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I was reading Reddit about people finding out there a late bloomer and I relate to all of it and the worse part is it’s not bothering me

I got stuck in a Solipsism spiral and I feel like everything and everyone is fake and all in my head like a dream is all in your head at night. I feel like i’m never going to feel normal again and alone and stuck. I feel like everything could be in my head and nothing exists. Please can someone tell me they felt like this before and got over it eventually and back to normal.

Hey All, So, I’ve always had patterns of ether initially having anxiety when I get dating someone or close to me and the anxiety has become so extreme I believed it to be my body telling me that it was not ‘right’ relationship so I ended so many of them. I have struggled with POCD thoughts in my past and got over them. But I’m back to the ROCD side of things. I met my current partner through work and we never had a honeymoon period. We talked consistently! One day I woke up and said. “I bet myself tomorrow that I’m going to start feeling anxiety”. Then wake up the next day and anxiety rises upon me. My partner knows my OCD and past obsessions. But now this is the killer. She is supportive and has taken so many blows from my OCD with confessions and compulsions. Currently I have this awful feeling all day that I’m so unhappy, irritated, slight anxiety about this relationship. I’m not checking but being drawn to others who are more attractive and I just have to look and I know I enjoy it and do this behind her back. But don’t get anxiety. I have this “knowing” that I am lying and not in the right relationship and continuing because it is easier to carry on than suffer with the abandonment of ending it. But I just find myself worrying about what if she finds out how i truly feel and issues. Now if someone was to read this and say to my back, you need to break up with her and let her go. I’d trigger and get anxious but I know I would only be getting anxious over the truth. But I’d get ‘what ifs’ if we broke up and I made the right decision or wrong decision. I know this is gonna follow me to every and next relationship until I find the one who does not make me anxious. Or work on myself. But I feel that everytime she wants to do something or more commitment I get the voice and the feeling of “I don’t want to” and when I agree and do it or other things I feel like such a liar! Some advice or similarly stories would be great please.

My fiancé and i are breaking things off, i was at fault - i hurt them near the end of a recent major mental episode that lasted weeks. I haven’t had one like this in years. I really would love some tips on how to combat being alone? It’s only been half a day and i’m already chronically struggling. I don’t have any support, friends, etc. so that’s why i’m here seeking it and i have a phobia of being alone due to past trauma. Any advice is appreciated, thanks! sending lots of love and hugs <3

TW: suicidal Constantly fixated on the fact of helping people. I’m always doing compulsions like checking social medias to see if people need help etc, it’s exhausting cause I’m so sad I’m unable to help everyone. I just don’t know what to do and if I’m being entirely honest it’s making me not wanna be here anymore. I’m afraid that if i walk away from my phone for even 5 minutes someone will be in need and in danger and I want be there to help therefore it’s my fault etc. how can i cope with this? Obviously I want to help people but I wanna do it in different ways

I am currently 17 and I’ve had ocd ever since I was a child. Everyone noticed around me because I was obsessed with washing n my hands and having perfect handwriting to a point where while taking notes in church, I erased the letter “e” and had my cousin fill in the letter e through my whole page of notes. I would want notebooks to be perfect often resulting in me ripping imperfect pages off and ruining the whole book. I would erase till the page ripped. Later as a kid I watched movies like coraline and was felt that because of me doing certain things, I sent myself to an alternate reality. (I know it sounds insane but I was a child with ocd). I was convinced that because I did the Bloody Mary challenge in elementary school, I sent myself into a fake alternate dimension. I would have to do the Bloody Mary challenge and even amount of times to reverse it and recall the exact events of when I did it. I also heard about the Truman show and felt that I was in a simulation and would have to do certain things to get out. This gave me severe depression in middle school. I would walk backwards on tiles to make sure it was even. I would have to touch things an even amount of times and do intrusive thoughts like breaking this keychain I made and loved. I would pet my dog and think the most horrific things of her injured and would have to pray to protect her. Eventually as I got older, my trigger became forgetting things like forgetting thoughts that could be important or important TikTok’s so every time I scrolled on TikTok I would have to scroll all the way back up and would have anxiety if the page refreshes on its own. I am obsessed with dropping or leaving stuff so I always look back like a crazy person 24/7 to see if I dropped something. I would take excessive random screenshots to not forget something or if they jog a memory. I fear I accidentally close tabs on my computer which drives me insane even if I never even touched the tab. I have a hard time throwing away empty packages just in case something is in it that I never noticed. Sometimes I become hyper aware of swallowing. I get scared because as a Christian, blasphemy is an unforgivable sin so I would have panic attacks thinking my random intrusive thoughts were real and blasphemy. I would be confused with my sexuality even though I know I’m straight. And a lot of my irrational things I am aware are crazy but still am urged to follow through even if I suffer. I get obsessed with getting good sleep and if something I did in my past will actually be a major health problem. I would think that something I did in my past is gonna make God punish me. I get obsessed with my clothes or hands getting dirty so I’m always washing it. I get obsessed with being pretty and used to screenshot like 100 photos of pretty people. I have an overall obsessive personality. I also overthink about everything I say. Overall these are my most noticeable symptoms and my story. I know 100% that I have OCD and everyone around me knows but I just never had the means to get officially diagnosed because I only recently opened up to my parents on how big of a problem my ocd actually is and I didn’t want to pay for help. This is my ocd story.

So I’m unsure if I am just jealous or just in the wrong. My boyfriend is a mommas boy and he lets his mom run over him and take advantage of him. His mom always calls every hour when we hang out. She used to have him with very strict curfews and my boyfriend would say “ a strict curfew means she cares for me and she’s a good mom” ( I’m 19 and my curfew is 11pm and he’s 21 his curfew used to be 8pm). Last two times me and my boyfriend hung out she called and said she had to go somewhere and my boyfriend had to accompany her. We were in the middle of hanging out and had to stop go get here and I had to go with him and his mom ( me in the back seat sitting quietly they speak Spanish so I don’t understand but he speaks English also). I just don’t want to even go out with him anymore because his mom is always cutting our time short with stuff she wants to do. Today he was upset I didn’t want to go with them when she decided to barge in the middle of my date. I made the excuse I had to help my family at home because I just didn’t want to go with his family. Should I speak up or stay silent? At the end of the day I am tired and I don’t want to compete with his mom with my boyfriend time and attention. I’m fine without attention I never get any anyways from anyone.Also I just have a lot on my mind mentally my intrusive thoughts have been getting to me and I also needed to vent :)

Hello All, I’m very new to this forum. And over the past few weeks I was doing okay with my OCD. Until , I dealt with a real life scenario that sent me into a spiral for two whole days and impacted my sleep. I was walking out of the store, shaking a protein shake, I noticed a guy, and my OCD theme lately has been cheating/fear of cheating on my boyfriend of four years. I was formally diagnosed with OCD last year when I had sexual images and nightmares about a coworker. Yesterday, I was shaking the protein shake, I told myself to not be afraid. I looked at them. The issue was that they looked back. I felt so scared that I just started something inappropriate or something sexual. My sister told me I didn’t cheat and that I’m slowing down the event cause it was only a few seconds. My fear lasted for days and I did compulses by asking for reassurance from my sister and Friend. Even the fear in my stomach made me think that I created a moment with this stranger and felt afraid because I didn’t realize I was shaking the protein shake until after since it was a unconscious thing I did. I overthought the moment to the point where I started gagging and couldn’t sleep. Because my OCD told me I had cheated. Or that “feeling” in my stomach made me think I “liked the situation” or “what if I liked the person” How do yall deal with Intrusive thoughts that come in real time?

I’m struggling worse than I ever have. I’ve been in a bad flare up the past 2 weeks and it’s getting worse each day. I’ve always been able to get back on track but this time it’s so hard and affecting my time with my kids.Last night for the very first time I had an ocd dream. It was horrible and I know it’s just my ocd manifesting into my dreams but i’ve been beating myself up because while dreaming I woke up briefly and became aware of the dream and was disturbed but just went right back to sleep. How could I just go back to sleep like that?? Then as i’m struggling to cope with that my 2 worst false memories about my children came to mind and i’m struggling with those all over again now. I developed ocd as postpartum so my ocd has always targeted my kids. My ocd has come and gone over the years. First harm ocd and then switched to pocd. I’ve always had a fear of unwillingly and unknowingly acting out my thoughts in my sleep and doing something inappropriate to them. So twice over the years I had a false memory based on real event situation. One with my son when he was a toddler and one with my daughter when she was around 7. With my son it was a long time ago so some of my memory has faded about it which makes it worse but basically he was sleeping with me one night and in the morning I got up and he was still asleep so I went downstairs to clean a bit. When I went back upstairs he was awake and had the blanket wrapped around him. I said goid morning and told him to come down for beeakfast but when he cane out of the blanket his underwear weren’t on. I yelled at him and asked where they were and why he took them off and yelled back “you!” My ocd immediately kicked in telling me I must have done something to him in my sleep and that day has forever haunted me even though I know i’d never do anything inappropriate to him and that him being a toddler there are so many other reasons for why he had no underwear on I still feel like what if it’s true? Then with my daughter, she slipped into bed with me one night and during the night she said “mommy!” I woke up slightly and lifted my head up saying “sorry mama” and moved over and went back to sleep thinking I must have rolled over onto her or something but when I woke up the next morning my ocd said that I must have done something inappropriate ti her in my sleep. I asked her about it a short time later and she said she didn’t remember that. Deep down I know I love my kids and would never do these things but because of my ocd/pocd I always have tge uncertainty of what if it’s true? So to have that ocd dream last night which was the first time that’s ever happened, while I know it’s just ocd I just can’t stop hating myself for waking up briefly realizing the dream was happening and feeling upset but then just going back to sleep like it was no big deal. Ocd has ruined my life and made me question and hate myself for years. Are there any other moms/dads out there with pocd that have had similar experiences? Please help. I don’t want to live like this anymore. It’s debilitating😪

Hi everyone, I’m really struggling with something right now, and I wanted to share it in case anyone else can relate, and also to remind myself that I’m not alone. I’m a 16-year-old dealing with OCD, and lately, it’s been taking a huge toll on me. I’ve been feeling really anxious about something that happened when I was browsing videos out of curiosity. I made sure to overanalyze every video I watched to make sure the people in them looked like adults, and everything seemed consensual. I was really careful to only watch videos where I felt like the people were clearly adults, and the situation seemed appropriate. I’ve been too scared to go on other sites like Pornhub because I’m afraid of finding things that are just too much for me or that could be harmful. So, I trusted YouTube because it felt like a safer place to explore my curiosity. However, I recently found out that some of the videos I watched got taken down because they went against YouTube’s guidelines for nudity or sexual content. Now, I’m freaking out because I’m terrified that maybe the videos were taken down because they involved younger minors, maybe even a 12-year-old, and I didn’t realize it. I know it sounds really random, but OCD is making me feel like I’ve done something terrible. I keep overthinking and questioning whether I missed something or if I accidentally watched something inappropriate, even though I made sure that the people in the videos looked like adults. The fear that there might have been someone younger involved is stressing me out so much. It’s causing so much anxiety, and I don’t know what to do. I didn’t mean to do anything wrong, and I didn’t want to see anything bad, but I’m just so scared right now. If anyone has gone through something similar or has any advice on how to deal with these intrusive thoughts, I’d really appreciate hearing from you. I just want to feel like I’m not crazy :/

Why do our brains do this? Like how is it this part of us that tries to convince us that we’re scum and want to do bad things? How is this even possible? Why does it produce fake feelings and sensations. The groinals get talked about but I feel like the other emotions and feelings this can produce doesn’t get spoken about. I’m so tired of my brain. I’ve seen people say it’s my brain trying to be helpful and misfiring but that just cannot be true. None of this shit is helpful.

elle warren’s story really confused me. (if you don’t know who she is she wrote articles about how she has soocd fear of being gay and actually turned out gay. because she realized she had soocd and internalized homophobia happening at the same time) it feels like i’m gay and im the rare case. it feels like alignment. i have no anxiety right now about it. it feels like i have internalized homophobia and soocd and that im gay. and it doesn’t even make me feel sad right now. like it almost feels right. but i just spent the last four months crying and living in fight or flight trying to figure this out. i’m the rare case and no one can tell me if i am or not. i align with like a lot of things she went through except i wasn’t raised in a homophobic home my family is very chill. that’s litteraly our only difference. it’s so unfair. how did she have soocd fear of being a lesbian and realize she was a lesbian with the internalized homophobia. It feels like i’m like her. i’m so confused. this is so confusing.

Basically I started having derealisation episodes back in 2017 and ever since then there have been multiple themes that get stuck to my head convincing me that I’m the only one in this world and other people aren’t real. I got a lot better in 2021 but this year it started to happen again and I find myself wondering that what if I’m in a brain in vat simulation and I’m the only one there with other people as AIs. But I realized that statistically the chances are very low and when I can scientifically refute such thoughts I feel a lot better. But today I have been feeling very anxious and another thought popped into my head that ok what if this simulation has more people like a billion (which increases my chances of being in it) and the remaining billion are AIs. Can you pls help me refute this thought scientifically and logically like why would it even be needed etc? Thank you 😭

I remembered something and it was awful. When I calmed down, I thought “I don’t think it actually went like that?” I feel like I’m making an excuse to make myself feel better. Like I’m lying to myself to feel okay? Like it’s not false memory ocd mixed in with real event. It’s just me being a monster and I just want to feel better. I feel like I made a big mistake, didn’t think twice back then but now I feel like crap and want an excuse to think I didn’t do that. I don’t know what’s real and what isn’t. I’m so scared.

So I know that when your ocd starts to subside and you start to heal the thoughts don’t effect you nearly as much as they did or maybe even at all. Well that’s happening to me which I’m grateful for. But how do you not fall for the ocd trap of “these thoughts don’t bother you so that must mean you’ve accepted them and they are true” like how do you deal with it and not have that thought constantly live in your head. Side note: my ROCD used to bother me 24/7 but now they mainly only kick it when I see my boyfriend and I don’t know if that’s a normal thing. ^ I have a tendency to form questions in a way that are reassurance seeking which I didn’t know so if any of this seems that way I promise that’s not my intent I’m just trying to learn more about it and what I can do to help. Any advice is greatly appreciated.

i couldn't take this anymore. maybe i'll just let ocd win this time. it's too hard to not have a clear conscience everytime i'm with my bf cuz my mind is telling me i'm unfaithful and don't deserve to be happy. i feel like i'll never get better anymore. i already told myself many times to stop attracting attention from other people especially to people i'm having false attraction to. but i did it again yesterday, right after i smiled a little extra in front of that girl i might be attracted to i could feel the massive anxiety in my chest. already decided last week that i might be actually attracted to her so it's best to fully avoid her. i avoided her with the best i could, but we're in the same classroom and i saw her in my peripheral vision looking at us (my bf and i) whispered to myself not to make any mistake i'll regret, but then i felt like i lose control and laugh a little extra. i searched micro cheating and it says there "trying to impress someone you're attracted to" and now i want to break up with my bf. the guilt is too strong. i couldn't sleep at night.

I genuinely can’t shut my brain up, it’s constantly making me think everyone is judging me and everyone is talking about me or thinking I’ve done something when I haven’t. Me and my male friend were chatting about the fact he’s moving away and him and his gf are having a rough patch so I was listening to him, we walked off from the group because it was personal and he wanted to sorta vent. I’m worried now it looked like we walked off and something happened between us but that’s not the truth, he’s a close make friend and that’s it, nothing else. We’ve been friends since I was young. But I know what people are like and idk why their perceptions of me means so much, like it doesn’t mean anything what people think of me. I know what happened, I know I’m just friends with the guy so why does it matter? I hate it so much Also, there was a guy out who I’ve known since I was really small (he’s a lot older than me) and basically he’s always been really crude. He was making jokes I didn’t like but knew it was a joke, me and my cousin were out and he kept making weird comments but I let them slide. He then started making crude jokes about me and him which once again I just washed over, I thought we were just joking and I don’t remember saying anything that could’ve led him to believe I was into him, especially when he’s just all joking and always has been. He then started to wink at me which I said “don’t wink at me” while laughing sorta calling him out, once again I thought all of this was just a joke. Until I sat on the chair he was originally sitting in because mine got taken, and he started touching my ass and stroking my back, I don’t like confrontation so I just ignored it and didn’t play into what he was trying to do. I told my sister and she wasn’t having it and told my male friend, he wasn’t happy so stood between us so he couldn’t touch me. I didn’t think anything bad of it at the time but when we were all chatting I said “it was my fault I played into it I must’ve given off the vibe I was into it” which all of them even the men said “no shut ip that’s not how that works absolutely not you did nothing wrong” and kept saying it wasn’t me. But now I’m sat here thinking maybe he didn’t take the jokes as jokes like I did and maybe the entire time he was being serious. But it’s made me feel really weird and I don’t like it but think I was in the wrong

I love the community here but I feel like it triggers me more than anything else. Someone on here mentioned the fear of being possessed to the point where they stayed in their room and really believed they were. Now I’m freaking out I’m going to do the same thing even tho this wasn’t even in my mind 5 minutes ago…help!! Any suggestions in this particular theme? Can you really convince yourself of something just by worrying enough, because I thought that was what differentiates ocd from other things…you have the fear of the fear almost…and that it can’t take over and genuinely convince you and then this post totally freaked me out!

Trying to finally start facing my Existential OCD and thoughts. When I get a scary thought, fire example “what if nothings real and i’m imagining everything”. I then tell myself maybe and distract myself. After doing this, I feel very on edge and everything feels unreal and fake and dreamy (might be partly dpdr) but it’s almost like i’ve fully accepted nothings real and i’m scared i’ll feel like that forever. Is this normal or am I doing my ERP wrong?

i’m having sm anxiety rn bc i had a choir christmas party yesterday at school and we had snacks and sugar and i think sm sugar can make ur ocd rise bc it’s technically caffeine but also since i’m a senior in high school we had this thing for seniors and i got 2 cookies i ate that so i think it generally messed with my anxiety and ocd but when i got home i was so tired and felt bleh but i was anxious bc my fear of death ofc was like “what if ur dying?” and i’m having trouble breathing bc i woke up from a nap yesterday and i was panicking bc i thought i was gonna puke… but i woke up from a morning headache and i was anxious this morning but i’m like ugh it’s so hard bc my head feels weird and my body feels weird like almost like a burn out after anxiety?? but like i took a tylenol idk if it helped… but my head feels weird and body feels weird like almost light headed but not? and tired feeling but then my health, sucidial, and fear of death in general has been going back to back