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working to conquer OCD
Sometimes I feel pretty lonely. It’s hard when the only person you feel like you can talk to is your therapist. Even though my husband knows my OCD themes I don’t talk to him about my thoughts unless I’m desperate to be fair to him, and I feel like I’m not comfortable talking about my specific themes with friends. Anyone else feel that?
I’m loosing my mind.
I am having a really hard time figuring out how to address my obsessions and compulsions using ERP. It's actually turned into a main OCD theme of mine and it's terrifying. No reassurance please. I've never had an OCD theme so severe and last so long. This "theme" has been going on for 5 years now & has been the hardest to manage out of any OCD themes in the past and I've had many: Harm, Sexual, Just Right, Symmetry, False Memories, Scrupulosity, etc. I just wanted to put this out there because it's hard to function with these distressing, intrusive thoughts around therapy and how to do it racing inside me.
So I have 'Pure OCD', it always gets triggered when my thoughts are related to people and things I care about, never me. There are 2 triggers or obsessions. • Thinking if something bad is gonna happen to the people I care about. • Associating the people I care about with the people I hate, or evil people. This started when I was 16 years old. I am 21 now. My obsessions have always been the same throughout the years. I went through a lot of mental rituals to give me comfort throughout the years which were only temporary solutions. By going through websites related to OCD and self-treatments, I came to realize that I must just accept these thoughts as just 'thoughts' and not 'reality'. This greatly helped me get my OCD under control but it still never went away. My anxiety levels during the triggers have decreased significantly, but I must still do something about obsession. Can't just ignore them. I do sometimes succeed in passing the anxiety without any compulsion but that's not often. But I still do have 2 main compulsions- • Rationalizing the thought process which gives me some relief and then distracting myself by continuing what I was doing during the flare up. • Imagining the thought as a glass, and then breaking it. Bringing me out of my mind and facing the reality again. Though these compulsions do offer a great relief and have been working pretty well so far, are still a pain in the a** to perform. Honestly I am sick of this and just want to think clearly, and smoothly...if that makes sense. I installed this app 15 mins ago. Before I came across this app, I experienced my OCD flare up and instead of doing my ritual, I said "to hell with it" and just endured the obsession. It was kinda liberating and easier than I thought it was, and everything felt so smooth. Then I continued doing my work, but suddenly had trouble and difficulty breathing and realized that it must be because of enduring the obsession. Since then, I've had a few more of my flare ups, but I decided to do the same and endured through it. The breathing stuff didn't happen again, but then I started feeling desensitized between my thoughts and emotions, in other words, it felt like the connection between my thoughts and emotions was cut off. (I had no idea about ERP when I started doing this.) I think found out about ERP. But the connection between thoughts and emotions breaking seems a bit scary after I went through it. I think endure through my obsession whenever it comes up now. Hopefully this desensitized stuff also goes away. I am confident in my ability to endure it. This is a long post, and I thank you for taking your time to read it. Take care.
anyone get obsessions about things that don’t don’t cause distress? Like they can be things that make you happy? For me this could be Disney movies, or music it’s literally all I think about ?
I had every symptom before , the googling, forcing myself to watch porn, EVERYTHING. Now I just keep on being in my head and testing myself. Is this still HOCD?
Does anyone else have PTSD or are dealing with trauma along with their OCD? I am and it’s pure torture, especially in this pandemic. My whole view of life and the world is so dark and I have such deep deep sadness and anger.
My zoophilia ocd is starting to be debilitating. I feel like just crying in bed I feel so guilty and terrible. I can’t even pet my dogs or give them a tummy rub without thinking I must have some sort of messed up motive or am somehow violating them. If I try to pick them up and accidentally touch them near their privates I feel disgusting like I must have done it on purpose. I love my dogs they are so sweet and I wouldn’t do anything to hurt them but these thoughts are ruining my life. Advice please!!
i’m curious, what was the happiest moment(s) of your life?
When I was really young, started at age 5, I had a lot of intrusive thoughts that were sexual. They were with family and friends. Being so little and having these kinds of thoughts about family and not knowing the taboo behind it may have confused me a lot? Especially having it so young. As I grew up I developed a fear about sex and the idea being raped. It would make me cry just thinking about being raped. It made me question whether I have been abused. I have memories which I’m not sure if they are false memories or not but I have 2 big ones. One is when I was 3 or 4 and my older brother molested me but when I think about it, it doesn’t seem real. And when I was about 6 I have a memory of me touching my younger brother in inappropriate places :( And I’ve always been so questionative about whether those things really happened or not. And overall I just began to fear being about my brothers, dad and the men in my family because of these sexual thoughts. I would think that they were attractive and then just cry because what if I’m attracted to my family members? To my brothers? Even now (I’m 20) I get these feelings sometimes like I have such a deep emotional bond with my younger brother (who is now 18) that I get it confused with it being romantic??? Like if that makes sense. Like I can’t even explain it. My BPD makes my feelings x10 so love always feels so strong. And sometimes I doubt whether they’re romantic or just family love. I guess I’ll never know if I’ve been sexually abused or if they’re false memories. If those things really happened I would want to d*e because I can’t stand the thought of doing that to my younger brother. And the fear I developed growing up about my dad has made me question why I am the way I am. Do I have ocd and these thoughts because I was sexually abused when I was younger? Because I don’t remember anything clearly. The memory of my older brother molesting me seems dream like and not real. So I can’t say if that was real. And if that isn’t real then why did I have these thoughts at a young age? Do I have to be sexually abused to have this type of ocd at a young age? Or is that just the way my illness works? Someone please help
PLEASE HELP, is this even hocd anymore Like at first I would avoid everything, like I wouldn’t even like my own dick because it would make me feel sick cause another man had one, I also deleted all social media and didn’t go outside because I feared the idea of being gay, now I have no anxiety and get aroused by the thoughts sometimes, this is fucking with me cause now idk what I want So I have been getting better, I have woke up today and knew I was straight but then I started checking if I like the gay thoughts because like being straight still didn’t feel right, ( like something was missing) I still ain’t got my full attraction to girls back, I started doing compulsions like saying to myself it’s ok if I get aroused and imagining gay sex, like I acc had to force myself to imagine it, like I would see a girl when I tried to imagine gay sex, but still that wasn’t enough reassurance so I tried to imagine a boy. But now my hocd is saying I like men more than women cause I’m trying to imagine a scenario, This is fucked up but I still don’t have certainty if I do or don’t like these gay thoughts, I just want to be back to being straight and only straight, I’ve heard that sexuality can’t change at all and I’ve always been exclusively in love with girls but due to porn addiction and escalations I watched weird shit, My anxiety has calmed down and sometimes these gay thoughts make me feel so sick but sometimes I feel aroused and it just fucks with me so much, Can someone help with suggestions on how to beat this, like I get excepting it is the best way, but I can’t get my head round accepting shit I don’t like, I just want to not doubt shit, like my own head is telling me I’m straight and it just feels like I’m not, the thoughts telling me I’m gay have gone and now there saying I’m straight, I was so happy this morning now I have gave into the compulsion and I’ve gone downhill Is this even hocd anymore I know I want to with a women and don’t want to be with a man but something is misssing ) the reassurance telling me I only want women ain’t there, I want it
My pocd got triggered bc someone on twitter talked about grooming and like I just feel guilty for when I was 17 and went out with someone online who was 13 but didn’t know their age and just augh that plays back in my mind so much I hate it and I feel I don’t need this I’m at a friends and I’m trying to relax bc today Is the anniversary of my grandmothers death so I’m just augh
What is your earliest memory of OCD? Mine is: when I was in elementary school, I used to spend hours tying my shoes until my hands were red & raw because they had to feel equally tight on both feet. This post is just out of curiosity!
Small epiphany moment: It’s OKAY to have intrusive thoughts! It doesn’t mean you want them to come true or accept that they are good. A thought is simply a product of the human brain. Allow yourself to have the intrusive thoughts. Acknowledge them, accept them, and allow the thought to come and go as it wants! Be an observer of your intrusive thoughts. A thought is just a thought! It has no power unless we give it power. YOU are the one who gives meaning to your thoughts!
I need some support and advice because I don’t have many friends left these days, and when I open up to my friend she can’t emotionally handle it and doesn’t want me to become codependent she says. I am in therapy now on BetterHelp because it’s all I can afford but I also need some further support as I’m going through a hard time. I’ve had ocd since I was 14 and had help for it. I obsess about the past a lot and try to decipher it and think of worst case scenarios. I do things like check porn sites for myself in fear of someone secretly recording me and ruining my reputation. Now I am obsessing about times I was blacked out drunk (not my best moments) Long story short I blacked out on a tour in London and woke up on the floor of a little girls room to some guy trying to do things with me. Then another guy tried to mess with me by saying “we all gang banged you last night” and other things. When I started really panicking and crying one other guy said “ok stop messing with her” but it could’ve been about other things and not about gang banging me. Even if he was joking, I cling to those words and 3 years later I am here obsessing over it. My therapist says I am delayed processing trauma and it’s not clear what happened and is trying to get me to move forward. I always try to seek reassurance. I know guys can be assholes but it’s just disturbing how people can mess with a girl like that who doesn’t remember the night before. I think I woke up with my clothes on but the one guy was no clothes and just trying to do things and I was still drunk the next morning, how creepy. Anyway now I’m terrified of going back to London I’ve developed some sort of agoraphobia. Since I was drunk into the next day the whole experience was blurry. When I try to move on from all these experiences (I have a few black out drunk crazy nights) I always panic and say no I have to be worried about this I’m too calm I’m doing myself an injustice. I feed off of other people’s reactions if I tell them I guess as reassurance. The guy could’ve been joking but it’s still highly disturbing to me thinking of the worst case scenario of a group of men taking advantage of me while blacked out. How do I just sit with uncertainty and move on? I actually had the one guys Instagram that I blocked and I unblocked him recently to send a message confronting him and saying if y’all are rapists god will punish u and if not ur sick bastards for messing with me like that. And I made some online London police report submission that didn’t come of anything because I don’t have any proof of anything. I guess it was my way to get closure. Blacking out is the worst thing for OCD and I have since cut down on drinking. But when I’m anxious and obsessing like this I get paralyzed and it affects my working, concentration, and quality of life.
So many people expected me to grow up and do great things when I was a kid but I’m almost 24 and I’m a huge disappointment to anyone who ever expected anything of me.
Just need to vent. I’m 21, and OCD hit like a truck in June. It was a small build up that finally avalanched. I remember looking up intrusive thoughts when I was around 18/19, and felt fine having these intrusive thoughts about children. But slowly over time, I started getting nervous around them. Which was funny to me because I was a babysitter for years. I never had those thoughts about children. I used to make jokes about having children (even though I don’t want to have them), but now I make those jokes and feel guilt because I’ve had those intrusive thoughts. It’s been 3/4 weeks since I’ve been dealing with POCD and I feel like the worst human alive. My intrusive thoughts are getting worse. I can’t sleep. Can barely eat. And it seems like I can’t stop crying. My mind rakes through every single interaction with children to see if I actually am this monster. It’s looking for that “gotcha” moment. The groinal responses are the worst. They’re actually driving me crazy. I know I’m not a pedo. I know I’m not sexually attracted to children. But these thoughts and worries make everything seem so real. It’s to the point where I’m scared of my thoughts and I’m scared of being alone. I’m not looking for reassurance, but I just want to know if people who have dealt with POCD can feel better. I just want to know if I’m in the spot where if gets worse before it gets better.
Hello everybody, I am Shinn and I am suffering from Relatiobship OCD. I always think excessively about my friendships and my relationship with my family is back and forth. I used to go to theraphy but when I got well I stopped it and now I am having the symtomps again and I dont wanna make my mother cry in nights so I don't tell them I need theraphy again. I am bisexual and my family is not okay with that in fact my mother was always thinking my problem was feeling different sexually rather than obsession. Lately I have discovered a new compulsion. I unconsciously make irrelevant conversations about me. I don't do it on purpose and I don't realize it unless my friends say it to me. I don't know how to stop it. Plus I feel offended by everything and I constantly hve problems about this with my friends. Because of my family relationships, I always would talk to my friends and share my feelings with them. But now I am shivering when I think of losing them. I don't wanna be alone and I don't wanna be left alone because my childhood was filled with people excluding and discriminating me. Its pretty much it, if i remember or realize something new I intend to post about it. I wanna get well soon and be there for my friends again.
I’m so tired of dealing with this everyday. I know we’re supposed to fight this but I just can’t i don’t want to die but at the same time I don’t want to go on living like this ocd has changed me for the worse I’m a horrible person now I can’t go a day without thinking I’m going to hell or thinking of harming myself because of guilt I know it won’t change anything but I feel like I deserve it. To me harming myself is a punishment for being a horrible person I hate these thoughts I hate being around my family while having terrible thoughts every action I do now equals doing something gross and I can’t tell if it’s true or not and to me not being certain and continuing doing that act means I’m actually doing it and it’s just skskmsmsks
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