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What are some common/uncommon misconceptions about OCD and OCD recovery that you wished more people knew about?

Anyone wake up with intense anxiety? I can’t sleep at night. The minute I wake up I’m consumed with anxiety to the point I’m crying. It’s been like this for two weeks and I’m emotionally and physically exhausted.

I looked up psychopath symptoms and it definitely didn't help. I feel disconnected from myself, others and even reality a little. Then i have horrible harm thoughts. Maybe I am crazy and deserve to be locked up.

Hi guys, I would like to share something and ask your opinion about it if that's fine. So, I was at work yesterday (I work in a grocery store) and I saw a child walking by. As always, I felt a lot of anxiety, but not just that, I also felt a very strong groinal response. Now, that's not the (great) problem because I'm aware that POCD comes with this type of symptom. The thing that worries me is that I've not been dealing with groinal responses for a long time, and when I had it yesterday, it felt very different than it used to feel when I first started having POCD thoughts. It felt absolutely real and it was very similar to arousal. In addition, in that moment, I don't think I felt enough disgust towards my groinal response, I don't think I realised that my body was responding to seeing a child, and not an adult. I don't know. I'm confused as it feels like it was more than just a groinal response. What do you think about this? Should I worry about it or let it go? (I sincerely apologise if this was disturbing!) Thank you for reading this!

A bit of a background on me: I have suffered from ocd for as long as I can remember, and I have reached my breaking point about now being isolated inside with my family. I was going to seek therapy but with covid-19 that does not make things easy. This is my first time seeking the courage to reach out to a community. so hello, future friends and fellow sufferers. Anyway, Last night I had an intrusive thought about my brother naked and noticed I got a groinal response to it. The more I checked, I felt the more intense it got, going from a tingling to an almost swelling feeling. I did not get an erection but it almost felt like I was getting one. however it felt very different from a normal erection. At one point I got so panicked about it I felt Iike I was going to have a heart attack. Now Ik for a fact that I am not aroused by, or attracted to my brother or any men for that matter. I also suffer from pocd and am familiar with groinal responses to that too. But am I crazy? Has anyone else experienced this? And how have you dealt with it? Ik I’m reassurance seeking but I just want some clarity on if this is normal for ocd sufferers or if I was actually arroused. Thank you in advance ?

I'm NOT asking for reassurance. I just want to know if I maybe developed depression. My ocd has been fucking me up since more than two years ago. I want to know if I maybe developed depression because of it. If so, I really need therapy. My symptoms are as followed: -No more appetite for more than 6 months -No more sex drive for more than 6 months -When OCD is active, I get recurrent thoughts of suicuide. -low self esteem -thinking that life sucks ass and dying would be better. Can this be caused by depression?

My ex best friend and I had a tremendous fall out 3 years ago. We were inseparable for so many years and my ocd started to latch onto this idea of “what if something bad happens to her and she develops ocd like me and her life is ‘ruined’?” bc her mom had very clear symptoms of it too. So I started fighting with her all the time constantly checking her every thought and action which I know was toxic on my end and so annoying and invasive, but I felt like if I didn’t then something bad would happen and I wouldn’t be able to “prevent it” and she would spiral and I couldn’t stand to watch that, what I perceived to be true. We fought constantly, but in addition she also lied to me a lot and at the very end got quite physical with me-choked me, scratched me etc. I grew to be toxic from my ocd constantly causing fights with her trying to check if she was okay 24/7 but I still think I didn’t deserve that and she cut me out immediately after and has never looked back since and it’s been years. I cried and cried to make up with her bc the guilt was absolutely killing me for so long, my brain got hooked on the scenario and if she felt bad, would make up with me, missed me, etc. anyone have tips for accepting your faults especially due to ocd when your intentions were good, and accepting being cut off and shut out by someone you were so close to who purposefully ignores you even when you’re in the same group?

So here is my story . I've always been weird regarding the way I thought. Thinking that if I did a certain action then a certain outcome( whether it's tapping my foot as I leave my room or doing a certain action) I would do these , daily thinking that I couldnt start my day without them. I've also have always been an Overthinker and have been prone to anxiety since I was young. I've always thought that this was a normal thing I would do ( I had religious themes that were terrifying when I was around 11) So I feel like I've always had OCD but just never diagnosed . During Middleschool I identified as Pansexual because all of my friends were bi. And the dumb middleschooler in me was all like , " I wanna be like everyone else too!" And so I did. Even though throughout the whole thing I only ever had boy crushes. I even played Otome games(Games targeted towards females , they're kind of like dating games where you end up with a guy) So entering highschool I realized that I was straight and only wanted to be with guys. So I ended up doing what any Highschooler did and started dating , having crushes and the whole thing. I would make sure I look nice for a guy, flirt and everything. But last year due to a stream of bad luck regarding dating , I fell into this weird pit of anxiety, of me ending up alone in the future. ( My dream was to get married and have children) and then suddenly the thought came back again , the HOCD hit me like a wave. I had every symptom in the book, the rumination, false memories, the feeling of dread, the gronials,google searching,loss of attraction, force myself to watch porn,I would just go about through my day like basically a zombie and I couldn't eat without puking, till the point where I had to go to the doctor. But as weird as it started it disappeared as soon as school started. Heck , I even started dating again and I had been talking to this guy who really liked me and I liked and we eventually started going out. Heck, when he kissed me it felt so right and amazing. His scent would be on my clothes and everything and I would get so excited and I would miss him a lot. But that all shattered once well, his parents got involved and flatly told him that they wanted him to break things off with me because they didn't want the friendship him and my dad had to just break off. So in concern of his parents and my dad , I broke things off which utterly broke me. I felt like a zombie throughout that whole thing. It was horrible. And that's when HOCD started to come back once more and haunt me,but differently this time. I didn't have the google searching, or the intense feeling of anxiety, I have a little bit of my attraction, but the rumination remains and the gronials too.My brain also always tries to tell me that whenever I feel attracted to a guy that it's fake and that I'm forcing myself to do it. It tells me different things like ",oh you have to do this, you'll feel better once you try it and worse of all my brain keeps reminding me of my middleschool years. But it's significantly less harsh than it was , I hate the fact that I'm going through this because it feels like, I'm going to never be happy with a guy ever. Or my brain is trying to convince me that I'm forcing my feelings that I don't truly feel this way for him. I feel so lost , numb, I feel like I don't even know who I am anymore. :(

I thought I was doing better with my pocd, but it’s been tough the last few days. I saw a young girl at the store, and I looked at her on purpose to ‘check’ to see if I was attracted to her. Of course it made it worse. Then ocd tells me, ‘but ok why aren’t you attracted to her? She’s so cute look at her? If you aren’t attracted to her now you will be next time you check.’ It’s like I can’t control the checking. Even when I see a cute kid online, I scroll past them then it’s like ‘wait, but we’re you attracted to him/her? Go back and check!!’ I don’t need reassurance. I just need someone to tell me that with therapy this will get easier because I’m freaking out today ?

Anyone else kinda fallen out with a best friend before? Idk I’m feeling a lot of guilt over how things went with my ex bestfriend. It’s been like a year now and we’re not enemies, but it’s still weird. I’m just worried I hurt her. And I’m worried she thinks I’m a bitch... because I know I’ve changed a lot since then. We used to have quite a gossipy friendship where we’d just talk about others a lot. She knew a side to me that’s (hopefully) died now. I just wish she could know that. I don’t wanna talk to her about it though; it’d be too random. We were really close, but maybe not BEST friends since we both have other best friends. But then I got closer to two other girls and it just got weirder. She started to irritate me and I just didn’t wanna be close to her anymore. I should’ve dealt with it better though. She’s got a solid group now and I’m happy for her! I just keep thinking about the whole thing and getting anxious.

I’m trying not to get stuck on diagnoses and “Do I have X, Y, Z, or am I just a lazy bum who needs to try harder?” I score low-ish on many scales therapists have given me (Y-BOCS, Beck Depression Inventory, over-control scales). The scales seem to be telling me, “You don’t hurt enough. You don’t have a real problem, you just need to get over yourself.” I’m excellent at surviving; I’m independent, support myself, self-employed. But I still suck at thriving and feel strangled in rules that I don’t know if I should be keeping or not. It sucks. Thanks for listening.

Everything just sucks. I identify as a masculine lesbian, but I’m having intrusive thoughts about being bisexual. My problem though is that when I go on tik tok or instagram, I see masculine women identify as bisexual. This is a problem to me because these are women who you’d look at and think “oh she’s definitely gay”, but she’s not because she’s actually bi. During this whole hocd thing I tried so hard to look and act gay and masculine, while still being myself, because I wanted people to know that I’m gay. But if there are masculine women identifying as bi, what would people think about me?? What if I am bi?? What if I’m just a masculine bisexual?? These thoughts are really triggering because every time I see a masculine identifying bisexual, I think “what if I’m not a masculine lesbian, what if I’m a masculine bisexual?” What if these thoughts I’m having are supposed to tell me “you’re not gay like you think you are, you’re just a masculine bisexual”? Is this normal?? I don’t know what to do anymore. Honestly, I just feel like giving up and giving in. I really don’t know if I can take it anymore. I just don’t know who I am anymore.

Hi everyone, I'm having a rough time. I don't know if this is me exaggerating but I don't and can't see a way out of all this mess. I follow Kimberley Quinlan on instagram, and she has recently posted something about self compassion and how everyone is good and loved. But here is the thing: I don't deserve self compassion and I don't deserve to be loved. I've done some disgusting and awful things, and because of that I don't deserve to be treated with love and respect. And this kills me. It kills me knowing that I'll never be good a person. It kills me that I am who I am and I can't change it. I saw the post, realised what a deviant I am and how I deserve nothing good, and my anxiety is spiralling like crazy now, it won't stop. I don't know what to do. I have work today but I really don't know how to function. The pain is way, way too big for me to handle it without bursting into tears or wanting to spend the whole day in bed and be left alone. I'm sorry. I don't really know what I want from this post; I guess I just wanted to let it out. Thank you for reading this.

here’s my story. (i’ve sent this to someone just thought i’d copy and paste it) I’ve been in a relationship with my boyfriend for about four months and the first two months were like a honeymoon phase. It was great I didn’t have any intrusive thoughts or anything. About two months down the road, I had this intrusive thought about liking this girl and it really stressed me out. It was this girl that I wasn’t even friends with anymore and it really stressed me out like a lot. That lasted for about two weeks. Another intrusive thought came after that and it was saying that I was gay and that I should break up with my boyfriend. That’s been going on for about two months now. It’s been really stressful because at times my mind will just be like “come out to him” and it just feels so real. And will be doing intimate things in my mind will just be like “you don’t like this” “this is not what you need to do you don’t like d word“ LOL. When my boyfriend and I first started dating we had sex a lot and I never thought about that those thoughts did not even cross my mind at all. All this time I feel like I’m in denial or something. Last year, I did kind of think I had feelings for this one girl. But at the time, I was homeschooled and had been for about five years and I was in a ballet company with all girls and I have never had a crush on a girl once in my entire life. I’ve always been very boy crazy. Last year was just me being desperate for love the relationship wasn’t even sexual in anyway. I came out as bi after that because I had read shit on my astrology chart or something, and I think I was reading that months before last year in the whole girl situation happened. And something on my charts that I had bisexual tendencies or something and I was like “oh that has to be me since it says that.” I just remember being extremely confused and I actually ended up in a mental hospital shortly after I came out as bi and it doesn’t really feel natural to me in any way. Like I feel like if I was truly happy I wouldn’t of been at the worst mental state i’ve ever been in in my life. Shortly after that, I went to high school. Remember I was homeschooled before then, so I started up my junior year at a new high school I haven’t been to school in five years. I went boy crazy and dated two different guys before the boyfriend that I have now. I never did fall for a girl or anything. I was just very very confused about my sexuality from after last year happened to about January of this year. I was always confused and questioning. I was also addicted to lesbian porn for about a year. So I think that has a lot to do with what I’m going through now. So anyways, in January I kissed this girl in my English class just for fun or whatever and I did touch her but it was kind of like a thing where she said “you won’t do that” and so I did it just because she said I wouldn’t do it. I guess I don’t really get grossed out about the thoughts it’s just a lot of anxiety that comes with the thoughts that I’m experiencing now. I haven’t even thought about last year and stuff like that until I started having this thought to come out to my boyfriend and come out to my family and it’s very annoying I’ve been having suicidal thoughts I started new medication I just..... it’s just so hard. Have you experienced any of this in your relationship if you are in one? I really love my boyfriend with everything that I have. With every bone in my body. I don’t doubt that. Because in times that the thoughts don’t bother me, I feel the love between us and even when they are I still do feel the attraction. But those moments where nothing bothers me or even when I’m still thinking about it but things the anxiety isn’t there, I know I love him.

guys I’m really spiraling right now. I have a theme of a fear of psychopathy/ sociopathy. I watched a video about psychopathy and then I proceeded to take three separate quizzes. All of the quizzes said I scored low/ average and that I wasn’t a psychopath but one said that it was higher than the average for the rule breaking section (58 percent higher!!) and now I’m freaking out and feels like confirmation and I keep questioning myself did I really tell the truth on all those questions? Even though I think I did and I’m just freaking out help

I really need help with jealousy. Any one that can help!?

tw: abuse, coercion, suicide mention .. .. i’m sorry this is going to be incredibly long because maybe writing this out will kind of help. very confused...i’m 22 and i’ve never had a crush on another girl. growing up it felt pretty natural that they were just my friends. i didn’t think anything of it actually. the earliest crush on a boy i had was in kindergarten. i always noticed boys and men, but never seemed to take any notice of women or other girls. if boys thought another girl in my class was pretty, or they got along better with them, i’d feel jealous of the girls. my first real crush in grade 6 was pretty embarrassing.. the whole school found out and then he personally called me ugly to my friends. i guess it was then i began to adopt a mindset that boys were just disgusted by me. my mom first told me about the lgbt community when i was 13 and distinctly remember thinking “oh i wonder what it’s like for those people.” some time soon after a classmate and i were kind of bickering back and forth. he called me a lesbian as an insult (like equivalent to ‘idiot’ or ‘stupid’ - which of course was wrong). i guess that comment kind of triggered this whole thing. i started experiencing anxiety (i didn’t know it was anxiety at the time) being exposed to rainbows, hearing lgbt stories, if my eyes lingered anywhere too long, being around lgbt people, eye contact, etc. i think grade 9 was when i discovered porn. (i feel uncomfortable writing this ??‍♀️??‍♀️) straight porn did arouse me but lesbian porn seemed to a lot more. i was convinced that it meant something about my sexuality. my obsessional thinking grew into me asking my mom for reassurance. that’s when the checking happened constantly. i compared my own reactions to different scenarios, purposefully looked at women to analyze what i felt, avoided watching certain tv shows. i was paranoid of people thinking i was bi or a lesbian. i thought i was insane. i was hyper-aware of everything: other people’s reactions, my groin, my thoughts and emotions. my mom had to talk me through a few crying meltdowns because everything felt wrong. i felt crazy and homophobic and not myself. during this time i was in my 2nd relationship and it was abusive. he threatened to kill himself if i didn’t have sex with him, shamed me every day and used anger to scare me often. i think it affected how i viewed sex greatly. my next relationship after him was healthier. he had a higher sex drive than me, but he truly cared about me. my ocd (again, i had no idea it was ocd at the time) seemed to attack it. the hocd got triggered badly again after seeing a woman in a particularly sexualized way during a movie. i began constantly researching and googling at a ridiculous rate. we were in bed together when i read a forum comment that porn preference indicates sexuality. i started crying and he couldn’t seem to understand my pain - but i didn’t either. i began thinking that every relationship or any feeling i’ve had towards men were fake. i was truly convinced that i was just faking it and living in complete denial of my sexuality. i even came out to my mom that i was bi after a spiral. she accepted it wholeheartedly. the coming out didn’t bother me at all. i wasn’t scared in the slightest - but i didn’t feel relief after telling her. i was still anxious and still asking “what if.” after that, i was in another relationship with a man, and after that i had three intense relationships with men over the course of 4 years, but my super low confidence interfered with them progressing (despite how much i wanted to date them). now i’m in the healthiest relationship i’ve ever been in. he’s my love. i met him when his band was playing and i noticed him as soon as i walked in the building. we got talking and it lasted the whole night. after his set, we both couldn’t stop smiling. when i got home, i rushed to my best friend to tell her all about him. she said she had never seen me smile that big.. ? but this of course is when i feel ocd the most. i asked my mom constantly for reassurance (bless her soul, she’s had to deal with so many repeated conversations) the 3rd week of covid lockdown gave me a really really bad spike. i masturbated and orgasmed to lesbian porn. this is significant because i haven’t orgasmed in any of my relationships. it’s been the driving force of my ocd. so needless to say, that was it for me. i didn’t eat for 3 days and i just wanted to die honestly.. i probably would have if my boyfriend didn’t come over and made me go back home to my parents.... but then i stumbled across an awaken into love video on sexual orientation ocd about a month and a half ago - which led me to learning about different ocd themes, making me realize that i’ve gone through the harm, incest, pedophilia and relationship subtypes as well. it was like my life suddenly made sense ? all of my strange behaviours and unhappy feelings suddenly had an explanation. of course my ocd has made me think that i don’t even have ocd, i’ve been lying to myself, i have to break up with my boyfriend, etc. i feel exhausted. i’m sure to anyone reading this, it could very well seem that i’m bi - there’s quite a bit of evidence. i’ll just accept the fact at this point. i don’t want to date girls, but it seems that it’s what life wants me to do . will keep on therapy and on meds there. got it all out ❤️

I’m so scared I’m a lesbian again I still don’t want it bc tho but for some reason the thoughts font make me as uncomfortable or anxious as they once did Barely even at all And that makes me feel like I’m actually a lesbian and as I’ve been getting better it’s coming out Ughhhhh why:/ But I still don’t want it and at the same time am still uncomfortable at the thought of it like I just got uncomfy and anxious rn Smh

New pocd false memory I'm still obssessing over that day on the pool and I hope this is a false memory but I think my sister's friend sat on my lap on the pool and at that day I was having intrusive thoughts... This "memory" is so fuzzy and I'm so scared she sat on my lap... This was 3 years ago so I don't remember much of the event. I only remember giving her 2 piggyback rides that day. That is the only "physical" interaction we had. I can't sleep. I want to cry. My brain keeps shooting false memories everyday and I'm on a breaking point. I was almost 21 when this happened...

Can someone tell me when people say it feels real what do they mean exactly? At what point is it feel real or denial