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So I just started a relationship and now my mind is telling me I don't like the person at all and it feels real and I can't tell. Is this ROCD??

Each day living is getting difficult even though I have everything to eat.. a house to live in.. books to read.. a family. Yet I have terrible relations and I fear everyone will leave me or a day will come that I will have to leave everyone. A 24 yr old girl who aspires to become a civil servant but today feeling like a failure and burden. Why? Why do I feel so anxious, angry on what people did to me or why my behaviour was not normal like other kids who now have graduated from top IITs, medical colleges or top NLUs and I'm in my bed hiding my face in fear that I'm someone who won't be able to survive. Please help me. Please. I want to build a strong career but I'm already 24 and have severe OCD. No one knows and feels it except for me. People in past have said that you only overthink but my impulsive behaviour.. repeating things again and again.. my obsessions and compulsions have distorted the way a normal individual could think. I dont have money to pay for ERP therepy but I need help. I'll pay off as soon as I get hired. It may take around 2-3 years. So I dont think I'm going to get any support anyhow. I know this platform is good that's why I came here. Please help

I dont even know who I am anymore ...

I’m doing okay figuring out exposures for my SO-OCD (not doing too great at the hierarchy piece though - I keep going too high and send myself spiraling 😵‍💫🥵) but I could use some help with exposures for ROCD. Does anyone have any ROCD exposures they used that worked well for them?

Can any of you with relationship ocd please share your experiences below?? Don't be afraid to give details!!! I want to know your experiences and relate to you guys!!! Mine was when I first told my crush I liked him. A month or two after that, we became official. That's when all the anxiety kicked it and when my life turned upside down. I got lots of ugly thoughts like my boyfriend wasn't attractive, me hurting him or killing him, all these awful ugly things that ruined everything and made me depressed and anxious. Whenever I thought someone else was attractive I would feel so so bad and thought I didn't love him. It was awful 😞 now I just for us on his imperfections and makes me fear he's unnattractive even though he's not. Ugh I wish this would end

Any tips for starting a relationship when you keep finding yourself picking apart every single thing about them? Every hobby, everything they've mentioned, their looks, their personality, everything?

How has everyone else's OCD progressed throughout their lives? Has everyone else always had severe OCD or did you live regular lives beforehand and encounter one point where it went from 0 to 100. Where are you now in your OCD Journey? I'm very curious as to everyone else's stories and have left mine below if you’d like to read it. From what I can remember, I went relatively undisturbed by OCD  the majority of my middle/late childhood, only having about 1-3 thoughts a year that weren't super bothersome but did create a level of distress uncomparable to regular intrusive thoughts. They were mainly about my health and about my parents safety & wellbeing. The earliest memory about my OCD that really stood out was back in 5th Grade, when I hit my head on a swing set and immediately began reciting every moment leading up to injury as well as every math equation I knew to make sure my memory was still intact. The greater part of my adolescence was essentially the same and resembled what I believed to be a normal life,  just with a couple of OCD thoughts sprinkled throughout it. I was able to function pretty well albeit depressed and somewhat anxious. It wasn't until I was close to my highschool graduation that I experienced the worst panic attack(at the time) at the idea that I would hurt my parents. It was so distressing because the thought felt so loud that I believed it was genuine which only caused more distress. I was so scared that I would act on the thought that I discarded all of my sharp objects and locked myself in my room. That was my first ever severe reaction I experienced due to OCD and was back in May of this year. I actually learned what OCD was the same night and realized that many of my newly found fears including mold growing in my walls  and my parents disliking me were also caused by the OCD. Unfortunately learning that it was probably OCD wasn't enough to quell my fear and I engaged in a bunch of compulsions in the months to come, worsening my OCD In the process. June was alright. July was worse(I only had like three topics for obsessions which sounds great now). Late July-Early August was my tipping point . Things went from worse to profoundly terrible in a short period. I found this app late August which was great because I had grown exhausted. September was pretty bad but not as bad as August. Now it's October and life is somewhat good now. I've become more knowledgeable of OCD (big thanks to this app and my therapist) but I'm very far from done. There's still this looming sense of anxiety that follows me everywhere. I have like 20 obsessions now, some being larger and scarier than others but those smaller ones are still apparent. But, the fear has decreased as well as the mental compulsions that came with it. My mind is quieter now. However the anxiety has stayed the same. My heart still drops whenever my worst obsession is triggered. Headaches, brain fog, sweating, rapid heart rate, sense of being paralyzed, racing mind are commonplace in my life but I've learned to sit with  the physical discomfort (not that it makes it any less terrifying). Anyways, I'm here now which is cool. I’d like to listen to others' experiences to get a better understanding of OCD and maybe feel a bit less alone. feel free to ask any questions.

Anyone here suffering from hiv anxiety or phobia from sexual encounters? Every time I have an intimate relationship, even taking care of myself and partner, there’s the obsession that I got aids, that my life is over, that I’m guilty and that the only way out is an hiv exam that’s 45 days away and I’m gonna suffer and waste my precious time waiting for it and life is going to be “paused” until I get the results, something that as of now even stopped working. I’ve been having this for 20 years but got worse in the pandemic. I’ve done countless therapy and medication, but only Pristiq helped a bit with the depressive symptoms, meditation and ACT, but nothing is working anymore so I’m looking for ERP. This is so debilitating and makes me feel like s... everyday. My life is a mess right now. ( Had sex yesterday and I’m in the middle of a big crisis).

This is a repeating pattern. I’ll have an intrusive thought, always about the past whether that be a few minutes or a few years. I become extremely anxious. I start furiously trying to disprove it. It can’t be true coz of this, it can’t be true,if it was I wouldn’t be doubting it as ocd etc etc. Then feels very very real due to doing self reassurance. Try to carry on with normal stuff but constantly feeling like there’s something important that I’m ignoring and should be paying attention to. To make matters worse the thoughts are always about my wonderful husband so there’s always the temptation to ask him for reassurance as he’s the only one who can reassure me on these thoughts. That’s not fair on him, he doesn’t deserve it. Does this sound familiar to anyone? Anyone recovered from this? People advise living with uncertainty but when it’s about the love of your life that’s very very hard.

Does anyone know what depersonalization is? I’ve been feeling very strange lately and Im worried that it’s more than depersonalization.

Why did I just have a abt being attracted to my abuser 💀 I so fucking hate this and now I’m having thoughts like “oh I can see why my mom dated him” like nooo :( I feel so terrible and nasty I just hate this I hate myself I feel like I’m only one going thru this

Haven’t been on here for a while. I think I have a problem. My bf and I are on a break because our relationship almost ended and it’s monogamous but I find myself (which I know it’s normal to be sexually attracted to someone in general) but a coworker of mine I feel like I have a crush on cuz he’s really attractive but I feel terrible about it, and I would never say that to my partner and we aren’t even talking right now so to say that is like wow you are cheating on me, or why would you do that to me. It’s not only that but me and him have some deep conversations and he always says he is there to talk to me anytime and asked for my Snapchat and I wasn’t trying to make it seem like a fling thing at all, but it now feels like it because he sees me at work and I find myself looking forward to seeing him because it makes me feel good… I feel terrible about it and don’t know what to do and I feel like a cheater because it’s just too far and if I told him which how could I it’s over board and I am afraid he would say the same thing like oh same with me, and I’d be mad like wow you betrayed me. So anyone have advice and it’s not reassurance because this has no part in my ocd guilt it’s something that I feel like I have an issue with. Because one time a friend of mine (a guy) I hugged him multiple times because he was leaving a therapy group and it felt wrong after because like I am hugging him because it feels good and I am attracted to him.. and I don’t even talk about this stuff because I know it’s wrong and I don’t know why I do this and I fucking hate myself I don’t wanna be anything like my dad. Any input would be appreciated!

My partner and I recently had our 3 year anniversary, and it’s been incredible. I love him so much and celebrating our relationship is important to me, but recently I think my relationship OCD has been triggered. I keep wondering if I’m doing the right thing. Should I still be with him? Is 3 years too long? What if it doesn’t work out? Will I wish I ended it now? But at the same time I love him and want to build a future with him. I feel like my options are to get married within a year or break up within a year, but neither feel right. I want to be content with where we are now, but the uncertainty of it all is driving me crazy. I’m also worried that since we’ve been dating so long that I’ve become dependent on him/lost myself. I don’t think this is true, in the past we both worked on avoiding codependency actively. But now I’m feeling myself slip and I’m afraid I’m not capable of doing this without him. I’m by myself for the first time in a while tonight and I’m noticing how unraveled I am, I’m just afraid this means I need to end things? I know this is a jumble of thoughts and worries and I don’t know what I expect to gain, I just need to get it out there somewhere

Hey everyone, I don’t know if I’m asking for reassurance, but I need some guidance. Query: Academic integrity I’m nearing exam period (I’m currently in study break) and my obsessions around academic integrity and honesty are rising again. Our class was given the instruction sheet for exams early and it said that you aren’t allowed to exchange written summaries of the permissible materials for the exam with each other (the exams are all open book, but permissible materials are lectures, tutorials and readings). My mid year exam period was really hard on me. I was struggling to keep up cause my OCD relapsed and I was struggling to take care of it, and then my uncle passed away unexpectedly, so I got pretty behind with studies but I still managed to keep up with all of the content and write up my cheat sheet (this is permissible, it’s just a condensed version of your notes as it’s too time consuming to go over all your notes). Despite my circumstances, I wouldn’t help feeling bad for my peers who were struggling to keep up. They weren’t behind because of any other circumstances, mainly just because our studies has such a huge workload (studying law is basically a full time job). I felt an obligation to send my cheat sheets to them (we didn’t communicate on these documents, so I always assumed this wasn’t cheating considering how many other students admitted to doing it as well). Sometimes I would insist I’d give it to them because I felt bad that I couldn’t really see them suffer, but sometimes they’d ask for other notes from me. This became exhausting for me because a lot of people ended up depending on me. One of them reciprocated and gave one cheat sheet to me, to which I drew some of their notes and incorporated mine, as well as some from the student note bank which is backed by the university law student organisation (permissible to use the latter). When exams came along, I failed two out of three exams. I was really disappointed, but my peers ended up passing (but they were also disappointed with their grades). I really do not want to commit academic dishonesty again, there have been so many instances where I didn’t realise I actually was technically cheating because I would discuss ideas with my peers for assignments. But recently, my friend came to me and asked me to send her all my tutorial notes because she was behind this semester. I previously gave her my case sheet and lecture notes (the latter because her laptop died on her and she lost everything, she was also the one that still gave me a cheat sheet which I’m thankful for). I’m not going to lie, but I didn’t feel like giving it to her because I’m not being compassionate to myself when I am struggling myself, but I didn’t know how to respond to it so I said “sure, just make sure to go to the office hours and run through those notes cause they’re vague”. So I sent them to her, but I really regret it once I saw the instruction sheet for the exam, literally saying that it went against the university policies. The exam hasn’t started yet but I’m just ruminating. Sorry for the rant, but I want to know how to approach this situation??? I won’t get caught for this because it’s just tutorial notes which is hard to track but it’s sick and tiring when I give people my notes and I fail and they pass and I don’t want to be dishonest :(

i feel like i’ve hit a real rock bottom and that its time i start my medication. my prescription is zoloft. can anyone tell me their experience on it for OCD?

Also, does anyone feel like they almost have like two brains? not personalities just feeling okay and not okay? hard to explain

How many of you have recovered from ocd? I know we tend to come here for support during our struggles but I know many ppl have recovered from a theme or ocd symptoms period. Can you share your story if you have. The prevailing story is that ocd is chronic but there are many voices off this app saying they are living proof that ocd doesn't have to be chronic.

I’m scared that I’ve caught feelings for a guy I work with. For the past couple of years I’ve always wanted to meet him, because he’s a fantastic musician that all my friends know as well. We get on, but only in the way I would have got in with all my friends. He is gay. And now I’m worried that I want to “be with him.” It makes me so anxious. I keep having panic attacks when I think about it but sometimes I think about it and don’t get anxious. I just don’t want these feelings because they just add to the guilt I already have about staying with my girlfriend who I really miss (as I’m away for work right now).

I just did an exposure that was way too high for me: I read a coming out article, written by the writer of Orange is the New Black. She was in her 30’s and she realized she was gay while she was on set for season one. She took time to figure out if she was gay, and left her newlywed husband. She’s now with a woman. This is my biggest fear, as I’m in a relationship with a man I love and am in my early 30’s. My thoughts are “are you in denial? What if this turns into your story as well?” “What about those thoughts you had years ago?” I’m not looking for reassurance, rather help with getting myself out of this spiral. I did this exposure about an hour ago and feel so sick I can’t really eat. OCD makes things feel so painfully real. When I do exposures lower on my hierarchy, I typically feel so clear once I’m out of the anxiety- I can say “wow, that was my OCD. How incredible is that.” And move on. But I’m having a hard time reaching that point with this exposure. Help would be much appreciated 💙

I thought I was on the road to recovery and now I’m just more confused. It feels like I’m just suppressing something I want. But I don’t want it. It doesn’t feel like me but I’ve forgotten what me feels like. And on the rare few seconds where I feel like myself I get so scared that it’s going to go again. I feel like a fraud, how can I stay with my girlfriend if I keep thinking about this. I don’t even know what I want anymore. I was sure now I don’t know anything.