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working to conquer OCD
I’m so happy that this last week or so I’ve been feeling the best I have been since my OCD onset. I feel borderline normal now finally. I wanna let you guys know it’s possible. I mainly struggle with suicidal OCD along with some other themes and before therapy it was screaming at me every waking moment and now I get some intrusive thoughts here and there but it’s easier to let it go by and it’s quiet now. It’s doable!!!
Hi all, I have an ERP question. I have POCD and I am terrified I would enjoy harming a child, particularly young girls. When I practice exposure I get several things: fear, dread, negative talk AND the big one, a very intense, very real groinal response. I often obsess that if get rid the fear/anxiety, I am left with the thoughts and the grional response. Which You can imagine I fear. Like, the only thing that separates me from a pedofile is my fear, why would I get rid of it? Regardless, I still experience some relieve after practicing exposure but I am left with a groinal response that stays lingering all day and eventually becomes a trigger. Anyone else experiences this? Any suggestions to work trough this in ERP?
Does anyone else get triggered by unexpected or unplanned occurrences? I always get triggered when my husband says he wants to order food when I was planning on cooking. Or like we have to do an unexpected curbside pickup tonight and I'm getting so anxious. I just feel like anything unexpected could happen and I wont know how to handle it. (I have contamination ocd by the way).
Death anxiety is so draining
⛔️ HOCD and loss of identity ⛔️ I’ve completely lost my identity now. Before I knew who I was and who I wanted to become; I was like a completed puzzle. Now I feel like someone’s smashed my puzzle, I’m scrambling to find the pieces and when I finally start to refabricate the picture, it seems to change and I don’t know what it’s going to be anymore. I’m starting to believe my thoughts. In fact, I often get confirmation thoughts that say “you are ___.” Despite the fact that these thoughts cause excruciating headaches that can last hours - days, a sense of disgust and uneasiness and little crying episodes I feel lost. Recently I’ve had intrusive thoughts asking me whether I’ve come out yet. I’ve also seen several TikTok posts jokingly saying that you’re gay if you watch. All of these things have made me believe that I am yet I don’t want it; I don’t want to touch them or be involved with them romantically or physically. In fact, I find it repulsive. Yet my mind tells me it’s denial and the disgust is what accompanies the denial I’m feeling. It’s so distressing to me. Please help. I don’t know who I am anymore. I know who I want to be but my mind and my heart are fighting with each other. A little bit of guidance would be nice.
HELP! I just saw about four videos on my cup claiming that everyone watching is gay and it’s made me anxious because I’m scared as it’s called the “for you page.” It makes me so distressed. Is this telling me something? I hope that it isn’t because it makes me so uncomfortable.
TMI/TW for mention of masturbation . . . Just did some intense exposure therapy. I pleased myself and didn’t let the thoughts and images stop me. My anxiety is skyrocketing. I feel like I did something wrong. Trying to reclaim my life by not letting my intrusive thoughts stop me, but it can be so hard and shameful. I want to be able to be sexually intimate with people, and this is the first step towards that. Anyone who can relate?
I’ve been having issues with my medication for a while now and I think my mom has something to do with it. My mom didn’t even like the idea of me going to therapy because I should “just get over it”. She also doesn’t accept any of the diagnoses and tries to play doctor saying “well I think you have this-“ and she won’t let me tell her that she’s not qualified to do that because she’s a nurse who worked in pharmacy for like a year which in her mind gives her power over my psychiatrist. She also doesn’t take me seriously because when I was a child I had a tendency for overreacting as children do, but this has branded me for life so now no one in my family takes me seriously. I told her I had intrusive thoughts, anxiety, and all this stuff and she kinda just shoved it off as being overdramatic. Anyway, for a long time I would only get one month doses of medication and then suddenly “your psychiatrist didn’t redo to the prescription and I talked to her and she keeps denying it”. I believed that..until I talked to my psychiatrist who I haven’t seen in months largely due to my mother and I brought up the medication and my psychiatrist was genuinely shocked that I haven’t taken it in months and that she had no idea because she hasn’t heard from us. I don’t even know how to feel at the moment. It’s makes sense that my mom would do that considering how she feels about the whole mental health situation anyway. Plus she had a lot of reservations concerning this medication. I just don’t understand why she would go as far as to lie and make me quit medication cold turkey. It was a really hard time for me when I ran out because “it couldn’t be refilled”. I feel hurt.
i cant do it anymore. why wont this ever end? i thought i was getting somewhere and now a whole new theme on top of it. why cant i make this stop :(
I feel so immature and dumb going through this at 23 years old how is it that one minute I’m fine and now I’m this
Hey guys. I told my parents that I sometimes have negative thoughts and the conversation didn’t go well. I get bombarded by them at times. Now i feel like if i have a negative thought about something/or reason for doing something, I can’t do it anymore and if I would want to change that negative thought or reason and make it positive that it wouldn’t work. What should I do?
I haven't had a panic attack for about 3 weeks now and I just had a mild one. I need some support. Im supposed to fly out to see my son tomorrow and ocd told me that since the number 7 is my lucky number, that I should act on my thoughts on the 7th. Im so terrified of how ocd is evolving. I had a mild (compared to others) panic attack. I kept trying to do erp everytime I began to do compulsions. I didn't even go to the gym. I messaged my therapist about this so Im waiting to see what she says. Im at a loss. I feel like life is taking my son away from me. I wanna be with my son, but I also want to protect him. Im just exhausted.
⛔️ PLEASE HELP!!!!!! ⛔️ Does anybody get intrusive thoughts that get presented as statements rather than questions? e.g. I am ____, It’s because you’re _____, etc. Is it my mind playing tricks on me? I REALLY hope that it is because I find it extremely upsetting and distressing. Not to mention, I have been dealing pretty well with intrusive thoughts, mental images, gronial responses, false memories and false attraction to far because I sit with my discomfort and refuse to do compulsions (this is incredibly difficult and sometimes my mind will revisit the exact same thought 5-10 times. However, I refuse to do compulsions). As of present, I have developed my attraction again and I have developed a crush on a celebrity that I liked before HOCD plagued me five months ago. However, I was daydreaming about him and I a few days ago and I got an intrusive thought asking me whether I had come out. As you can imagine, I started to overthink it and I began to believe that I was experiencing deja vu and my future self had accepted the thoughts and admitted that they felt denial all along. After getting these thoughts, I began to watch “HOCD vs denial,” videos, analyze my symptoms and ask my mum repeatedly whether she thought I was. I became incredibly uncomfortable and distressed because this particular thought felt so real. I honestly thought that my future self was asking me and I wasn’t sure whether I was being irrational. Either way, my question is whether you can receive intrusive thoughts that are statements rather than questions e.g. I must fancy them. Is this normal because I haven’t seen anyone mention intrusive thoughts like these as they aren’t “what if’s.” Instead, they are saying that I am what I DO NOT WANT TO BE. Please help!
Something important my therapist told me was that I shouldn’t get lost in the contents of my thoughts, but focus on what ties them all together instead— which is uncertainty. Uncertainty is the problem in every theme and situation my mind comes up with. Nothing else matters but solving that issue, not each individual disturbing obsession.
I just watched a video in which an OCD therapist used the exposure of walking into a gas station bathroom, lights off, sitting down on the toilet without checking, using the bathroom & then leaving. He used this as an "overcorrection" exposure. I don't understand these types of assignments. I thought ERP was about facing YOUR obsessions & compulsions as they are, not going against what you set out to do/would usually do in the world. I keep thinking that because I had the intrusive thought "You need to smear soap all over your TV screen", that this now needs to be what I do for an exposure based on what the OCD therapist has people do for "overcorrection" Another intrusive thought I get is that I'm supposed to purposefully leave a lot of soap on myself every time I leave the bathroom, so now I need to actually treat that thought as reality?? ERP is super confusing. I just want to get on with being me, not turning into someone who always lives their life in "overcorrection".
I've just started my seratine 50mg , second day ,feeling a bit weird? Is it too early for them To kick in ,is it my mind just knowing I'm taking them or are they working ? I'm confused ?
Sometimes I feel really isolated as a queer autistic person with ocd. :/
Hi guys i'm 23 and i feel like a loser and everyone around me thinks sorry this has nothing to do with my ocd but i just feel like i need to share this with you
If you are in crisis, please use these emergency resources to find immediate help.
OCD doesn't have to
rule your life
