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I relate more to this than OCD which furthers my “OCD doubt”

I feel like the thoughts and feelings are getting stronger, to the point where they feel like they are my own and that I want them and want them to happen. Recently I’ve even had feelings of ‘wanting to be gay’ and that I ‘don’t want to be straight’, or that being with a woman would be nice even though that’s literally the one thing I don’t want otherwise I wouldn’t be constantly thinking about it day after day surely and if I wanted it I would just know? I feel numb and sick and terrified that I’ll just be what I’ve feared all this time. Why does my brain do this. I feel like I’ve lost so much already, I couldn’t concentrate on university work and I’ve had to delay my degree for a year, I’ve lost my purpose, and I feel so ashamed that I can’t tell anyone the real reason for it (I just told everyone the course was too much stress and was causing me anxiety) and it just feels like it’s getting worse to the point that it’s actually coming true, and I’m going to have to leave my boyfriend because I can’t be with him anymore. Why do the thoughts sometimes feel good? Why does it feel like real attraction? Why why why does it feel like DISAPPOINTMENT with the idea of never being with a woman wtf this is literally what I don’t want and never have? Even just writing that out my brain is telling me ‘it is’ and ‘I’m lying’ and I just can’t even believe myself anymore. I’ve tried telling myself the whole maybe maybe not but it just doesn’t work. It feels like if I accept I like woman I’ll want to be with one and leave him. Why does the idea of being with a man not fill me with excitement like it used to why do labels terrify me I genuinely just want to give up I still haven’t even told anyone about this cause I just feel like they won’t understand and that they will just think I’m struggling with my sexuality and the worst thing is I don’t even know what I want anymore cause of the thoughts and feelings I don’t know what to believe what if I am actually just struggling with my sexuality cause nothing feels right anymore

Anyone willing to share there health ocd story with me? I’m really struggling with mine and would like to relate to someone and maybe talk about it. Thanks in advance. I’m new here.

i was scrolling through instagram and an ad suddenly appeared to me. they were all female t**nagers soccer players. but what my eyes saw first were thighs and legs and the worst part is not like i simply recognised impersonally an attractive look, i automatically perceived attractiveness and se&uality of the thighs. why did it happen to me? I dont want it. I don't desire it. So why was i able to find the legs attractive? When I saw the faces I knew I wasnt attracted, but what about the legs? I feel utterly defeated. I'm disgusted and traumatised by the fact that i perceived those legs and thighs attractively. i'm starting to feel like a ****.

Idk how to caption it other than that. My whole life I’ve had an issue with memory hoarding and the upside has been that I have a really vivid memories of my childhood and I get to remember my best days, the main downside has always been I have a lot of childhood trauma too and I remember every detail meticulously like I can relive and reanalyze them which has caused issues in my healing. However as much pain as it is to remember bad things so well it’s always been a bit of a comfort bc at least I know for sure even if other people don’t know or don’t believe. But as of lately I I’ve been forgetting things, whether it’s what time I’m supposed to work (and I have compulsions when checking my work schedule bc I’m always scared of reading it wrong so I usually open it up read it close it and open it up again 2-3 times so I usually KNOW) or what day it is, or just small things that I don’t remember saying or doing that other people swear on. I just have always felt like I know at the very least I know and lately I don’t and I’m so scared of going crazy and losing myself like literally my biggest fear. So I hate this. Today is Friday I was convinced yesterday was Friday and I woke up today for my Saturday shift completely convinced today was Saturday. I hate being wrong and making those small mistakes because it’s terrifying to think about what else I’m remembering wrong, or what else do I not “know” that isn’t actually the truth? I’m just so scared of losing myself mind. Has anyone ever experienced anything like this?

Hi everyone. I hope everyone is doing well. I just needed to vent for a second. So I'm divorced as of May 5th and I've been doing well with my ocd. My time of the month is happening and I'm feeling a little sensitive today. I'm in the car with my brother and sister in law and my sister and I don't have the best relationship. We never did really but I guess we are trying to mend that somehow. My brother in law and her asked me to move in with them to help take care of their baby. It's been hard because she is now happily married with a baby on the way which I feel awful for even saying.... because I thought I would be there too. But my life fell apart while his flourished. I'm happy for her but today it's a little hard because she made a comment saying "next time be smart about who you choose to marry". My brother in law said don't say that which was nice but it just reopened old wounds. For context I was emotionally cheated on by my ex husband and he said he would leave me if I wasn't on medication. While he was chatting with other women when we were suppose to be focused on our marriage and trying to fix it, his mom would call me and tell me everything I was doing wrong. I was lied to since the beginning. He lied to me about even him never being unfaithful. He cheated on his last girlfriend too. Didn't find out until after I was married. Now I'm just having a lot of negative self speak in my head about how everything is my fault and I'm starting to have a spike in feeling like God is punishing me. I'm happy with my boyfriend who I love more than anything and believe that my trials are just a test and that I deserve something good to happen. But after that comment... I'm currently tearing up in the car typing this because I just needed to get it off my chest. If you read this far... thank you. Just needed to get it out

I’ve been dealing with rocd for about 9 months now. Off and on I’ve been able to manage it. When it first presented in the beginning my boyfriend and I had just celebrated our one year anniversary and about a month later I started getting random thoughts questioning if I really love him or things telling me I’m incapable of love and then my brain trying to get me to break up with him. I started therapy a little after and she explained rocd to me. Fast forward to now I had been doing decently but we’ve been under a lot of stress lately. He has three kids from his previous marriage who started staying with us full time Monday through Thursday. He lost his job so now we both work for mine doing grocery deliveries. But the day before last I was feeling really anxious and it feels like any anxiety opens the door for intrusive thoughts. So I decided to put a post on a different ocd community forum. And a lot of the times one of my thoughts is what if you don’t really have rocd and you actually want to break up with him. In a persons response to that post they basically said what if you don’t have it and you really do want to break up but what if you do have it and you don’t want to break up. I wasn’t prepared for the first part of that sentence and I went into a full blown panic attack after reading that and my boyfriend had to help bring me out of it. We talked and I messaged my therapist after but haven’t gotten a response. And for the rest of the day I felt drained and like the anxiety was still there and the thoughts were still running around my head. And last night he had fallen asleep and I felt like crying and I came into our bathroom and I looked at myself in the mirror as I was and the thought that came up was look at you crying here this is your sign that you need to break up with him. But then I challenge my mind and ask why why do I need to do that and I can’t think of a single valid reason to break up with him. I love him I do. When I’m not spiraling we do so well and have amazing communication and he cares for me so much. But now I woke up this morning still really anxious and fighting my thoughts. Another thing too is that we have about a 9 year age gap and that had never ever been an issue in my mind. I love that he’s older than I am. Any guy my age was never something I looked for or wanted. Yesterday during the drained and still attacking thoughts I saw this younger guy at the store and then my mind immediately was like well this would be better for you he’s older and that’s why you should break up. I really really hate this and don’t want to feel like this anymore but I don’t want to leave him. He’s the person I see when I look into the future as my husband. But that’s also another thing I struggle with time and that creates more of an anxiety it’s like can I really do this for 20-30 years. But that’s not even just with my relationship I do that with anything that is long term and then I hyper focus on the time duration of everything and thinking I can’t do something for that long.

Hello, so I’ve been struggling really badly with so-ocd where I am worried that I’m not actually straight when that’s what I’ve always thought and wanted to be. I’ve been with my boyfriend for about 2.5 years now, he’s my first boyfriend and I really love him so much and want to spend the rest of my life with him. I remember one time, before I had struggles with so-ocd, I had a thought along the lines of ‘what if I’m missing out on other men by staying with him’ and it didn’t really cause any anxiety but I felt quite guilty for thinking that. But I moved on. However, right now I’m in the depths of so-ocd it started back in March I believe, and today I had a thought along the lines of ‘what if I never get the opportunity to try being with a woman because I’m in a relationship with a man’ and that has really set me off today. I’ve had a meltdown over it, my chest feels heavy and it felt so real like I actually wanted it and I had a feeling of wanting to be gay even though that’s not what I want in life. Why is this happening to me and I feel so horrible for thinking this like it felt like it was me and not the ocd and that I’m just lying to myself and my boyfriend. I’ve tried scrolling on here to see if anyone has had a similar thought or experience and I am aware that this is reassurance seeking but I just need someone to tell me that I’m okay

I’ve been struggling with ocd for a while now and did therapy for like 2 or 3 months but stopped because it wasn’t helping. My main focus right now is my ROCD, I have a boyfriend but we’re on a break right now because I was convinced that I didn’t have feeling for him anymore and I told him that being in a relationship was challenging for me because my mental state has been truly awful. During the summer I didn’t want to talk to anyone or do anything and that included talking to my boyfriend. But also I was doubting our relationship more then ever. I kept thinking that we’re so different, I was thinking about all of the things that I don’t like about him and all of the things we disagree on. And came to the conclusion that I didn’t think I wanted to be with him. And we went on break so I could have space to really figure out what I wanted. Now I’m back at the school we both go to and I want to reach out, but idk if I only want to reach out because I’m back at school where I’ve only been with him here, or because I actually want to get back together. Now my ocd is making me think that maybe I never really loved him. Or that maybe I convinced myself that I didn’t want to be with him because we were long distance and I’ve been googling and asking chatgpt. And basically I don’t know how to distinguish between my real feelings and what’s my OCD. I’m just so confused about what I should do. (Also I feel like my feelings change like the weather and I’m never consistent)

It seems every chance someone has to upset me they take it. It is like people don't pike me for some reason. I think I'm pretty good at being polite and holding my temper so I don't know what it is about me that they don't like. Why do they want to pushme?

Ever since starting ERP, my SO-OCD and general OCD has lowered. This has been great. I just wanted to have somewhere to share my thoughts and ask questions. For anyone else, have you realized that the SO-OCD and other forms of OCD are all rooted in what people have said in the past that I hadn’t processed, and up to this point believed hadn’t affected me. It was also odd because to me, I had never had a problem questioning my sexuality, even labeling myself as queer. However, this fear plagued my thoughts whether or not I decided to identity as straight, lesbian, bisexual, etc. It was so weird to me because it felt so foreign to how I’ve always been. I hated the guilt I felt over possibly being in denial or in the closet, over being homophobic, and all of that would just lead to constant stress and spiral. I felt so bad dating or being with my friends, on the off chance I was using them or going to cross lines. Progress isn’t linear, but I definetly feel so much better shedding the random fear I had of expressing affection towards my friends or of “using guys” to prove I was straight. Most of the time, I find that the stress comes from something really real. Like my past experiences with an old friend that I had or just not liking the guy I was dating and not wanting to lead him on. Being able to discern the OCD thoughts and stress from regular stress has been like a breath of fresh air.

Is anyone else just confused by their ocd all of the time?? I was diagnosed 2 months ago and I feel more confused than ever. I have no idea what’s an intrusive thought, when I’m ruminating or doing mental compulsions or what my “themes” are. I guess I don’t really have intrusive thoughts the way it seems others do and I don’t struggle with themes that are extremely taboo or frightening so I’m always just extremely confused and frustrated. I feel like I just have a lot of intrusive doubt and I think a ton but don’t really know when I’m ruminating or not?? I have comorbid depression and anxiety so I’ve no idea what’s what. Do other people struggle with this?? How do I try to begin to identify these things or know if what I’m doing mentally is a compulsion or not?!

I got interested in lucid dreaming several decades ago. I'd often had lucid dreams going back to childhood, long before I even knew the term, but it was in my early 20s that I learned about it as something some people actively pursued as a hobby, with a range of techniques to help make themselves aware of their dreaming while they were dreaming. Among those techniques is to look at a piece of writing, look away, then look back at it. As writing rarely remains stable in dreams, the writing will usually have changed if a person is dreaming, and if it stays the same, the person is probably awake. (The technique is usually described in terms of looking at a watch or clock, but it really can be used for any writing--in fact it's better if it's writing that normally wouldn't change, as clocks and watches do.) This is not the only method of reality-testing, but in my experience it's the one I've found easiest and most reliable. My full-time interest in lucid dreaming only lasted about 6 months. But thereafter I continued to use the looking-at-writing technique whenever the topic of lucid dreaming entered my mind. I began doing this practically everywhere, using whatever writing I found around me: books, food packages, devices, street signs, license plates, storefronts, and more. I even unwisely did it on occasion while driving. I did it so much it made my eyes sore and bloodshot. I even paused to do it while writing this post. Naturally, it looks strange if other people see me doing it, though it's something I try not to do around other people. My mom once saw me doing it, and she told me I had a tic. I don't think it's a tic, but it is a compulsion. My understanding of the difference is that compulsions are always a choice: I can choose to ignore the compulsion. But I guess the back-and-forth motion with my eyes and/or head may resemble a stereotypical tic to outside observers. I'm still unwilling to totally give up the habit. Part of the reason is that it still is effective at helping me become aware of my dream state while I'm dreaming, which is a positive when I'm having an unpleasant dream. But I definitely do it excessively, to a point that's probably unhealthy for my eyes, and it seems like a lot of effort for very little. I have diagnosed OCD as well as autism, but I'm not sure what particular subtype this would fall into--it's hardly the only compulsion I have, but it may be the most unusual one--as I've never heard of this happening to anyone else, not even other people who are interested in lucid dreaming. I guess it derives from a sense of anxiety connected to being uncertain about the reality around me, as well as a sense of loss of control when it comes to sleeping--which relates to my general difficulties in falling and staying asleep (which I'm currently being treated for). I also have chronic sleep paralysis going back to early childhood, and while this has provided me with yet another stepping stone to lucid dreaming, probably the fear of entering this state has further reinforced my sense of anxiety around sleeping and dreaming, and feeling a need to take control of it to the best of my ability. At least that's how I've been able to explain it. I'm open to other suggestions, or any advice others may have.

i suffer from severe contamination ocd and I'm starting to think i will never be "normal" again I have already done 20 sessions of ERP I've also tried 6 different medications so far The medication and ERP have so far reduced my OCD by 25-35% but i remain very limited and far from "normal". have any of you who also suffered from severe contamination/disgust OCD managed to recover fully and have a normal life? is it even possible for someone like me to ever have a normal life again after 7+ years of severe contamination OCD?

my thoughts are not just thoughts, they feel real, too real, i dont feel anything for him, i feel bad feeling towords him lime anger, even disgusting when thinking about intimacy, things i used to not have, i used to be so different, but since i went into a compulsion rabbit hole (googling , posting on nocd, checking my feelings constantly) i am worser and worser every single day, im not the same, i surd to feel a little better from time to time have moments of clarity, feel some love, but i dont, im in agony . people on here told me yhat maybe i matured and i lost feelings, that maybe im scared of change, i feel lime i have no feeljngs and maybe it was never love , just convinced myslef it was bc i liked the ideea, i have been having thoughts for 2 years now, and they started month 4 into our relationship, im scared that i only chased the “i must love him” and love was never there, maybe im lime this bc he is my first bf, moved to another city for me and loves me, and i don’t want to hurt him, nothing helps me, im too scsred, it feels real

I’ve recently started dating a guy. It’s been a little over a week and I’m already questioning my feelings for him. Our first date went pretty well, but since then I’ve been obsessing over the fact that my feelings for him aren’t strong enough and that they’re sometimes flat. This is very distressing because I dated someone last year for 3 months whom I never really developed much feelings for, and it was very traumatic for me because I felt like I was leading him on (which to be fair, I never told him my feelings were up and down until 3 months in). The amount of guilt I hold over that is tremendous. But fast forward a year later, and I’m dating this new guy who I seem to like and want to continue getting to know, yet here are those same doubts and loss of feelings. It’s so discouraging. The only difference this time is the thoughts aren’t as distressing, and I also never left the first date questioning my feelings for him. Looking back at my relationship from a year ago, I feel like I never really formed a connection, both emotionally and physically. It was very slow paced and I really wasn’t that interested in him. With the new guy, I have interest and I do like him, but these doubts and dull feelings make me not want to see him—they create so much anxiety and dread. He will text me good morning and I don’t get excited but instead bad anxiety (which to me seems abnormal especially when first dating/starting a relationship, but I could be wrong). And so I’ve been led to believe that these doubts and feelings MUST mean I’m not interested in him, and any further interactions are purely me forcing myself to like him. My question here is—and I must admit this is me trying to seek reassurance—there must be a difference between GENUINELY not being interested in someone and then OCD TRICKING you into thinking you aren’t into someone. Where and how is that distinction made? I’m seeing him later this evening for a date and have been feeling nervous. There’s excitement underneath, but it’s very hard to feel with all this anxiety. I’ll be giving him a letter I wrote explaining how OCD impacts me in relationships. He already knows I have the disorder, but doesn’t realize its extent. I know I’m ritualizing by giving him this letter, but I personally feel I owe it to him out of pure respect. And especially after that last relationship where I told the guy 3 months in that my feelings fluctuated.

Afraid to tell people about when I'm down. I've been told that certain people don't want to hang out with me because if I encounter a trigger then my mood changes and makes everybody else be down too. To me, this means I have to hide what I'm feeling because they don't want to deal with it. I should be able to openly talk to these people without judgments and without worrying if they'll get tired of my condition. I grew up with one of the people who told me that and she used to be depressed. Never did I feel like I wanted to distance myself when she was feeling down so how could someone say that to me. I feel like I don't have anybody to talk to anymore. One of the other people who told me that is my mom and she has said before that I'm lucky that they are still with me because anyone else would have left a long time ago. I feel like I'll never find someone who wants to stay with me because they won't want to deal with my sadness and the depression that ocd brings me. I don't know what to do anymore. I don't. My family and I were gonna go to the beach but I started feeling really sad all of the sudden. last night my brother looked down so at night I blew him a kiss and the my mom was like go give her a hug to him but hugging and physical touch makes me uncomfortable because of my ocd and she knows that and not only did it bother me that she kept insisting despite all the times I've told her jsut that but it bothered me most that she kept insisting with him right there. I don't want to make him feel bad or feel like I'm not hugging him bc it's him. and idk but I couldn't go to sleep until I explained that to him so I had sent him a text last night before either went to bed. and then I explained in person today earlier too and I told my mom over the phone since she was out all day about how it bothered me and that it bothers me as it is because I'm an affectionate person and the ocd takes that away from me constantly I don't need her to keep pushing me to do what makes me uncomfortable you know? but odk why I suddenly got a wave of sadness now but I didn't want to bring the mood down at the beach and I also kinda just needed to be alone and cry alone

You can agree to disagree in a soft gentle way

My obsessions feel so true. Like I really did flirt. Like I really do want to be with my ex lover or love him. Sometimes these thoughts come about naturally & it takes me a few minutes to freak out. Is this just the name of the game? I guess just because I thought something and DIDNT panic, doesn’t make it anymore true.

18+ Don’t view if under 18 People say ocd arousal isn’t actual arousal feeling but it’s groinal response but mine feels like actual arousal is this normal?