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Anyone else feel like they will never be understood in a relationship? Like I want to get to know other people but its like I feel like I am boring and my ocd just makes my life a living hell currently. No motivation to do nothing even though I have alot to do and literally having no purpose in life.Like I literally dont feel like I have ever enjoyed any of my life because it feels like I am not real or I am like a shadow in my own body? Its frustrating because my last relationship was horibbly toxic and the guy I was with was horrible and I broke things off after years of abuse and I have currently been having a hard time not to reach out to him after no contact for 3 months.I feel immense guilt like I was mean to him even though he cheated on me and a part of me says I deserve to go back to the abuse. And I feel like maybe I am punishing myself because my faith in God is not the strongest Ive stopped praying and I dont read the bible consistently becayse I get very overwhelmed because I want to make sure I am doing bible study correctly or ill be punished. (sorry for the spelling mistakes)

So this morning I woke up to the grim reaper for about two seconds then I went back to sleep. I don't know if it was a thought image or actually standing there. The thing is I can't really how it look or happen but I know it happen. Is this common with ocd

reposting to see if I can get replies. putting a TW in case this triggers someone with SOCD. please please refrain from reading because I’m scared to trigger more people. I just want to share my thoughts bc I’m feeling guilt right now. ——— so there was this guy who posted on here a week ago I think. he wanted to know about other bisexual people’s thoughts on his question if his attraction to the opposite sex was ‘aesthetic’ or not. he shared his experiences. I put my response in and tried my best. eventually, I reply a few days later w/ my honest (since I was confused at first) answer & he replied days later as well. he said my answer was great & that he was just freaking out at the time asking the question & was secure with his sexuality. I was glad to know & I believe I added more to my reply in hopes of making him feel better but I think I might’ve triggered his OCD. I said somewhere along the lines of that “it’s okay to feel lost/confused/worried about [our] sexuality” because it’s “normal.” and that we are still learning about ourselves and “our thoughts right now could change in the future” & that it is okay. ‼️‼️again, please PLEASE do not continue reading as I feel like this might be triggering to SOCD. ‼️‼️ I was just going by what some people have said online (I can’t remember correctly but I know someone said this) because of their own experience. they said that there are older people who find out they’re gay/straight/etc later in life. like how people think they’re ____ and then find out years later they’re really ____. it was somewhere along the lines where us finding out about our sexuality can be a roller coaster and that it was fine not to know at the moment. as a kid, I thought I was straight and then looked back at some stuff I did that made me question. then had like a year where I obsessed dating the same sex. two years pass and I date the same sex but ends badly. I feel like it could have been OCD that ruined it for me and just my feelings at the time. I’m not diagnosed so don’t think I do but share similar or same thoughts as others. now I’m worried I’m straight and have been faking liking the same sex. I don’t see myself dating the same sex again. I have much much stronger feelings towards the opposite sex. anyway, that guy said that when he’s confident again about his sexuality, it feels like someone comes in and says that “feelings/thoughts can change in the future” and makes him doubt his sexuality again. he also mentioned that when he talks about his worries, people think he’s “confused” but I don’t think that. I fully believe he’s bisexual but didn’t say he was because we were talking about attraction. I felt like if I said “yeah, you’re bisexual, dw” I would have reassured him and that’s not okay to do with a person with OCD. now I feel terrible for having triggered him. it wasn’t my intention to. because of that, I have pretty much refrained quite a bit from replying to other posts because I’m scared of hurting another person. I am currently obsessing over the thought of checking up on him and apologizing a lot for making him feel bad. I feel like a villain. I was just trying to help. I feel like I can’t speak because my stupid self always can’t word things right. I feel like I can’t help people now because what if I hurt them? why am I not good enough…. now I feel like I’m just self-victimizing and acting like a bitch. I don’t know if I should just suppress my feelings and suck it up because I feel like I shouldn’t be acting like a crybaby. like, like, like…….feel, feel, feel……too many words…..I’m sorry for the disgusting repetition…. I just feel ashamed. and what if I’m wrong about everything? what if those people or person didn’t say that I think they said? what if I’m just trying to justify my wrongdoing? I don’t know anymore

But thanks to doing ERP, I feel like OCD is barely a part of my life now. It's crazy because I have had maladaptive perfectionism for essentially my whole life, and I developed tics that were probably OCD-related at a young age. I've had a variety of themes (mental contamination, existentialism, symmetry, gender, etc.), with the most recurring one being the "just right" subtype. Even though the thoughts still come, I no longer give into the compulsions. Sometimes, I think "oh no, I erased and rewrote a word just now - isn't that giving into a compulsion?" and then I just accept that I can't really know and go on with my life. As long as you're willing to commit to truly exposing yourself to your triggers, to sitting with uncertainty or imperfection, OCD doesn't have to be your destiny. I really never imagined I could get to a point where, for instance, I could write a post like this one in 10 minutes, rather than 3+ hours of googling synonyms of every word, reading it over and over again, checking how I felt about it, and ultimately deleting it (feeling that pressure in my head and body all the while, that feeling of things not being quite right). It's honestly hard to remember how bad it really was. Life isn't perfect, but it's alright. I'm finally letting myself just... do the things. To anyone in the throes of OCD who is currently reading this, you don't have to believe me. I certainly wouln't have when I was in your position. You just need to commit to doing the exposures (and to not doing the rituals), as much as you can, even - and especially - imperfectly. And maybe one day, you'll realize that the thoughts aren't quite as anxiety-inducing as they once were, and the urge to do your compulsions is not quite so strong, and now you have time to do some of the things that you wish you could before.

Because of the thoughts or mentally exhaustion, and got over it?

I would like to get an answer for this cause i want to know why this keeps happening. I compare myself with others cause i dont see others having the same problem. When they have a setback its usually because of a hard day or a big trigger, however for me its just forgetting what i have to do. A month ago i was really good, i dont say i didnt had setbacks but i saw that im going somewhere, you know the setbacks were weaker and weaker, and one day i just someone understood how emotions and thoughts works and i was able to enjoy my day while i had thoughts and emotions, but it didnt affected me. Then i was like this is so good, but im afraid i will just forget it like everytime and believe me or not, the moment i said it i felt that im slowly losing what i learned and after some time i didnt know what to do with the thoughts and emotions when before i realized it and i was living my life like that. And then i was unable to do the same thing, it was like my brain deleted it. It really feels like theres something wrong with my mind, how it foegets just like that what i did before? And now after 1 month im still struggling, the videos that used to help me and made me realize what i need to do doesnt help me, its like im watching nothing, my mind doesnt realizez this video made me understand what i need to do before, now it doesnt make me do anything. And im keep falling back to the point that my panic attacks are back, and it makes me feel so bad cause it means i did nothing, after all this work it got back and im still dont know how to deal with it. Im feeling like how i felt 2-3 years ago, like these years were nothing. Im really afraid that sometime i will get the night panic attacks again when i will be afraid that i will hurt myself or be afraid of i will unalive myself... It doesnt seems like im learning something. Look st my other posts, it seemd like im so close to recovery and im learning alot, but now if i read those i cant relate to those... its like a different person and it doesnt started slowly, like i engaged in unhealthy behaviours, it all started when i thought "i hope i wont forget this" and then i actually forgot what i learned... just like that... and now im again questioning acceptance, what to do with my emotions when i understood that and i was working on it. Im sitting in bed and i try to remember what i did when i get these bad emotions and all i can remember is when people say "you have to let yourself feel the feelings" and im letting myself but all i do is im drowning in them. After anxiety it comes anger then anxiety again and then im depressed and hopeless and then panic comes... i dont get why letting these to come helps me, it makes me drown and become depressed which will only send me to a therapist who will say accept it too... It doesnt make me learn anything it just drowns me, i dont get this acceptance and letting myself feel bad... Im just letting negative emotions take over me without trying to stop it cause now im accepting it...and it doesnt makes me realize anything.

I’ve suffered with OCD to some extent most of my life—rituals, counting, religious themes, etc. After some bad episodes of family abuse + a bad breakup + work toxicity, I developed some pretty bad OCD-related anxiety. I went through a few very bad panic attacks, and became badly depersonalized/dissacotiated. My obsessions and panic began to focus on my bodily sensations—like vertigo/dizziness, worry about floating into the sky forever, the ground falling, the ground disappearing, the ground warping/rotating, etc. I’ve been applying the 4-Step process by Jeffrey Schwartz, and it’s been very very helpful in snapping back to reality and preventing anxiety/panic cycles. So I got his book—Brain Lock. In the preface he talks about a woman who seemingly recovered after 25 years, but still has these thoughts. My question is: Will I be stuck like this forever? The very nature of my thoughts make it very difficult to live happily. I felt discouraged reading that, because it feels like I’ll always have these thoughts and be doomed to undergoing this anxiety/OCD cycle forever. Is there any hope?

I just woke up from a disturbing dream. Here’s what happened in the dream: my family member wakes up from an odd dream, then asks me to look it up. I look it up, then a bunch of LGBTQ+ flags and labels come up. The family member’s dream wasn’t specifically about me, but what if that was some weird sign that I’m not straight? I’m really scared that I’m not straight because yesterday, I was worried about not being straight. I’m not homophobic, just to be clear I just want to be straight. I’ve been straight my whole life, but I’ve always wondered if I am attracted to girls romantically. I know that I’m attracted to them sexually because when I used to watch porn, I would mostly look up girls, but I’m not romantically attracted to them. And I’ve never been attracted to women in person. That dream made me highly uncomfortable because I’ve never thought of myself as anything other than straight because I know that i wouldn’t take a girl serious. Please help, my anxiety is through the roof right now, but also be honest

My mind keeps going in circles and it’s so much to think about and I don’t know how to stop it and I’m all alone. I don’t have anyone I can go to and it’s hard for me to feel like anyone cares about me. Maybe my head is spiraling right now? It feels like it is 😭😭😭 I just want it to stoppppp it’s putting me in a fog and I’m so scared ):

Im scared of what’s gonna happen when I die like im so uncertain and I get BAD panic attacks about what’s gonna happen to me like I get these thoughts like if my gonna live forever, like is just a forever loop or is just gonna be nothing. Im catholic and I believe in heaven or hell but im really not sure. I’ve struggled with my faith since I’ve been 13 and it’s getting worse, I’ve heard about all these theories about what’s gonna happen after we die and I always get so scared about them. One time my aunt told me that we are souls, spirits that we are energy and just being in our body having an experience but our souls are immortal so im scared about the thought of living forever that scares me so much because at the same time I want to have peace. There’s other things that really really give me panic attacks about that subject but I can’t list them all here if you want to help me out then I’ll tell you more.

Someone called me “your brain is not working properly ”.. I was not able to understand their directions due to my OCD condition and feeling brain fog. I was pretending to be fine but I actually cried a lot on my pillow. I have been this way since my entire childhood to many comments and bullying I received from people, and in recovery my old sensitive self came back again… how do I deal with this? I have understood that human beings are practical and that they are self contained to not be affected. But this is destroying my self esteem like a house of cards and I’m sobbing like anything. But it breaks me down too much. I feel completely destroyed lost and alone and tears flow down my face. I realised the world is different in the face of death and pain But I can’t handle the ruthlessness of how this world works. I can’t let go the part of me that is devastated by the facts of cruelty or loss, and gets completely destroyed by its manifestation in world. This incident completely transports me to my childhood self.

My mental health is at its lowest and I'm sick of existing

Hi. I'm new here. Never been diagnosed but identify with symptoms. I want to seek a diagnosis but I'm terrified of seeking help and having the doctors think I'm just faking it or being a hypochondriac (I have a laundry list of thing I want to look into as far as diagnosis go). I just need answers and help because it's hard and after having a kid it's even harder. How did you get diagnosed? Was there medical gaslighting for you?

How can I respond to some of these intrusive thoughts without feeling like I need to fight, resist, and etc?? They’re extremely distressing and make me question myself, my reality and my health/brain. I’ve tried just distracting myself, ignoring it, and letting it scream at me. But then it comes back with scarier ones and I’m just struggling . I’d been doing good with them lately but suddenly they’re awfully intense and hard to ignore Help😞

I’ve been struggling recently what if the “ what if these aren’t intrusive thoughts from ocd” because my mental health has been terrible , I’m at at ting to have suicidal thoughts and siv never been a depressed person I’m very scared of death actaully:( it’s scaring me that I’m having these thoughts and images 😕

i remember feeling more hopeless in the past, having lower moments, mentally, you know, in 2022 i completely lost it. and i remember being 14 in 2020 and for the first time really considering ending my life. but still every day i wake up and go to sleep in the ocd prison, i am so tired, no one understands the patterns are the same, have been the same for years and yet i don’t know how to cope. it’s so exhausting.

After that triggering dream where the worst thing could have happened, I don't feel legimitated anymore to feel genuinely distressed by triggers, to call compulsions as such. It all feels disingenuous. They don't feel valid anymore. Like crocodile tears. Because the one thing I didn't want to happen probably happened, that undoes everything else. I feel like a hypocrite, to feel distress and worry about those things, being anxious of that particular fear because in that dream it happened. I felt arousal and probably genuine attraction, I'm afraid that I could have agreed with it. Maybe it isn't true, maybe it didn't happen, maybe I'm misinterpreting, but then why I was left with that impression? All because of a damn dream, because ocd, all my triggers intrude even in my sleep, because I can't even be safe in my dreams. This is the worst mental illness.

How do I even talk about this to ANYONE, I feel so shameful especially because why do the most horrendous images or saying pop up in my head. Just because of incident that happened @ a young age between my cousin and I, I keep telling myself I’m a P and I can’t get close to the little kids especially the ones I know because it starts attacking them. I keep fearing gods judgment like these are sinister thoughts, i NEVER wanted. I feel like this is going to follow me through death and I’ll be punished.

Early this morning I was laying in bed with my youngest daughter. My Harm OCD was having a field day. The intrusive thoughts that I would hurt her. So vivid and alarming scared me so bad. I really had to lean into "these are ocd thoughts" I know I would NEVER hurt her. My therapist has let me know OCD takes what we value most and turns it against us. Being able to identify that it is a terrible thought and the fact that it brings horrible fear with it shows that it is OCD. I just hate this. Other subtypes are horrible too but this I think is the worst. I also have suicide OCD that flares up from time to time. I have a irrational fear of dying/getting older but I still have the thought of "What if I get so bad I just snap and think its the only way out" and then I spiral in those thoughts of guilt and not wanting to get that bad. Other days I have just the residual anxiety that sits there. The physical feeling of the adrenaline dumping into my body and not knowing why. I have been able to function and I am working on reframing and identifying triggers (Fairly new to this). Not seeking reassurance, but I am wondering if anyone else has had similar. PS. I have started having very Vivid dreams when I go to bed. I don't know if its the OCD or if its the recent med change. If anyone has input or wants to discuss some of them I am very open to it.

Anyone else think it’s irresponsible to have kids if you have severe ocd?