prove that you don’t have ocd… when I was 10 I would sit in the middle of my room thinking that there were bugs in my walls, and then I would think my whole room is contaminated, and then I think that they’re in my skin”, etc. And ok fine whatever her experience was that makes her think she has ocd is valid, and I’ll support her, but her trying to prove me wrong is making me think that maybe I don’t have it and whatever feelings I get, isn’t ocd. I mainly get rocd symptoms, pure ocd, sometimes sexual orientation, but never contamination or anything that my friend described. But this is making me think that because I don’t have that experience, there’s not even a possibility that I have ocd. I just need to know that I don’t have to have that experience to have ocd.

I can say with some certainty that I have mastered the art of not engaging in rumination. I can choose which thoughts to explore and which I want to let go. But this had made way for the feelings to surface. The feelings that I am not sure where they are coming. The feelings that are quite strange and seem very intrusive. Can anyone relate and can anyone recommend some good resources to know more about it? Any suggestions how to deal with ocd feelings? People generally talk about intrusive thoughts, very less people talk about intrusive feelings.

So this is more of a rant and I’ll try not to seek reassurance but it’s really tough right now. I got diagnosed later (when I was 30) when I had a pretty big suicidal ocd onset after I had several family losses including ( one close one and one family friend to suicide which wrecked me) so needless to say I had a breakdown and felt like a baby and couldn’t be away from my mom or brother, I literally drove up to their house cause I couldn’t handle the thoughts and spent two months there before I went into erp which helped a lot. A big hang up I had was I considered my cousin and I very similar and close but he didn’t want help and I didn’t understand him so I have a lot of regrets regarding how we approached it but we didn’t know either. So fast forward to now I’ve had erp and I-cbt and trauma work and the anniversary of his passing happened a week ago. I thought I was fine, it’s been a long time since it happened and I was so proud of myself for conquering the suicide theme as it didn’t affect me any more and I was confident in my ability to deal with it. But then I had SO-OCD show up something that has popped in here and there but never this strong, so I have been dealing with that and now that that’s gone the suicidal ocd is back and it’s so upsetting to me and I don’t feel confident anymore. I will say after reading some posts I do have a fear I realize of not being able to manage my mental health so any time I start feeling negative feelings I can start to worry and go down that rabbit hole. Idk if that is what happened. Lately I’ve been struggling with and being frustrated with finding a job I like and dating ( has always been a struggle) and I moved to a different city and live with my family again ( after my first onset I did leave my families house and go home for a few yrs and did my erp but after i was in remission I just wanted a change and needed a safe space to start over as I didn’t see myself in my old city anymore just scrapping by). I’m glad I made the change and I’ve had positive things happen for me where I’ve been slowly overcoming my dating fears and my ocd themes and found an area of work I liked and pursued… but nothing has happened and I’m frustrated I thought it would all be an uphill swing as long as I just intentionally tried and I feel like it just hasn’t landed. And I’m also realizing sometimes that happens but my perfectionism can really start working its magic in me to beat myself up about not doing or being enough. I’ve always had this fear that I’m just gonna end up a bum and this past weekend I was down and just tried to let myself feel down despite fears of depresssion because I was just looking at the trend of my life and I feel like the outlook doesn’t look great despite me trying I even logically know I’ve done way more and come a lot farther that I “ feel” I have big feelings can trick you I’ve learned especially when you have ocd about not being able to handle them. Anyways I’m in a state of just like really because last night i was down and teared up about the changes happening with my friends starting families and I was trying not to be down but then kept having thoughts of what’s the point in trying you’re not gonna get the things you want, your never gonna stop feeling bad or confused about your emotions, what if you’re actually depressed and want to die and then I would have no emotional reaction to it cause I just feel like numb to it or apathetic at this point. I know I know I don’t want that but it’s liek my lack of feelings toward it is trying to convince me otherwise. Then I went to bed in a foul mood and mad and Ofcourse had the suicidal thoughts pop up and trying not to pick it apart or test if I wanted it there ( but I did give in to the testing a few times and felt nothing) I was liek just go to sleep you’ll feel better tomorrow your ocd is just fucking with you. Then I had a dream that I was super sad and emotional everyone else was happy and doing things with their life and starting families ( which I again don’t get I don’t want to start a family right now I’m just trying to get into dating and maybe finding a partner) and here I was not ready but feeling left behind liek I didn’t get the memo and in my emotional state in the dream I said I wanted to die and I remember feeling liek no this can’t be true but it felt like real and out of my control. Almost all my friends are getting pregnant and as a woman in their 30s this has gotten to me ( I never thought it would). And so I woke up this morning feeling that intense sadness left over from the dream and not wanting to get out of bed and trying to talk myself out of the dream like it wasn’t real and is again my ocd just fucking with me. I think I should also mention that I’m about to start menstruating and have pms/pmdd sometimes. I guess I just wanna know if there are others out there that experience this liek you’ve conquered themes but then they back door through a new theme. And I honestly just feel like it’s stupid af but my ocd is liek but it could actually be you’re depressed and suicidal and I just feel like all my work is gone. Is ocd more likely to strike when you’re frustrated with certain aspects of your life, does it make you more vulnerable to it. I know my cousins anniversary is a potential trigger but I thought I was okay but maybe it was just there in the background. Idk. Looking for support and ppl who have gone through it too and I know we can come out of it and conquer it even if sometimes you really don’t want to cause it’s tiring.

How do you all see ocd? I see a lot of demonised perspectives on it. Just curious as to how you view it.

Anyone here who got over the pocd theme?Do you have any advice? It's really scary .I dealt with it for a long time . I think it's one of the wost themes that I had besides harm ocd and real event .Also have you talk with someone about it? I am terrified to talk with someone , even a therapist

So my theme has revolved around the fear of having schizophrenia for about a year now, many therapist and mental health professionals told me they believe it’s a mix of ocd and hypochondria. Well my main symptom of this disorder is the fear of having delusions, so over the course of this year I’ve had thoughts ranging from “what if my wife is a demon” “what if this song means something” “what if there’s some hidden message in this movie” “what if the government created the world and controls everything” “what if Satan is the true creator of the world” “why did my cat look at me like that, what if he’s a spy created by the government, what if all animals are?” Literally crazy shit but it all feels so real, I’ve thought about this stuff so much that I’ve started to have almost an emotional detachment from the world around me, I’ll have thoughts like, “why should I care, nothings real anyway”. And now it’s starting to feel like my normal line of thinking, like now I genuinely feel like everything is fake or staged in some way, nothing feels real or genuine, it feels like everyone around me, the media, news, politics, all feels like some sort of big act or lie. Feels like there’s something more to reality that I’m missing or something, everything feels “too perfect”. I’ve lost all happiness in everything and I’ve become SO suspicious of every single thing, everything has to have some deeper meaning according to my brain, it sucks. Has anyone ever had the fear of schizophrenia and it got this bad?

Every time I’ think about going outside for a walk - my brain pictures them - maybe with a groinal response - and will do this randomly throughout the day even if I’m at home And when I do leave the house there all I seem to notice Is this pocd or fantasy? I feel like I’m in denial Also sometimes I get in these manic states when at home (no anxiety or fear anymore) but I guess a state of panic where the line between what’s right and wrong is blurred and I don’t know who I am anymore And sometimes a surge of adrenaline like I’m going to do something Please help I’m speaking to a psychiatrist soon and I really don’t know what to tell them

My biggest fear right now is not getting better and rhats so scary. I dont want death to be "my only way out" I hate this so so much. Please if any one has advice pls do give because i feel hopeless. I want to live again. The overwhelming amount of fear anxiety i get every day is just too much. Please help.

Here’s my biggest issue. I see men that I think are attractive or I’ll notice a good looking man, but not in a sexual way, I don’t wanna cuddle them, no of that stuff. I simply notice how good looking they are, then the thoughts trigger that ask “I wonder if think he has a good looking face means I gay”, then I keep asking questions along those lines. Then sometimes I’ll put my self in a gay situation in my head to try visualize whether I’d enjoy doing something gay. After all the mental gymnastics, I come to the conclusion of no. Then I proceed to ask myself, “is the answer only no because of what society would think, or how you were raised?”. And I genuinely can’t come up with an answer for that, I can’t tell if I’m just in the closet, or if this is just OCD, or what. I don’t know what to do and it drives me crazy.

ive been questioning these past weeks, what js wrong with me? i just feel like i FEEL the thoughts but i dont HEAR them. I felt all these things, i saw these images but than i didnt. I felt fucking insane. Until, after a short anxiety attack, and some spiralling. I realized what the problem is. Im repressing the thoughts, im forcing them shut. Im just not letting them flow. I would tell them to stop, to shut up. And i fear, after doing that, the thoughts are still there, and i feel them there, i just dont hear them. Its weird, and probably doesnt make sense. But i honestly fear my own mind, i fear my thoughts, i fear the images, i fear the power it holds. And ive been chicken to it. It makes me feel crazy, like a lunatic. I feels like someone is squeezing my brain. Idk, does any else relate?

Anyone else get triggered by seeing true crime stories on tiktok of people who k*lled family members and worry that they could become like that or are secretly like that? It’s horrible and just the worst to think about. I really hope I’m not the only one. I wasn’t always afraid of things like this. I don’t know what happened. It’s like my brain wants me to believe I’m capable of something like that but I know I’m not and obviously I don’t want to do that. I love my family and my greatest fear is losing them. Please tell me I’m not alone. I know many people struggle with harm ocd I just always feel so isolated when my situation is not described exactly. If you’ve recovered from this form of ocd what helped you the most?

I was doing great for 4 days straight then it just hit me…like a giant wave and intrusive thoughts just started bombarding me…now I’m in the back yard in tears & sad…arrrrhhhghg

Am I insane for having such thoughts? I'm not asking for reassurance. A single "I can relate" would make me feel less alone and less like a creep or the exception. I will practice ERP after this post, but I just really felt the need to address it. I shouldn't because then I make it more meaningful, but if I don't this will come back to haunt me in the future again, if I do this, and these triggering thoughts comes back I'll just say "I already addressed this, I don't need to do that again, this is OCD" I had remembered that time when I was little when I had phimosis and my mother had to help to open it because i couldn't, the doctors said that she had to do it, until I could do it my own. And then I had a thought what happens when it's not a male but the female side does something like that happen? And I got triggered so much thinking about that, had a few vague intrusive images. It was so triggering and disturbing. I needed to solve it but I didn't want to because it was so triggering to think about so I didn't. I have to let uncertainty be there. I also had obsessive thoughts because I got triggered of the fact that adults share the same private organs like ****s and wondered the difference because in men you can understand clearly the difference with the size as you grow so I started to thinking about what happens in the other side and got triggered so much thinking about that and felt like a creep. I didn't want to think about that and felt horrible that my thoughts lead to wonder about something like that. The fact that the se&ual features that we enjoy in adults are the sames as when we are young triggered me a lot and I was afraid of not seeing those se&ual elements in adults as normal features but costantly associated with that knowedge. Before I was attracted to the female adult organ but now I'm just weirded out because in my mind there is this triggering connection, this knowledge. But if there is a substantial difference that makes me differentiate definitely so that I don't get triggered anymore I can't think about it because then I would be going "there", in a very triggering topic, I don't want to think about "that", I'd feel like a **** and it would destroy my already broken sanity for how triggering it would be. Then one would think "you're messed up if you can't distinguish the difference" but I do, I know the difference, but the fact that we share the same organs triggers me a lot because there is an association and I don't want it at all. I don't want to think about that. I'm so triggered by these thoughts but I'm not going to entertain OCD any longer. This is clearly an OCD mechanism because I've been stuck with these thoughts in my mind since, feeling distress and needing to address them, ruminating. I'll move forward and sit with the distress. Now I remembered an another triggering rumination discourse I had for an whole 1 hour inside a car alone in my brain, that I can't believe I had, it was a voice asking me what's the difference between the body of an adult and a trigger and I couldn't find a clear answer to it and I got triggered by that question and my lack of a ready and certain answer, so I ruminated about it, and I was so afraid that I could be agreeing with the question, and triggered that it could have been valid, that that messed up logic was indeed logic, when it was a question so disgusting. And I feel the need to review it again, ask for reassurance abt it, check what I wrote in my notes to check that I didnt write anything strange. It was just overthinking I guess, but I'm so bothered that I even entertained that question. It made me feel like a ****. And it was before my med school exam. I was tired from my lack of sleep and instead of sleeping in the car I ruminated and tried to answer that question for more than 1 hour. I felt so disgusting. I think these are all questions of the same nature that OCD gives me as an assignment to solve, and my brain needs me to solve them otherwise it thinks I'll be stuck with those question forever unsolved, and the trick behind those questions is that they are so triggering that the fact that I'm willing to entertaining such horrible and triggering questions makes me doubt my own integrity. But in order to move past these triggering questions is to accept uncertainty and the discomfort that happened as a result of the thoughts and disengage with the triggering thoughts, knowing that we can't solve it in a way that makes us stop having anxiety about it.

I am really curious to try the GeneSight test because I think that it would help me understand what medication will work better for me. I spoke with multiple different people about this, and it was brought to my attention by my hairstylist and my therapist. They both think it would be really good for me, and I’m willing to try it if my insurance will cover it. I then texted my psychiatrist and she seemed very unsure about the testing. Part of me thinks that she just wants more money so she is not willing to help me find what medication works best for me, the other part of me wonders if it is not a good idea and a waste of money to do the testing. I want to see the best in my psychiatrist, but she tends to not listen to me anyways, so I don’t really have a reason to listen to her in this situation. I’m curious to know if anybody else has tried the Genesight testing and how it worked for you. Or if you have medication recommendations? I know that is more tricky, because it’s different for everyone.

Hi so I just have a question and I just need some help. During a rough patch in my boyfriend and my relationship I saw that he unblocked two girls he slept with. He said that he unblocked and blocked them straight away because he wanted to clear his blocked list and then when he realised it would make me upset blocked them again. I just saw last night that on his instagram data it shows he did it on two seperate nights, which he says “he did it all in one night”. And the time stamps are both different meaning he did do it on two seperate nights. He keeps getting mad at me for bringing this up but it hurts me and keeps making me feel like I’m the reason we are going to break up because I bring this up. It doesn’t make sense because he “unblocked” those two girls but not the other 10 people he had blocked. If he was “clearing it” why wouldn’t he unblock them to. I’m going crazy, he’s telling me I should believe him and that he wouldn’t lie but I just feel like it’s the most fake story ever. Help please

What makes my situation different than someone discovering their sexual orientation later in life? How can I still be my identified sexual orientation when I have these thoughts, images and urges? Am I just using OCD as an excuse? I’ve both seen these thoughts, and have had them myself or some similar, especially the last one. Usually OCD loves to add some guilt to it to, after all when that random person whose story you read about online, who definitely told the whole story and was 100% truthful, shared their story, they accepted these thoughts. What gives you the right to deny them? What if one of your children is gay? How can you support them if you denied acting on those exact same thoughts and feelings they’re totally having? Etc. That am I using OCD as an excuse question still gets me a little bit, but nowhere near as much as before and the reason why has been learning to accept that I am different from all those people because I do have OCD! So are we using OCD as an excuse? Maybe. Maybe Not. But you and I do have this terrible illness that creates this intense doubt and extreme thoughts that our brains struggle to just move past. We’ll never know what number on the sexual spectrum we are, but we don’t need to figure it out. We are okay living the life we want whomever that is with.

Hi everyone. Has anyone's OCD skyrocketed after an abusive relationship and/or after having children? I've always had some version of OCD but two years ago in February of 2022, I experienced this really horrible bout of DPDR. I lost my sense of self, I was having really strange spiritual thoughts or existential thoughts. I was in an abusive relationship at the time. I'm still recovering from that. But my OCD jumps around. Today, I was worried I was having a brain aneurysm because of a mild headache and because I'm prescribed Lexapro for my depression/anxiety and a low dose of adderall for my adhd. I've been on these meds for a while with no issues but I am now getting thoughts like," maybe I'll have a stroke or an aneurysm from my meds." With no reason to think so. And then I spend hours googling. The health anxiety and death anxiety are fueled by a fear of my kids being without a mother (I'm a single mother.) in some ways, the fear has helped me to make healthier choices but these thoughts of death and the million things that can cause it are taking away from the joy of living. The DPDR seemed to kick this off. Does it ever get better? I exercise, meditate, pray, talk therapy, I just want to feel like "me" again.

i don’t even feel human right now honestly, like i feel NOTHING. ugh my mind comes up w doubts that completely go against what I want and who I want to be. and my values. it feels so real too and i’m so afraid because of how real it feels bro. i feel like there’s no coming back from this. i’m genuinely becoming evil. i really didn’t want to be like this bro. i just wanna be normal

my harm ice started off w just the thought/urdge that i would kill anyone. don’t know why who when where it was just that random feeling that stressed me out. now i just get the random waves of evil feeling. it’s not even like a thought it’s like the obsession is that evil feeling of being cold hearted and acting on these things. is that still ocd?? or am i actually having like personality issues of being normal me then evil?