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Been coping for over two decades. Was off medication for a few months and then started back up again. Cant stop obsessing over worst case scenarios with house repairs and hypotheticals of what could break or go wrong. Any tips?

For the past couple month I have had an obsessive thought and come up with crazy scenarios in my head of my boyfriend cheating with one of my friends (we are no longer friends because of this). It seems like the second I am not with him I have these thoughts. Initially I kept it to myself then i began accusing him of cheating or just shutting down whenever he would ask why me and her haven’t hung out. He began to notice. One day he relised I checked his phone while he was sleeping and we had a huge argument not because I checked his phone but because he believed i don’t trust him which I truly do it just my thought can’t help but believe this. After this we both unadded people of the opposite sex on snapchat. I began therapy and was diagnosed with ocd this targeted my relationship becoming rocd. We have been fine. She then unadded me off of everything and took me out of her highlights all because my boyfriend unadded her. So i questioned her and all of her reasoning seemed to be about him. Anytime I was around her It’s like my body went into fight or flight and it made me sick. This is when these thoughts started. I made it clear I don’t want him to have her on snap which he doesn’t I even went as far as blocking her on all of his social media. We both added our old friends back excluding her. But this past week I have had this thought that he has added her or just unadds her when I am not around. I really want to check his phone but i know it will reset the compulsion. How do I stop this thought and wanting to check his phone. He is more than perfect and has given me every reason to trust him oh and have I mentioned we have been together for 4 years. Anytime he does something nice or says things nice I question it and my thought goes to what have you done. Well now he has mentioned her that we aren’t friends also she got him a beer that’s rare a couple of months ago he was like oh this is the only thing i thank her for. Also he mentioned her cats name when talking about cats. In my mind these are subliminal messages that he can possibly still be in contact. Is this normal for me to be looking for little things like this? I know it’s crazy but he has been speaking about marriage recently and how in the next two years he would love to get married I believe him but what if he only says these things to make me think he isn’t cheating.

I've been trying to date again and with OCD, it's been difficult as I'm sure you can imagine. I had a date with someone that we had planned for a fortnight, but they cancelled on the day. They didn't text me for a week so I sent them a message asking if I did anything wrong. They said I didn't, so I asked that they just tell me next time. I genuinely wasn't mad, I was just upset that after sending messages every day, a week would pass without anything. I thought I had hurt them in some way. After explaining everything I have said just now, I received a one word message. "Okay." Now I'm over apologising because I know they're upset. In my head I'm asking why I don't ever get an apology.

Hey y'all Just wanted to ask - I've been having sexual intrusive thoughts for many months now and I'm in recovery, luckily things have gotten way way more manageable but one issue still remains There are moments where you 100% don't want these thoughts to appear. And my brain has learned, through weeks of avoidance and checking, that every time I go and try engaging with anything sexual, I must wonder about every single thing that's happening. What do I mean by this? Example: You start experiencing legitimate arousal that aligns with your desires, identity etc. Immediately, your brain goes "Okay, but did you just have an intrusive thought just now or what? What if you did?" so you check, which only leads to the intrusive thought actually appearing. Sometimes I have this weird effect where I feel like I had an image or thought pop into my head but I can't tell whether it actually happened, even if I don't think it did. I'm so hyper-vigilant about my own thoughts that I basically find intrusive thoughts where there were none. It's really messed me up, because I feel like I can't actually enjoy things that I used to before, and I'm not even that anxious because of ERP which makes this even more confusing. It feels like the intrusive thoughts have become "normal" or "fine" which I know they haven't, but then, I still used to be able to engage with sexuality and enjoy it to some extent, even if I had intrusive thoughts. That ability has gone down over time, especially with ERP for some reason, and I don't know why. I'm scared that this means a genuine change in preferences or paraphilia, but like... I know it probably doesn't? Has anyone in recovery from Pure OCD / sexual OCD had anything similar happen? Thanks in advance.

TW - Groinal Responses 18+ Also tmi As of the last week or two, I have no idea why or how, but the groinal responses have gotten so, so much worse... Today was so bad... And I'm still having a very hard time. Like, I don't even know if I want to say how bad it really is. It's beyond just obsessing about it; I have to try to distract myself so something doesn't actually happen from the groinal response (I'm intentionally being vague bc I don't want to say much about the situation). I'm seriously struggling... and I don't know what to do or how it can change... This is tmi too, but years ago I had another issue regarding groinal responses. And even just the thought of it made my body do something I would have thought couldn't have happened just from thinking and worrying about it happening [the thing my body did back then isn't as distressing as I'm worried about my body doing now] (and yes, I'm intentionally being vague again) My mind and body are very against me right now...

I, for whatever reason, took it upon myself to share with one of my friends about OCD diagnosis… Immediately regretted it. The first thing she said to me after I told her was “you know I think all of us are a little bit OCD.” Then she literally proceeds to tell me why she thinks she’s OCD… I’ve heard that people react like this sometimes when people share their diagnosis with them, I just never thought one of my friends would respond like that. It just caught me off guard.

Is anyone here a regular (or semi regular) journaler? (Or was in the past?) I’m talking something like a daily (or just regular if not daily) practice, not just using the app to journal about symptoms/other OCD-related stuff. I’m curious if folks have found this helpful in general for mental health, if they actually found it made OCD symptoms worse… It’s something I fall in and out of and I’m curious what other folks’ experiences have been (with the lens of OCD in mind). Also any type of journaling totally counts! Art, vocal recording, anything that translates thoughts to “real space”! I’m curious about any of it.

Ive seen a lot of information online and misinformation, my ocd has been severe since I was a child, as probably most of yours have as well. I’m currently doing CBT with a therapist and I really can’t tell if it is making me worse which is causing an obsession around it. How does CBT affect some individuals suffering and what’s your experience?

I had a best friend middle school. We were friends for a long time and I can guarantee with 100% certainty that not once did I ever have any crush or romantic feelings for her. No matter how much I analyze it, I can’t find any trace of romantic feelings. However what is eating me alive right now, is a time where she was showing me a martial arts move and I was VERY uncomfortable. I’m not really a touchy person even with friends I’ve never been comfortable with hugging or anything like that. Even if i’m very comfortable with that friend I just don’t like to be touchy feely. But when she was showing me her martial arts moves I immediately got very uncomfortable and stiff especially because to my brain it was like a sexual position and I didn’t like it. So as I sat there full of discomfort she was sitting on my groin and my focus went to my groin and I felt a tingle. I immediately got up and just felt disgusted and again, UNCOMFORTABLE. Yk that uncomfortable distressing feeling you get with a groinal response? that’s how it felt. I don’t remember what happened after but it never changed my sexuality or how I viewed her. I completely forgot about it and we remained friends for a little while in high school but nothing ever changed. Now that my OCD has latched onto my childhood exploration/reaction to sexual content/porn use/ false memories/this particular memory/ and me mistaking a cartoon character and masc lesbian as men, I have been going actually insane. Before my spiral i completely forgot ab all of this. It didn’t mean anything to me and changed nothing. The logical side of my brain tells me I’m obsessing over nothing, my real genuine feelings i’ve had for men all my life and the ones I felt for my boyfriend after years of numbness, are the real me. But my OCD is telling me it HAS to mean something that i know nothing about myself. But what tf does ocd know if even when I had no attraction and had absolutely 0 libido(still happening but worse now) I was in my mans car 2 months ago literally wanting him to kiss me, feeling a thick layer of attraction for him, admiring his smile and his eyes, and this was when my mind was clear and ocd let wasn’t fully running my life. I feel my mind and body shutting down again. I’m going back to that fully numb place again. It’s crazy because I felt like I was slowly defeating OCD a couple months ago. The feelings I felt for my (now) boyfriend after years of feeling nothing were coming back and made me feel like I could fight this. Now I feel like everything is ruined again. I miss how I used to feel about my man. I’m going crazy again I FUCKING HATE THIS. I used to be able to tune this out and enjoy my time with him but not anymore. This is consuming me again. The checking, rumination, mental reviewing, analyzing, reassurance, hyper awareness, the numbness, loss of attraction, the fucking debilitating anxiety IS DRIVING ME INSANE. I’m questioning everything I do and feel, even the good feelings I have with my boyfriend. I miss who i was 2 months ago even if it was still slightly controlled by ocd, I had hope. My posts when the spiral was barely started showed how much hope I had. Now i have lost it. I feel anxious and like a liar when I call, text, or am round him when it used to give me peace. I just reminisce thinking about our early dates and I feel like those feelings are fully lost. I don’t wish this type of pain on anyone.

Currently worrying about how prior to OCD, I once thought a masculine cartoon character (that was really a woman) was attractive when I first saw them pop up in the cartoon. It was when I was in middle school i think. The cartoon character was Kuvira and I spent the last 2 hours googling and spiraling and getting reassurance. I remember being uncomfortable when I heard the voice actor speak and got a wave of anxiety but afterwards I never thought anything of it. Especially because people online said they thought she looked like a man or was a man at first. I was still an extremely boy crazy young girl. After that I never really thought about it ever again until this morning when I was ruminating. It’s funny because when I wasn’t spiraling, in a better place, just numb and had loss of attraction, my mind and body fell for my boyfriend. I can just remember the tension between me and him in the car and how I just wanted him to kiss me so bad. I wanted to touch his hair, look at his smile, hug him, hold his hand, you get the gist. I rmbr looking at him and thinking he was so fine and my ocd popped up again n i thought “but your numb….do you actually think that check again.” I’m tired of this. One minute I feel better and ready to take on OCD and enjoy my relationship and the next I feel like I don’t know myself at all, like a liar, a fraud, and like i’ll never be happy again. Prior to the spiral i forgot all about the “evidence” (childhood exploration (being aroused to sexual things)/mistaking that one cartoon character or masc lesbian as men/that one uncomfortable memory/ porn/ i was exposed to sexual content early sadly). It felt irrelevant to me bc once I stopped obsessing about it, nothing changed, I didn’t change, my wants didn’t change, my desires didn’t change, I didn’t end up falling for a woman like my ocd said i would. I literally mourned bc I thought that my numbness will never allow me to be in a relationship. I cried watching couple videos because I thought i’ll never be able experience it. Only thing that worried me before/in the beginning of my spiral was the groinal response at times, and mostly the non existent libido/attraction/emotional/mental numbness spell for years bc of severe ocd, depression, and anxiety. I literally felt/feel like a rock or a leaf on the ground. But even when I was just dealing with the numbness I FELL FOR MY MAN. No thoughts, no checking, no hyper awareness, just me and him in the moment and those feelings, attraction, and emotions came to me. The day i realized I had a crush on him I felt normal again 😭. It felt normal and real and I loved it. I was so excited I had so many big wins and yesterday (bc i’m spiraling) I had small ones here and there BUT I WANT TO BE FREE FROM THIS. I had moments where he kissed me and it felt so nice bc i wasn’t checking, ruminating, hyper aware, i was in the moment with my man. He hugged me and the anxiety fell off my shoulders, i felt safe, i felt love, I felt the mushy feelings i felt for him prior to the spiral. But ofc i end up questioning EVERYTHING i feel. I felt a sliver of freedom from this fucking disorder and as soon as I’m happier it comes back. OCD makes me think that those things (childhood exploration and the rest^) is the only thing that ever happened in my life but it literally wasn’t 😭 I was THEE most boy crazy girl. I wanted to experience love and all the other things (ykwim) with a man. I used to daydream and dream about it. OCD makes me feel like i’ll never have any of that. I literally told my therapist if all the past stuff meant something ab me or that im bi ok cool bc that means i don’t HAVE to be with women and I can still be with a man. I was so excited to be with my man and now it gives me anxiety im scared to even text him now. I’m feeling exhausted and numb again FUCK ocd.

Hey guys, I was hoping to get some guidance on what to do in this frustrating situation: My boyfriend doesn’t want to have sex with me and refuses all advances because of my OCD (flashbacks and intrusive thoughts sometimes lead me to dissociate or panic). I’ve only now started to get help so I’m new to NOCD, but my boyfriend thinks it’s best to completely cut off sex until I get better. He’s an angel for wanting to put me first and having self control, but I have been frustrated with this because I desire to have sex even if I have to practice my exposures. My therapist is unsure at the moment as well and is asking a trauma therapist what to do about this situation, but I was wondering if anyone can give me some advice. I want to convince him that it’s okay to have sex with OCD and even if I panic I’m confident I can push through it and get better with practice. I’ve never felt more unwanted and rejected. I know he’s doing this for me, but it seems like he’s completely uninterested now and I’m starting to think he doesn’t want to deal with me panicking because he already has so much else going on in his life. He makes me feel like having sex with him would make his day worse because he’d have to “take care” of me. I’ve expressed this to him (we have a super healthy communication dynamic), but he says we should just keep waiting. PLEASE give any advice possible for this situation!! I can’t even do things on my own because I start thinking about how rejected I feel by him. Thanks in advance!

It’s been pretty hard lately with my SOOCD and ROCD. While some may struggle with other manifestations, I on the other hand have to deal with the chronic anxiety that OCD brings. The thoughts feel like they’re in the back of my mind saying things about me and my relationship. They’re always there whispering and it’s gotten quite frustrating cause I can’t really enjoy the things I want to do. There are good times but damn is it annoying having to deal with the nausea the anxiety causes, the groinals and the false attraction that SOOCD brings. I’m thankful for my girlfriend that she tries to understand me and she really is my lifesaver. I know that my SOOCD and ROCD targets my love for her that’s why it gets stronger whenever I spend time with her. Fuck you OCD cause you ain’t ruining my love tor her. I try to be strong but damn is it hard. I’m finding myself back at square one where all symptoms are back and bad again. I’ve been doing compulsions, some occasional searching but more on constant rumination, repeating the same phrases and yeah admittedly compulsively looking here in this app to see if I relate to anyone. It sucks and I hate this. I hope you guys have tips on how to manage SOOCD and ROCD while in a relationship. I’ve had these themes for almost 2 years.

How do you make friends as a adult I m so socially awkward shy and have social anxiety all of this due to being bullied when I was little I always believe no one want to be my friend now as a adult I think the worse

Okay so today after I woke up I had an absolutely unexpected thought about a girl, but I DIDN’T MIND IT. So all I felt that it was unexpected but I didn’t feel shame or guilt or something. I started pacing back and forth my room and it was like my brain accepted that I’m bisexual and I started getting anxious about what my family and friends will think about it then I had the thought “If I’m afraid of coming out, that means I’m actually bisexual” and I started asking ChatGPT about what is happening to me and it wrote the usual answer “That’s typical with OCD, it doesn’t mean anything” but it didn’t calm me down a bit and it was just so confusing because for about twenty minutes it was like having this certainity about being bisexual but it didn’t help I was stressing just like before. I know this means I’m not comfortable with the thought and it’s not ego-syntonic, but I wasn’t necessarily anxious about the thought just anxious in general. Then I started fantasizing about men, and it gave me anxiety too but it felt more right. I tried out how it would make me feel if I fantasized about women but all those fantasies lasted barely 3-4 seconds after that my brain just shifted to other thoughts. I can’t listen to one of my favourite songs because it’s sung by an attractive woman and I’m getting these thoughts about me liking her. I don’t understand what’s going on with me, because whenever I read a story here by someone who's struggling with SO-OCD they always write “I don’t want to be gay, I want to go back when everything was normal” but for me every time I get a similar thought it’s immediatly overshadowed by “Of course you’re bisexual, look at all these evidences, you want to be bisexual, you’re just in denial, look at these people, they are real OCD-sufferers, you don’t, you’re welcoming the thoughts, you want them, you’re not comfortable with your heterosexual identity, you always wanted women” etc. etc. It’s so confusing because all along my journey with OCD I had the certainity in myself that I like men but now I feel like I lost this and it feels like a real sexuality crisis now.

So whenever I see something that could be possibly made by someone who's 13 I always check the age and if they are around 13, I get scared but if they're not (they're pretty much ALWAYS older than me) I'm ok and relaxed, I'm always afraid of being around kids online ngl idk, watching content with kids makes me uncomfy, especially little girls, maybe it has something to do with the fact I wanna be a girl (🏳️‍⚧️) but I'm afraid I'll always just be a creep and a man idk, any advice on how to work through this (undiagnosed btw so if this isn't in line with OCD, please let me know so that I can try to figure out what's ACTUALLY wrong)

I (22M) had been...pleasuring myself, and just as I was finishing, I felt like I needed to test myself mentally and a thought popped up (again, solely mentally) and it felt like I enjoyed it for a split second while I was "finishing". I tried to redirect my focus in the moment, and it didn't really work. After, I felt really off-put and worried about what it could mean. I have been extremely fearful of ending up being "that" way. I know false attraction etc. could have played a role, but I've never been officially diagnosed. There had been times I tested myself in my head before (not like in a context like this), and I felt like I had spikes of attraction before feeling offput by it, and I've been really, really worried if I had been in denial. The thoughts that I tested myself with included non-problematic things that I found attractive, so I'm not sure if that affected my reactions all those times, but regardless I had been worried. I also tested myself in my head after waking up almost every day, and it felt like I failed when I did. I tried to not assign meaning to it, and it helped with avoiding spiralling, but again, I don't know if I'm in denial or not. I understand if this is probably, but I was wondering if I could get any insight.

Is there any someone suffering from false memory ocd? I need help. Please support.

I joined a worship fellowship group with friends at my community college it’s not a extracurricular thing but it’s someone just putting a thing together. but i can’t tell if this is my ocd. but i’m having thoughts of “what if i’m not believing God anymore?” or “what if this isn’t my ocd” or “what if i’m lying to myself and i don’t trust God and this is real” “what if this is real and i don’t wanna be close to God anymore” it’s like triggering because i’m a new christian and still learning about a lot of stuff since i just joined a group because i’m trying to get into more of Gods word. but i get scared of opening because i sin and i tend to be so hard on myself or if i see others like be christian and cuss and i’m like all suprised but idk i think im afraid of opening up in this type of stuff around christian’s that know a lot as i’m still learning… and sometimes i think my ocd will be like “ugh we have to talk about God all the time” and i’m like no no i want to… i’ve had ocd for a year now and my therapist has been in the hospital and i need to sit with it but it’s so hard bc i’m trying to figure if it’s real or not or if i’m lying to myself but i have a current second therapist rn and she’s teaching me about how rumination works and how to stop it. because i struggle with it ugh. i’m so scared this is real. i believe in God i do i just hate these thoughts why does it feel real

I’ve been meaning to ask this question, I’ve been diagnosed with SOOCD last year in November. But I had been struggling with SOOCD for around two years at that time before the diagnosis. Yet I still doubt the diagnosis almost every day. I didn’t continue therapy because I could t afford it. The anxiety symptoms or lower now and sometimes istimewa feels very meh like I don’t even want to answer the questions in my mind and other times it will implode and I’ll cry and feel so much pain in my heart. I cried the other night when I was watching on of chrissie Hodges’ videos. Because I felt so confused I can’t tell what’s real from time to time. I also wanted to ask if it’s normal to see pictures of men like really hot men and feel uncomfortable because I feel pressured to look and if I don’t look and check em out even when I don’t feel like it, I’d feel like I’m in denial and it’s exhausting and I tend to give up on responding to it and I’ll just feel like I’m hiding something and it’ll feel so uncomfortable. And then other times I’ll see a guy and turned on but I’ll still feel anxious and uncomfortable abit because of the thoughts. I’m straight and I do love men my fear is that I’m secretly bi because of the porn and the previous fantasizing I did when I was a teen. I’m 21 rn. It’s hard for me everyday I feel like I’m stuff acting in these negative emotions and like I just can’t breathe and be myself by solely trusting in myself. Because there’s constant doubt. And I’m a girl btw

I was just washing myself down there, and as soon as I got done the hyperawareness kicked in, and it made the usual amount feel so excessive, I’m so tired of this