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I don't even know what my compulsions are so how can I resist them? I am always doubting my OCD diagnosis because of this very reason. How can I get better when I don't even know what is keeping me from getting better?

i had some intense intrusive thoughts about the past while trying to sleep and it scared the hell out of me to the point that i couldn't sleep. i just woke up this morning feeling like crap after getting a nightmare afterwards.

I am struggling recently. I am working with my therapist and I have recently finally did an exposure I have been struggling to do for months. However, I also recently have had more obsessions and given in to more compulsions after the exposure which has made my ocd worse and caused me to mitigate the exposure I did in the first place. Since my worst point with ocd, I have made a lot of progress. This is one of my hardest areas to overcome, but I feel like it’s setting me backwards and resulting in me engaging in compulsions that I have not engaged in for while. I am feeling mentally exhausted from all this, and it reminds me of how I felt when my ocd was at its worst. I am exhausted of ocd winning and know I need to make a change to be free of ocd.

I’m afraid of falling in love with anyone now. Especially since I have pocd. I fucking hate it. I’m afraid of liking someone that’s even 1 year younger than me (I’m only 18 btw). I’m so scared this has been the most terrifying thought for me. I sound and feel like a creep writing this. How can I stop these thoughts I do NOT want them turning into feelings which I’m very afraid of. I want to not wake up again but I still keep waking up. Might eat a whole jar of melatonin just to not wake up again. And I’m afraid if I don’t have ocd then I’m actually a creep which I do NOT want to be!!! I’M SO AFRAID THAT I HAVE FEELINGS AND THOUGHTS WHEN I SEE A CHARACTER THATS MY FAVORITE BUT IT’S A KID IM TERRIFIED. I’M SO SCARED OF MYSELF AND I JUST NEED TO GET IT OFF MY CHEST. I am petrified. It’s like I’m in a never ending nightmare but I’m not in a dream… it’s like there’s another side to me that is not me…

I'm really struggling atm w what I think is rocd. I know for an absolute fact that I love my boyfriend 100% with all my heart. I'm only 15 but I know that he's the person for me. We've been together for a year and a few months and I've been in love with him since I was 11. I'm almost 16. We've never had an argument, he's so incredibly supportive and he's very aware of the whole situation. I've been having horrible thoughts for about 6 months now that I'm not in love with him anymore. Obviously this upset me so so much but at the beginning I knew it wasn't real and I miss when my biggest issue was how to tell him and not upset him. Luckily I have the kindest most loving boy and he completely understood me and he is the only person who can fully comfort me. At the beginning I knew the thoughts weren't real but 6 months later and they're all i can think about I'm believing them and it's horrible. At one point about 3 months ago I came to the realisation that love is a choice, I loved being around him qnd kissing him and being his friend, and qt 15 that's basically all a relationship is. Since coming to that conclusion, and also telling myself that even if the thoughts were real and I really didn't love him anymore, then I would again because of who he is, and the sheer fact that I want to love him, the thoughts have changed into what if I dint like him and now I've convinced myself that I don't even like him and I don't want to love him again, and that's the worst part of it all because I believe it. He knows I believe them, and he's only 16 but he's handling it all so so we'll. He says that he knows that the thoughts aren't real, even if I don't know because he's got an outside perspective, but it's okay if I don't realise it because he'll wait for mw as long as I need. Some days I overthink so much I refuse to kiss him, and he's handled that so well, he'll always ask me if I want a kiss or a hug beforehand if I'm having q bad day, and he's gotten into the habit of watching Disney films with me ro help calm me. I don't understand why I don't think I want him in my life anymore. I miss feeling like i love him. I do have therapy, and she says that the thoughts aren't real qnd she knows this because of just the way I speak about him. My mum said she knows that they're not real, ans his mum says the same. For about 5 days last week the thoughts were gone. I felt like I loved my baby again. I was so so so happy because I loved him again and he was so proud of me. Then the thouhjts came back. I dint want this to be too long, im so sorry of you're still reading. Just any tips on how to love my baby again? I'll do anything except break up with him. I love being a part of his family qnd I miss how it was, but I'd much rather be so so sad ans scared all the timw with the thoughts then not have him at all. I've had very intrusive thoughts before but nowhere as bad as this. Maybe the intensity of the thoughts is mimicking the intensity of the love I have for him? I just want to love my jude again, my lovely boy :(

I’m going to a Psychiatrist today for the first time because of ocd. Do all Psychiatrist knows about ocd and the themes ? Or I need Psychiatrist that knows about ocd cause im afraid she will not know and then she will think I’m crazy or a bad person

my ocd has been overthinking like crazy about how i eat and the symptoms with it too… i believe i have acid reflux but i’m so scared if i have a hital hernia because at night i somewhat feel nauseous and idk why… but i also belch a lot even when i feel nauseous and eat ofc. but i googled… sighs. and i looked up what the symptoms were for hital hernia. the symptoms were nausea, belching, had abdominal pain on left the other day, a few weeks ago i had heartburn everytime i was eating and drinking… , sometimes i would have a throat irritation… But i also get scared if i’m binge eating and i’m like wait “what if i have an eating disorder…” it gets me scared like if i do and do not want that but i’m scared of that and i’m scared if i have a hital hernia…

I’d really appreciate any guidance or help people can provide. For context I’ve basically been struggling with OCD for a long time- probably from about the age of 13, however I was only properly diagnosed around the age of 21 (I’m now 28). I’ve seen a variety of therapists but only found a specialised OCD therapist at the age of 23. I’ve experienced a lot of themes from health OCD to religious themes to harm OCD. However the OCD type that has bothered me the most is sexual orientation OCD. Whilst the other themes have diminished with the help of exposure therapy, this seems to be the hardest to shake. Whilst I identify as a straight female I cant shake the doubt that I may be in denial and this isn’t actually my OCD. I think what’s making this spike so hard is that I had been effectively OCD free for four years. Through ERP with my therapist I had managed to fight back at my SOCD, met a wonderful man who I’ve now been in a relationship with for 5 years and been married for one year. Whilst we were in the butterflies in the tummy phase and planning our wedding, I never once thought about the possibility that I could be gay or bisexual. I was so in love with him that it didn’t matter to me. For context this is the only person I’ve had a meaningful relationship with or been intimate with. Basically we’ve settled into married life now and our relationship has changed, as it should to a commitment kind of love rather than that passion that consumes you kind of love. I think this combined with several negative events including the death of a family member, me experiencing my own physical health problems and extreme work stresses have made my OCD rear its ugly head. Despite my understanding of my condition and how it works, I keep thinking I’m in denial and secretly have been fighting against my sexuality all along. It’s particularly confusing when you have groinal responses and other things that prompt you to think you actually are gay. I’d like to emphasise that I am not in anyway homophobic. It’s more about my identity and my sexuality changing. Apologies for the long post I just feel as though it helps to give context.

If I trust my feelings more than my faith, I’m opening myself up to trickery and illusion. Feelings can and often are out of synch with morals and therefore I will not give them my power. My faith is my intellect. My feelings are instinctive.

hey everyone !! i come again asking for help. my ocd gives me copious amounts of intrusive thoughts and feelings, and while i try to not stop and think about them too much, the fact they are happening, that im thinking and feeling those things is very scary, which makes me overthink them, worry, try to disprove them, yknow, classic ocd stuff. thats also not the only issue though. this makes it so that for the rest of my time i live based off "if i dont do this, it means that x feelings or x thoughts were true" and (as lots of you probably know) that is very exhausting and upsetting. i want to live my life without paying attention to my ocd and without attributing every single thing i do to whatever my ocd throws at me that day. does anybody have any tips? i would really appreciate it !!

What does it feel like as you go through the process? I feel like absolute crap. I feel like it just keeps attacking me. I’m exhausted and new thoughts and urges keep coming. Is this normal? I thought by not doing compulsions I would get better but I just feel so awful. I don’t even know who I am! And I feel like I can’t find joy and everything seems to be a threat. Any insight would be great.

The pain of ocd is unbearable...I know it's not me. But why do I have these thoughts? What's wrong with me?! People should stay away from me. I'd rather my arms be cut off than harm someone. I hate me...the medication isn't working. I keep remembering past mistakes adding to all the reasons I think I'm evil. Seemingly validating my ocd intrusive thoughts...I can't do this. I wish I had a therapist. I wish I could afford this app.

Hi, sort of a vent, idk. This year i had a really bad time with my ocd and autism. I had a sudden and unexpected change that happened and it sent me into a spiral. I felt so out of control and that made my triggered certain things with my ocd so everything just started going downhill. A relationship i had that didn't last long cause i couldn't get my brain to calm down and then i lost 2 friends that I'd known for years. Even though i acknowledged that the friendships weren't great and they weren't the right people for me, i still found it really hard to come to terms with and i keot overthinking and going over every single detail of what happened. It's just hard enough for me to make friends as it is and even though those people weren't really great for me it's still like, great now in back to being alone. Im waiting for my counselling to start (I've been on the waiting list for ages now) and i still have 3 friends i talk to but they have their own things going on, i don't feel comfortable bringing up what im going through because i know it is likely to trigger them or might bring them down in some way and honestly they've been through so much, i just want them to be happy and i don't want to put anything else on them. But then that leaves me feeling like i wanna cry as soon as I stop talking to them/hanging out, cause im carrying so much and I'm surrounded by family that just diminish what im going through and don't respect me. They help me with some things i can't lie and i still have a connection with them but im just over here wondering what exactly am i supposed to do? Theres always something going on and i know thats just life but this year, the way things have been getting on top of me i just constantly feel so tired and done with it all. Ive considered going in-patient but being a black person who is so often misunderstood, i don't know if i would feel safe in those places. Also i know I'd feel so uncomfortable because my need for things to be so clean and perfect and orderly is overwhelming enough when im in my own space or at my family's home let alone some random place I've never been. Idk im just tired of my brain and life right now. To think my day was going well as i was watching one of my favourite shows before i got a call telling me i needed to leave the house to do xyz last minute and I've just been feeling miserable and irritated since then. I can't go back to my show either cause i would start associating everything with something negative and overthinking again. It would be amazing to just be a vegetable rn.

so i have harm ocd and recently it switched to having to make sure my loved ones are breathing in their sleep and i did a big thing this week i stayed at my dads house for the first time in 3 months i neevr was able to bc my ocd was like what if this or that but i did it and stayed for 2 days and i was like what if i don’t love my mom and now that im back at my moms house it’s like my mind is convincing me im wanting something bad to happen and it’s so scary bc it feels so real and true i feel crazy, what do i do?? i feel like im in and out of reality

I’ve been getting really bad intrusive thoughts and idk how to deal with them or what they mean TW : So basically I’ll see stuff on social media of people going through certain things and I get intrusive thoughts like “oh what if people in the comments are going through this and I don’t see it” and so I’ll look up posts of that topic and scroll for hours just to make sure people are okay. I don’t know what to do and I really wanna help everyone but am I a bad person for not commenting or scrolling through every single post and comment section? I just keep getting intrusive thoughts like “what if You’re just letting it happen and it’s all your fault.” And I just don’t know what to do. Am I a bad person for that?

It's funny but my soocd subtype seems to pop up during fall and winter, and leaves during spring and summer. Currently it has me overanalyzing my friendship with my friend who happens to be gay. It's really frustrating. What makes this even worse is this friend and I are fairly close, (I see them as a parental type figure) and it makes it really awkward especially when they use words like honey or sweetie. They're biologically female, but identify as he/they, which again doesn't help my OCD. They're like 6 years older than me. Idk I'm just freaking out a bit lol.

Does anyone suffered from sever ocd in the past and was able to recover? I’m suffering from sever pocd right now (every second of the day) and I miss my old life and self. I find it hard to even function normally. I’m losing hope, it’s my dream to have my old life back( im afraid to never gain them back , every second of life it like hell) And maybe hearing someone who recover might help a bit. I’m tired of this so much , I just want to give up all the time I think I could never recover from this. I hate it. Ocd took everything from me, my happiness, the fun in life, the living in life without fighting my brain non stop, I haven’t felt happy for so long, I feel alone, I don’t want to live like this, I feel empty, no motivation, I feel like I don’t want to talk with anyone right now,life is black and white, I’m starting to hate people that I love and I’m hating myself. I miss my past self. I’m tired of feeling like this, not normal. I want my old life back (I will probably never get them). I just want to be happy, that’s all. I can’t do it anymore.

I am doing everything I can to sit with the thoughts and the feelings and the urges. No matter how grotesque they are and not matter how real they feel, I am doing all I can to keep going about my day. But I am really struggling. Every time I feel like I’ve made progress, more and new thoughts come in. More anguish comes. I feel like I’m drowning. I keep going. But it comes and hits me harder. Even then, I keep going. I would think it would subside but it’s just hitting me harder and won’t stop. It’s making me concerned that I am doomed and this isn’t OCD. Please help me.

Does anyone else when things are going okay in their life fixate on things. I’ve suffered with intrusive thoughts for years now and a common theme I suffer with is a “what if” - which is directed to my relationship with my girlfriend. I recently befriended someone at work (doesn’t work with me anymore) who is male and it’s the first time I had a male friend as Ive always worried my institute thoughts would get worse. What if I kissed this friend. What if this friend likes me. What if etc. I’ve had nights out where the next day I’ve imagined all kinds of things I’ve done and have horrible what if moments. Now I can’t stop thinking what if I’ve kissed this person. The thought makes me feel sick and panicky and I can’t stop crying at the thought of it. I love my girlfriend and have been with her for 9 years. I’m genuinely an insecure person and can also be bantery and flirting with my friends. I feel due to my insecurity I flirted more than I would normally with this person I used to work with for attention. Now it’s catching up with me. When I say flirting, I mean the tone and flirty jokes. Harmless as I would act this way in front of work colleges & family (I work with my dad and brother) Now all I can do is say what if I done this and what if I done that. I’d go for walks with this person at work as I was genuinely friends with him. I wanted attention, but not because my girlfriend makes me feel less than, but because I feel rubbish about myself. Am I normal? Do others do this. My insecurities and OCD mixed together makes me feel so anxious and panicky.

I’m 19 and in my second year of college, experiencing a period of extreme anxiety, similar to the experience I had first semester last year where I felt like I couldn’t handle any social situations and was anxious and overwhelmed all the time and felt like there was something wrong with me and that I couldn’t have friendships/relationships because I was rarely able to be comfortable and present in the moment because my stomach felt anxious and I was anxious about how I was being perceived/what to say/do, anxious about the anxiety basically. I keep going in a cycle it feels like of trying to tap into the right mindset to get through a day or social situation and try to enjoy it and then end up coming back to my worried thoughts and fear that I’m mentally ill (even though I know my diagnoses and have been through 2 years of inpatient/residential therapy treatment in high school so it’s not like I don’t know I have these things) trying to fix or find a way that will make it all stop. I feel like I can’t feel connected to anyone sometimes and been ruminating on the fact that I feel alone, and spending a lot more time in my room, also because I’ve been overwhelmed and stressed about school completing my assignments and working on these two big research projects which take so long because I’m a slow reader and I feel like this is another thing being effected my my racing/intrusive/repeativr thoughts. I’m working with my therapist who I’ve been meeting with online since December 2023, and this past spring/second semester of college I was able to get to a better place from where I was mentally that first semester of college by going and “doing things” like focusing on doing things such as yoga/working out when I could/breathing exercises/doing stuff to keep me busy, and that’s been my therapists main approach but I’ve felt like my thoughts have been taking over, probably due to a lot of external factors that have happened since the summer if been super anxious about such as a high intensity situation with my mom, not being welcome in a group chat/action for my schools SJP group (this whole thing is complicated), distance between some friends I was way closer with last semester, one friend completely ghosting me (blocking me on instagram) who I was close with over summer like she literally came to visit me from a different city, and I have no idea why etc. etc. Like right now I’m also overwhelmed with my ability to explain clearly and am always anxious I’m not going to be understood/I’ll just confuse people because I get confused my my own thoughts myself and don’t trust myself a lot so it’s hard to even make decisions. This is a ramble but I’m new to the app and want to see if anyone relates to the way I think/am struggling right now. I probably didn’t cover everything and K don’t even know if this is the right thing or if this in itself is rumination but whatever, I woke up with an anxious stomach and chest and thoughts so here I am.