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Anyone have problems sleeping? Like thinking about falling asleep and it never happens? Or is this just ocd?

Does anyone that is diagnosed have experience having different themes come up in a day? It’s like I ignored one thought and then my mind comes up with another one until it figures out one that is scary enough for me to ruminate. Does it ever make sense? Like today my intrusive thought was an image of me in the space or falling into space which made me also think - this is non sense! Am I going crazy for having such an unrealistic intrusive thought? And then my psychosis OCD comes to play 🫠 it’s EXHAUSTING but I’ve been answering with “maybe or maybe not” and “I don’t care” which is something I saw someone saying that helps and I’ve been using it. I haven’t started ERP yet but hopefully soon. Just this year this came up and I still catch myself feeling so sad and remembering how I was before this. 😭

Does anyone else tell themselves "don't do 'this' or something bad will happen!" or if something bad does happen you go "it's because I did 'this' thing beforehand" and you end up avoiding a lot of stuff you really enjoy? I get in a bad habit of it. I assume some stuff is cursed, in a sense, even if it's something as mundane as using something in video game or eating a certain food.

content warning: mentions of sexual acts things took a turn for the worse and I ended up opening up about the intrusive thought I had about some random guy while self pleasuring and my boyfriend took it really badly. we calmed down pretty quick and he apologized but I don't know how to feel anymore. with everything else he has been so caring and gentle and understanding. I didn't expect him to be perfectly fine but it got really mean and I don't know how to deal with this. he has apologized and doesn't expect me to forgive him and also made it clear that he knows he messed up, I just feel so upset by how the interaction went. has anyone had a partner react badly for a moment but we're able to move past it? I know how exhausting it can be fir the partner of someone suffering so much and I'm not mad that he felt that way, I just feel so taken aback and in the moment it felt like a dream and everything was just a haze and so intense. please help I don't want to lose him and want to know if other people have worked past this before

I hope someone can respond... Im genuinely so triggered and so anxious... This youtuber was accused of grooming a minor, making inappropriate sex jokes with a minor, and planning to meet up with him at dreamcon when the minor turned 16, talking about doing explicit stuff in the presence of minors, etc... this was all when the youtuber was 20 and the minor was 13... POCD is saying that my situation with me venting about 18+ HOCD stuff to people in the PM's on an OCD groupchat I found from NOCD, including minors, means that I am just as bad as they are... or worse... I pm'ed them from the support group and vented to them (including the minors) about my 18+ HOCD struggles... I dont ever want to ever be attracted to minors in any way... I dont ever want to ever engage in any inappropriate relations with minors in any way...

Taking a walk down memory lane ❤️I used to stare at the knife blocks in my house because I was picturing myself committing suicide in vivid detail terrified I would do it. I was probably 7-9. I also had one about a stuffed penguin I had, where I’d imagine it lost and crying for me :,) that one still gets me even as an adult.

Hello! I am pretty early in my journey with receiving treatment for OCD, although it seems I’ve had it my whole life. I would love to hear any inspirational stories from people who have seen improvements from treatment! I am feeling good about ERP so far but I could use some inspiration as I embark on the harder parts :)

Im 16 and i’ve always wanted to drink and smoke weed to use it as a way to ease my tension and anxiety like people say it would . I never have because i’m terrified id say something horrible or do something bad and not remember it . I don’t tell people that’s why i don’t wanna engage in drinking or substances because i just know they wouldnt understand and they’d tell me to ‘stop being so paranoid’. So, instead , they call me boring and frigid which is putting pressure on me. i wish i could have fun like them but i actively avoid parties and dont get invited to them because of it. Im just so scared of something bad happening that’s out of my control. Im not too sure what to do because i don’t want to stay a social outcast forever. Any advice would be appreciated ❤️

OCD is so strange because I feel so mentally exhausted 24/7 but i’m so good at masking it that like it’s like i can think double. I’m not sure that makes sense. But i am so used to the OCD thoughts racing through my head that i can respond to my environment whilst completely existing in my head. I can have conversations when intrusive thoughts are taking over my inner dialect. I feel like i am even doubting whether i have OCD and whether it’s all just an excuse. I feel like my rumination hasn’t stopped for the past 3 years. Everything i used to enjoy or look forward to, is now dread and tainted by the thoughts telling me i never knew. I don’t even know what i like or who i am anymore. The thought of getting help and talking through it all scares me because what if i’m invalidated or if i speak about it too much then what if i don’t stop thinking. I’m so exhausted

Have you ever been feeling okay and then suddenly an old intrusive thought comes back but worse and you can’t seem to get past it as easily?

I have had OCD all of my life. It affects absolutely everything I do. Those of you that have it know exactly what I mean. I'm a 50 year old male and I have been on meds for 30 plus years. Most days I'm fine, except for a bit of compulsive checking. Lately, I have been absolutely overwhelmed with my job, which I absolutely hate. I have been at it for over 14 years. I'm at the point of a nervous breakdown and feel so terrible and ashamed for my poor wife having to deal with my emotions. I feel like a failure of a man and husband, though she's always by my side. I'm currently looking for new work but my OCD just accentuates everything. Lately, whenever I'm about to clock on for the day I nearly have a panic attack. And over what? A stupid job that would replace me in a heartbeat?? They have already led on that I'm not too far from that. OCD just makes everything soo damn big. Instead of realizing it's just time to move on and just take the necessary steps to do so, I Instead overthink and panic. This is my current struggle. Just wanted to share. Soo damn tired that all I think about is retirement. I'm just wishing my life away to the age when I'll seemingly be more at peace. Thanks for reading.

okay so i slept at like 3 am last night, so i obviously slept in lol. i woke up at like 1:40 to be exact but i also woke up multiple times in the morning just for no reason, i check the time and go back to sleep. i had to pee since like 6 am(the first time i woke up) but i didn’t because going to the bathroom and getting back in bed makes me feel dirty so i just went back to sleep. so fast forward to when i wake up at 1:40, i get up normally and as i’m walking to the bathroom i have to pee really bad like i can barely hold it. which is normal duh bc i’ve been laying down too long to know i had to pee really bad. i go to the bathroom and i sit down really fast so i felt a little pee get out before i sat (sorry if it’s tmi) but as i’m sitting i realize a wet spot on the lower part of my underwear and i start freaking out bc i know it’s pee but i’m asking myself what if i peed myself in my bed. so i felt my pants all over the inside and it wasn’t wet at all on my pants but i’m still scared. i showered and changed but now i’m asking myself what if i peed in my bed.. but what if i just peed a little on the way to the toilet bc i had to pee so bad i could barely hold it? does anyone else have this problem😞 i’m trying not to wash my bedding again bc i did like 3 times this week and i’m tired.

I have a lot of change going on in my life and I just saw my girlfriend after being 2 months apart. I missed her a lot but the whole day was feeling a bit off mostly with rocd. I’ve been trying to do exposures but none give me that crazy feeling and it’s been worrying me that I don’t care anymore. I also have been struggling with rocd for almost a year now. Does anyone have any clues as to what makes exposures really expose lol??

Tried to say "ok im just gonna accept that i'm gay" and you felt calm, like It was true and then It freaked you out wven more cause It felt real???

Hi everyone, it’s hard for me to share this but I wanted to give it a shot. OCD onset got really bad when I turned 19 and it’s been a huge struggle ever since. Even being able to accept help from NOCD was hard at first, I wasn’t brought up in a family that ever took OCD or other mental disorders as valid reasons to struggle. I’m turning 21 next week. These past few years have so much emotional baggage from OCD and trauma exacerbated by OCD. Sometimes I feel like it’s really hard for me to even assess the severity of my triggers and obsessions because I’ve become so used to being under constant distress. I can’t help but to feel at times that getting this disorder under control seems close to impossible. I’ve basically dropped out of college after trying to keep my head above water (and failing) for my freshman and sophomore year. I’m unable to study or even keep a normal job right now. I believe that now more than ever the world is in need of community building and organizing and I feel so much guilt for not being able to participate in that either. I feel like everything I want to be doing with my life right now, especially socially, feels so out of reach because of this illness. It makes it even harder to feel joy about life in this position, which can’t be good for my depression. I hope that soon I’ll be able to track my progress on here. I know growth isn’t linear and everything comes with time…but damn. This shit is hard.

content warning: talks of explicit acts and fear of cheating or attraction to another person I had a dream yesterday about breaking up with my boyfriend and now I had a dream I cheated on him. They scared me but I've realized that they don't really mean anything. I only am freaking out again because while I was self pleasuring earlier, I was thinking of my partner and watching him until I had an intrusive thought someone I just saw in a tik tok and that got me there. im so scared because I didn't mean to let my mind slip and I really feel like I need to talk to my partner about this because i feel so guilty and I know something like this would hurt me if the situation was flipped so I don't know what to do. why did I like the thought so much to that point??? how do I convince myself I don't need to tell my partner even though the guilt is setting in and it feels so wrong? I feel ashamed and unfaithful and terrible I hate that this happened how I do know what to do what if it wasn't an intrusive thought and I enjoyed it even though I tried to change my thoughts?

I am 16, my name is marie. I am in desperate need of help. Here are afew of my stories. 1. and ever since I was 8, I want to say, I have struggled with POCD. I always felt like a predator to my younger niece and cousin. I’ve grown to hate her for solely no reason, and with my two other nephews that came along, I’ve also grown to hate them. Only because I don’t want to seem like a predator, even though it’s in my mind, do I want others to know I hate them and have no liking for them. There were other cases where it isn’t my niece and nephews and I just always had a hatred towards children I felt like if I actually had a bad experience with them I would’ve seriously harmed them. 2. I have no connection to watching Gore, or I was never exposed to Gore until the age of 12, which was a hard year for me. In 2019-2020, I believe it was when a complete stranger, Ronnie Mccnut, killed himself on a livestream, and people made it an internet meme for years after, and still to this day, I see it. I can’t remember if it affected me at 12, but that was the only time I saw it. Now, at 15, in March 2024, it came back to me. It feels like a curse. I’m just so tired. The same nightmare has been going on for months. Since March, it’s more just memories than just nightmares. It feels stupid because I don’t know the guy, but I always have nightmares of him, and I haven’t even seen the video since I was 12; ever since. I cannot sleep ever since I have had no proper sleep schedule and could only sleep when it was daylight at 6-7 a.m. and wake up at 2-3 p.m. My friend is not helping; she’s saying he’s spirit is attached to me, and I’ve lived thinking for the past few weeks that he was attached to me and wanting to curse me in some way and I felt like I had to kill myself/ felt like I was going to die the same way as him. I always had a fear that if I came to someone online and told them my intrusive thoughts, they’d always use them against me. My other friend who is diagnosed with OCD says I have all the symptoms and I just need to be treated. I can’t afford it, and I hate therapy.. my father is always involved for the consultation and laughed at me the last few times. I was forced into an eating disorder clinic from my narcissistic sister and that did not go well. Ohio health care is no help and they don’t care for you. 3. I don’t remember much but around age 14 to beginning of 15 I always felt the need to die, I felt like I needed to kill myself for everyone’s sake there’s no explanation for this one I was a normal kid I was going to school, good grades I have friends I was going to events I just had this task to having to kill myself, yes I’ve attempted a ton at the age of 14 and luckily I haven’t had any serious harm done to me. There is nothing more to say to this it’s a fuzzy memory.

I feel bit vulnerable to share this, but I feel it's important to voice a struggle i'm having (in case others are too). Per my current journey, i've decided (and have for quite some time) to not try and pursue relationships until I have figured out my "inner self" and have some more stability in my mental health. I think there's a common belief in society that getting into a relationship will solve all my problems cause i'll be happier with where I am instead of feeling lonely. I guess for me being aware of it is the first step- I have ambitions to have a partner/start a family- but I realize that takes a lot of emotional capacity and I feel I'm just not at a point where I can handle it. It sucks because it seems to go against what society is telling me to do, but I keep on reminding myself that is about my well being and mental health.

I have done lots of “bad/problematic/immoral” stuff in my past. My ocd latches onto this so badly :( I have a large social media platform and usually get 20k-100k views quite often. The stuff I did in the past was probably “cancel-worthy” stuff. I have the constant urge + scenarios in my head to make a video “confessing” that I’m a bad person and I deserve to be cancelled although I realised the stuff I did in the past was bad and I don’t do them anymore. The things could range from months ago to stuff when I was a child. Seeing famous people get cancelled is triggering for me and if I see someone being cancelled for something I’ve done in my past I get so scared and anxious and start searching and ruminating. I have a constant feeling of guilt that I’ll never be perfect or be able to call myself a “good person” My ocd also focuses on my partner. He used to say Offensive jokes and more but I made him aware and he realised and stopped. He still makes occasional jokes nowhere near as bad as he used to but when he makes a joke my brain is suddenly like “oh no what if people think that joke is problematic” and because I saw like one person on TikTok be offended by something similar, I feel the need to immediately tell my boyfriend that he shouldn’t say the joke and it makes him frustrated because it’s almost every day my ocd is nitpicking for anything slightly “bad”. He means no harm with the jokes and doesn’t make the same ones he used to as he matured more and realised they were weird but my ocd wants him to be an absolutely perfect person with perfect morals whatever and he isnt allowed to do anything even slightly bad or he’s an awful person. And same for me, I need to be perfect. Anyone else relate? And does this sound like moral scrupulosity ocd?

why did I have a dream where I basically cheated on my boyfriend???? what I can remember of the dream was there was some random guy (No one who I know he was just random) and me and him were "testing things" like hanging out and we were kissing and stuff???? and then I went through a grocery registration line and my mom was there and looked at me a certain way when I kissed the guy as to be like "you know you have a boyfriend what the hell" and then after I told the guy "hey maybe we shoukd stop doing this I don't think it will work out" and then I don't remember anything else I kinda woke up feeling super guilty. I don't even know why I had this dream I have never wanted to cheat on my boyfriend or had a desire to be with another man like that why did this happen. what do I do. I feel like in some way I'm being unfaithful by having that dream. even if im.nkt I'm worried the dream may mean something about me or my relationship. please someone give insighf