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Sometimes people with OCD find that it has an impact on their self-esteem. In what ways has OCD impacted your self-esteem?

So I have cheated on tests and exams before, and I just now have started feeling guilty about it because of my OCD flare ups among everything else in my life. I also have really bad relationship ocd that I may cheat or may have cheated in the past (I didn’t) and so having these thoughts that I cheat in school makes me feel like a really bad person. I didn’t feel bad about it until now, because I know that it’s wrong. I still can’t shake the feeling of guilt and I feel like I should confess to my professors.

Okay. So, for those who have seen my previous posts, you are probably well versed in what I have been going through, but I feel like venting again. 😅 So, my brother came home from the hospital (because of SI), and I'm extremely on edge from that. Bro has the F*CKING AUDACITY to mock me when I'm in pain, sigh, cry, or laugh. When he used to do that, he would smack/punch/kick/etc. me, and I got in trouble with DCFS for hitting back (1 1/2 years ago), so now I can't have kids until I'm 21 (I'll be 18 in 9 days), otherwise, they'll be taken away. I cannot laugh, joke (I'm the queen of dad jokes), cry, TALK in a silly voice, sing (my main stress relief, even if it's excruciating), or anything along the lines of expressing myself without him becoming "triggered" because it's a "boundary." I AIN'T DOING SH*T TO HIM. I MOSTLY STAY AWAY FROM HIM AND GET SNAPPED AT FOR TALKING TO >OUR< PARENTS. I don't want to go home at the end of the day, to be honest. I'm soo f*cking DONE with all this BULLSH*T!!! I overheard my dad telling my mom that he thinks my brother and I are just "faking" and "attention seeking." HOW THE F*CK DO YOU FAKE A SEIZURE??? OR MY LEG RANDOMLY CONVULSING. I DON'T F*CKING WANT BRUISES EVERYWHERE! I DON'T WANT TO FALL DOWN THE F*CKING >>STAIRS<<!!!! So then my OCD goes into overdrive, telling me that I'm not in pain, that I am faking everything, that there is nothing wrong with me, and to stop lying. That the memories of falling down the stairs are just fake and lies, even though I have the bruises to prove it. I don't get dizzy, I don't stumble, and I don't see stars when I CLEARLY AM. I'm so TIRED. My anxiety is going INSANE, so of course my BPD mood swings have to as well, so that's just f*cking PERFECT!! Absof*ckinglutely PERFECT. I'm tired of my body not working properly, I HATE my body. I HATE my personality because of how insanely unpredictable it causes me to be. I HATE how helpless I feel. I just want to make my family happy. I want them to love me. I don't want to be a burden anymore. 💔😢

This morning I was thinking (and talking) to myself about the various issues I have and I noticed how much I mull over these same issues. Even talking to myself, I replay the same problem and loop my responses and ideas about the issue over and over again, wondering if I'm doing the right thing. It reminds me of how we look in the fridge for a snack and, finding nothing, we walk off and come back to look again as if food is magically going to appear 😂 Except I know I can always go to the store. With rumination, I'm trying to make sense of something that is missing key points. I try to plan for every possiblity, but in the end, I still have no idea what will happen. I realized is that my issues have something in common: they are over situations that are BEYOND MY CONTROL. Rather than accepting, I attempt to affect them in what little ways I can, pretty much unsuccessfully and not worth all the effort. Wouldn't it be nice to redirect all that energy into something more productive?

I had a really bad episode 2 months ago. Started therapy and meds and have been getting better. then this past weekend I was slammed with a completely new set of intrusive thoughts about my mother's mortality. She is alive and well and I see her often but yet I can't shake the idea of her death and how my life will never be the same and eternally broken when she dies. This feels unique because so much of my past OCD are things that either can't happen or are unlikely. But this is certain. We all die. And I have no idea how to start to deal with this.

Just been discharged from hospital outpatients after operation and 3 month recovery. There was an ultrasound on eyes and possibility of radiotherapy treatment for a spot there, but turned out it was benign. OCD was quiet during this time. However, now OCD has come back big time, and I'm wishing I hadn't been so fortunate with diagnosis. Tired of going through this like groundhog day, and worried that there will come a time where I won't cope. Can't tell anymore if this is OCD or I'm just losing my mind. All plans and dreams gone now.

my ocd has been all over the place the past few days and it’s really exhausting. it’s convincing me i’m lesbian, im racist, i don’t like my bf, or im dying of 5 different diseases. im so tired. i’ve been more physical and keeping myself busy so im not sure why its acting up. within the past hour my ocd told me that i secretly like girls and i cant date my bf and that im racist bc i didn’t think a guy who is a poc was attractive. i feel like a horrible person and i feel like it won’t stop.

Every night when I get home from work, I have this habit of touching the tree at the end of my street. Tonight I had an intrusive thought/ image of myself laughing at someone getting a serious health diagnosis. It caused my anxiety to increase as that’s so unlike me and I work in a hospital so I’m dealing with health problems on the daily and it’s not funny. My brain basically was telling me I had to go and touch all these trees again to rectify the situation or I can no longer buy items I was wanting to buy (had my eye on a few things to get). I just keep going doing I circles, I know it’s not logical but I can’t help it :(

from Saturday, i didnt talk to chat gbt, didnt post here out of desperation and didnt even cry . but, ofc, i still have thoughts and a strange feeling in my chest but im too over this and tired to respond . But what if i will stop the compulsions and responding to them, ignoring them, but i will still feel bad and realise my thoughts are real and im lying to myself and him. he told me to tell him when a though pops out so he can talk me through it bc he wants to help me and he is sad i always ask people online for help and not him, he did helped me various times but sometimes in just too much. Im scared, this is stupid i know, i know yhis is dumb and it annoys me. i think that he is cringe and annoying and that i dont stand him , and that means i dont like him bc sometimes i get mad at him and look at him with “disgusting “ but not in that way. like what if i dont stand him and i am with him bc im used to him and what if he is cringe and annoying… IM MORR CRUNGE AND ANNOYING THEN HIM BUT IT MAKES ME THINK I DONT LIKE HIM.

I came across a video that was talking about a theory and it was something me and my friend were talking about 2 years ago and were tweaking about and i was explaining it to my girlfriend just now and them i started to get anxiety about stuff not being real and my world isn’t what it seems to be and that there stuff out there and then i started to have religious OCD and then it went to how Im scared of the world being fake or suffering from a mental illness like schizophrenia or something and stuff and I’ve been having OCD about my girlfriend being a government agent or that government agents are watching me cause I’m scared of schizophrenia and thinking like them i don’t think i actually think it i kinda just go to my girlfriend isn’t a government agent which scares me into thinking i was thinking she was or gonna think she is or idk if i just saying that to bot seem insane or something but like idk if i truly believe that i doubt it i don’t believe it any other time and then i started getting stress i might hurt or maybe kill her and it scares me cause shes my everything and I’m scared of losing her idk guys I’m getting stressed hella and I’m scared of myself and my OCD I’m genuinely tired of it like anyone can ask my girlfriend and she’ll say i cant go 5 mins without ticcing (from ocd) or asking for reassurance like that life is real and thats shes real and I’m real and nothings wrongs and stuff, i probably sounds crazy lmaoo maybe and the sucky thing is i don’t have a therapist or a thingy going on for me cause i don’t have a job and or insurance let alone.

As someone who has never been in a relationship it’s hard for me to envision myself in one and know what it will feel like. I feel like being 21 I’ve protected myself a lot due to insecurity. I want a boyfriend and yet I don’t it’s just all really scary for me. I never had the stupid relationship to break the ice and now I’m putting so much pressure and emphasis on things and finding the RIGHT person. Also have hocd definitely doesn’t help. I’m working on myself and doing my best. But my current feelings are: I don’t like the way I look, I can’t imagine myself with someone, and I’m never going to find someone I click with and feel good with. Any advice??????

So I get happy meals if I’m not too hungry or if I’m curious what the new toys going to be ( they’re never good ) they’re not what they used to be …. You used to get actual mini game toys … but today I got 2 little key chain toys from pet simulator… looks like a duck and a bear ? Or a squirrel… I’m easy to please ..: what’s your favorite thing or toy whatever you’ve got as an adult from somewhere? No judgement here

I thought I'd gotten over sexual obsessions, since they haven't been bothering me at all until I had a flare up yesterday. I usually struggle with masturbation due to a combination of both anorgasmia from SSRI medication along with intrusive thoughts, so I thought that an adult film should work fine and went on the hub as per usual. Everything went well until I "finished" and looked at the video title afterwards. My stomach dropped as the title had the word "teen" it in. I felt nauseous and gross because I'd previously struggled and became horrifically suicidal due to the pocd I thought I had under control. Now I know that by the word teen, it means an adult actress that's 18-19 and I'm only 20. But I can't shake the feeling that I'm gross for watching and that it was illegal material, even though I am fully aware that it wasn't, so I've been ruminating over it endlessly. This is more of a vent, but I feel like all the progress I've made with my ocd just went down the drain ☹️

i’ve had pretty bad anxiety since about 10 tonight (it’s 2 am rn). i started really worrying because my head wouldn’t stop hurting even after i took a nap and two advil. then my stomach was hurting. then i took two more advil because my head kept going. then because i was worrying so bad i went into my mom’s room and she gave me a zofran. then i lied in there, watching the notebook to try and distract myself. and that started working and i started feeling better. but then i got hit with a second wave of anxiety, making me think i was gonna get sick even though i took a zofran. and i’m still dealing with it rn and can’t stop panicking. i have an ice pack on my neck to help alleviate the anxiety along with my heating pad and a movie playing on my computer. right now i’m freaking myself into having food poisoning. it just sucks when my nights are spent like this and i can’t get out of it.

Hello, I’m in undergrad and recently was diagnosed with OCD. Its a very new diagnosis and it’s both been stressful and relieving to receive it. Looking back at my past I’ve been able to explain a lot of behavioral issues that I thought were simply attributed to me being “crazy”. It’s comforting to know it’s something that others struggle with and that there are set coping mechanisms and treatments for it. There are a number of thing of which I obsessively think about, and it’s been getting really hard to deal with all of them. The most troubling are my thoughts toward suicide. I can’t stop thinking about it. There’s not really any intent, it’s just like my brain has tuned into a frequency that plays in the background at all times. Usually though this leads to more dangerous behaviors, and so I always try to do any preventative work to keep myself safe. As for the asking for advice portion of this post, what do you all do to combat unending loops of thought? Because I’m so new to my diagnosis, my therapist and I haven’t found good strategies for me yet, outside of just labeling those thoughts as OCD in an attempt to delegitimize them.

i came out of it now i’m back in , what helps?

My boyfriend just said this to me: “If u rlly wanna be together n build something healthy u wouldn’t try to look at every small negative aspect or disagreement as a dealbreaker” do you think deep down i just don’t want to be with him? I’m so confused

My OCD is going absolutely insane right now. There are SO many stressors, so much mental and physical stress. I feel crazy. UGH I’m gonna let myself keep crying for now because ☹️

Hello all, I’ve dealt with various OCD themes and compulsions for pretty much as long as I can remember. In some periods of my life the thoughts and compulsions have been particularly severe, but I’ve also had years where I’m able to keep it under control. This has made me worry I don’t actually have OCD, especially because I haven’t been doing consistent therapy and my therapists have gone back and forth on whether I have OCD. In the past few years, I’ve struggled immensely with false memory ocd, and right now I’m going through probably the most severe episode of my life. I love my boyfriend with all my heart. A few times that I’ve gone out drinking I’ve had the thought before “what if I lost control and cheated tonight” and it’s bothered me severely. Two times before, it’s gotten to the point of convincing myself that because I talked to a man that meant I had cheated on my boyfriend and just couldn’t remember. It has never turned out to be true. About a month ago, I went out with friends and had too much to drink. I was really ashamed of myself the next morning, particularly because I always try to drink cautiously now that I know it can trigger my anxiety. I am ashamed to admit I do not remember the very end of the night getting in my uber and going home. I woke up anxious and extremely worried and immediately started off by worrying if I could have tried to kiss my friend and not remembered. I called him and was immediately reassured nothing had happened, I simply drank too much and went home at the end of the night. I started feeling better, but then remembered a moment I had been in the bathroom. I remembered chatting with people in line about how long the line was, and then being in the bathroom on my phone. I then felt like I remembered people knocking and saying to myself “that wasn’t that long” and leaving. There is nothing concrete that I remember that in any way indicates I cheated, and in fact I have texts with my boyfriend from the whole night telling him I loved him. My friend told me that the only time I was ever apart from him was about 5 minutes and that when he came back I was in the same exact spot he left me in. However, when I remembered being in the bathroom, I thought to myself “what if you cheated on him in the bathroom”/ “oh my god did you cheat on him in the bathroom” and then a series of images of me performing sexual acts popped into my head. I’ve poured over my memory and truly do not remember meeting anyone, talking to anyone, or even finding anyone attractive that night, but the fact that I was drinking makes me worried I’m just forgetting and these images could be real. I’ve been constantly ruminating on these fears for the past month, to the point that the only relief I feel is when I’m able to fall asleep. I’m a law student and it’s becoming extremely difficult to keep up with my classes. I’ve been google searching, asked chat gpt for advice, confessed my fears to my boyfriend, asked for reassurance from pretty much everyone in my life, and even emailed the bar asking for security footage (which I know all sounds insane). I’m a naturally guilty person and feel bad about small things, so I really don’t think I would be capable of cheating and then nonchalantly texting my boyfriend, but these images feel so real that it’s terrifying. I’ve also seen a lot about how I would “just know” and that begins to scare me because then I think “you do just know, you did it” even though I really don’t think I did. I know these posts are not supposed to be for reassurance seeking, I’m just so exhausted and feeling really depressed. I’m wondering if anyone has experienced something similar and has any advice. I’m also wondering if images can feel more real the more you ruminate on them or if it’s a sign of memory. Thank you so much for listening.

so about two years ago, i got into a super BAD ocd episode. it made me scared of letters, numbers, texting, etc. like something bad was happening. and we were watching a soccer game, and seeing letters would freak me out. i remember my mind telling me “words and numbers are scary, the way you see them, now you’re going to hyper focus on them and it’s going to scare you” i’ve been much better, but now my mind is going back to that. “you need to hyper focus and be scared again” has this ever happened? like you think of something that scared you and wonder if you should be frightened again? cute weenie dog gif because look at them 🥹