- Date posted
- 5y
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working to conquer OCD
I’m going to share my experience with hocd I think or not: About a year ago I was laying in bed and a random question came into my head which said “your gay” the. I was like what if I then my anxiety went through the roof then next Morning I forgot about it. Next I was getting to know this girl who I really liked and we spoke for months then suddenly she was not interested which then made me question myself and then got depressed. These question were is it because I’m ugly, am I weird, does she think I look gay, oh god what if I am and that’s when this started. I will get images of gay sexual acts which would distribute me and give me anxiety all day, from then until now I always get the thoughts and which give me anxiety, seeing gay stuff on tv gives anxiety so I can’t watch or do certain things, these thoughts or real life things give me groinal which is the worst and it feels like it’s on fire but is not full erected. I’m on google everyday doing research even at work when I suppose to be working, get dreams which when I wake up disturb me but I’m the dream I don’t know. Even when the thoughts go I always have this feelings of uncertainly which just invites the thoughts in. Pls help us this hocd or denial
Has anyone work with Sam Greenblatt or with Dr. Steven Phillipson's clinic? I would like to know if I was the only person with a poor experience.
I had a idea for the people who suffer with real event ocd..how about we make a group chat on instagram or something to talk to each other. Not everyone understands real event ocd which I understand and some of us are very lost because of this. If anyone is interested let me know :)
Does any one have any advice. Whenever I do imaginal exposures I don’t feel anxious I just feel sad and scared. I haven’t felt anxious constantly for a while. What shall I do? I don’t really know of any other exposures... they just make me think “this is just imaginary not true” so it doesn’t do enough for me. And now I’m kinda scared that I don’t feel anxious all the time. My heart just drops when I get the thoughts and that’s it. I feel sad and scared after
I’m struggling with doing ERP with my rOCD right now. I feel like I have no loving feelings toward my fiancé, and if those feelings are so fickle, maybe we shouldn’t be together. What if I have rOCD AND am in the wrong relationship? Although I guess there is no WRONG relationship as long as there are no major red flags (which there aren’t). But maybe I just don’t want to be married to him? Today I feel annoyed by everything he says and does. I hate having to go through this all the time. I feel so tired.
How have you guys dealt with your stickiest / most long lasting theme? For me this is HOCD; I had other themes popping up in the last few months but I was able to get past them quite quickly with acceptance and a sort of shrugging manner, like ‘the probability of this happening isn’t enough for me to waste my time obsessing over’. However HOCD has always been different, it was what started my ocd and what I obsessed over for a year before discovering I had this disorder, and it often feels like when I decide not to obsess over it, I’m just sweeping the issue under the rug and not thinking about it. I’m better with a lot of the triggers but the big ones, like ‘comphet’ and my relationship nerves, are so hard to ignore. A part of me is always saying ‘you’re just ignoring this, you shouldn’t be!’. This is always been the theme where I find it so hard to distance myself from the content and look at it from an ocd perspective because when something relates to your identity say, I find it harder to ignore than obsessions about health or existentialism for example.
Does anyone else have this problem? So I feel like all my crushes were either just in my head or forced. I think they were genuine, but HOCD is now using everything against me. It feels like I was never attracted to boys in the first place and that I was only aesthetically attracted to them. I'm scared, it feels too real!!! I looked at my crush and smiled but it felt forced. Then I get thoughts about attraction "what if you only like him for his looks?" "what if you forced yourself to like him by dreaming about him?" "what if you never liked him and is using this as an excuse?" I'm terrified .... what if i never liked him in the first place. What if this a sign of comphet?
How do I stop my fear of hell and other related fears? I am new to figuring all this out...so help would be appreciated
Hello everyone, I feel I’m going crazy. I have “checking OCD” and for example I check that my front door is closed and the same instant I turn away, the doubt appears if I checked correctly or I if didn’t. Another example could be, when I check or set a phone setting (that is important to me), the instant I switch screen, I doubt I left the setting the way I wanted it or not. It’s like False Memory OCD, but Immediate False Memory. Any other similar experiences? Thank you for reading me.
I have no idea how to use the exercises because I’m not always sure of the trigger to my ocd. I ruminate and obsess constantly, the thing I obsess over and have intrusive thoughts over changes when I’m no longer freaking out over one or whenever it feels like it. It’s typically in a pattern when I think of my thoughts. I was wondering if anyone knew how to tell me use this app or stop the excessive obsessions/intrusive thoughts
Guys I’m struggling. So I’ve been doing erp and my therapist is amazing. She’s supportive and doesn’t reassure me which is good for OCD. I’m so frustrated because I’m not feeling better yet. It’s SO FRUSTRATING. I’ve gotten my reassurance down from 200 times a day to like 5 times a day. It’s unbelievable. At the same time, I still feel horrible. I can go a few days with 0 reassurance, but then it will go back up to 10-15 reassurance a day. I get so bad at 0 reassurance that I give in. My ocd will tell me “you might not have ocd” and “this plan won’t work.” Then I get so discouraged. It literally convinces me I don’t have ocd. I NEED MOTIVATION TO do 0 reassurance FOREVER. I need motivation TO PUSH THROUGH A FEW WERKS OF TOUGHNESS AT 0 reassurance TO BEAT THIS. I also am not ruminating as much and I never avoid anymore. The main fear is that I don’t have ocd. I’m also getting frustrated lately because It will convince me on autopilot that “I can’t enjoy politics” and “I don’t like girls”. It attacks everything I love. I also feel like I’m so out of it sometimes. I’m working so hard. Just need that motivation to keep going. My ocd mainly makes me feel doom and down. That’s why it bothers me. I’m working on accepting it and not doing reassurance!
The narcissism thing is bothering me WAY too much today. I’m feeling really numb today and I like know how to respond to people based on like that’s what you should do but I’m scared bc I have no emotion feeling with it. I’m just numb today. I know in bpd sometimes people can be numb but..
What if ERP feeds my obsession? My mind is like a vacuum that absorbs all the information possible and puts it against me, creating deeper obsessions and more thoughts.
I apologise for posting again so soon, but tomorrow is a big deal for me. I have my first appointment with my new doctor. I'm excited cause I'm hoping he can help, but I'm scared my hopes are too high. What if he can't? I don't know what I'll do after that
I recently broke up with a friend of mine...and even though it’s been hard I’m ready to get over it but I keep obsessing over it. I keep trying to find things to do but my mind just won’t give me a break and it’s getting really annoying. I’ve talked out my feelings, wrote it out and much more but it’s not good enough I’ve been praying for DAYS...literal days begging God to make the thoughts stop and...clearly judging by this post my prayers haven’t been answered Emotionally I am okay about it and I’m ready to get over it but mentall my OCd is not budging...ugghhhh.
I am so sick of hearing about sexual assault stories on social media. It makes my OCD a lot worse. I wish that people realized that they are actually harming a group of people when they post stuff like this.
Is exposure or response prevention more important for OCD recovery? This article suggests that RESPONSE PREVENTION is what makes the difference between illness and wellness. - 40 adults (on ssris) with OCD participated in a research study about how ERP works. Previous research showed that compliance with ERP daily homework assignments predicted symptom reduction regardless of symptom type or initial symptom severity. - The next important question to answer was "what part of the homework mattered most?". So researchers had participants provide feedback each week about how many daily assigned exposures were they completed (exposures) and about what percentage of urges to do compulsions the participants acted on (response prevention). - When they analyzed the data, a clear pattern emerged. As you can see in the chart, participants who reported resisting 90% of rituals by week 6 had an 80% chance of reaching wellness. 75% success with response prevention by week 6 correlated with a 60% chance of minimal symptoms at the end of the study. Participants who managed less than 75% Response Prevention or less than 50% response prevention had much lower odds of positive outcomes. - To contrast, the percentage of exposures the participants attempted was unrelated to their final outcomes. - Now, a SUPER important thing to remember when interpreting this data is that participants could be in different categories week to week. This graph isn't showing how four different groups of people fared over the course of the study. It shows how response prevention success at each timepoint related to final outcome. Just because someone started out preventing less than 50% of compulsions does not mean that they couldn't move to preventing 90% of compulsions later on and have very good odds of recovering. - The overall conclusion that Response Prevention is more important than number of exposures didn't come as a big surprise to me. I've said for a while that the point of exposures is to create opportunities for response prevention and that response prevention is where the brain rewiring happens. - What did surprise me was the level of response prevention needed for success. Resisting 50% of compulsions was not anywhere near good enough to have decent odds of recovering. Even 75% was iffy. More than 75% gave decent odds, but it wasn't til more than 90% of compulsions resisted that recover was a solid bet. - If I'm honest with myself, I resist maybe 75% of urges to do compulsions. Lately, I've been really down on myself about how I'm not seeing the progress I hope for. This study suggests that my experience of continued symptoms is expected given the level of response prevention I'm at. And that sucks. It feels yucky. Yet, it gives me information about where to focus my energy to see better results. I've got to amp up my response prevention game to the next level. And while daunting, that's something I can do. After all, when I first started trying to get well, I resisted maybe 10% of urges to do compulsions. I've improved response prevention before, and I can do it again. - Thoughts? Questions? Leave them in the comments so we can explore the together!
Anyone her on Birth control? I’m scared of side effects
i don’t see this as a sign of my ocd bc it doesn’t cause me any anxiety, but sometimes i wonder if it’s possible that i have autism? i know i can’t self diagnose and i won’t, but i sometimes entertain the possibility. i also just wanted to find somewhere to put it out there bc i don’t feel i can’t talk to anyone in my offline life about it. i somewhat identify with some of the associated behaviors (NOTE- i got this from a google search. they might not be accurate, or representative of how people actually experience autism. i admit i don’t fully understand the realities of autism) like stimming. my interests vary, but i usually maintain one interest at a time and put all of my energy into that interest. sometimes i’m overstimulated by sound. the most recent examples i have- anytime i’m in the silent study room at my university and people are whispering, or tapping their foot (or similar repetitive behaviors) or eating something (and i can hear chewing, etc.) i can’t focus and i get really frustrated to the point where i have to leave the room because it stressed me out to the point of crying and having to call my mom to vent. this past weekend, i went with some family to visit other relatives. my cousin took us out for the day and when we got back, the adults were having a small get-together with drinking and loud music and it went on for over an hour. i had to sleep on the couch due to the amount of people in the house (didn’t care tbh), but couldn’t until people left and they turned the music off. i wasn’t all that tired (i stayed up for hours after people did finally leave), but i was so frustrated and upset and after pacing circles and circles in the living room, i ended up crying in the bathroom upstairs calling my mom. in both the study room situations and in the latest situation, i had to cover my ears as best i could). these incidences may be related as well (but can’t really say, as i was like 4), but i also remember in pre school, my teacher was trying to teach us to draw shapes. she made a layer of shaving cream on the desk (not sure why she used this method). i remember crying and getting very upset over this (again could just be four year old things) because i didn’t wanna touch it at all, but she grabbed my hand and made me (fun- not). i don’t have any present issues with touching shaving cream. (this is something that might not be at all applicable to this discussion, but emotionally i’ve developed somewhat slower than my peers. i played and enjoyed playing with dolls until around 14.5 yrs old.) and my parents have told me i used to bang my head on the wall- which i do believe i have a memory of doing- and that people in our family thought i might have autism. and i’ve always felt like a bit of an alien when it comes to interacting with people my age. like, i don’t share their interests. i often don’t know how to respond or talk to people when they text me, i feel utterly and horribly awkward in how i hold myself and do things like eat, i miss social cues sometimes, and i generally feel that i don’t know how to act or speak or really get to know people. i recognize that i’ve essentially made a list of reasons why i could be autistic instead of a comparative list of reasons why i might not have autism. i am not attempting to self diagnose, but i’m wondering if i should consider talking to a specialist. i also apologize sincerely if i have said anything that could or does cause harm to people with autism, if i have misrepresented what people with autism deal with or how they feel, and vow to remove this post the second that i am made aware of any potential damage.
If you are in crisis, please use these emergency resources to find immediate help.
OCD doesn't have to
rule your life