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Hi all, This is a POCD question that I wasn't sure I should post. I have overcome so many types of OCD, but this one still brings me down and isolates me. Especially my recent situation, it's the worst. So I made the decision to share it and I pray that something good will come of it. I am in a sense afraid that I acted out on my thought. My OCD doc told me even if it were true i had no intention bc it was due to OCD so it doesn't matter so to stop torturing myself. Basically what happened was I was on vacation visiting family out of the country. I was practically guilted into attending a birthday party for my niece. Well after years of avoidance ( bc it took 9 years for my diagnosis) I am slowly but surely getting use to being around kids again and I was very anxious about going to this party. When my nephew was leaving he started making the rounds to give everyone a hug and my fear is that I am going to put my foot out and trip someone or stick something out and touch then inappropriately. So I cross my legs to guard myself you could say. Well as I saw him coming up to hug me I started got super fearful with how close he was getting to me. Next thing I knew I felt pressure on my knee that he was placing on me when hugging me. And in my mind it was prob his groin so I was terrified in that moment and I had an urge/ fear to push my knee back into him. And for the first time instead of fighting super hard to control myself my knee just let go and I slightly pushed back . So I basically freaked but had to look composed. My dad went with me bc I'm still getting used to these situations and told me he didn't notice anything wrong when I hugged him. But in my mind you can't really see a slight push and the fact that there is a higher chance that it happened where I fear bc of where my knee was when he hugged me I feel devastated , and just gross...etc. I mean does having OCD excuse something and on top of that I don't even know what to label what happened?? Was it bad or accidental , does that matter bc I pushed either way?? So I've been so depressed for the last 6 months not even knowing how to accept this bc it feels different then just thoughts. Please any advice??

I’ve been living with this horrible illness officially for 11 of the 20 years I’ve been alive and I feel like the older I get the worse it gets and it’s killing me. I just want some relief I’m in so much pain. This illness has hurt myself, my fiends, my family, and has even caused the man I love who also has ocd to break up with me. I feel like I’m a lost cause and I hate it. I don’t know who I can trust anymore and I just feel so broken. HELP

Having hocd feels like I don’t have a fucking choice on what gender I want to be with ever since this hit me like a brick. Hocd doesn’t give a fuck if I want a man and to marry my amazing bf. Fuck this

Atm I hate my life so much.. I maybe have 5 minutes in the morning that I don't think I have a terrible disease, the rest of the day is filled with googling and fucking myself up again. I know I shouldn't Google, but I just cannot stop it.. Anybody has some tips??

There are my pasts which I am not proud of and make huge mistakes.......now after so long suddenly these memories are coming back to me.....getting a worse anxiety...and feeling shit about myself...I don't think so I can ever forgive my self It turns me to a bad person...I don't know what to do.....how to live anymore..Is this even normal in OCD....or it's not my OCD...I don't know how to correct my past..

Like now, what the hell are making me arousal and excited? I cant understand, I dont want to go to porn or masturbate. As I said before, I am tired of doing this and then askimg forgiviness like an endless cycle, like if I am not true regreted my sins. I dont know what to do anymore, I just want to be a good person, christian and good by the eyes of God, but idk how to deal with these sins. Sometimes I just wanted to this to not be sin. And said all that, i am obssessing so much that I end up taking a lot of pills to go asleep.

I’ve been doing a good job controlling my Urges, but I suffer from responsibility OCD. My check is with paying. I am always worried I will forget to pay for something or accidentally take something. So I check old credit card statements, from months and years ago! I have worried about everything from food to clothes to car washes. I have also Contacted old doctors to make sure I don’t owe money. Does anyone else do something similar?

I had a dream about a past “relationship” (we didn’t even date and knew him for a week, he’s from another country and he left after telling me he loved me when he really had a gf back home! What a dick head!!!) and for a while I was upset about it. Cuz it was like “exciting” I guess. But in the end it wasn’t really much. But he randomly pops into my head out of nowhere and I hate it. I don’t have feelings for him and he used me. I love my boyfriend so much but now my intense ROCD is back. I keep thinking “what if I don’t really love him and I love this other guy” which is just NOT TRUE. the way my boyfriend makes me feel is just...amazing. Never met anyone like him. But now everything is hard again and s*x has been SO HARD for the past 6 mo since I’ve been off my meds. This is so long and so fucking much but I’m beginning to worry my relationship is getting ruined.

Hope - can anybody share their story, perhaps from a pure ocd (like scrupulosity) where you started with no hope of possible recovery. Say you felt like it beat your faith down so hard you thought recovery was nigh impossible. But then you did!

I know I’m sexually attracted to women, but my HOCD is telling me I could be attracted to men as well. You would think it would be easy to just say to yourself, “So what if I am straight, gay, or bi”. Why is it not that easy. It seems like that should diffuse the situation.

Could somebody help me? I have problems with porn and masturbation and this makes me feel so bad that affect my belief. Like I am christian and I keep thinking about my salvation, God forgiviness and my sins. I have OCD, mainly on POCD, but taking meds this changed a lot. The intrusive thoughts changed and start to be about death, future and religion. I have too much anxiety too and sometimes out of nowhere I just start to feel aroused and excited and my anxiety goes really high. My stomach even hurt like if I am with stomach ache and this dont pass until I watch porn or masturbate. Its like a torture that drive me to use this things as a escape. I am not here asking reassurance, but asking help to overcome this problem or understand it. Its dificult for me because of my religion condenm these acts, even if you are single. I kind understand, but this make me suffer a lot. At the same time I keep doubting myself like if God is angry at me doimg thos over and over again after asking for forgiviness for him for doing this. I really dont know what to do, I indeed wanted this to be a normal thing and not be condenmed. And I am not questioning it, but just saying out loud what I feel and that I dont want to do that again if it will make me feel guilty and bad and everything.

I’ve been obsessed with the fact I’m on benzos and that they might be ruining me, doing all sorts of online research reaffirming this theory. It’s like all I can think about. I tried to come off a few times abruptly because I got so scared and of course that didn’t end well. My doctor says I need them to get stable (I’ve had a lot of trauma) and then slowly wean off. But I get so scared like what if I fail again and am too weak.

Are any straight girls here turned on by boobs/naked women in porn? Does this mean I’m gay???

Kind of losing hope? I had a really really bad relapse because I saw a naked woman.

TL;DR: ROCD spike, doubts, online therapy? I feel like I'm having a mental breakdown. Pretty sure it's because of my job, which I've been wanting to quit for a year now, and it's a big cause of stress and unhappiness. But until now, that didn't matter when I was home with my partner, or even away (long distance some times) but talking with him. Just him being there made me truly happy. I didn't need anything else. Now I feel super bogged down with issues and anxiety and I'm generally unhappy. And the worst part is this intrusive thought: "if my partner alone is not enough to make me happy, does that mean I don't love him anymore? That I shouldn't be with him?" Just thinking about that makes me wanna stop existing. I don't want to be without him. He's the best thing that ever happened to me. But I blame myself so much for not being happy despite being with him. My brain goes like "what if you're falling out of love? That's why you feel unhappy now. If you loved him, you'd be happy like before." Which is crazy. I have a friend who "fell out of love" with her previous partners and I never understood that. My ex actually fell out of love with me. And now I'm like "what if it happens to me too?? What if I start feeling like that, what if it's already happening?!" And I panic so much and feel like utter crap. When I discovered that ROCD is a thing, I was immediately relieved. Like "this makes so much sense. It's a brain issue, it's not a real problem." Because let me make clear, that there is indeed no problem in my relationship. It's just my brain asking "but what if you fall out of love, like your friends did? It can happen for no reason, it happened to them! So maybe it will happen to you!" Now I'm asking myself "but what if it's NOT ROCD and I'm in denial about my 'true' feelings and my 'true' self" and all this "what if" tortures me and I feel so numb all the time, like nothing matters. Like everything is so pointless. I'm away from my partner right now, been on a business trip in another country for 3 weeks by myself. My feelings are mixed because on one hand I miss him so much and I just wanna hug him and cuddle, on the other "what if you still feel numb after you're back? What if you're just lying to him, playing with him?" which I would never do, I hate myself just for thinking of it. I thought I was on my way to recovery because educating myself about OCD helped SO much, but now it's back and I'm like "the fact that it got worse again despite the education means that it's not OCD, it's real." I haven't been personally diagnosed. Perhaps it would be best to seek out a therapist. I've read that therapists who are not experienced with OCD might tell people "maybe that's how you truly feel deep inside" though, and that would probably destroy me. I can't find any therapists specializing in OCD in my area. To anyone who took the time to read this: do you know any online therapists that you can video call with? That would be a tremendous help, I think :)

Does anyone else have environmental allergies? My contamination OCD is specific to stuff I’m actually allergic to. So it’s been hard to treat since it’s hard to tell what level of avoidance of allergens is necessary for physical health vs what’s OCD. To top it off my allergist told me anxiety can lead to releasing extra histamine in the blood stream so I may be experiencing allergy symptoms due to anxiety as well. I was hospitalized recently and did therapy etc and was being brave and decided to do a carpool which I normally wouldn’t do since I’d be worried about a dirty car. I started feeling sick within minutes of sitting down but I told myself it was psychosomatic so I stayed for the whole ride home which was more than an hour. By the end I had lots of trouble breathing. I showered and changed soon as I got home but got sicker over the weekend and then was diagnosed with allergic bronchitis which lasted for weeks and I had to use an inhaler. The point is my contamination fears aren’t illogical. I do need to avoid allergens but it can be hard to tell how much avoidance I need to do. Anyone else in the same boat and has advice?

Today I felt so lost and down. I’ve been making good progress in ocd recovery and last week was the first week in a LONG time I went without having a bad ocd day then this week it’s been kinda rocky. I’m kinda in the pummeling effect of ocd recovery right now where my ocd is throwing anything it can at me and on Monday one of my very old themes flared up and I started getting bad anxiety then I was okay yesterday then today was just bad. I had a scenario in my head of my partner leaving me, hating me, not loving me anymore or caring about me and my Brain was telling me to just leave him when it knows I love him so much and I know it’s irrational and it’s just my brain trying to get at me but it felt so scary then I was feeling guilty and stressed out earlier because of past guilt and it just sucked honestly. I let myself cry instead of holding my emotions in and now I feel better. It felt so real in the moment and now I’m not even thinking about it that’s how I know it’s ocd. pure o it’s so tiring and so is recovery but I know I need to recover not just for myself but for my friends and my partner. I want them to see me recover and see me happier without ocd bringing me down 24/7. I just wanted to make this post to show you that recovery isn’t going to be easy. There’s gonna be those days where you’ll be like “what’s the point” then you’ll remember why you want to recover. Please don’t let yourself get to the breaking point like I did. It took me almost wanting to end my life that I realized I had a serious problem. I’ve been in recovery for about a month now and it was definitely difficult the first few days but my anxiety is starting to lower but like I said, there have been bad days and I’m sure there will be many more bad days during my recovery process but ya know what? it’s worth it. my good days are outweighing the bad. I may have had a small breakdown earlier, I may have gave into compulsions, but that was the first time I’ve gave into compulsions in a month and I am proud of myself for that. I hope this can help some of you get started on your road to recovery. I know it seems scary but it IS okay. ocd is never right please remember that. sending love and positive energy your way <3

OCD unrelated post. For those of you who believe in abrahamic religions, what keeps you believing in God, or what experiences have you had that make you confident that God is real?

I am so scared to start erp with a therapist... I am even scared doing it on my own before that at home. I’m so scared that at the end of it it will make me realize I’m lesbian with all of the exposure. I don’t want that to happen. I don’t want to lose my bf. ? i don’t want to be a lesbian. I’m so scared. I know it’s how to get better but I’m terrified of it coming true because it feels so real BEFORE ERP already ?

I’m at the point now with HOCD that - If I sit back calmly I notice that while the thoughts and feelings, sensations FEEL REAL... That I don’t personally like or want them. Can’t bring myself to like them. Perhaps that is what OCD is really like.