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TRIGGER WARNING - RELIGION AND EXISTENTIAL OCD So, now that the trigger warning is out of the way, I'd like to share a thought I had earlier. Its been brewing for a while but this is the best way I think I can word it. Are we responsible for our circumstances or the circumstances of others, or is God responsible? Is a thought responsible for it's circumstances or the circumstances of other thoughts, or is the thinker responsible? What leads what? (If anything leads at all). Does it ultimately matter if we know? Is the solution inconsequential to the answer, is the answer inconsequential to the solution, or both inconsequential of each other? It may take a few times to reread to understand 😅 sorry

I haven’t been on this app for quite a long time. I could go about my day without thinking about ocd and actually focus on things in my life for the past few months. I haven’t been on meds and going to therapy. But recently my ocd flared up due to the pressure of dealing with pre-college stuff. And it has gone worst than I’ve remembered. I feel so dissociated with myself. I don’t even have a ‘gut feeling’ anymore, and I genuinely couldn’t trust myself. The context of the intrusive thoughts are so absurd and disturbing. It feels like it’s eating me up and I’m becoming a mindless zombie. It’s just so traumatic.

⚠️ TW: p3d0, POCD. i'm really distressed that i've developed a paraphilic disorder (or discovered it) because it feels more real than POCD.. i see many reports here saying that they are afraid of being around minors under 15, 16, 17 years of age.. i feel my panic starting under 13. It's uncomfortable to be around younger teenagers, sure, but it doesn't sound as awful as being around children (literally). it seems like there are some "focus" ages, like 9, 11 or 12. i feel desperate because i once read in a paper on paraphilic pedophilia disorder that it is only considered p3d0 when the individual is 5 or 6 years younger than the victim of "desire". this really worries me. i don't have direct thoughts of me abusing a child, sometimes i do...they're more in the 3rd person, of children being abused or something else. they're the most degrading thoughts a human being can have. and I'm afraid they're mine, from my unconscious... i've dreamed about it a few times. It's so sadistic and cruel. becoming a bad person has always been my biggest fear. i feel like i've always been afraid of it, but i know i'm not.

I haven't been officially diagnosed with OCD but when I learned more about it, I never related to anything more. A little back story: when I was younger, there were a couple of youth suicides in my area and the schools felt the need to have someone come in and talk about suicide. Well the person they had come in did a horrible job teaching it and basically made it seem like the smallest negative emotion or feeling or change in behavior made you suicidal. This ended up scaring me so much that I got horrid anxiety. Fast forward to now, Everytime I feel anxiety and panic, I fear I'm going to kill myself. Everytime I feel down and depressed, I fear I'll end it all. I'm scared to be around anything sharp because the "What if" I hurt myself comes into my mind. There are always intrusive thoughts at almost every point of the day. And it's not only for me. Everytime I hear someone being negative, I fear they will be suicidal. I know in my heart that none of this is true but it's terrifying me that it's stuck around so much that it makes me scared that maybe it is true. I've had a lot of death in my family in the past year and a half and a lot of other family drama that I'd never had before that is now also bringing up existential intrusive thoughts. And I'd never questioned anything about life before but now I get the "why is life like this?" and "does anything we do matter?" and I hate it. I don't want to think like that. I just want to go through life being able to handle things normally again. It terrifies me even right now going "what if you give up?"

I have a story I’ve been working on for a long time. I have lost passion for it and it’s become harder to work on because of this. Every day I feel the urge to write down details of one specific character because it “never feels right”, I just write the same things over and over and over, and I keep checking and rereading to see if it “makes sense”. This has been going on for a while now and it feels familiar to my other compulsions, which were related to things like my morality and ruminating the past, I used to do this same stuff just a different theme. It’s just this unstoppable urge to reread and rewrite everything about my character because each time I feel like it’s wrong and I’m missing something, I try to stop but it’s so important to me that my characters are good and well written. Does anyone else have this?

it feels like i’m going insane. a while ago, i felt this internal prompting (believing it to be the Holy Spirit). my friend prayed for me & she got a different response from God than the one im feeling is from Him. whenever i go to make a decision to stay, i feel so much unrest. i feel bad and i feel like God’s angry. when i decide to leave, it makes me physically go into a depression & experience extreme anxiety. i stop eating, start picking at my face, take melatonin to sleep, and it makes me wanna draw away from God because it hurts so bad. my community is telling me that God is not heavy and does not punish you for making a choice, but it feels like it. my community is also saying so many different things & im confused. people are saying that God is good and kind…as a believer, i know He’s good and kind, but i don’t feel like it. i feel like im being forced to do something. like a stirring in my spirit so bad, i feel like i can’t do anything else. i’ve been in a 3 month depression (maybe my own fault for not making a decision and following peace…but what happens when peace is there but so is anxiety and depression & fear & worry & feeling like i want to die?) ugh

I learned what i did was wrong and everything i tried to do when i was anxious was kinda avoidance and not what i should do, and what i should do is not figuring the anxiety out, its more like teaching myself that its okay to have anxiety, its also a feeling like happiness, sadness, anger and so on... However thos is my second try and im starting to feel sick sitting with the anxiety, i feel like im more like staring at it and it starts to get worse, i worry more, and i accept it but that doesnt do anything to it cause its still worry... Some of the thoughts that are scare and feeds the anxiety are automatic and my reactions too are automatic, the solution are always run to someone, run to a therapist to solve my problem but thats not the answer. The problem is that now im in a headspace where my thoughts say i cant deal with this and my feelings are lining up to that so it starts to get desperate, and im starting to be afrad of these thoughts cause i dont want to feel that i cant deal with this, its just more panic. And now im desperate and angry, i dont think sitting with it and staring az it would help or noticing everything, i feel horrible doing that. What i labeled before as "pushing away the feelings" seems like a solution cause i feel like now im constantly watching in and now i became afraid of everything, even the reactions... im just too inward focused, i dont think this one helps now. Im afraid of these depressive "i cant deal with this" thoughts, these made me panic before and i was in depression because of these before... I dont know what is the next step cause im being stucked here...

Existential crisis pls help guys🫶 I’m finding that everything is pointless What’s the point of reaching my goals? Is God even real? Please help guys!!!!!

So I’ve been obsessed lately with the doubt I might be developing schizophrenia. For days now I’ve been seeing things out of the corner of my eye and moving things and it’s almost constant now that I see something. I feel like I’ve been hearing things lately too, like the sound of my cat meowing when she’s laying down asleep and I just heard crickets chirping when there were no windows open or anything like that and there’s no way I could’ve heard that. Or I’ll hear a real faint thud like someone’s walking around occasionally. There’s no history in my family of schizophrenia that I know of and I don’t think anyone in my family currently has it. I feel like I’m losing it and I might actually somehow be developing it. Someone tell me please, is this the start of schizophrenia or is it just my OCD playing tricks on me? It feels so real, I don’t know if OCD can cause all of this. I don’t know what to believe.

My life ended in july when this started. Im waiting for it to come back. Ive been unemployed and cant keep a job because its so debilitating. I used to be happy, But i dont think ill ever be okay again. Its like i died and im just here observing life happen.

Hello all! I need some recommendations from anyone who tried therapy with the NOCD therapists. preferably anyone who is struggling with Religious OCD, SO-OCD and Existential OCD If you tried therapy here, how was your experience? would you recommend any specific therapists for a specific subtype? any feedback is appreciated!

My mom and I have always been very codependent on eachother. A few months ago we found out she had gallbladder cancer stage 4 that spread everywhere. Now it's getting to the end, this is the last thing me and my family expected, I have never been the strong one, my mom always has, but I have not left her side during this whole thing. I already feel the pain of losing her coming on and it already feels unbearable. I was just wondering if anyone else is or was close to a parent who has passed at a young age and just felt helpless and like they couldn't handle it. Any stories and helpful tips about this subject would help me alot. I don't know where else to turn except to find a psychologist.

Hi, I had a ok 2 days after a while I haven’t been ok. And today it all kinda came back to me. Like yesterday and 2 days ago the thoughts were here to cause I had things to do. And today it all kinda came back , im trying to stay away from compulsion and today starting erp again cause I kinda gave up on it. I’m afraid I just never recover from it cause what if the thought will always be here? It’s just scary that it’s will be forever. Ocd has made me depressed too so I need to get my life back together. I’m afraid I will never recover because what if there are people who don’t recover from this? What if I will be one of them? My therapist tells me never to compare myself to anyone, she tells me that everyone can recover and it’s possible to recover for anyone but it’s depend of the person. I’m trying to think positive but the what if I’m not going to recover thoughts are killing me. I know it’s possible but what if not for me

they say ocd is egodystonic. ever since i was young i knew i was attracted to women sexually, possibly even more than men, and it never bothered me. when i was about 14 i had an episode (my first ever i think?) about being a lesbian. once that died down and i got older i tried to flirt with the idea of liking women romantically, and theres been a few times where i have been a bit. but since then i still have had a few SO-OCD flare ups about liking women and i cant figure out why.. maybe being raised christian and whatnot? but like im not a christian so whats egodystonic about that? it has me questioning everything, like what if i really DO like women romantically/am a lesbian and all my other scary themes for example pocd are real as well? the weird thing about this is… im not even panicking? i’ve been working on my ocd alot lately so it could be a result of that but im also wondering if something worse is going on?

Hello, at the risk of seeking reassurance, I wanted to see if anyone else here had experienced what I consider a strange thought process in my ocd. I have suffered from harm and existential themes for around 4 months now, with the existential themes having stemmed from the initial fear that I could become a violent person (triggered by something I read online). Before I knew better I would argue and engage excessively with the thoughts to try and disprove them. This led me to tread into very dark and strange philosophical territory. For example: I would tell myself that there’s no way that I could hurt someone because I am repulsed by the thought and I know that if I ever were to cause harm, I would feel awful. But logic doesn’t work on this, so my brain would then suggest that I could still hurt someone despite not wanting to because I could actually somehow want to feel awful. This led to a lot of bizarre thoughts about whether I actually want good things for myself and what essentially amounts to an identity crisis and fears that I am in denial and actually have some sort of evil shadow self that I’ve been unaware of my whole life. As if the more I tried to reason my way out of it, the more I lost touch with reason. I don’t want any reassurance, just looking for some commonality and maybe encouragement to keep working on getting better.

I felt like I was stuck in a rut on my old medication so I talked with my psychiatrist and we decided I’d try Viibryd. I tapered onto it at 10mg and the first week was a bit rough, and the last 6 days have been horrific. My OCD has been the worst it’s been in years, and I think this is the most intense it’s ever been in such a short period of time. My suicide OCD* has been on my mind constantly, and it has felt so insanely real. Like I’m just one thought, or one moment away from hurting myself. I’ve also really been struggling with my existential OCD because I’ve been feeling so terrified that things feel surreal, and the idea of feeling normal, caring about normal things, and going about life seem so alien to me. And it ties into my suicide OCD. Like despite all of the work I’ve done in ERP (4+ years) it’s come flooding in, and it’s so severe that I’ve been in survival mode the past 5 days. I talked with my psychiatrist and therapist yesterday and it helped a lot. I’m going back to a medication I know works and taking abilify as a booster. But my psych says it’ll be about 3 days until I feel better, and about a week until I feel myself again. And I’m just scared that I’ll never feel normal again. That everything will feel like a simulation or meaningless, or that I’ll never feel comfortable with my own existence again. I know it’s not true, but this in-between period of the chemicals in my brain trying to balance back out is just exhausting and grueling to get through. I’ve been super nauseous (probably a mix of my bad medication and my ocd episode) and even the thought of food makes me feel ill, so I’ve been force feeding myself with bland protein shakes. And I feel awful saying this, but today I napped partially because I was tired and partially because I just wanted to avoid being awake so I wouldnt have a panic attack. I wanna go back to the little things bringing me joy, yearning to draw and paint, and being able to genuinely smile despite my anxiety. I don’t want reassurance or anything. Maybe some support or words of encouragement. Or maybe tips on how to get food in without gagging until my meds even out. (Just to distance ocd from reality for one second, my suicide OCD is ego dystonic and doesn’t actually reflect my desires, so objectively I am not a harm to myself right now. My ocd is just trying to convince me it is actually how I feel)

I just want to say That when I get this therapy I hope I heal and I hope my brain goes back to normal the way it was and I hope all these false feelings go away and thoughts and urges although I feel nothing and I feel like this is the new me I know deep down it's not I just really hope it doesn't get worse and that I can finally have normal thoughts I just really pray to God I can feel like me again if not then I guess I'm stuck like this thank you guys for helping me me the best you can. I just hope this passes beacuse it genuinely feels like I'm changed and that the feelings are there it's scary. Like my brain doesn't even react anymore with disgust or anxiety neither does my body the thoughts just come up and checking is exhausting and when I don't think about it it still comes this is a scary tome for me I've never had ocd this bad before beacuse I knew who I was before all this idk anymore. I feel like I'm in denial about being a monster and that I actually feel like I do desire these things that's how real it is the lingering feeling is still there it feels like I enjoy this it's terrifying How powerful the brain is cognitive thinking is no joke. It really does change how u feel and affects you badly I don't wish this on anybody. 🪽🪽🪽

I feel like I know everything that my mind is doing yet cannot escape the same predictable trick OCD plays on me. I have an obsession, I know that performing compulsions only feeds the cycle and acts as a temporary relief. Though I know to not suppress these thoughts because that labels them as bad and scary. I’m told not to pose judgement towards my intrusive thoughts, and simply let them pass almost as a spectator views clouds passing by. I attempt to do this, and then feel a sense of discomfort. I tell myself an rpm (response prevention method) “this is uncomfortable but I can cope”. But I sit with this discomfort all day, thoughts neither entering nor exiting my mind, just a background feeling of guilt and an urgency to perform my compulsion which is research and rumination. I know not to pose judgement towards myself here and to give myself grace, and acknowledge that I’m doing the best I can. But I don’t feel that way. I am an overachiever. I have extremely good grades, I am in very good shape, but feel held back from experiencing joy both in doing my passions and harvesting the rewards of my labor. What does one who is completely self aware of how their OCD functions do. Why can my brain not distinguish real danger for irrational fear? Logic does not cure OCD. I waste too much time thinking about my obsessions. “Am I depressed” “am I suicidal”, it’s the same thoughts that trigger anxiety and urgency to gain insight. OCD is connected to what we care about most. I want to live my life, I want to make friends, go out, and ENJOY doing that. Why can’t I understand that nothing is wrong. What in my head is like “woah woah woah, we need to look at this thought for 3 hours to make sure this won’t happen, because you can’t validate it until you find the specific piece of information you need to feel better. I feel like my logic and emotions are very detached. I can understand the concept of holding no judgement or guilt towards self, but it’s different in trying to feel this. Feeling better and understanding how to feel better are completely different. One who feels good has no need to understand how their mind works on a predictable level, as they feel in control and in unison in identity with the thoughts and concepts which flow through their minds, as they cause no immediate distress. But I have to map out how my mind works predict how it will act in different scenarios (after I wake up, in social settings), in order to maximize the enjoyment I feel from immediate feelings. I’ve had to learn to live with combined emotions. To laugh while feeling a sense of dread in the background. I can feel happy and anxious. But I want to feel as I think on a rational level. Escape the irrational. So I know I must just accept the cards I’ve been dealt. I am in therapy, and feel like a broken record writing this. I am simply venting. I want to use the credentials I gain in my hard work to better the current mental health crisis. To give everyone a fair and proper treatment to their very specific issues at hand. There is too much individual experience akin to how one experiences mental illness. Therefore treatment should be specified more for each individual. In regard to how I’ll get by, I must manage to accept my position, gradually become more and more aware of my mental cycles to where I can predict and ultimately control how I respond to certain thought cycles.

I have been doubting my salavtion for 18 years or 15 years does not matter I am 40. I was told I had ocd region last year and tore me apart. It does make sense I have also ptsd and bipolar. How do I know if I have repented and am saved? I feel numb to God. Never any love or change in my heart. I don’t belive good works save me. I know the Bible in my head but how do you know Jesus? I am tired and need a heart change but how does that happens with ocd? Forget about church they can’t handle me and have tried to help but given up. Been told I have been oppressed by demons pray harder trust God more ect. I feel depressed and take my anger out on my kids age 14 10 and 9 and husband. I feel alone and taking medicine does not help. I take my meds for bipolar and anxity. How can I be sure God has saved me or I want God? I am mad at God and been told it’s was sin. I think it is but why did I have to be abused as a kid and have mental health issues and now ocd junk. I don’t have the fruit of the spirit. My mind is in torment sometime and numb myself out with tv sleep drinks food pills ect. Where is Jesus ? Why can’t I have assurence? Just being real and the church is scared of me or I overwhelm people. Jesus offeres peace and rest and I don’t have that. I want my sins forgiven and be loved by God and have him as a my father. Dortine does matter saying the sinners prayer does not save me and I am lost and confused. I don’t want to go to hell. Please anyone have anything to say. I don’t have support

I very recently found out it was OCD all along that was keeping me hiding from the world and I am only just now realizing what my compulsions are. It’s been very difficult to separate in my brain what my feelings are/reasonable action to take vs what my compulsions are because all of my feelings are so intense. My entire life I’ve been told “it’s not that deep” and “you’re so dramatic just get over it already” and “it’s not that bad”. My own mother has called me weak and lazy for what apparently was this disorder slowly driving me insane. I am so tired. I thought I was autistic for years. I’m not. So now… this suddenly isn’t “I am who I am and I am valid” it’s now “this disorder is ruining my entire life and I’m so tired of fighting my own brain I wish I could just accept this reality and that I have a disorder and live how I need to to feel calm.” Am i supposed to be mean to this inner ocd voice? It wants me to stay home from work and hide my big feelings so I’m not a burden. It’s how I stayed safe growing up- avoidance of situations was the only way out of my mom’s explosive anger. now these survival mode coping skills are keeping me from providing food for myself. My executive dysfunction is so bad I’m barely eating and I’m TRYING to, but I’m not getting enough protein so I can feel myself starving. I am so tired friends. Please tell me: how do I move forward? Can I please just rest first before I have to fight more? I’m trying to add more relaxing activities to my daily life so my work shifts aren’t so daunting. But I can feel my depression coming back with winter coming. I don’t want to spiral again.