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What should I do if I catch my self ruminating. Most of the time when I ruminate is when I have urges, sensations or images. I just want my life back.

Hi! Okay so everyday I wake up and freak out that I am dying or going to die soon and then because I think that, I feel like I am manifesting it but I cannot stop getting intrusive thoughts about myself or someone I love dying. I also can’t get in my car and drive without thinking I hit someone and somehow just didn’t know? And then I will just wait anxiously and think police will show up at my door. And lastly, I live in the past and always think about all of my mistakes and I can’t forgive myself and keep thinking my past will come back to haunt me. Does anyone relate to anything I said? I think it would just help to know I am not alone.

Hey, I am a gymnast and I'm pretty sure that I've had OCD since my childhood. It all started with small things like keeping my water bottle in a certain spot with me or keeping my shoes nice, aligned, and straight but nothing too serious or concerning to my parents. Now, I have all of these ongoing thoughts, especially as a level 9 gymnast. These thoughts are like "I'm going to miss my hands off the beam or injure myself," and other thoughts just like that. I have also started to have some more self-conscious thoughts about my image or having bad luck and a bad future. Now don't get me wrong I love gymnastics with all my heart but sometimes it's just hard especially since it is already a sport that puts a lot of stress both mentally and physically. I have just recently started therapy at NOCD. It is especially hard as a girl just starting to go through the stages of growing up as I am just about to turn 14. But anyway thanks for making me feel pretty welcome NOCD.

I have done lots of bad things in my past and I mean like EXTREMELY unacceptable things from when I was a kid up until 16 (I’m almost 18 right now) My main theme of ocd is moral scrupulosity ocd and ROCD. Most of the time it’s partner focused. (Met my partner when he was 17, he is now 18) When I first met my boyfriend a year and 4 months ago, he used to be really immature for probably the first half of the relationship. He said slurs he shouldn’t say sometimes because he used to play games with people who thought it was okay to say certain things so he picked it up. A few months ago I brought it up to him and had a conversation. He has since stopped saying slurs (apart from one we can both reclaim because we are neurodivergent) he said I made him realise it was wrong and he never really had anyone to tell him that the things he said were wrong in the past years he played video games where people would say extreme stuff. I see people online getting cancelled for slurs and more etc (probably rightly so if the person thinks it’s okay and they are a grown adult who should know better) but even situations where one person said one offensive thing 3+ years ago and never did it again they end up getting cancelled. My ocd gets triggered when I see people being cancelled and people saying “people who do that will never change” “ they deserve to be hated forever” “they don’t deserve forgiveness” I see others in comments saying stuff like “come on they are/were a child/teen, they will learn, they just need educating not cancelling” and people attack them. I believe that my Boyfriend has changed and whenever I speak about people saying slurs they can’t reclaim and how it’s wrong he agrees. I would say he has matured a lot since the start of our relationship. Is it right to think that sometimes cancel culture is stupid and the people who take it to extreme levels are closed minded and refuse to accept the fact that people can change? (Eg. Cancelling someone for something they realised was wrong and stopped) Do people need to be more open minded and forgiving/understand the situation sometimes?

Does anyone else struggle with a fear of sex/sex avoidance? I’m 23 and have dated quite a bit yet when it comes to having sex, I always pull the brakes before it can happen. I’m too scared of the intrusive thoughts and that having sex would confirm my fears. It’s ruining my ability to have meaningful romantic relationships. I feel like I’m completely alone in this. :// It’s not normal to avoid sex like I do.

TW🔴 Ive seen ALOT of posts on here lately surrounding this topic so i thought would post something to help. I’ve dealt with real events and false memory’s surrounding this topic but i tried to change my perspective and hopefully this helps any of you who have experienced or are experiencing something similar,so i personally believe people with OCD put WAY too much responsibility on themselves, so even IF you did see something that was bad/immoral, you wouldn’t of known, and it would have nothing to do with you and be the person who distributed the videos fault, another thing i remind myself is that it’s not immoral to take risks, we take risks every single day which is not immoral to do so, don’t put too much responsibility on yourselves , another thing is that most of these things have happened when we were children/teenagers and it’s not fair to ridicule yourselves for things that happened around that age. Another thing is that it’s very easy to get ourselves lost in the internet and we aren’t creating any of the content, just viewing it so you shouldn’t blame yourselves for seeing anything you thought was bad/immoral, it’s unfair on us and the people who post these things should be blamed, no one else. I wish all of you all the best and i hope this post helped to switch your perspectives on this kind of thing, keep up the good work ❤️

I don't. OCD has its pitfalls, its horrors, and its crippling themes. But why do I have to constantly focus on its harmful symptoms in order to overcome its harmful symptoms? My experience with OCD forced me to perseverate on so many meaningless things. Even worse, it forced me to RUMINATE on shameful, terrifying, and traumatic memories, thoughts, and feelings. I've obsessed over religion and morality, sexual orientation, cleanliness and illnesses. When I was in my teens, undiagnosed OCD lead me down the dreadful path of anorexia and bulimia. I was obsessed with my weight and fitness. I was thinking magically, forcing myself to knock three times on bona-fide wood with my right hand only to stop myself from jinxing something. I sometimes still repeat prayers, asking God to show me a sign regarding some unforeseeable event in the unknown distant future. I would say "God, if I'm going to get fired from work today, then let me find a parking spot!" Needless to say, I always found a parking spot and then went into work shaking like a leaf all day. Looking back, I wager that that alone helped me be one of the lowest performing employees in the lot. And oh boy, was I frightened as all get-out when I thought - believed - I was HOMOSEXUAL! (The audience gasps). What if, though, I wasn't homosexual... What if I was worse? What if I wanted to hurt... God, please no. I can't stop. It won't stop. MAKE IT STOP! How do I stop this? I have no idea. I need to learn how to stop this. I need to learn. I need to learn everything. If I don't KNOW FOR SURE, then how can I BE sure that I am none of those things? How can I be sure nothing bad will happen? Maybe... Just maybe, I can Google the answer. I just have to be smart while doing research... (12 hours and many BS websites later) By this time, I haven't eaten, showered, brushed my teeth, slept, or drank water. I would crawl up and out of isolated research, checking, rechecking, rereading and reassuring myself... Only to later find out that my attempts at quelling the insatiable obsessions were in vain. My compulsive activities only bolstered my fears, and I lost all of my insight, leaving me paranoid and almost clinically psychotic. I felt hopeless, and so I drank into oblivion. Only when I was sloshed and seeing stars did I find peace and sleep (albeit very dissatisfying sleep, and the peace was just a lie I told myself until I believed it). I took medication that doctors told me would help, but I drank away all the benefits of those prescriptions. On the other hand... Did you know that anxiety is not just an emotion, but an instinct? We adapted it throughout evolution to help us survive before civilization. If you are a creationist, the idea still stands: it is an alarm that warms us when the enemy is near. Isn't that nifty information. I wonder how I can use that... Did you also know that perseveration is the umbrella term used for multiple psychological diagnoses that means to fixate on one thing - emotion, thoughts, or external things - for longer than normal periods of time? It's associated with autism, ADHD, OCD and other anxiety disorders, depression, and more. Fancy that. You know... now that I'm sober and continuing therapy, I look back on the dreadful days wasted obsessing over themes of my own design, acting compulsively to eliminate them only to find out I made them stronger, and I realize that I've actually learned quite a lot of useful information. Through compulsive checking, I accidentally learned how deeply rooted OCD is in my genes. Instead, I was trying to learn the signs of being 100% gay. Now I realize that I'm just some bisexual dude with anxiety. I also learned that mindfulness meditation isn't just a Buddhist idea. It actually spans across every continent, every culture, in different forms. Pacific Island cultures practiced a form of meditation where a person would focus their gaze on a single point, without looking away. Blinking was necessary, of course, but their goal was to notice things in their periphery, as muted and blurry as those things might be. How amazing is that? I don't want to beat OCD, but I certainly do not want to let OCD overtake me again. I would say that "OCD once beat me", but it didn't. If it truly won, then I wouldn't be able to share this with anyone. I wouldn't be able to look back and say to myself "That experience taught me a lot about myself and the nature of OCD." Today, I can share my experiences and knowledge with others and I can say with 100% certainty that there is hope. The light at the end of the tunnel does not need to be checked and turned off and on multiple times. Instead, it can be what it is - the light at the end of the tunnel. So, I've quit drinking for good. I am continuing therapy, and I am aiming to restart medication management on top of all that. OCD may have taken a lot of time, energy, and health from me in the past, and as much as I WANT to completely get rid of it... I can't. It is a terminal diagnosis... So, how can I use it to benefit others? Well, I'm doing that right now by writing this. If it has become an issue, then that is okay. Asking for help does not mean defeat; it means refusal to give up. Embrace the unknown, and go forward fearlessly.

Hi, can someone please told me how to dealt with compulsions i been avoiding a lot of music because if i listen to some songs someting bad will happend

How do I get Diagnosed? And is any therapist adequate to dealing with OCD?

I tell myself so much that I don't believe in myself and that I feel like a bad person and that events of the past leave me greatly uncertain about who I am no thanks to OCD. When it comes to who I was as a teenager, to be honest, I was straight up fucking weird. I did weird things, I acted out, I wasn't good at socializing with people, and the more I try to look back into the events of the past, the more disturbed and disappointed I become. That just was not the person I wanted to be. I just wanna be able to put all of that aside and just be nice to myself. Be kind to myself and accept myself for who I am and just be confident. The thing is OCD doesn't let me. It feels like I'm not OWED to feel that way about myself or that I don't deserve to. Or that I need the permission of OCD to feel that way. I don't want it to be that way. I just want to be able to think positive about myself despite the past but that's next to impossible.

Huge trigger warning related to porn and pedophilia. Please don't read if it makes you uncomfortable. Thank you if you get to read this long post. Something awful happened recently. I was watching porn, I won't say what page because idk if it is allowed, but it is the most famous porn page there is, so you'd think you wouldn't find something so horrifying there. The problem is that one of the automatic pop ups that appeared really terrified me because the girl looked way too young. I'm not sure if she truly was underage, but she looked it, and I can't express how horrifying it is considering if she could have been. I feel like my mind is playing games with me. I can't tell if it was paranoia or reality. My memories are really fuzzy, as I was on a state of shock when I saw it. I remember feeling scared right away and trying to look up how to report it, but the page refreshed on it's own and I never saw the pop up again. I felt so gross for seeing that, and guilty for not reporting it. It was an accident, but I can't help but think that I enjoyed it and that it is my fault for watching porn at all. I am a monster. If this had happened to someone else I wouldn't question it so much, as I know that I didn't look at it on purpose and tried to do the right thing when I saw it. But I already hate myself because years back, when I was 16, I discovered loli. Which is really wrong drawings of young characters. And since then I've been obsessed with the topic and developed pocd. I never looked for those drawings again after that, I dont enjoy them. But I've accidentally found them again on the internet and it's made me feel disgusting and evil; but at least I had the certainty that it wasn't real, until now. I think that this is recent event is further proof of the monster that I already thought I was. After what happened, I immediately contacted a therapist, but tbh, I don't think that I'll ever move on from that. Life isn't looking good right now.

How can i reassure myself (comfort) if i am angry and upset about having compulsed when i am not supposed to either compulse or reassure myself?

I'm not sure how to explain why I feel this way but someone I no longer have on social media messaged me out of the blue after four years. I'm worried they messaging me to find something out about me or cause me harm for some reason. I'm not a very trusting person due to events growing up. Why can't I just except this person could just be messaging me, it just scares me that they must have had to search for me to message me.

If my OCD is trying to convince me I’m gay due to past compulsions. Every time I have that through I now repeat in my head that I’m straight several times to battle it. If I continue to do that am I just creating a compulsion??

Last year my dad got Covid and I went to the movies a day after. I did not even test to see if I had it. Not maliciously for some reason it just didn’t cross my mind to take one. I wore a mask at the movies and only went because I thought it was low risk. I got sick a few days after. I could be the reason people are dead. I’m the same as drunk drivers who harm others due to being mindless. I deserve to be in jail. I deserve to never be happy again. I deserve to lose everything. And anyone who disagrees is just being illogical. I’m the only one who sees this logically it seems because people tell me I deserve to forgive myself when I don’t.

I have severe emetophobia, and last night my partner threw up. They had taken too many edibles (completely legal in my state and we’re of legal age) and asked me to go downstairs so I wouldn’t have to hear. I was panicking, going through all the times I had touched/kissed them that day, trying to work out how contagious it might be, etc. I definitely fell into the reassurance seeking/googling trap for a minute, asking them if they were SURE they weren’t sick, that it was just the edibles, but eventually I managed to put away my phone, tell myself “If it does end up being contagious, I can worry about it when it’s actually happening,” and go to sleep. I certainly didn’t handle it perfectly, but for where my mental state has been, I’m glad I was able to calm myself down and go to sleep.

Hi everyone, I’m new here! I have struggled with OCD on and off for many years and all different flavors (SOOCD, POCD, Pure OCD). I am in a happy relationship of 2.5 years and feel supported and loved by my partner. We have been wanting to move in together and now that we are officially going forward with it, I’m suffering from extreme ROCD, at least I think it is. Out of nowhere I just feel absolute fear around moving in together, thinking that it’s going to ruin my life and our relationship. While he is normally someone who comforts me and I now find him to be a big trigger of mine, as every text and “I love you” now triggers thoughts that he might not be the one or that I am deceiving him. I’m finding it so difficult not to talk to him about it. What I think is my OCD keeps telling me I should not move in with him, break up, and move back home, even though I don’t want that. The hardest part of this is wondering if it’s OCD or my gut. I’m even terrified to post here because I’m worried someone will tell me I should break up with him. I feel so tired and depressed. I’m having trouble doing my job, enjoying things, and eating the past couple days. It’s really just popped up.

I have been with my partner for about a year and 4 months. My ocd symptoms started in February. Recently, my ocd is making me seem annoyed by everything my partner does… I have a bad problem with forming my opinion off of other random people instead of making my own, possibly fear of perception/upsetting people with an opinion so I have to follow like a sheep. This frustrates my partner. My ocd might latch onto a random dark humour joke he made or an opinion for example about social issues that is different to me where we have to agree to disagree and I end up going searching on mainly TikTok. If I see a comment where some people are against what my bf said I have to go and tell him and it’s almost every day my ocd manages to nitpick something. A lot of the time it’s me setting it off by asking his opinion or something where I can feel my ocd being like “let’s scan for things in this conversation to latch on to 😈” and starting a convo where something could trigger my ocd. He might be playing a video game and says things, for example if he’s shot in the game and gets a little bit annoyed. My ocd will instantly latch onto something. I try to hold it back but I ocd tells me I NEED to tell him off for it. If I bring something up while communicating and my boyfriend asks why I think something is bad, it usually always starts with “well I saw a tiktok/instagram comment-…” and my boyfriend stops me to tell me I’m going off a small group of people’s opinion and I need to be able To form my own opinion and it’s okay for me To have my own opinion. A lot of the time I can’t form an opinion because I’m scared what people think so I resort to looking at random peoples comments on posts. 😞 My ocd convinces me he’s a bad person because he has dark humour. Is all the need to confess my thoughts and tell him off ocd? Is the best thing to do sit with the uncomfortableness? Does anyone relate

I have health OCD, and my brain LOVES to interpret random things from my day as “signs” a certain thing will happen. Like, if I hear someone talk about vomiting more than usual, my brain says that’s a “sign” I’ll be sick. Or if I hear about a certain medical condition randomly or repeatedly in a day, that’s a “sign” it will happen to me. It’s taken a lot of effort for me to step back and tell myself basically: “I’m not an oracle. The universe is not sending me signs. My brain is just grasping into things I’m afraid of whenever I happen to hear about them.” My latest coping skill has been to exaggerate the intrusive thought sarcastically. Like, if I start to worry about having an aneurysm because I hear someone talking about it, for example, I might get the thought “That’s a sign your headache is actually an aneurysm,” and I’ll respond, “Oh, totally, my whole head is gonna explode, it’ll be crazy. I bet that twinge in my wrist means my whole hand is about to fall off too, right? Gotta look out for the foreshadowing.” Sometimes it’s so ridiculous that it helps me reframe the thought to be less threatening! Just thought I’d share.

This may be a little taboo so discretion advised. I stumbled upon this Twitter community that’s labeled to post 18+ Porn content and I’ve went in there a few times to view the posts. For some context I’m 19. For those of you who may not understand how Twitter communities work here’s some context for that as well. In these communities they are separated by a topic and everyone can join the community to then collectively converse or share media/pictures about the topic. Of course people made porn communities and anyone can post in these communities. Obviously knowing this I try to be as careful as possible by only viewing videos of individuals that are obviously above 18. I should also add this particular community has moderators that are supposed to be verifying videos and deleting anything that is suspect or not compliant with the rules but sometimes i worry the people in these videos aren’t actually 18 like they are supposed to be. I have every reason to believe they are of age except the fact that anyone is aloud to post in these communities so I fear I masturbated to a minor or viewed child porn without knowing they were underage because I misjudged by the video. I am currently in therapy and I have been for a while now so I know I should stick with the facts and really try to stick with my core values but this really is sticking with me and I don’t have a meeting for a few days can anyone help? (Also I should add I don’t have any of these videos saved and I didn’t share them either only viewed)