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I'm very far into recovery from my severe OCD. I've been going to therapy for seven years now, since I was in middle school. I can pretty much function normally in everyday life now, which I'm very proud of. The reason I decided to join the NOCD community now is that the coronavirus epidemic is reenforcing many of my compulsions. I have contamination OCD, but it's not about getting sick, it's purely about not being clean. So normally, if I go out and touch something that other people have touched, I feel the intense need to wash my hands or sanitize. Usually this is very noticeable to other people as unusual behavior, but now I can sanitize as much as I want without anyone questioning me. Usually I do not like to bring things that have been outside the house inside the house without wiping it down with an alcohol wipe or washing it in some way; usually this appears unusual to everyone else, but now this is normal. I am using the coronavirus as an excuse to indulge in my compulsions, and I don't know if I'll be able to stop when the epidemic is over. How can I continue my road to recovery in this challenging time?

I have hocd , tocd and obsessive thoughts about having mental disorders. Hocd and tocd are under control but these thoughts about mental disorders is going out of my control. The problem is that whichever mental disorder I see , I get obsessions about developing it. I have a question that when iam using youtube , if I get a recommendation about a video which is about mental disorders should I avoid it or watch it to expose my fear. This the biggest question iam concerned about right now . And one more question is that which self help therapy should I use ERP or CBT . Iam very confused due to this question . And please tell me how can I do erp for this mental disorder fear . Because it is ruining my life . Thank you.

so quite a while ago i had gotten this fear of developing schizophrenia due to some personal problems, and then it just got worse and worse because the topic kept coming up in everyday conversations, and i could never escape from it. i don’t want to disclose what happened fully, but i will slightly just for some context: quite a few years ago, i watched someone close to me go through symptoms of schizophrenia. some things happened during that time which made me incredibly afraid. at the time, the person who went through it and i realised we had the same interests – creating characters. them and i both created two characters together while this was happening, so they used their character as a way to vent out, meaning their character had schizophrenia. it didn’t bother me at first, because the topic never usually came up. i mean, we were about 12. but now we’re older and we still have these characters, meaning we talk about them in a more... mature way i guess?? we’ve built a storyline together with them, and a lot of it IS based around schizophrenia. and i feel horrible for saying it because i feel petty and rude, but talking about it constantly over and over seemed to grow my fears, because the more i learned about it, the more my ocd could try and convince me that i had it. it got to this horrible point where the distressing thoughts would NEVER leave my head. i honestly thought i was going to lose it because i felt so horrible for having this fear/becoming obsessed with schizophrenia. i felt so insensitive because i obviously don’t have it which seems almost degrading to the people that do. i couldn’t even tell my friend because i thought it would translate as me blaming them for my problems. although at the beginning of the year, we both said that we were going to make another two characters and work on them instead this year. and we have been for months. it was literally a breath of fresh air – although the fear of schizophrenia stayed, i wasn’t being constantly reminded of it all the time. it wasn’t until tonight that i found out that the fears were just lying dormant. we went back to talking out our original characters today and we’re revamping their story. then it got to the parts where it mentioned schizophrenia, and i was being asked so many questions and being told so many things that i seemed to get overwhelmed - it was like a flashback to how i felt a few months ago. what i feel like now, i don’t even know how i dealt with constantly for about a year. and i absolutely hate this because why should i not educate myself on other mental health disorders? why can i not talk about one single illness (mental or physical) without my ocd becoming obsessed with it and trying to convince me that i have it? honestly sometimes you just want to scream

Advice corner: how can I get rid of the feeling that I’m betraying my boyfriend by being gay in denial HOCD, and just enjoy the relationship

My ocd is already bad and my parents make it worse by saying things like, "why don't you just come out of it?", "why can't you be normal, like everyone else", "why do you trouble us so much".. I feel my therapist isn't very helpful either.. I feel as if he doesn't understand me properly.. I might be wrong I guess. I've tried yoga, meditation, exercise, but nothing seems to help, I don't see any improvements after all this, my parents just accuse me of lying and not doing all these exercises and meditation. Ocd has affected my productivity at school, grades have nosedived since last year, and I'm struggling to keep up. My parents still compare me and ask why can't I be like everyone else again. Everyone else is having happy lives, living without any fears, here I am, writing my heart out because I have no one who understands me or listens to me. If you've come this far, thank you so much! A few words of encouragement would help.

I have some massive feeling in me that the life i have isn't enough, i need to be doing more but dont know what more even is. I feel like im just floating through life and i will do until im dead without doing anything amazing. Its like my perspective of my life is sooooo mediocre and i need to be saving the world and until i am my brains just reminding me how boring my life is.

Can anyone help me ? I am in so much distress right now . I don't know what to do . My problem is whenever I see any new mental disorder I have thoughts that I have them . I know I don't have them . Should I tell myself that I don't have these or let the thoughts pass . For example I saw a video on colorblindness . I know that I don't have it . But my brain is obsessing about the idea of having colorblindness . I don't know what to do . Whenever I use youtube there are many videos in my recommendation. And now I am avoiding these videos. Like this there is no end to it. Now I have started to feel depressed. What should I do to these thoughts . Anyone who reads this please help me . I think that iam going crazy. I now remember my old days . When I didn't have ocd . Those were the best days of my life . And now I feel like iam stuck. Everytime I see something that can ruin my life I get distressing thoughts about it . Like yesterday I saw religious ocd I had thoughts that I have that . Day before yesterday it was pedophile ocd . Like this there is no end to it . Will I ever recover ? . My condition is getting worse day by day. And to make it worse I have multiple of themes at once . Like hocd and transgenderocd and these thoughts of mental illness . Please help me .

So I am currently having a panic attack at 2am, this is terrible. I'm about to go to sleep and my mom is walking to her room my mind randomly says "you're attracted to your mother" and I'm like wtf!? No. My mom is my whole heart and I love her but not like that. I then go to the kitchen to grab a few things then I remember saying "mommy" and then I started randomly moaning but that's because I was thinking of my boyfriend just after, I swear. Two different things but I am horrified bc I said it right after. Like that was just so out of context I feel so sick. I'm so afraid this will scar my mind forever and will affect my relationship with my mom. like this is by far the most embarrassing thing I'm so disturbed I need help I feel I'm going insane. My mind is freaking out more bc I said it out loud but they were unrelated I feel so sick, has anyone gone through the same or similar? Help!

Urgent. I need tremendous help. Thanks for letting me vent. Sorry for the depressing post. My mom and I are breaking up... I hurt her so so much and I feel great remorse. Thanks to my ocd. I kept telling her every thought on my mind and drove her too far. I can’t think before I speak. I can’t think before I act. Every random thought (example compare my relationships with her to my sister’s relationship with my mom, every little ouchie in my body, and always tell her she’s too loud. Any advice would be greatly appreciated... currently on my bed crying. I love my mom. She is (or was) my advocate. I really want to change, I do. When I put my mind to it, I can! I am at wits end... I’m nice and sweet to EVERYONE else but I’m snotty 90% of the time to her! I even told her to shut up during her yelling at me. How am I going to survive this quarantine while living in the same house 24/7???

I'm drained. My anxiety is at an all-time high. I've only been getting about 4 hours of sleep each night. I feel awful. I practice therapy, but I'm not getting better. The results aren't happening.

some days are basically 90% ocd free, and other days I’m stuck inside my head. Does anyone know why this is? I’m currently struggling with false attraction (hocd) atm but I’ve gotten used to my thoughts (kinda)

I feel like my whole life is over. I had a same sex dream last night which involved a damily member is lgbtq and it seemed like I enjoyed it. Now I'm getting these thoughts and feelings. I dont know what to do anymore. I've been wanting to be with a man since i can remember even though I've always found women attractive. So now idk what to do. I don't want to be lesbian, bi,ir anything else. I just want to go back to my normal slightly boy crazy self.

So yesterday my bf and I were talking and idk he was saying how he feels I’m motivated like to workout and what not but that like I need to follow thru with it and I told him I worked out yesterday when I didn’t but I am today and he said he was proud of me and now i feel so guilty for lying and I feel I HAVE to tell him I lied but I don’t wanna mess us up and have him not trust me. Someone pls help me I’m freaking out

I noticed I catch myself ruminating, and thinking about everything wrong or negative that has happened in the past. And it's causing me to feel so down and horrible inside. On top of that obsessing and having so much fear about my ocd topics is draining me so bad. Imatinib this point its almost like my mind is trained to keep me miserable, and trapped and feeling like there is no escape, it's torture.

Hey nOCD Fam! Question - If you’re reading this and do NOT regularly talk to a specific OCD Therapist can you list the reasons below as to why? Any & all reasons, no wrong answer! Just curious! Thanks for helping with this poll!

I can't seem to habituate. I do okay with small obsessipns but when I get hit with a big one I can't hold back the compulsion. It feels so real in the moment that my anxiety goes nuts. So tired of this crap.

Just wondering if anyone else here has a dual diagnosis of OCD and BPD? Sometimes, I feel like my OCD around my morals and being a good person and not hurting others has masked my BPD anger symptoms and turned them mostly inwards. The majority of people when I meet them couldn't tell that I have either. Most professionals don't believe I have BPD initially, but after doing a comprehensive assessment of my family background and history of mental illness, my psychiatrist determined that this was my diagnosis (both OCD and BPD run in my family). So I guess I was just wondering, if you have experienced both, how do the symptoms of both disorders interact with each other for you, and have you found it has made it more difficult in receiving a diagnosis and recovering? Any tips? :)

Help guys I started ERP and have been letting some intrusive thoughts through and just trying to accept them but now I can’t get them to go away because I’m done thinking about it for today. I just want them to stop.

HUGE brand problem? I feel extremely alone in the OCD community because I feel like nobody has a problem like me. It makes it hard for me to read all of you guy’s posts and think ‘how can I reassure them, how can I support?’ because my problem is so drastically different. I have only received backlash in my past from OCD groups because ‘you’re just particular’ is a good response to my problem. I feel lost. constantly think about brands. I probably have over 40 lists of “appropriate brands” and I constantly sort my life into sections and think about brands. I have refused to use any skin product other than Neutrogena for a while now, not because of its benefits or anything else but simply because it’s all the same brand. I have sold or given away expensive gifts because it’s not the right brand. This creeps into literally aspect of my life. Sometimes I am unable to complete school or work because all I can think is ‘The floor mats in my vehicle are GMC. I drive a Chevy.’ and you can see how this could transfer to a lot of things. Constant desire to rid myself of everything I own. I even get weirdly upset if I have nail polish on that it’s the ‘wrong nail polish’ I have to remove it until I find the ‘right’ one. Spoiler. Still hasn’t happened. Since I have -for the time- curbed my desire to throw everything away, I’ve been narrowing my life down to several brands. So far, I have SHEIN for notebooks, office supplies, organization, clothes, accessories, makeup, and decor/bedding. This is appealing to me because it covers so many areas. I also have Pentel for alllllll of my art supplies, markers, pens! IKEA would be ideal for furniture, mattress, and some other areas that possibly SHEIN doesn’t cover as far as household. I chose Food Lion brand for my food- because it’s my closest grocery and it’s quite consistent. I choose Apple for technology because of my phone and laptop, but I get strongly conflicted when I see my really nice gifted radio that OCD wants me to throw out.. and think about trading it for a $500 Apple Home thing. Lastly, the one that’s been hurting me lately is Burt’s Bees for skincare etc. and it only hurts so bad because they do not make deodorant! I refuse to purchase any sort of body wash right now (I am out. Yucky, I know.) solely because I cannot find a skincare brand that makes both toothpaste AND deodorant! It’s been almost a week! I feel like I’m in a loop and I really wish I could tell you I didn’t start this post just to ask- “Does anyone know a brand of skincare and bath products that literally makes everything?” I’m really struggling. Ideally I would like everything to be made by one brand. Even the outlets in my apartments wall bother me. What brand? The flag on my wall- is it the same brand as the other flag? I can be writing a paper and suddenly just realize that I have multiple brands of clothes hangers and I will let out an audible sound of distress. If there’s anyone else out there.. I would love to be your friend. We can get through this (maybe)... if anyone can tell me why I think like this or literally anything about this. My counselor said it’s most likely sounding like OCD (as it started to interfere with schoolwork since I see everything as a task) and all I know is it’s probably just-right OCD. Thanks. Hope you all are safe and well during this time.

Anyone else have particular types of thoughts that they feel they have overcome over the years? For me its violent intrusive thoughts. Mainly thoughts dealing with physically harming others(cutting,hitting,stabbing etc). These particular thoughts don’t phase me anymore. I know that I would never/could never do such acts to people lol. Now the only violent thoughts that sometimes bother me are ones dealing with babies in particular. They’re fragile beings and I fear sometimes that I will accidentally/intentionally drop them or trip on top of them. Those images can cause a lot of discomfort and sometimes force me to not handle them or to be overtly cautious. Other than that I am just thankful that that group of thoughts don’t cripple me like they once did.