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working to conquer OCD
One of my biggest triggers is my things being touched, and change. And I feel incredibly disrespected. My parents know I have ocd theyāve known for years what my triggers are, we worked with a pediatrition since I was like 13 to help my parents and I understand my ocd and my triggers. I was over my dadās house which I was annoyed because my grandmother came over and cleaned my room (it literally wasnāt even messy btw) everything was placed exactly where I donāt want it, to the point it was just so agitating and just a waste of energy for her as I place everything back to how it was, I was already so irritated by all of this and when I tell yall I donāt like change I mean it takes me months to adapt to big changes like this simple change I was still mad two days later, my mom calls me the day before Iām supposed to go back to her house and tells me THAG while I was gone she decided to re do my bedroom, paint job and all, yes, my mother, without telling me re did my ENTIRE BEDROOM. When I came home it wasnāt done, so I had to sleep in my brothers room, awesome I donāt have my own space! I go back to my dads, my room was rearranged there and cleaned to exactly how I donāt ficking want it, Iām irritated once more, I express to my father how much anxiety THAG gives me and how it puts me in horrible spirals of uncontrolled anger and anxiety to which he says THAG if I myself keep it clean to his standard my stuff wonāt be moved and THAG if Iām under his roof itās his rules, I go back to my moms again, she shows me my room is done, thereās things in my room rearranged to how I DO NOT WANT ITx thereās things she decorated it with THAG I DO NOT WANT. I tell her this, and THAG I might redecorate some things when she asks me what I think (mind you guys Iāve been extreamly polite and havenāt crashed the fuck out) she then begins to tell me THAG Iām ungrateful for her work and THAG Iām spoilt. Mind yall this is my room, my space. Imagine if she wasnāt home and I rearranged all of her shit, regardless of whoās paying for the house and shit thatās fucked up. Iām not even complaining aboht how the room looks either because it is really nice, I just donāt understand why motheruckers need to touch my stuff and be up in my space without letting me know. Especially when you know this is the type of shit that really really triggers me, these people listened to me explain countless times how I hate change. They know I hage that shit. So why catch me off guard? Sorry this is crazy long yap.
I fell in love with this girl and long story short we tried and didnāt work out but my heart is still so attached to her. When I donāt hear from her, I get so worried that somethingās happened to me and my mind goes to worst case scenario. I feel responsible if something goes wrong and Iām freaking out
would love to hear some positive success stories as im feeling completely discouraged. my amygdala (fear center) is just completely on overdrive mainly tied to a thought that once I get ROCD about someone (friend and romantic) I have to completely cut them out to be calm ever again. mainly because every time ive had the rocd it never calmed down. I now have it with a few friends I really care about. The ocd and anxiety make it feel like its impossible to practice the exposure therapy because the anxiety never actually comes down on its own. no matter how long I sit with the feeling of anxiety it doesn't come down. its pretty much on 95-100 percent of the day. Does anybody else have this problem with an ocd thought where its always there so every second feels like its just one big exposure.
I donāt know if this is ocd or just lack of discipline (maybe both lmao) but like⦠Everything I was excited for before my huge spiral, Iām not excited for anymore. Like I donāt even care anymore. And I donāt know why?.. I was so excited. I was ready to achieve my goals and finally start living life Then the spiral hit and now I could give a shit what happens to me. I donāt care anymore⦠at least it feels like it. Itās affecting relationships and school and goals and passions and everything. Iām not blaming this on anyone or anything but myself, so please donāt think Iām placing blame on something other than me. Has anyone else ever felt this way?⦠any tips on what to do?⦠thank you
Hi everyone ā Iām hoping for OCD-aware insight rather than reassurance. If someone can respond with a similar experience, Iād appreciate any insight. I have diagnosed OCD (relationship/perfectionism themes), and Iām dating someone I genuinely care about. Emotionally, he has so much of what I value: heās thoughtful, patient, ambitious, intelligent, funny, and makes me feel seen and understood. Iām attracted to him ā especially in private. When we were long-distance and mostly talking on the phone, I felt very safe, very connected, and very attracted. Things shifted when something objectively small came up: he mentioned gaining a couple of pounds and shared some eating habits that donāt align with my very health-focused lifestyle. Almost immediately, my nervous system flipped into threat mode. Since then, my OCD has latched onto his body, food choices, and āfollow-through,ā and my attraction drops sharply in public ā not in private. What Iām realizing is that a huge part of this is fear of judgment and perception. Iām worried about how weād be seen as a couple, and what other people might think. When I imagine us in public, I start viewing him from an āoutside observerā perspective, scanning for flaws and feeling embarrassed ā even though, internally, Iām attracted to him and care about him. In private, the attraction is there; in public, my nervous system shuts down. I also notice that I attach a lot of meaning to health and self-care. For me, it represents discipline, responsibility, and care ā and emotionally, my brain translates self-care effort into āthis mattersā or āI matter.ā I know thatās my wiring, not necessarily reality. In a past relationship, I over-functioned around health and felt disappointed and resentful when the other person didnāt follow through, which seems to be feeding this trigger now. Because of that fear, I catch myself trying to control in a āniceā way ā encouraging workouts, suggesting nutrition resources, praising effort, coaching rather than demanding. It looks supportive on the outside, but internally it feels like anxiety management and an attempt to prevent future disappointment or judgment. Patterns I am noticing: ⢠The anxiety shows up as urgency, mental checking, future-tripping, and hyperfocus. ⢠Attraction fluctuates with anxiety level, not with how I actually feel about him. ⢠Fear of public judgment seems stronger than fear of incompatibility itself. ⢠My urge to āhelpā or āfixā increases when anxiety spikes. AND if he expresses a desire to workout, my anxiety decreases
To anyone on here, whatās your longest lasting theme, when you finally got through it how did you feel? Also hope everyoneās having a great day
Really struggling with the SOOCD this week! I know I shouldnāt use reassurance or rumination but today none of my reassurance methods are even working. It just feels like Iāve been lying to myself and using OCD as an excuses to not be a lesbian šI really want to be with a man but any time I get close to dating I just feel sick like itās not what I really want when itās all Iāve ever wanted š then I just think I only want to have sex with a man because I want the cuddles and intimacy and to have more kids but my brain js telling me cause I find same sex intimacy arousing that really I should be with a woman but I canāt imagine being with a woman romantically š Iām so lost Iām at the rock bottom where I just feel like I need to admit to myself Iām a lesbian because none of the normal glimmers of light that remind me Iāve been attracted to men before are coming through šššš help!!
does anyone else get anxiety in the morning for no apparent reason? i wake up and feel so anxious to the point that i'm trembling, i feel cold but my palms are sweating, and my heart rate is so fast. i wasn't having many thoughts regarding OCD when i first woke up, but then i felt like i had to think them and caused myself more anxiety?? has anyone else had this experience?
Does anyone else have the subtype of false memory? Where their minds will try to convince them theyāve done something they didnāt. It feels so real and I canāt get this one false memory intrusive thought out of my head and Iāve been feeling the guilt of it as if it actually happened and Iām so spun up in it Iām like I donāt even know it I did this thing or not. Help :(
Iām the kind of person who hates to be inbetween. I want to be here or there. Iām very lazy with ocd and sometimes very okay with agreeing with the negative thoughts because at this point I donāt mind agreeing if it guarantees I stop spending my whole day questioning. Iāll rather agree my fears are real and deal with the pain that comes with it. Yesterday I panicked a whole lot and had to give in to the fear. I felt calm after, I convinced myself it was my truth and decided to stick with the identity especially because itās a weird and specific theme that might not really be understood and will be judged by others if I was to explain it. I gave in and it felt really painful like really painful then I felt calm then it felt like the pain washed away. At this point I was confused. Wanted to continue to remind myself of the identity I chose at it started to feel like I was forcing it. So I thought āMaybe my fears are not what I think it isā started to relax into that realisation but weird feelings I didnāt understand came up, I didnāt care to analyze because I was exhausted. It was 3am in the morning and I just wanted sleep with the little calm I felt. I woke up this morning incredibly anxious. Iām back being uncertain. Ocd wonāt let me pick a side. I donāt know what is true for me and my future and now I think Iām just forced to sit with uncertainty. I have to deal with it and not try to agree nor disagree. My memory are back to feeling incredibly negative and Iām really confused on why I have to sit with not knowing what is real or not even if negative feelings come up.
i was diagnosed this morning and i canāt stop questioning the diagnosis. iām currently struggling with tocd and up until recently the thoughts have started to come with false emotions. i get butterflies a lot when iām anxious and sometimes i get scared that the butterflies are actually me being drawn to the thought. so i just want to summaries my whole experience with this disorder. so, when i was only 4 years old i had a very strong urge to touch all of the corners in the room. nothing would feel right if i didnāt. when i was 10 i had to do everything 6 times, had to say ānight, nightā as my last words, and had to get to the door before the garage closed or i thought iād die. when i was 11, i started experiencing what i think was existential ocd. nothing felt real. i constantly asked my mum for reassurance that iām real. i remember avoiding going out because i felt so dissociated. i was so scared of developing derealisation and depersonalisation and frequently checked in mirrors to see if i recognised myself, and i would also type out the word āderealisationā on a keyboard on my ipad to see if the word came up. if it didnāt come up, i felt okay. but i literally couldnāt watch movies like the matrix because i was terrified. now fast forward to when i was 12, i feared i was becoming a psychopath. i genuinely worried that i would grow up to be a murderer. i would have frequent intrusive images that would cause distress. i also had pocd around this age. for pocd in particular, i saved many tiktok videos to reassure myself that i wasnt becoming a pedofile. now iām almost 14. yeah, iām young. but my current theme tocd is really not questioning. iām going to summarise my experience with it a little bit here. i use envy men a lot. like i always thought they got more attention, more power and people swooned over them more than women. i was introduced to a popular fandom at the start of 2025 which i literally loved. the main ship were two straight men. i shipped them. i admired the dynamic. their ship got the most attention in the show. i of course blamed that on gender. i got very jealous of the attention and wanted to be in a relationship like that. like i would try and act like one of the characters (i didnāt try to look like him i just wanted to be like him because he seemed cool) and imagined myself being with a boy (me as a girl though) and basically āwearing the pantsā in the relationship because the more dominant man in a mlm or even the most dominant person in a straight ship always seem like the coolest. i still imagined myself as a woman like i didnāt want to be in a gay relationship, i wanted to be in a straight relationship. but in july last year i saw a video that resonated with me. it said āi want to be in a mlm relationship as a womanā and the top comment was āthis is how i found out i was trans btwā and that dont scare me. but then i got curious. i didnāt feel like a boy and i still donāt now. so i went onto chatgpt⦠yeah i know. not the best. but i told it about what i was going through and it said all these different labels which i didnt understand. demigirl however, resonated with me. at least i thought it did. i few weeks later it kinda just wore off. but i started to get involved with political matters and yada yada i was an alt girl. i was very accepting of the lgbtqia community. i wanted a future in human rights or politics. i think i kind of tried to push labels onto myself as the alt community is very diverse. so i just left that aesthetic because again, it wore off. but in november i had a dream of me wearing a suit and tie. it freaked me tf out. like i was asking chatgpt why i had that dream. this is where my tocd started. (i have a history with ocd). i basically got really scared and started compulsively checking my memories, my feelings and i had so many uncomfortable intrusive thoughts of me as a boy. god itās scary. this ocd subtype ruined my holiday, my christmas and more. i start school tomorrow and iām nervous as. all of the things i wrote here are extremely hazy as ocd kind of gives me false memories. so, yeah. i donāt feel like a guy. never have. i literally had pinterest boards of feminine clothing i wanted to wear when i was a mum/older. all i ever wanted was to be a beautiful, feminine woman. i forgot to mention that the other night i did my makeup and felt so happy. i was happy with what i looked like and for a moment, i felt absolute certainty in my gender. but then the doubt came back in š so, thatās it! thanks for reading. what are your thoughts? do i sound like i have ocd or was my psychologist wrong?
Hello! I am new to NOCD I am coming on here to share my experience, a few months ago I was having a ROCD issues and I thought they were pretty bad to the extent I decided to look into this type of therapy for it then. It took a while for me to finally decide to do it but now that I have I havenāt had any ROCD symptoms in a month or so and Iām wondering if anyone else experiences this with their ocd where sometimes it seems like you donāt even have it anymore? Itās making me wonder if I even need therapy for ocd? Thanks!
I am seventeen, turning eighteen in a month, and things in my family have been rough for the last couple years. I have a few subtype of ocd and most likely autism, though my family doesn't want an evaluation. I'm not the best at phrasing things or noticing my tone, and a lot of the time get asked why I look sad, even if I'm not. Emotions aren't easy for me to express, and I struggle with noticing things out of place around the house, and certain compulsions are inconvenient, mainly when I cook or wash my hands a lot. Anyways, things started getting worse a couple years ago. I started keeping up with politics and ended up despising both of the major political parties where I live. I respect everyone's right to an opinion, but I am the only one not aligned with the party they support, so I normally get told to stop talking to avoid a fight, even if I'm asking questions to genuinely understand. Like I said, I struggle wording things less bluntly, but I've tried to explain my intentions. We got into a fight after I mentioned an assignment to my father and he turned it into a race and politics issue. Now, my faith has always been important to me, and that is a large part of why I disagree with the people they support. I mentioned something about how avoiding generalizations and viewing everyone the same, as children made in God's image, and was told that I don't have enough experience for what I say. I am a sophomore in college and live at home, but I don't think that means I can't say everyone deserves the same respect. He started talking about how my "ethics and morals" (to which I corrected my faith) would get me killed because I was stupid. I said that defending my faith even with my life was quite literally one of the things Jesus talked about and would not go directly against His teachings and got seriously yelled at for and told that it didn't matter in the real world and then, as I tried to leave, that if God was so important to me to respect my father and mother. I said that I do, but not more than God. So that also got me yelled at for, and I finished the housework and attempted to workout and then journalled for a few hours. When my mother got home, I tried to explain that I do respect them both but wouldn't go against God, the same way I argued when my father defended Nazi ideas and Nazis. So she said that he didn't mean it and that it was months ago, so why was it a big deal? I said because it was a moral issue. She asked why we couldn't agree to disagree, and I said that didn't apply to genocide. Then I said it was against the religion that they had raised me in, and that it made me feel unsafe. She started yelling and said if I felt so unsafe she could call someone and put me in foster care, but that they wouldn't tolerate my ocd. I said I just wanted to know it wasn't true, so my father came and it still took a few minutes to convince him to say he didn't believe it, and that I hurt him by saying he was a bad person. Also, he mentioned again that I b could just move out when I turned eighteen. He said I should get a dorm in the fall. So now they are both saying what I said was hurtful and my mother asked me earlier to apologize, which I didn't, but I don't understand how what I said was more hurtful. I called other family members just so I wouldn't spiral and have been on this app for a while. Does anyone have any advice? I genuinely don't know what to do.
Does anyone else have these problem and you just lay in bed thinking about all the bad things?
Thoughts? Do yāall ever worry about that or self isolate?
Yesterday i had that heart dropping feelings again and then my heartbeat just felt off. I didnt go to the ER and even though i havenāt shown any weird symptoms today, I feel like i want to go now. My boyfriend stayed home from work yesterday in case anything happened, and I took like a 5 hour nap. I also have been sleeping really deeply lately. Im worried my heart is off beat or irregular or something, but the only way I have been checking is by feeling my pulse on my neck which i am trying to stop because it only leads to no answer really. I feel anxious about it but i am trying to move on with my day. I have a gyno appointment on the 4th, maybe i can ask for an ekg then?
Like awful thoughts and scared youāre gonna act on them. Like whatās stopping me? Besides the fast that the last thing I want to do is something awful!
Not really associated with the ocd like I have always been sensitive as a kid but sensitivity like if you call my shirt ugly or said something offensive I would cry and I never had autism or like anything no offense to anyone Iām saying I was just sensitive because I was and it could be from growing up my house wasnāt to big as now but was a big house and then now anything to do with my ocd I get triggered as well but like yeah but can anyone relate everyone is like Iām an empath so my emotions are drained and I have always been a good person but the thing is I donāt even think I was such or anything as kid I was builled when I was a kid I went through normal stuff and big stuff and Iām still sensitive can anyone relate to being sensitive not only the empath like if you get what I mean
Iāve had depression since I was a teen and it really affected my attraction towards men even if I used to be a hopeless romantic. I just felt really numb and I went on with life not dating or even doing anything with anyone but kinda had it mind I was either straight or asexual at that point . My friends would always wonder if I was attracted to men by which oh well I wasnāt but I knew why. It was so easy for hocd to get meš So hereās how hocd got me. I was on a phone call with my friends and we started talking about a particular fashion brand. I was scrolling through their instagram and thought a model was genuinely cool (I wanted to be as cool as her because I wanted to be a model too) so I told my friends I thought she was cool. They laughed and said they knew I was gay. I was confused and tried to tell them it wasnāt anything like that and they kinda brushed it off. The call ended and I started to think about what they said and suddenly I panicked real hard! āWHAT IF IāM GAY??ā Now Iām not homophobic but this was a huge identity threat. From then on it was something. I checked and checked. I felt those feelings. I had groinal responses. I thought about an old close friend from highschool and my memory convinced me I liked her and didnāt realize. Everytime I saw a woman I was convinced I was attracted to her. At a point I got scared I was attracted to my mum HOW SILLY IS THAT. My TikTok search was filled with gay couples because I kept checking and feeling and checking. The feelings felt way too real and I spiralled and even got more depressed. I searched on google and somehow It led me to knowing what hocd was. I did everything I could to accept the thoughts and not engage. I tried to reach out to a therapist from my country and he said āif you donāt want to be gay then donāt be?ā Huh??. Atp I had to find my way to do erp myself but how real the feelings felt still made me scared. I really tried but I was too weak for ocd. It was too much and It was starting to really convince me so I surrendered. I accepted everything that came with it. Infact I was totally convinced I had a crush on a friend. I got so tired of fighting and went about my day and accepted my reality for a while. If I was gay so damn what? Whoās gonna check me? Until someday I randomly realized I wasnāt actually attracted to women. I didnāt go for any woman or care about them more than friends. I actually thought I was gay until it started to feel like I was lying to myself. I suddenly realized I wasnāt and shrugged it off like it was nothing. I really didnāt care. It didnāt matter anymore if I did or didnāt. My actions werenāt really replicating those thoughts and feelings. I thought āI guess Iām notā I wouldnāt say you should go about it the way I did because I realized ocd healing is very different for everyone. And me actually deciding to believe it can cause someone else to spiral badly. What works for everyone might not work for you. For me not engaging those thoughts made it hard to even do things in my day to day life. I couldnāt do anything else. I was rock bottom. Maybe me accepting was some form of long term erp. But I found my way to healing unknowingly. Itās been years and ocd recently focused on some other theme that was really serious because it involved my partner( A man btw) and Iām backing here trying to heal and I understand my feelings better now about the relationship and it wasnāt what I thought it was. Iām sure this also something Iāll overcome. I guess I let fear and panic get the best of me in the most random moment. Also hoping to work on emotional regulation so I donāt panic in ways ocd loves in future. Stay blessed. I hope everyone here finds their way to healing.
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OCD doesn't have to
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