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This is a poem I did a while ago, one of the many things OCD is good it and is making you forget who you are and that's how I was feeling when I wrote this and to be honest it still resonates with me today...

I am going batty. Teaching remote summer school happened this week instead of next, and I was only notified this week that it was...😬 My new immediate supervisor just keeps making me so mad. She doesn’t seem to read my questions because her answers are often copying and pasting an old email to me that might be somewhat related to the topic but is absolutely irrelevant to the question. Her other, big go-to is to tell me to re-attend trainings or ask questions at office hours run by higher ups. When I do so and I am repeatedly told by higher-ups that what she’s asking is the exact opposite of what they want, I politely let her know that’s what I was told, but that I’m willing to do whatever she wants/needs. She then seems to berate me with her retorts, though I am really trying to remind myself that she is also under a lot of stress right now and subtext is lost in email. On the one email amongst dozens where she used overtly kind language, I read it as though it was a fresh start with her. It was unfortunately followed by more curt, unhelpful, and contradictory emails. She mentioned that we were given 2 extra paid hours for planning “over the weekend”. Since I had only gotten my class rosters this week, and she discussed this at our end-of-the-week meeting today, (we don’t work on Friday), I thought how nice it was that we would be paid for some of the extra time that would be needed for all the extra work this holiday weekend, mainly of re-doing things as all these supervisors keep telling us to complete tasks differently. (Really, I can’t wait to actually spend my prep time on my students instead of illogical forms!). When I asked if there was a specific way she wanted us to record those two hours on our timesheet, she told me via a midnight email that those 2 hours extra were for last weekend, copied and pasted something about our regular teaching hours, said that I needed to relearn how the whole system worked again, and yup, should watch more self-training videos. I replied that I understood our regular teaching hours and thanked her for letting me know those extra paid hours were for last weekend. I wanted to ask if I could borrow her time machine, because how on earth could I have used hours last weekend that I was only made aware of today to make lesson plans for classes and grade levels I hadn’t yet been assigned? I refrained from asking her that, but that’s where the OCD comes in. It’s so hard not to ruminate about her. As soon as I meditate or move on to a cool, new lesson for my students, ::bing::, another email from her asking to redo something in the way I have been thoroughly trained NOT to do it. At least when this turns my uncontrolled thoughts into scenes from Office Space I can laugh even while living the asinine reality. Thanks for letting me vent. My mind already feels clearer. 💜

What is OCD’s true purpose…why does it haunt our minds and exist. Is it driven by anxiety? Dysfunctional brain?

18+ please sexual topic Tw So growing up I used to have a fetish and that was all I had anything to do with it had nothing to do with anything else. I’m scared that when I looked up the fetish and this was after I was 18 that the characters that had to do with the fetish I’m scared to death what if they were younger characters and I didn’t realize it. I remember going back and being like this is weird now it’s not the same as it was when I was a teenager and I stopped but still what if I did something terrible and I can’t go back and fix it. I know this is real event ocd but does anyone relate? I promise it had NOTHING to do with age it had to do with the fetish itself. Masturbation had a lot to do with it too. I hate myself and I keep getting suicidal thoughts because of it. What if I deserve it? I’m not the same person and I would never make the same mistakes again knowing what I know now

Hey guys. I’m new here. Real event ocd is my main theme right now.

My ocd is trying to convince me that I don’t love my boyfriend anymore and that I don’t want to be with him when it’s the exact opposite. I love him with my entire heart and I would never want to lose him. Has anyone dealt with this?

I keep beating myself up for being too slow at work projects even though there has never been the slightest complaint. I mean, it's definitely true that I'm slower than a person without OCD because I check so much and always try to make everything perfect. But if my boss doesn't seem to mind, at least up to this point, why can't I stop hating myself 😭 just venting... I'd appreciate if someone could offer some opinion, similar experiences, etc.

Anyone else’s OCD really bad when they first wake up?

Convinced I'm a racist, even though it's the complete opposite of my morals & what I believe. - - - - - - I've currently been struggling with something that is going to make me sound like a piece of shit, even I recognize how messed up it's going to sound. Over the past couple months, I have been worrying about the proper way to interact with POC without coming across as racist. I know, this is already awful. I consider myself to be an ally who supports POC & civil rights movements. I'm ashamed of white people honestly, we've oppressed POC from the beginning of time. I'm personally ashamed of my white ethnicity. I've been even more so in the past year. I feel like my OCD has recently attached to this though. At least, I think it has, or maybe it's guilt knowing I'm white and part of systemic racism problem as a whole. When I pass a POC on the street, or in a place of business, I'll immediately start to get thoughts like "Am I coming across as rude? Am I being nice enough? Am I being too nice? Am I smiling too much? Am I smiling enough? Do I look uncomfortable? This isn't about me, so why am I anxious? Stop being so self centered. Are you appearing racist? What if this POC thinks I'm racist? That's awful to assume what they think. Stop making this about you!" And basically the entire time I'm trying to interact with someone of color, I have all this anxious dialogue in my head and I probably physically appear to be anxious, which in turn I'm sure the other person thinks "Why are they acting so tense/afraid?" It's not that I'm afraid, or dislike POC, I'm way too overly cautious, I recognize that, and it's actually coming across as racist. And I don't want to make this about me, because it's not, I can only imagine the racism POC have to endure on a daily basis. It's like my own OCD/anxiety is getting in the way. I hate it. I want to get over it. I don't know why it's coming up, but I want to get past this.

18+ please Tw abuse, pocd and real event This is going to be long but I will try to keep it as short as I can. I feel like right now I’m on the end of my rope I feel worthless, hopeless and terrified. I have ocd and I’ve tried to tell my mom but she proceeded to tell me that I’m making her miserable, I’m being stupid and that I’m going to end up in an insane asylum. I have a therapist but I feel like every time I go to her for help I’m bothering her. When I was a minor I was possibly sexually abused for a time period of 5 years but I’m not sure. When I was a minor My step dad would hit me in inappropriate places to be funny and some other things like talking in a sexual way verbally so I think that it had to do with why I’m dealing with pocd but I’m not sure. My mom knows about it and so does my therapist but anyways, when I was a teenager, I used to be curious and looked up some fetishes and one of them was a daddy/little girl one and I’m scared that it makes me a monster and I don’t want to be one. I hate to even think that. I’ve had intrusive thoughts and images and so on just wondering if that’s why I have pocd is because I was messed with as a minor, not under clothing but still messed with. This is so painful to even talk about and I’m scared to death. I’m having suicidal thoughts because I feel like I deserve it and I don’t know what else to do. It’s seems like everything is crashing down. I’m a Christian so I try to pray but I feel like it’s not working. Im not looking for reassurance I just don’t know what else to do. Im scared to death that I’m a monster and I don’t want my past or whatever I looked up as a teenager to mean I am one. I never looked up the worst things if you know what I mean I would NEVER do that. I would NEVER hurt anyone. I refuse to be a monster….😭

im a little bored so im going to tell you all my ocd story. it all started in elementary school when i thought “what if my siblings stop breathing?” this caused me to stay up late to ensure they were still breathing in there sleep. on road trips i would always be the one to stay up while my siblings were sleeping so that i can make sure they were ok. then it turned to another theme where everything i did on one side of my body i had to do on the other. for example, if i opened a door using one hand then i had to do it with the other hand. then it turned into religious ocd. i thought that everything i did would cause me to sell my soul to the devil. if i blinked 5 times i would sell my soul and it would be a bunch of ridiculous things like that. when i fell asleep i would feel as if my body was being possessed and that there was a demon in the corner of my room. now onto the worst theme i have had to go through, hocd. this began in quarantine while i was on tik tok. i would see these tik toks where the person would be like “if your favorite movie was tangled then you are gay now” “if you like drinking sprite then you are gay” the most ridiculous things right? well sometimes i related to what they were saying and that got me worried. around that time i rejoined the one direction fandom. a running joke in the fandom is that everyone is gay. that is what took the worry to another level. i live in miami so i have been exposed to homosexuality my entire life and many of my friends identify as lgbtq+. i have nothing against homosexuality and have been a proud ally my entire life. but i dont personally identify as gay (umbrella term) so when this began it caused me mass amounts of worry and anxiety cause its not me at all. i have been boy crazy my entire life and it made me feel amazing when i had a crush on a boy. so the thought of losing that and my future doing a complete 180° terrified me. what took it to another level is my insecurities. i have never been the thinnest person in the class so i always admired the girls that matched the beauty standards. i would often compare myself to the tik tok girls that had perfect bodies. i thought they were beautiful and i aspired to look like them. then ocd put the thought in my head “what if you actually want to date them?” that caused me to get so scared. i soon developed all these compulsions where i would check if i was attracted to every woman i saw, would look back on my memories and see if anything i did showed signs of me being gay, and spend hours researching sexuality. i never felt connected with any of them except for heterosexuality because i have always only been romantically, sexually, and emotionally attracted to men. but i never felt like i had a definitive answer cause my mind would think “i cant be straight if im having these thoughts. why wont these thoughts stop?” i felt like i had to accept me being gay even if it didnt feel like me at all. i spent months living this torment of not knowing who i was until i found ocd. i thought ocd was the stereotype of uncontrollably cleaning. i read more into it and found hocd. it made complete sense. before i knew about it i would always look back at my past and would say “dang this feels a lot like what happened with my siblings breathing.” so i have always had ocd but i didnt find out til this theme. im still working toward being recovered but i feel much better knowing i am not alone and that there is tons of people experiencing this. this just goes to show that we as a society have to do more to educate others on ocd because there are hundreds of people that are suffering in silence due to the fear of being judged. im sorry that was long just wanted to say that:)

Just a big vent I had a really good time going out with my friend yesterday and it made me realize how much I missed having a close friend. I haven’t had the best of luck with friends and I’ve been even more hesitant to get close to anyone because I’m terrified of falling for them. But of course, my black and white thinking won’t let me take this as a good thing. If I want to be closer to my friend, I must like her. It feels like I want to do things with her. I’m also finally expanding a little more in my life and this attacks my long distance partner saying I no longer care about him or that I should break up with him because it’s not going to work. My thoughts around us have been so negative and it hurts because I love him so much and I want to have the same optimism I usually do around our relationship. At the same time, I’m terrified of reuniting with him again. I haven’t been with a guy romantically or physically since he left and I’m really scared that I won’t like it when he gets back or I’ll realize it was never real and that I’m indeed destined to be with a woman. I’m scared I won’t like him anymore or that even seeing him won’t be enough to keep long distance going. It feels like I’ve lost everything that’s important to me but at the same time it feels like I never truly cared for those things in the first place because my ocd attacks all of it and it breaks my heart. Being around my boyfriend used to be so easy, he really brightened my world and he was he first person who I was ever really unselfish for. I wanted to care for him, well I still do it’s just hard with the distance, anxiety, etc. I miss the person I was. Nothing about these thoughts feel right and whole the way I used to feel. I want that feeling of rightness back and I’m terrified that I’ll have to let go in order to feel that but I don’t want that at all.

Does anyone struggle with ocd around and involving racism?

I'm so sorry. I don't know where else to go. My intrusive thoughts happened in March for first time. I worked hard to fight them through diet and excercise since I had to wait for my insurance to kick in during April. It got better with alot of work but then I went to friend house and had an anxiety attack. Since then I have breathing ocd. I've tried lexapro, zoloft, exxefor, seroquell, now luvox all with horrible side effects and no luck. I don't want to try anymore meds. This is the first time I try pharmacological agents. I don't know where to turn anymore. Im 48. This is not where I saw my life going. There has to be an answer for me. My God.

Anyone else isolated and going through a breakup?

i dont think this is ocd i mean maybe relationship ocd at most but god over a year ago like feb 2020 right before covid restrictions started my best friend of 8 years and I got in this argument but it was more of I was acting weird and passive aggressive getting sensitive about dumb things and hadnt returned her headphones when she asked me about it i decided to tell the truth be like i just am in a bad place i dont want to talk to anybody im mad about my life and i dont want pep talks from people and your headphones just havent been important to me this led to like a long long rant on her end about how basically i must be in a bad place or shit hole because her best friend would never talk like this and i kept apologizing and she kept shooting them down and being like im not hurt im angry im pissed and she just went in on me and i just kind of broke down crying and it led to an ocd like spiral where i began begging my sister like please read these texts begging for reassurance of am i bad person and freaking out that im a piece of shit or that im a narcissist for like being selfish about being in a bad place or that my friend is for blowing up on me ... i eventually calmed down... but the whole weekend i was a mess crying spells and obsessively searching for answers of what happened... a few days later this friend emailed me basically a ted talk about how i have a lot of work to do on myself and shell be there for me when i need her and then a week later when it was my birthday i got an email ecard? then a few weeks after that it was still messages about her headphones which i had honestly like i wasnt trying to steal them i just hate going to the post office and anyway i was debating do i send them because i was like i dont want anymore texts from her ill send them but only so shell leave me alone and stop accusing me of being a theif essentially ... then when she got them she sent me a passive aggressive message of like dear ghost which i never read because i promised i would stop reading and rereading her messages because that just made me worse... so i just saw the start of that ghost message...then a week later she tried calling me but i was afraid to pick up the phone and then i had deleted all my social media but she thought i blocked her i was too much of a wishful thinker and didnt want to block her so i just deleted all social so i wouldnt have to see posts about her or have her keep tabs on me or send me more passive aggressive stuff on messenger she thought i had blocked her so she texted the only place she could get in contact via phone and called me a spineless coward for blocking her even though i didnt i just was trying to help myself by getting off of things that wont help me and then months went by maybe 6 and she sent me something that started off as an apology and i never responded because i didnt want to read the whole thing i was afraid it would cause my anxiety like her other messages and then like a day or two later she followed it up with oh wait never mind just continue more silent treatment i also spent a lot of time debating am i giving her silent treatment and am i a narcissist or am i going not contact so i dont have to be berated anymore like how do you know if youre the bad guy how do you know if youre a horrible friend and piece of shit like anyway so that last time was when i decided to fully block her because i was like well even her apologies seem to be ways to lure me back in that they arent real they are like hey so i guess i took it too far and then if i dont respond right away its a wow more silent treatment and kind of taking it back or telling me off ... so i was like yeah we gotta block this has to be over because every time she makes contact i have a little freak out they arent as bad as that first weekend but i definitely become desperate for reassurance am i doing the right thing how do i know ... well today she texted my mom (she lives in another state by the way like 4 hours away) and said shes in town and wants to meet up with me and now im freaking out like idk what to do i still miss the good parts of our friendship but that period of time last year really fucked me up like i just dont know what she wants, to tell me off some more? if it is to apologize like what so we become aquantances? and in the back of my mind im always worried this might happen again? im tempted to message back to her and go if you intend on disrespecting me further i have no interest in meeting with you, ive been told enough by you what a bad friend i am, im in a shit hole ill never get out of, im a spineless coward. If the nature of this meetup will reflect your texts in anyway i have no interest in this. Im not sure what you want out of this but if you arent here to belittle me I can hear you out otherwise i wish you well and honestly just want this chapter to be over with. Idk even that seems like yeah like i basically became afraid of contact with her and now shes in my hometown over a year has gone by and she wants to meet up? so yeah im having a mini freak out... like is this my one shot to get closure and if i dont take it ill regret it forever or will i leave it feeling even worse a out myself or worse will i forgive her because being around her will remind me of old times and my missing of our fun parts of pur friendship will outweigh all these bad memories and then ill come home going shit i forgave her for everything now she thinks we are tight as ever but im still scared this could happen again. like what if she tries to down play what she did and i fall for it and am like oh you didnt mean it like that wow now i feel stupid and yeah i just am imagining a million and one outcomes im even imagining somehow she uses this app and read this message and comments christ that would be bad... anyway trying my best not to ask for reassurance

Has anyone been in a situation where someone triggered your OCD to mess with you? What did you do?

This isn’t about OCD. But it’s triggering. I am thinking about leaving my boyfriend since we’ve been really fighting a lot but he wants me to stay because he feels he can change and be the best he can be. I had a dream about leaving him for a friend of mine in the past but I know that friend isn’t good for me. My female friends say so and that he’s up to no good and that I should work things out with my man but he’s just not changing no matter what he says. He begs and says he wants to talk to me one last time and start to prove himself to me and to give him one more chance. Should I do it?

I clean too much at night and not getting to bed until really late. It's not germs that bother me though. I don't even want to be in my house anymore.

I truly don't understand what's happening to me. I'm evolving into a monster... I swear absolutely every time my cat licks its private part I HAVE to watch it, my head physically moves and watches it, And i try to look away but my brain says "no u enjoy it, look right now" And I HAVE to look, and the worst part is it feels like I feel "pleasure" Both mentally and physically?!?! Like why is this happening? Why do I have to look? If somebody hold my head I would still need to look?!? What the fuck is happening:( I'm turning into a monster... Why am I watching my cat lick it's private part????? What form of sickness is this??? Why do I have to look? Why is my head moving there to look??? I can't believe this :( why does it feels like it's giving me pleasure? Do I look because im a sick monster not managing to control my fetishes? Is it a fetish? OCD can not do this right? I'm a monster, I'm a monster, im a monster. I need to quit ocd therapy. This isn't ocd. I can't believe why I was born a monster. why me, why me.