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I wish I was at a OCD residential treatment center smfh. It’s the only way I can get better smh. I’m tired of feeling like this. I’m tired of not understanding of who I actually am. It’s like I have 2 different personalities when I see a women therapist and dude therapist smh. I take 2 different approaches to both smh. When I’m around women I try to not act so vulgar and manly cuz I don’t want them to think of me as some asshole. When I have a therapy session with a dude I act normal. I even got pissed off at the gay psychiatrist cuz he was referring my thoughts as my own and not OCD. Man I wish I knew what to do when it comes to therapy. I just need help. I know I’m depressed. I know I’m depressed about the thoughts that come up. I’m depressed about the stupid thoughts that come up for chicks. The psychiatrist doesn’t think I have bipolar disorder and yet I’m taking lamotrigine. For whatever reason the psychiatrist asked me if someone has ever talked to me about it and I was like no. My previous therapist never actually said that I might be bipolar or that I’m experiencing some bipolar disorders idk if it was cuz she didn’t want to get me anxiety about it or didn’t feel the need to label my disorder. Why do therapist’s do that? Why do they try to avoid labels? Is it cuz they don’t want to trigger a reaction? Knowing what disorders I have are very important to me cuz I need to know what to avoid. I need to know what I should try to be doing. I need to know what a good life looks like again cuz I thought I used to know but for whatever reason I don’t know now. Idk if it cuz of OCD, depression, being on medication, being on caffeine, like I just don’t know what makes sense in my life anymore and it just sucks. Like I want to cry about what I want in life. I want to know what makes me happy and what I have to do to keep me happy. I wish I could skip the talking part and do the do part like out shit on a board and let’s attack what my heart wants and what I want in life. Like at this point I’m not capable of finding out what makes me happy. I really just want a therapist to write something on the board and just get me out of my head and start doing. I’m tired of getting the run around and just want to get better. Like is it wrong for me to ask for help in finding out what I want in life. Like I just don’t know anymore. I’m just asking for help. If someone on here can tell me what steps to follow as opposed to what kind of therapy I should be looking for and to just help me. I don’t like feeling this way and just want help. If I need to go over what thoughts and sensations, arousals I have. What compulsions I do. Whether or not I should seek dbt help along with OCD help, and whatever kinds of therapy I need to stay afloat and happy please anything helps. I just really want to get better. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to feel sad and lonely and depressed about who I am.

I think I’m starting to realize that I didn’t handle my grandpa’s death right. He died back in March and it was obviously very traumatic for all of us. We weren’t even with him when he died since he lived in Ecuador and we are in the US. The last time I saw him was in September 2019. I remember when we left us at the airport he was the first first one to start crying that we were leaving. He was such a sweet and tender man. His death also greatly affected my OCD in that it solidified and intensified my existential OCD. Anyways we’re going back to Ecuador next month to spend Christmas with that side of the family and it’s going to be the first time with him not around. He also died in the house we’ll be staying at so I’m already feeling that it’s going to be a very emotional trip to step into that house and be there with him not there. It’s just making me realize I didn’t process his loss right or hid the pain away or something. I didn’t think it would bother me so much now but its hitting some raw and painful emotions tonight, like I want to cry. I saw that my church was offering a grief counseling seminar this Saturday and I was interested in going, maybe it could help. I don’t know if I’m being overalls dramatic or not but it’s hitting me. Just wanted to share and maybe someone has words of advice. Thanks

I have sunk so low in life. I've thoughts about being a pedophile, being gay (not that there is anything wrong with being gay) being schizophrenic, being a psychopath, being a narcist, being a sociopath, obsessions about having cancer or some other disease and I could go on. Last three years have been long, terrible years. I'm so tired of living with this. Last couple of weeks I've been feeling very suicidal. I have no libido, no appetite and no interest in things other than doing compulsions. I've been thinking about ending it for a while now. I got urges to end my life. Has anybody else on this app ever felt suicidal? What did you do to make it feel better? I don't want to die bc I'm very ambitious, and I'm not ready to die yet, but i also don't want to life with these thoughts anymore..

Guys I need some advice :( my boyfriend started smoking weed again and I’m really nervous about what to do about it because I have set very clear boundaries about it. My OCD was induced by marijuana and I have ptsd correlated to that, so I have those boundaries for a reason. Now I’m very anxious because he’s out with his friends and smoking after we had many conversations about it not being around for at least while I’m doing treatment for my OCD and ptsd. What do I do? I don’t want to breakup with him but I do not want to be forced to back down on these boundaries because my mental health is important.

Hi everyone, I'm currently severely struggling at the moment. my main theme for OCD has always been harm and is centred around my little girl. I have become so bad that I now feel like I want the intrusive thoughts that I get and that I'm am absolute psychopath that will hurt someone eventually. I feel like I cant feel any emotion towards anything which only feeds my beliefs that I'm a terrible person who wants to harm people. I also has thoughts like "why don't I want to kill myself", surely if it was OCD I would want to kill myself. I have suffered since being little and I'm now 31 and recently come off lexapro. please please if anyone has any advice for me or has experienced this I would be so grateful.

I’m just wondering if any one else has a story similar to mine so I feel less alone. I’m not too sure when my HOCD started. All I remember is when I was in 4th grade I watched the “girls like girls” music video because it was in my YouTube recommended. All I can recall is wondering if I was gay (I don’t think I knew what bi was at the time) and I got pretty sad. Afterwards I was pretty rational about it and decided if I felt sad then obviously I wasn’t gay, so I just let it go. Then fast forward to 6th grade, my best friend comes out to me as lesbian. I was completely fine with it, and told her I accepted her and would treat her just the same. It wasn’t really a problem at all until she asked me what my sexuality was because she said she was interested in me and I kind of panicked. I kept thinking about it, and again luckily I was pretty rational and basically came to the conclusion that people know they’re gay or bi from the beginning and are fine with it, and I eventually just told her I was straight but “didn’t want to put a label on it” (this was mainly so I didn’t hurt her feelings). Fast forward maybe a couple months later, (I think this was after I panicked about my sexuality I honestly don’t know) I come across this video of this woman twerking on Instagram (extremely embarrassing to talk about lmao) and I remember being aroused. Not sure if this was genuine or false arousal, either way I can’t let this specific memory go. I keep ruminating about it and wondering if I had HOCD then or not. I’m pretty sure it was real arousal though, which is so scary! But anyway the point being I feel so abnormal because it seems like nobody with HOCD has childhood memories like mine and I feel so anxious about it. :(

hey y’all im so sorry for being bothersome i just need some advice. so i understand by reacting to your thoughts in an emotional way, you’re giving them more power. im really trying my best not to react to them emotionally, but right now they’re just being such a nuissance. i just want them to shut up. is it okay to be annoyed at them? whenever i get a thought i always just give it them eyeroll, but does that mean im emotionally reacting to it and giving it more power?

Is anyone else good mentally and emotionally for months/years, with no intrusive thoughts or obsessions, and then have a relapse into an “episode” that what I call them. I’ve had 4 in 8yrs, does that sound similar to anyone else?

I’ve found this last year or so that I just really like being alone. And part of me was always like ‘ah that’s great! We value independence’... but now I’m realising that essentially all I do when I’m alone is go on my phone. I’ll be on it for hours, on social media or YouTube or Netflix or playing games. And I know that that doesn’t massively set me aside from any other teenager. It’s just the fact that I like that MORE than social interaction. I’m just really scared that I’m broken for this. I don’t know how to spend a chunk of time alone without going on a device. But I like spending chunks of time alone. Can I change this? Or is this okay?

I didn’t realize how much avoidance I do as a result of OCD. There are simple things I want to do throughout the day, such as laundry or other tidying up things, and because I’m worried an OCD thought will happen while I’m doing xyz, I don’t do them. Anyone else have this experience and wouldn’t mind sharing?

Need someone to talk! I struggle from OCD alot. And i keep remembering the past mistakes i have done. I keep thinking about how i will face certain people in life again. I fear about getting anxious in front of them. And they are my old friends. What to do?

My partner broke up with me in Thursday night. Huge surprise, huge blow. She’s the love of my life. We were just planning out when we were going to move in together last week. We talked about spending our lives together. Our kids names and what not. My obsessions (which were closely related to her) and my co dependent behavior finally wore her out. Tuesday we were sharing a great day/night together, she even texted me telling me she wished I had spent the night. I have a hard time falling asleep, so I left early. I didn’t want to keep her up, I’ve fucked up her sleep schedule enough as it is. We got into what I considered to be a small fight on Wednesday night that carried over to Thursday morning. I was just feeling triggered because I was having a really rough day and she didn’t seem to be there for me as much as I wanted, or had grown accustomed to. I didn’t like how insecure I felt for being the needier one. I wanted to feel like she needed me as much as I needed her. I said some really needy, co dependent stuff and looking back on it, it was terrible. Basically told her one day she would need me like I needed her and we would see how she felt. I have been re reading and remembering all the stupid ways I acted and really feeling a ton of guilt and remorse. I can’t believe I treated her the way I treated her sometimes. I could be a jerk and be distant sometimes, when I was going thru an OCD episode. When I was good, things were great. We were like 2 peas in a pod (Forrest gump is our favorite movie). And I was considerably better and more present. Took care of her more. I feel like I took her support, patience and kindness for granted. She’s my gal. Instead I just ran her dry, especially at the beginning of the relationship. Even though my ocd is considerably better now, and I have been sober for 8 months, she said she was tired, tired of fighting and physically tired. Told me I deserved someone who wanted to fight for our relationship as much as I wanted to fight for it. Told me every time we fought or bickered she just felt like giving up. That she was so used to putting other people in front of herself and that she was doing that again and that she couldn’t do it anymore. She said she didn’t know if she had a stable future with me. I was so hurt and blindsided, I begged her to work out it with me, that we could do it. That I was only getting progressively and exponentially better. She agreed that I was getting better, but she said she was exhausted and that she needed space. Told me she didn’t know what she felt right now and needed time to process it. She told me she needed a few days of space and that we could talk then, but for now, we needed to be considered broken up. I’ve been going thru a terrible OCD episode now. Just cycling through a bunch of negative emotions, really. Guilt, shame, remorse pain, longing. This girl is my best friend. I spent the last year of my life planning our future out in my head and with her. Literally in the blink of an eye, everything changed. I took her for granted. Thought we were locked in. Never considered she get up and leave, so suddenly. I have been telling myself I am going to get her back, trying to devise a plan to get her back. It’s the only thing that is keeping me upbeat. I have to believe there’s a way. Just last month she told me she had a terrible dream that I broke up with her. Told me she remembers thinking “how do I get him back?”. Who would’ve thought I’d be in this position, a month later Now I can’t stop thinking about, what if she found someone else? I asked her if she was going to start dating next and she said told me “you know I have my own things to figure out and work on, right”. Later she told me “you need to be alone, too” although I’m not sure if she meant “too” as in both of us, or was just compiling the list of reasons why she was breaking up with me And my mind just keeps compulsing, looking for evidence. Why did she say that? Why didn’t she just say “no” if she wasn’t going to. Was she was dodging my question? Maybe she didn’t want to hurt me. She was always so honest and that’s what our relationship was built on, trust and honesty, but what if she became attracted to someone else? I don’t know how, she literally only goes to work and spends time with me and her family. Maybe the occasional friend. I know everyone she works with, ain’t no contenders there (no offense lol). I don’t think she would entertain anyone while still with me. We both hated cheaters and both of us would’ve considered that a form of cheating. But I guess anything is possible. Anyways, I know I’m just compulsing hard right. I’m not looking for reassurance. It just feels good to share what I’m going through with a community of people that might understand my pain. I hope we can work it out. My sense of comfort and security has been really de stabilized by this whole ordeal, and I also wonder how that will play out if we do get back together. I want to be with her. I know we have at chance and something special, stable and long term. I can try and be even better, I know it. I’m aware of my short comings now. She’s a gem. We have very similar values. But I also know she’s pretty decisive, so I could be SOL. But I’m also the first person she’s ever been in love with, so maybe I have a fighting chance. I guess we will find out soon enough. Thanks all for taking the time t read this novel, I just needed a safe space to put my feelings into writing.

I'm someone that suffers from Real Event OCD and POCD and I constantly think about the mistakes I made as a teenager. I was never educated about sex ed and I tried to explore the sexual feelings I've had at the time with other people online. Around 15-17 I engaged in sexting with a couple of people I met online and I didn't see anything wrong with it at the time. I felt really happy doing it and I thought I was sharing love with the people involved because they consented with my along the way. But now, I feel really bad for it because it was something I feel I shouldn't have done and I would never do now. On the other hand in my opinion, consentual sexting between teens is something I don't think is a bad thing, other than it being two teens curious about how they feel sexually for one another. I've always seen it that way but I'm afraid that I'm wrong and have really made a horrible mistake. This has caused me to do nothing but search about teen sexting articles with older ones explaining the consequences but newer articles going against the laws that tackle the practice in the wrong ways. I even went on YouTube on the topic to see what comments were left on several videos and many of them were either agreeing to change the laws for good I also have a bad porn addiction that I'm currently fighting with the use of blockers and remembered watching a ton of different categorized porn but just as I was finished watching I have had accidentally came across what I think was illegal content that I did not want to see nor did I search for. I quickly left the entire site altogether. I'm certain I was on a legal porn site that was secure of most of its videos. Is this something that happens to a lot of people? I've seen on Reddit that people have also talked about this and said people cannot be blamed for accidentally watching especially if they didn't want to see it. Things like this have even happened to me on Twitter and Instagram. Other incidents included a time where I wanted to search for girls my age which is 18 but by accident it had searched 16, but thankfully nothing terrible came up, but I still feel awful that I even made that search by accident. I had searched for girls my age on YouTube once again and for the most part I got what I wanted to see but then comments kept saying the girl was underaged but others saying they were actually 18 and it made me terrified that I once again saw videos involving underaged teens. It was never my intention to see girls under the age of 18, but only my age which is 18. I've even seen people talk about things like these on TikTok which isn't a platform I use. These thoughts have been roaming my mind ever since I joined this app. I'm so uncertain on basically everything and I'm beginning to feel terrible for even letting myself watch so much sexually explicit content. Am I horrible for this? Am I deserving of something bad to happen? I'm so confused and concerned and OCD bullying me with false convincing makes it all the more worse. I've also never ever saved any of the videos I've watched because there was no need to keep them. Has these things happened to anyone else? Can anyone relate in a way or have real event OCD stories to share?

Anyone else with religious OCD? How do you cope? I have blasphemous thoughts, and pray compulsively for forgivness. On bad days it can take up my brain space for 8+ hours. I'm 100% pure O as well. My prayers usually have to be perfect and can be quite complicated, and I can get so frustrated and feel so defeated because I want to pray for forgivness but I keep messing up and more bad thoughts add on to the list of things I need to ask forgivness for and it can get overwhelming. I try sometimes to just trust in God and ask forgivness for all of my sins, but feel like that doesn't count when I know I can ask forgivness for them all individually and perfectly. I feel like I'm being lazy and choosing my own comfort over doing everything I can to be forgiven. I know God doesn't hold me to the same rules I hold myself to and try to remember that but my brain makes it very hard.

Is avoidance or looking away a compulsion or trying to think of something else ?

What’s the best way to respond to an ocd thought? I think my current one is becoming compulsive.

Cried because I couldn’t find the courage to show up to my night shift. Had such a bad existential OCD episode and panic attack that I gave into my compulsions another night in a row. I decided to take a night walk to make up for that though. :( I’m scared I’m not making enough progress anymore and that I’ll never get out of this. It’s been two months into treatment and I relapsed halfway through. Please send prayers my way. Every day these past two weeks seem dark. I’m looking for the light but I can’t find my way out. I do my exposures every day mentally but the real life exposures I’ve held off for so long that the fear of them consumes me. Eventually I’ll get there. I just need to realize that recovery is gonna be slow for me and that’s okay.

If I have OCD driven porn addiction will Exposure and Response Therapy help? I fear I cant control the urges and will just continue to relapse

I want to feel happy again

Hey there everyone, I’m newly diagnosed with ocd and and still very confused with this whole thing. The question I am wondering about is if it’s common to have themes shift rapidly. I experience harm ocd. It started with the fear of intentionally hurting a loved one, then shifted to “what if I become a serial killer” and “now my theme seems to be what if I commit a mass shooting”. It’s extremely difficult for me to express these the things. But I don’t want to research it as that only seems to make the condition worse. Just wondering if anyone had experienced rapid shift of fears like this. I’ve learned I need to try and stay away from Reddit, as much as a love it, it’s hard to filter good posts from disturbing posts and when I see a disturbing post without being prepared for it, it can really mess with my ocd.