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I’m really debating to go to a residential ocd treatment facility this summer or buying a car. If I buy a car I won’t be able to go cuz I’d have to keep working to pay for it. Seeing ocd specialist for an hr apparently doesn’t cut it or they aren’t willing to work with me cuz they think I need a higher level of care smh. I guess hearing that and writing it down makes me think to myself should I even continue to work if it’s apparently so bad?? Why am I even working then or am able to work and just now go to Starbucks to get me some ice coffee but apparently my ocd to is to bad to where a therapist thinks I need a higher level of care. Like I get weird thoughts that pop up when I see a girl. I get hocd thoughts when I see a dude. I have an arousal feeling that doesn’t leave me cuz of the weird thoughts that pop up when I see a girl if it wasn’t for that I would be having a happy after. I work with gay dudes and have been on antidepressants while working with gay people no interest at all in them. I don’t see why an outpatient therapist doesn’t want to work with me on this. It blows my mind. Just right before I turned 22 I purposely thought of a dude in a sexual way to to see if I could become gay but I didn’t feel anything so I don’t see why a therapist doesn’t want to help me anymore to live a better life already smfh.

Here's some hope for my fellow OCD and depression sufferers. This is my personal story (spoiler alert: it has hope and a happy ending). Without going into every single detail, I'll make this as short as possible. My entire family is plagued with some type of mental illness. I am not excluded from that. The majority of them turned to drugs and alcohol, disability or unemployment because they couldn't hold a job for very long. A fair share of them have attempted the big "S." Anyways, I personally chose not to follow their particular route in life. I've had my several struggles with major setbacks. I have had some of the worst days possible, mentally. Back in early 2020, I was FINALLY diagnosed with OCD. But still, it didn't make complete sense. I just didn't believe it and I felt otherwise. Based on what I personally experienced while spending several years stuck deep inside my head, I was convinced I was crazy. Literally crazy. I felt severe doubt, nothing made sense and I became paranoid. I was also severely depressed which in turn fueled my OCD. There were days that I wasn't sure how I could go on another day. I started losing all hope. Thankfully, for the sake of my kids and my own determination, I somehow knew I'd get the help I need. I saw several therapists, doctors and consulted my friends and family. Mind you, OCD was very unknown within my family so they weren't of any help or support. I felt alone and disconnected. Finally, my FIFTH therapist, from this very app helped me navigate my OCD and helped me understand it a lot better. With that said, I would still continue to relapse and become angry with the lack of results but I kept on trying. I ended up combining therapy with my own research on this disorder to the point I finally understood it better. Ironically, what helped me the most was learning what OCD was and how it worked but also learning to not understand how it worked. Confused? I know I was. I learned that OCD is hyper awareness of meaningless thoughts that we all have. These thoughts scare us, therefore, we obsess about them as if they mattered. At the same time, understanding the above paragraph allowed me to realize I need to stop trying to understand those random terrifying thoughts and leave them be. I understood that I needed to stop understanding everything that entered my mind and just let it be. That's mindfulness. Fast forward to today, I am happy, content and I can allow my silly thoughts to pass thru my mind, no matter how terrifying they seem. I've learned that by doing NOTHING about them, I've trained my mind to disregard them. I struggled for years while trying to correct the thoughts without result. So why was I still trying? That's what I learned. Let them go. You aren't a bad person. You aren't sick. You aren't crazy. I've experienced virtually every theme. Yet, I'm still here and happier than ever! I have a great job, stability, two new cars, mortgage on a nice house and a great family. I chose to not succumb and suffer indefinitely. I triumphed over OCD and depression. When I have paranoid or depressive thoughts, I let them pass because compulsion don't work! If I'm having a bad day, instead of fighting it, I accept it as is and it goes away MUCH MUCH MUCH faster than it ever did before. I live the life that was dealt to me and honestly, I have no regrets and I live it and love it now! You can do this.

😭😭😭 I just told my partner I love him less! 😭😭😭I feel myself slipping further and further away from him 😭😭😭 how can I choose to love him if I constantly feel like I don’t love him… I want this to be ROCD!

Hey guys so lately I’ve been doing okay at not ruminating. I’m allowed to ruminate only at 9 pm. But it scares me that I’m doing okay not ruminating, because it is literally supposed to feel like hell! And I’ve been ruminating a bit less for only 3 days! I’m worried this must not be OCD and I’ve been fooling myself all along. It also makes me so disturbed to be with my family and feel the thoughts coming in, (they’re harmful thoughts towards my family), so my brain starts doubting and asking me: okay so are you going to stand up and do it? Or are you just going to your room? And it makes me so uncomfortable because I don’t know the answer. Right now I’m in my room. I didn’t do anything. But my brain would tell me: are you sure about the decision you made? Maybe that was not the decision you wanted but you took it anyways. I’m even surprised I haven’t acted on my thoughts because I’ve really felt like I could have, or like I am ignoring to act on them but might do it any moment. So now I feel so confused and disturbed. These horrible scenarios really overwhelm me and the fact that they feel so possible, that I don’t know if I’m capable of doing them/ if I’m going to do them, is the worst.

Feels like there are so few TOCD sufferers on the app... any of y’all having success with exposures and therapy? How is it going? How does your TOCD show up in your everyday lives? I’m just so curious how other people are doing, as I’m struggling a lot myself.

Hi everyone. Any advice on how to help a teen with severe OCD, a teen that absolutely does NOT want to participate in therapy and continues to say “I like my life the way it is.” “You are just trying to change me.” Keep in mind, she does not eat anything at our home, does not touch anything certain people have touched, has special clothes for riding in the car, sitting in bed, and being out in the house, will not ride in the family car, will not touch people-any people, will not touch school books so she is falling behind in school. She more or less spends her entire day in her room. She used to be so social and fun and adventurous. During therapy she is sassy and defiant, completely different than her normal self. I have tried everything and can use all the help I can get. Thank you in advance!

Can someone please respond to my last post ?

Hi everybody. I have SOOCD and am engaged (to a man) - if anyone else is engaged and dealing with this and can relate, would be interested to know if you want to connect. :) Really right now though i just want to vent that I HATE the fact that my SOOCD is making me feel like I’m homophobic. Some of my best best friends are gay and I very much support all of their rights to have all of the rights!! This is probably one of the worst parts about SOOCD and OCD in general. I value my friends being able to have rights. But I also value my partner and I’m sure that’s why OCD is attacking me like this. Anyway just wanted to post in case anyone else could relate. Thank you for reading and have a good day :)

My OCD attacks everything I’ve ever loved. I was ok with self-doubt about not being good enough or not being likable to people but the moment my OCD started attacking my attachment to my pets and the people I love everything went downhill and I completely feel helpless. I can’t tell my family about it I’ll scare them so much and they’d think I’m going insane .

I was reading an online comic with my boyfriend and there was a scene when a woman was battling with some voices-demons who where telling her to kill people around her for them to stop. This was totally disastrous for me because my brain was like what if I am like this what if I go insane? This totally triggered my ocd(3 weeks ago) and I can’t keep it out of my mind ever since. When I first discovered I have OCD and saw the harm-OCD theme I was like no this could never be me and I didn’t have any intrusive thoughts. Some months later reading the comic book and this particular terrifying scene causes me to doubt everything and cry everyday- especially when I am with loved ones. I can’t look at them in the eye without crying because of the intrusive harm thoughts. I don’t want to tell them because I will mess up their lives completely. I don’t know what to do I seriously want a new brain I can’t live with these thoughts I know they are not me. I can’t live with constant doubt about my character. I can’t believe how much your life can change in a matter of seconds. My heart goes out to everyone whose mind makes them suffer without a reason.

I feel like I have made the opposite of progress. I finished my 12 sessions of NOCD and I still want to be done with life. Everything weird I’ve said or done ocd is telling me is proof to all my themes. And I can’t live with that. I’ve never felt so alone and so sad. I’m just over it

The whole comphet thing triggers me so much, that and the master doc is one thing I can’t get over :( does anyone else also struggle with this? And if so how do you deal with it?

Hello Has anyone started medication? Currently on 5mg Lexapro. I started Monday night then switched to mornings, skipping Tuesday and restarting yesterday. Tuesday was a really bad day with the depression/tiredness and intrusive thoughts, I didn't think they were going to stop. I didn't wanna get out of bed yesterday but side effects got a little better. Still feeling a little anxious/no motivation today... I originally started meds for anxiety and the intrusive thoughts weren't bad before starting meds (they were manageable).. Do meds make everything worse at first?

Anyone else get triggered by certain celebrities? Whenever I see them I feel the need to check if I fancy them or not

My ocd stems from a fear of losing control and when I'm having a really bad episode I overcompensate by trying to control everything. Anyone else have this issue? What'd you do?

I’ve started uni this year after not studying for 12 years & it’s exposing the perfectionist elements of my OCD. I went into uni with the mindset of “play, experiment, don’t take anything too seriously & be Ok with making mistakes (that’s how we learn!)” but am finding myself spending days & nights in front of the computer re-writing short, relatively inconsequential essays. Lack of sleep & constant focus, screen time is feeding the anxiety of it not being “just right”. I usually find having a project to work on keeps my mind preoccupied enough to not be affected by my usual intrusive thoughts about food (poisoning, spiking, cannibalism etc) which I’ve looked at as a positive, but it’s becoming less of a positive & more of a negative . & like other manifestations of my OCD it’s taking a toll on my life in other ways. Sometimes like today I feel like I don’t exist unless I can compartmentalise these parts of me, to resist indulging my obsessions is equally as painful, shameful & confusing as actually indulging them. Anyone else!?!? Anyway.... I’ve had better days & it’s important to remember they’ll be back. I’ve got a couple months ahead of me to do this on my own while my psychologist is on leave which is why I’ve downloaded this app to use in the meantime. All is not suffering x

In need of some help, I’m really struggling😪 I struggled with a lot of forms of this nightmare we know as ocd, I’m 25 now and back when I was 12 I went through a traumatic home invasion, from this I ended up with anxiety and bad intrusive thoughts, They ranged from me going to hurt a loved one, to me being a paedophile, to me liking the same sex, all of which I completely convinced myself of, I started seeing a psychologist and was prescribed pristiq, and over time and with having support of lots of friends and family I pulled through, had a couple of relapses over a few years back in therapy pulled through again, fast forward to 12 months ago I stopped taking the pristiq, I felt I was cured and after the arrival of mine and my loving partners little princess who is now 16 months old life was bliss, I was on top of the world, I own my own earth moving company, between us we own 2 houses, life was great, a few weeks back my partner come to me and said she wasn’t feeling the best and that she felt like we weren’t getting ahead and she wasn’t sure if she was still happy and what not, which sent me into a panic, my anxiety sky rocketed, I stopped eating I wasn’t sleeping, just a nightmare, then the intrusive thoughts got on top of me, about harming her, and then they got onto harming my daughter, which has absolutely wrecked me, I’ve convinced myself I’m a monster and that I’m evil and that I don’t love her and that it’s not ocd it’s just cause I’m a bad person, I’ve started seeing a psychologist again and I’ve been prescribed lexapro which I’ve been on for 3 weeks, but I’m living in constant fear, life is a nightmare, I do everything to try and stay away from them because the thoughts and worries feel unbearable, which I know is the opposite of what I need to do, but I just feel like I’m a monster, I hate myself, I need to be supportive and strong for my princess’ but I’m failing, I don’t know what to do guys😒

I would do anything to trade themes this is insufferable

Will trying 10mg of citalopram help my existential ocd? I don't want to use big doses because of side effects.

Why does my hocd just feel like denial 😕