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I'm going to share my HOCD story. Growing up I never knew I had OCD, looking back tho I can see that I had manageable symptoms of perfectionism and scrupulously. I was a normal kid, loved sports video games fishing hiking camping crabbing and women. Always had crushes on women. I started masturbating to straight porn around 14 and could now see I may have even been addicted. I was always insecure about performance anxiety with women so I refrained from having actual sex until I was 18 with my first serious girlfriend. I loved it. Still never questioned my masculinity or if I was gay. With the pressure of going to college my girlfriend and I fighting my parents getting divorced, I was so stressed and anxious had my first panic attack. About a week later, I couldn't get an erection to a picture of a hot woman and the thought came into my head what if I'm gay because of this. At this very moment it felt as if my brain broke. I had constant anxious and fears. I was basically bed bound besides going to class. I had crippling depression with the constant gay intrusive thoughts. All of a sudden I questioned if I talked like a girl walked like a girl or acted feminine. I would have to constant repeat in my head I'm not gay I'm not gay I'm not gay all day every day. I couldn't sleep could barely eat. I got images of penises in my mouth and the sensation of men kissing me and me doing sexual things with men. I was disgusted. I couldn't have sex with my girlfriend because during it I would get intrusive gay thoughts. I would check with porn, still never watched gay porn. Only time I felt normal was when I would drink alcohol so I started drinking compulsively. The gay thoughts would go away and I was calm. Now I still turn to drinking alcohol. I have social anxiety with women because my brain was filled with gay thoughts. I avoided all things gay. And I falsely concluded that everyone thought I was gay. I lost interest in everything and became extremely suicidal and depressed. I went to therapy but none of them knew what was wrong with me. They thought I was hanging a sexual identity crisis. I would constantly read about HOCD and take gay tests online and watch coming out stories. After my girlfriend and I broke up I would have sex with women yo check if I liked it, close to 30 women. It was a compulsion. I was always drunk. I would get the groinals every time I saw any man and also felt the sensation that I was being raped every time a man would come near me or I would bend down. I still suffer from this. I lost a lot of friends due to my drinking and dropped out of college. I kept it a secret for 6 long years until i finally told my best friend. I was ashamed and still am. Now I'm an alcoholic and basically just drink to numb the pain. I have no interests or hobbies anymore and feel as tho everything is pointless. I've always dreamed of having a wife and kids and now that doesn't feel realistic. I feel hopeless. I don't know what to do. I hate my life. There's so much more I could get into and would love to talk to anyone who has gone through any of this. Thanks for reading...

Does anyone have any recommendations on resources that have helped them with their OCD? Particularly any podcasts or blogs? I go to therapy every week, I’m just working on a lot of self improvement and would love some extra tips.

Do u guys have anxiety about getting older ? It feels like time flies and i'm only 19 but it's like i'm scared of wasting my youth bc of anxiety and ocd and not knowing who i am. So i'm kinda obsessed about how old am i and am i enjoying my youth enough and that i'm scared of getting older

does anyone have any tips for figuring out what is and is not a compulsion? my ocd is currently trying to convince me i don’t have ocd because mine is mostly pure. also on that note, does repetitive googling classify as pure or physical?

My cisgender OCD (telling me I’m not trans) is back for the first time since I did my full course of gender-OCD-focused ERP. It hurts. It makes it harder to have a healthy relationship with my body, a healthy sense of self, respect for all I’ve done to get as far as I’ve gotten as a transgender woman. I can really feel the difference the ERP made in the severity of symptoms and in how I handle them, and yet here I am again, dealing with obsessive and intrusive thoughts that I’m really a man. I wish more people understood just how painful this is.

Man I’m tiered these thoughts have no themes or any particular kind..I have trouble in breathing and my father woke up and start vomiting so i think of covid 19 and i think that I’m still young i will be fine and it doesn’t matter what will happen to him I think that i want my family die to take money I have all kinds if thoughts and they didn’t tuck just everyday a new thoughts pop up in all kinds And the weird thing that in the time the come i’m not remembering that i think bad or anything it just from nowhere

Is “take as needed” anxiety pills a thing that can work for OCD? I know it’s not possible now with covid still happening but my friend and I have been talking forever about traveling to Japan one day and spending a week or 2 there, flying from the US. My biggest concern is my OCD and anxiety flaring up. Last April I went on a trip across the country and had a horrible anxiety episode which resulted in me flying back home early (this has never happened before and I’ve traveled many times before). The next trip I took, like a week before the trip, I had another anxiety episode which also started my OCD onset of suicidal OCD (trip was HORRIBLE for me mentally and physically, but I managed). I obviously don’t want to have OCD run and ruin my life, especially with a once loved passion of traveling. I’m not on any medication now and I’m worried to get on an SSRI or antidepressant or whatever because of risk of side effects and potentially making it worse and whatnot. I’m doing fine I suppose and doing ERP/working with a therapist now and I’m seeing progress, but I would absolutely hate to have a strong episode hit me while I’m across the world and having to cut such an amazing trip short. So that leads me to wondering if a take as needed anxiety medication would help or even exists, so I could just take it while on the trip and be fine off of it when I came back Thanks!

So i have a 2 year old daughter and every time we go for walks around my neighborhood i scan the floors where we're walking, usually looking for stuff like used bandaids or stains that might look like blood. And if i see anything that triggers my anxiety i completely avoid that part of the sidewalk for my next walk.. Is this normal or is it just my anxiett taking over?? Please help

Hello everyone, I'm absolutely freaking out about something. I'm 17 years old, and a couple of months ago, I stumbled on a website that had child pornography. I was absolutely disgusted, I closed everything immediately and even reported everything to Google. There are many websites like this one that havent shut down, so I was trying to make an effort to report them all to Google. However, as I was doing so, I started feeling extemely guilty for even opening those websites and looking at those images. I know that I was doing the right thing, but it still bothers me too much. I feel absolutely disgusting and destroyed for having seen those type of images, especially because MY OCD likes to make me imagine those things. I feel disgusted and repulsed by it, and I'm absolutely panicking right now. Please help me :(

Does anyone else feel like when their moving around or doing something their doing it "gay" like I'd be walking but my heads like your walking "gayly" and it makes me feel physicaly gay if you know what I mean.

WARNING: LONG READ. Would appreciate if someone would read it though. ~ ? Y’all I am struggling today. On the outside, today has been nearly perfect. I have a wonderful daddy who just spent 1100 dollars on a new laptop & accessories for me today before I go off to school. But now I am obsessing over “needing” a new iPhone 11 now instead of just appreciating he & mama’s sacrifices for me!! Consciously, I know I am grateful, but my emotions are being CRUEL today. Also, I just got my hair done & I am obsessing over our city water turning my blonde yellow. I wanted to get a filter for our shower, but dad says a plumber will need to look at it first. AHHHHH why can’t I just be happy & grateful that life is going great? (Materialistically. Emotionally not so great because I just lost my grandfather.) Maybe it’s partially because I have not been taking my Fluoxetine & I need a refill on it. AHHHHH this word vomit isn’t even all of what I am obsessing about. UGHHHHH.

take me back to the time where my HOCD never happened. i'd give up 30 years of my life i swear

I’m dealing with depersonalization.disociation all kinds everything seems so strange

How does internalized homophobia feel? I'm scared I don't have HOCD but being homophobic. Before hocd, I kinda was. But right now I feel like I've more accepted people being gay and everybody should do what makes them happy. Only thing is that having crushes on girls makes me happy and not the other way around. What's the difference between hocd and internalized homophobia.

It's telling me if I don't like my guy friend, then it must be a sign. He liked me in the past, but I never returned the feelings because he's kinda of a jerk and he has made me uncomfortable countless times. Also, he isn't "good-looking" and my OCD tells me that "I don't like him because of his looks so it means that I only like guys for their looks." Although looks fo contribute to attraction, I don't like his personality, knowing how unloyal he has been to his exes. I'm really lost with this HOCD thing. I feel so uncomfortable and paranoid when I talk to my female and male friends :/

Reflection Time: It's crazy to me how little I actually know about my condition. Sometimes I come here and stumble upon things that somehow, give me a newfound understanding of OCD. I'd think to myself, "Yeah, that makes sense." For a while I thought I was free of intrusive thoughts, those I deemed the scariest and most disturbing. Then I realized those aren't actually the only themes I could possibly have and OCD can still manifest differently from what I already know. And although the thoughts I do get still bother me, I never actually related them or made a connection to my condition, in any way. I thought maybe, I really just have a brain that sounds like a broken record outside of OCD, a broken record of terrible things, that is. Still, I'm learning about my own condition and a lot of things are making sense. And my brain still sounds like a broken record. Sometimes, I find it funny when people tell me my brain is like my biggest asset, and they'd joke about borrowing it for a while (especially before a test, haha). I'd bet they wouldn't really want it if they got to experience the ugly part of it. But maybe that's just the balance of it all. I learned in accounting class how an asset can be as much of a liability, too, in order to keep the balance. That's kind of how I see myself, and my brain now, both an asset and a liability at the same time. Maybe that's the price I have to pay. For every perfect score I manage to achieve is an anxious mind that rechecked everything a dozen times just to get them right; For every truth that I know is my mind, unsatisfied, seeking certainty, just to be sure, just one more time (and again after that, and again after that); For every compliment I get is my mind bullying me into thinking I am the opposite (a fraud, they'll find out soon enough, I'm a fraud); For every place that I go is my mind warning me of threats (no, it doesn't feel safe, no, it doesn't feel right); For everything that I feel is my mind calling me a liar (do you really? Do you really?); For everything that I do is my mind reliving and reliving and replaying and replaying everything until everything starts feeling so wrong. And I'd breathe, and stop for a while. Until my mind decides to do it again, the whole process. And repeat. And repeat. Like a broken record. That's how it wants to be in order to keep its balance. It's been a while since this demon first got acquainted with me. There are days when it announces its presence and is clear about its intentions towards me, and days when it uses the element of surprise against me. Most days I just think I'm used to it by now. Some days, I'd stop and think to myself, what am I doing? Why can't I just stop? I wish it was that easy to let go of, but I guess it's kind of like an abusive relationship where it's NOT always that easy to just leave. Maybe I will always live with it like I've been told. I guess I just kind of learned to live with it for a while. Some days, not so much. I still have a long way to go.

im in such a bad place right now :(( it’s like everyday, a new memory, a new thought, a new doubt, a new false memory, a new what if, a new theme. i swear i’ve gone through all the themes already. im just so TIRED of being tormented from every angle that ocd has. i just want to feel better and i want my life back. i used to be so happy but now i can’t enjoy life anymore. i have to lock my self away in my bathroom at family gatherings cause i cant control my panic attacks. i cant go to my friend’s house cause i’ll get intrusive thoughts about her baby brother. it’s so scary and so tiring. i know this isn’t me, this is not who i am. im so scared and i feel so alone. i just wanna go back to normal. i don’t want ocd throwing every single curveball at me that it has. i live everyday in fear of another theme popping up

I’m a terrible Christian ?

I have had harm ocd for 5 years but now the theme seems to have changed to the fear of going crazy. Every thought I have I think is this me hearing voices or just a thought? And sometimes I’ll look at a bag on the floor and for a second think it’s my dog, but then when I properly look I can see it’s just a bag. I have an intense fear of schizophrenia and psychosis. Is this still ocd? I don’t hear many people talk about thoughts about developing schizophrenia or psychosis and am worried that my worst nightmare has come true and that my ocd has changed into a different mental illness

I often wonder if my SOOCD and ROCD stem from an extreme fear of getting pregnant. Growing up my mom would say things like “I bet shes the one that will get pregnant in high school, in college, before marriage, etc” Ive alway been one to prove someone wrong so here I am, 30 years old, afraid to get intimate with anyone because it always leads to me feeling extremely guilty. Ive broken off the only 2 relationships Ive had in the last 10 years because of this. I usually use some lame excuse like religion differences but deep down I know its this fear. I started seeing a guy recently. Theres something different with him or maybe its just the timing of being quarantined and learning about OCD. I enjoy my time with him until things start getting more physical then Im constantly battling these fears: am I only letting him get farther to prove the soocd wrong or do I actually enjoy this? Or, we got pretty far this time, that only means next time we get together the likelihood of me getting pregnant goes way up. Even though I dont do anything that will get me pregnant, I still worry that the next time I do something, Ill go all the way and Ill get pregnant. I always have mixed feelings after I see him like I really did enjoy spending time with him but I also just feel so guilty. Unlike the previous relationships I have this fear of being gay on top of the original fear of getting pregnant. Most of the time I feel dead and numb inside because that feeling is better than the guilt and uncertainty. However, I will say knowing that its OCD has made a huge difference, I only feel like that most of the time instead of all the time. Anyways thanks for coming to my TEDtalk, I need to get that off my chest this morning.