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This is a realistic fear for me. Had it for decades.

I’ve had OCD, never saw a doctor but I’m pretty sure for over 59 years. When I was young, it was numbers, doing things a certain amount of times ect. As I got older, it was having to hear things more than once, or rereading to make sure I knew what I read. When we had kids, it was the fear of bad things happening, still as a parent, at age 62, two military sons, great wife, I still Do!! I have the fear of death, what happens ect, as I’d hate to this life on earth as it…now, I always loved music, but now I put rhyme words to songs, started out fooling around, now can be stupid things saying go myself?? I can hear or see a word, and my mind continues on, thinking all weird things, lol, I don’t get it? Any info out there from anyone maybe reading this?

I’ve been doing good without posting on here the last few weeks but now I’m finding myself in a weird position with whatever’s wrong with me. I don’t know whether I should stop caring despite the thoughts and whatever I might feel towards them or I SHOULD care because of the thoughts and feelings. I’ve mostly been not caring, despite me still having small reactions (shaking my head a lot, scowling at these thoughts etc). The small reactions are all I can really muster since I feel so used to all these things, and the only thing that I can confidently use as evidence that says “see, you don’t like these things, you’re reacting negatively!” But what about when I’m not reacting, or “ignoring” the thought(s) whenever I’m doing something that makes me feel joy? A lot of my anxiety rarely ever feels directed towards this stuff anymore despite it still being there. It feels like I’ve been robbed of who I was before all this and stuck with whatever this is and now I’m just like “ok whatever” even though the content of these thoughts are, literally, really really disturbing. Since I haven’t been posting on here and researching endlessly, it feels like “ok yeah it was never OCD it was just you trying not to deal with the fact that you like these things and just need a way to excuse what’s been happening so you can make yourself feel better and make everyone else see that you aren’t that person.” When you finally let go, let all these thoughts and whatever feelings that might bring, what’s left of who you were and who will you be now that you’re letting go? And how much of it proves that me having OCD was, always, false, and I’m just a nasty and demented person looking for an excuse to say that I’m not?

We are responsible for stopping our compulsions but are we responsible for doing them?

A "perfectionist." As a child, that's how most described me. Little did I know it might've been related to OCD. When writing notes, if I didn't write a single letter correctly or the ink smudged, I'd tear the paper out from the notebook and re-do the whole thing. It would take me HOURS. Another thing I remember that I still catch myself doing is walking a specific way on the sidewalk. I'd have to start with my right foot, then my left foot, and finish with my right foot at the end of the sidewalk square. If I messed up, I'd feel the urge to turn around and restart from the last square. Knocking on wood also became a compulsion of mine (which I still do lol). Same thing with "step on a crack, break your mother's back." I remember kids in elementary telling me that, and I jumped on a crack to prove to them that it wouldn't happen, but then immediately after doing so, I grew extremely anxious. Because, "What if it's true and I just hurt someone I love?" That day, I'm pretty sure I went home and apologized to my mom for stepping on the crack, and she laughed. Bad intrusive thoughts every night about scenarios where my family would pass away, and I'd imagine how life would be without them. I'd cry about it every single night for years. This eventually evolved into a fear that, if I didn't hug my mom or dad before they left the house, then something horrific would happen to them. Then, even later, it evolved again into intrusive thoughts of ME doing violent things to them. It was horribly distressing, but I didn't tell anyone about it because I thought they'd be afraid of me. One time, I'd been convinced myself that my entire family and I's flight would crash. I begged my mom to cancel our trip because "I just had a feeling that this time, it really would happen." The next day on the flight, I passed out multiple times, but our plane landed safely, and we all lived! Mentally reviewing past conversations over and over again and even scripting out conversations. Constantly asking for reassurance about EVERYTHING. Even if it was something small. During Covid, I grew really paranoid. If I touched anything, I felt like I immediately had to wash my hands two or three times. The air outside felt "contaminated," and I'd get intrusive thoughts just walking around our neighborhood about catching Covid by just being outside. In the first month, I did actually end up getting really sick, but I don't think it was Covid. Still, this only worsened my paranoia, and I'd constantly plug my ears to check my breathing, or I'd check my pulse. I thought I would develop pneumonia and die in my sleep😭 There's probably more, but that's just a few of the memories I've been looking back on...

Ok so about 48 hrs ago I was watching YouTube shorts, going through and i stumbled upon a video saying, some people don't believe in the Bible because it was written by men. And ever since then my brain has been going crazy. This doubt is like never before and idk what to do about it. Like literally I'm freaking out. But at the same time I feel like I could give two craps. So here is the kind of thoughts I get. Like I get thoughts saying. How do you know, this or how do you know that. Or like my mind sometimes says bad things, that degrade Jesus. But also at the same time my mind is trying to tell me he is fictional. But I dont believe that atleast i dont think I do. I don't want to believe that. Literally just 48 hours ago my faith was fine, I was talking to God and having a great time and now since then idk what to do. It's like I'm lost my complete faith in God. And idk what to do, it's like my mind is trying to convince me he isn't real, and I'm not sure what to do. I feel like I'm deliberately trying to not believe in him and idk what to do. Idk if I'm ok. I really don't......

(Disclaimer: I don’t have any thoughts about hurting myself or anyone else. No one else, no matter what they think about themselves, should try to hurt themselves or others. And no racism, sexism, classism, ageism, sizeism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, or any other kind of prejudice is ever justified.) ERP can expose you to thoughts that cause anxiety to try to interrupt the cycle of compulsions that help you cope with the anxiety until the thoughts and anxiety come back stronger. This way the thoughts carry less anxiety with them. I get that. And therapy helps give you insight into the intrusive thoughts themselves and to try to look at things other than in black and white. I get that too. The problem is that I don’t just have intrusive thoughts that upset me because they are terrible things that might be true. I have deeply held beliefs, almost like a moral system, a philosophy of life or even a religion, that is part of my identity. These beliefs are: 1. That everything I was ever given and everything I have has been stolen or defrauded from someone else due to the unjust society we live in. 2. That any goodwill, affection, or love that anyone has toward me is the result of their being deluded, codependent, coerced, or brainwashed. At a certain point, someone like me becomes so selfish and takes so much advantage of others that to continue to enable them is to be a doormat. 3. That all humans have rights they deserve, including myself, but that when someone like me who has always had immense privilege, great healthcare, great education, and loving parents and a loving spouse has gone through half their life and done nothing for anyone else and merely been a source of stress and anguish for others, they/I don’t deserve the benefit of the doubt anymore and should be written off by everyone. 4. Therefore, I don’t deserve any kind of help. I should be thrown on a trash heap and left to fend for myself. These beliefs are not instrusive thoughts. I don’t seek or need reassurance because I know these things to be true deep in my soul. This is the core belief that I base everything else in my life on. I knew it was true when I was child, even though no one taught it to me and I was surrounded by love. I know from the bottom of my heart that if I think that I deserve compassion and empathy and if I think that it would be ok for me to enjoy things like friendship, family and marital love, and professional success, I would be a sociopath because only someone with no morals or empathy would think those things when they have been proven, despite having been given everything, to be useless trash. The reason there is so much injustice in the world is that trash like me is not thrown away. I don’t think anyone should hurt me or anyone else. But we should have everything and everyone good taken away from us and left to fend for ourselves. That is the only way that we will have any dignity, because for once in our lives we will only have what we have worked for. I don’t think there are many people like me. I don’t know anyone else who is completely useless and who has completely wasted their life. I don’t think that anyone poor, abused, or oppressed is like me, and I don’t condemn any of them. But I think the fundamental evil in the world is that society enables people like me to suck parasitically on everyone else. We have to be cut off or burned off like the leeches we are in order for the world to be a just place. So what is the point of therapy if this is what I know to be true? Is it just to work up the courage to leave everyone and everything I have and throw myself on a trash heap until I manage to do something with my life? Therapy is not supposed to make you reject your religion, even if you have intrusive thoughts and compulsions that are religious in nature. What if this is my religion?

Sometimes I think " do I like kids?" "Would i get aroused if I saw content with kids?""What if I'm a pedo and cant accept it?" "What if I'm ok with these thoughts?" "What if I'm not distressed enough " "What if I enjoy these thoughts?" , i avoid kids as much as i can, i cant look at them bc I'm scared I'm gonna have some groin like response. I keep testing if I'd get turned on or if I'd have some groinal response to sexual scenarios with kids. Sometimes I think that if I took my life this would be over and i wouldn't have to think about this and i wish i doubted something else instead of things like this. I had similar situations just with different topics such as if i loved or found sexually appealing a guy while in a relationship and i kept asking myself those questions for months and i avoided going to school for weeks and when I went I'd cry and have anxiety attacks. I had it with past actions i obessed over and felt the need to exploit every detail and be honest because otherwise i was being a fraud. I had it for sexual things that happened when i was a child. Im not diagnosed with ocd but should i tell this to my local counselor? Can someone help? Give me advice or tell me anything?

I hate my ocd so much every single time I get new hyperfixation or special interest it has to ruin it destroy shatter I cannot do this anymore it's so fucking annoying. I dont really have a theme of ocd, sometimes it's something sexual, sometimes it's values and morals, sometimes it's hyper responsibility, but the main part is that, it always attacks my current special interest. For example, when I get sexual intrusive thought it wont be an intrusive image of myself or someone I know, but it's going to be an image of my favorite characters, or when I'll get a thought about my morals, it's going to be "your favorite character is based on misogynistic stereotypes" or "your favorite male character is the way they're not because they're severely mentally ill and traumatized, as well as disabled, but because they're a man and every men acts this way" So ocd is basically trying to make me go either insane or dead, all I can do is just keep being interested in what Im interested in and hope for it to go away after some time. Tho my therapist that I was going to a year ago told me to stop being interested in what Im interested in or get interested in something else, when it doesnt make even the littlest bit of sense?? I mean, it wont make my ocd dissapear it's just going to latch onto other thing im interested in?? Maybe something even more important? At this point Im just tired, I never actually were that suicidal as I am now, I mean, I dont really think about it all the time but I feel like Im completly ready to take my own life whenever I feel like I cant take this anymore, my mother after a year and a half started to trust me with taking meds to my room, so I can do it whenever I want. It gives me some sort of comfort

Idk. It was slightly daunting before ocd but now it’s more daunting. Especially with the relationship thing. Like I cannot conceptualize forever. My parents got divorced. Most of the relationships I’ve seen have fallen apart. I’m worried about making a mistake and living in the wrong relationship with the wrong gender my whole life but I was so happy and confident before. Now I feel like. None of that. I’m wondering. Who do I want to do life with? Who do I wanna sleep next to my whole life? Have sex with? Have a family with? Am I holding back from my real soulmate cuz I didn’t feel that intense draw towards my bf? I had breakup thiughts and random intrusive thoughts about me dying or smthn random like that but they never bothered me at all so I worry about them. Idk. I’m so tired Being bisexual makes this more confusing. Cuz now I’m worried I’m a lesbian cuz I can’t feel anything lately towards my bf besides slight anxiety, overwhelm and nausea. Idk. I’m tired and about to head to bed but I wanted to rant. Idk if anyone else feels like that if you do pls Lmk, especially with the nausea. I feel nausea around anything sexual lately. And I feel horrible cuz I do wanna be intimate but I have no energy and don’t wanna do it much lately.

This morning when I was half awake I had really dark depressing thoughts like I don’t care about my self so I should just do it & I don’t know if I wanna be here, when I first started having these thoughts it would bring on anxiety and would cry so much I even started throwing away dangerous items and avoiding things as these thoughts didn’t feel like me and I didn’t wanna die. Now these thoughts aren’t bringing on anxiety and I don’t know how to feel, so I don’t know if I should check my self into hospital cos it’s worrying me that I aren’t reacting to them. Advice please ☹️

i feel too far gone and like a lost cause like i have left my ocd untreated for too long that it’s peaked or at least i hope it can’t get worse sometimes selfishly i actually think i have the worst ocd anyone’s ever had in the history of ever and that no one is in a greater pain than me its every single second of every single day and even when im asleep its there for the last 2 years i have had a traumatic ocd dream every single night there’s absolutely no escape and i stopped feeling real such a long time ago in retrospect i realised my ocd started when i was 11 and im now 19 and it escalated so fast at a constant incline i dont get respite from my ocd its only ever gotten severely worse it started that i couldn’t see family for one theme and then men for another theme and then children for another theme and then women for another theme which eliminates absolutely everyone in the world i used to be able to make exceptions for my boyfriend and certain friends but now i cant im so scared and isolated i cant watch shows or films because of triggers i cant listen to certain songs for fear of manifesting the lyrics and i cant even sit in peace and let me ocd thoughts be and feel the discomfort as a form of recovery because im convinced dead people that i know can hear my thoughts and they don’t understand ocd because other than cleaning and liking order they would never have heard of it so im constantly having intrusive thoughts and explaining them away to the “people listening” i’ve never felt more suicidal in my entire life and i’ve attempted suicide about 5 or 6 times and even then i didn’t feel half of what im feeling now but i was younger than and didn’t have empathy for the hurt id be leaving behind and now knowing how selfish it is i can’t do it but its all i ever think about and the only thing that helps me feel better during a flare up is imagining hurting myself in the worst possible ways and dying and that’s what gets me out of the house is the hope that someone might stab me or run me over with a bus or truck or that i might get beaten to death by someone in an episode and when im not thinking that over my intrusive ocd thoughts im praying and hoping that i get a brain tumour that gives me 6weeks to live or that the stress and pain of my ocd will induce a heart attack or a stroke and i die that way so that im not the one causing the hurt after i die

Feeling extra lonely tonight … I feel like I’m out of place for some reason in this world .. I’m not depressed… just something feels off

My OCD is getting better but i get random intrusive thoughts ranging from different subtypes, like i’ll be enjoying life and randomly get a rlly depressing thought that makes me afraid because i don’t want to believe the thought, and then the next second it’s a horrible harm ocd thought or a religious thought or pocd Please no reassurance, it’s just that i was wondering if anyone dealt else dealt with ocd that is rlly random and not just one theme I think this happens when you beat one big theme and OCD starts coming back in smaller ways? Either way, ik the solution, leave the thoughts, accept the uncertainty, don’t do compulsions 😌

(sorry for long paragraph but please read and give advice🙏) 2-3 months ago i got to a point where my thoughts were too much and i got numb and felt resentment towards God. I used to think “why did God allow this to happen to me” And it was just crazy. Now about a month ago i feel like i started to have ocd left over mind patterns where i guess my mind started having disturbing thoughts by it self? This time it didn’t feel like ocd. It felt like it was me. Truly me. And i didn’t feel guilty over it for a long time. After this I thought i had committed the sin of blasphemy and for a while i didn’t care? Or maybe i did care but since i was tired of having these thoughts i just made myself not care. Then for about 2 weeks i didn’t seek God at all. And all those thoughts in my mind had calmed down and i didn’t have any thoughts for a while. I felt at ease/peace? Idk if that was a good/bad thing. But recently my mom started talking abt how God is coming soon and that we need to be ready. And i told her to stop bc it was getting me nervous js thinking abt it. She told me “why are you scared if all you have to do is seek him” but in my mind i just kept thinking of my circumstance. but i kept saying “i’m sorry God”. Then yesterday morning i was crying to God and letting go of everything i felt bc the day before was a rlly bad day. So i was just crying and also asking for forgiveness. And i felt like God was actually listening to me? I feel like God still loves me but i just don’t get how. And if i’m truly forgiven. bc i keep thinking that i committed the sin of blasphemy. Because i don’t know if i actually care that i did or that if i care that my heart is hardened towards God. Idk what to do. Then i also wonder why i’m still alive after having all those weird thoughts about God. How can he possibly let me live? Am i truly forgiven? Is God not done with me and that’s the reason why i’m alive? or am i alive so God can punish me and do something to me and he’s just waiting for the right moment? Do i truly care? Do I actually want forgiveness? All these questions. Please help me figure all this out.

I was diagnosed with OCD in late last October despite having it since I was around 4 years old. I have a long history of not eating in order to ”keep control” and realized that I had been eating badly last year. My usual ocd topics in my life have been harm ocd, magical thinking ocd and especially existential ocd. Right after my ocd diagnosis and starting setraline I developed a really big health concern ocd about my heart. I’m constantly aware of my heartbeat and worried that there is something wrong with my heart due to mild malnutrition even though seversl medical care professionals have told me several times that my heart is completely fine and I dont have to worry about it. I started eating better recently on purpose and then ended up quitting caffeine and I feel so calm (I’m used to having anxiety 24/7) and now that is freaking me out because I feel so calm and I’m afraid of my heart and I keep focusing on it 247 even though I’ve made immense progress since starting my ocd recovery journey. I just cant seem to let it go, it feels strange for my heart to feel calm. I feel good and calm and then I start freaking out about it thinking that something bad is going to happen or that my heart will stop working…. I know writing these thoughts out loud help and it’s incredibly hard for me to do so because I’m afraid of ”manifesting” it by speaking it out loud. My heart is adjusting to not having caffeine and eating more and I know that that’s what it is but I can let it go. Does anyone have any tips on how to push through this? This is my first post on here, I really want to recover because ocd has controlled me since I was 4 years old and I’m ready to live happily and to work towards that. Luckily my loved ones are very good with me about it but I want to write here since they’re not fully capable of understanding the nuances of ocd. Thank you for reading my message I’m new here so I’m not fully sure what to do 😅

The guilt that I feel won’t stop and maybe it shouldn’t but when I was 14 and just started highschool (I’m 15 now) I went into highschool with a messed up mindset idk if it was from the pandemic or not but I made friends and afterwards I messaged those friends and made sexual jokes/advances crossed boundaries and made them feel uncomfortable to the point now they don’t ever want to talk to me again and I don’t blame them.I even did the same to a 17 yr old who tood me I s@d him even though I never met him irl but I felt so sick I apologized multiple times but he told me that he was manipulating me the whole time to keep doing THISE bad things so I felt bad later but idk if he was being honest.and I asked my parents to get me therapy like 3 times and they agreed but the first session I told them that I was exposed to explicit content at a young age by my older brother and so was my younger brother and how I cocs@d my little brother when I was 9 and my therapist told my mom and she never brought me to therapy again and told me that I would go to jail. And my little brother told me he never remembered our older brother showing us that stuff or me cocs@d him which is weird because I remember both THISE things and I’m scared that he was so traumatized by THISE things he forgot about it.And I feel so helpless and sick of myself and can’t stop thinking what if I s@d my little brother when I was older that would mean im an even worse person a disgusting criminal and to make it work I have nightmares about me doing horrible things and I wake up feeling horrible and it sometimes makes my memory even worse and I don’t even know what to do anymore the guilt is LITTERALLY so crushing and idk what to do anymore it feels like I shouldn’t be able to continue my life.i just feel like I’m gonna go to jail sooner or later and I can’t even do anything anymore because I feel so much fear I don’t know what to do

if you notice that something looks attractive, like a butt, doesnt that mean necessarily that you were attracted by it if you noticed? i need to know because of a triggering episode i had two days ago. what does attraction mean? for me i thought that attraction is when attractiveness meets desire and want for it, that pulls towards to it and it matches your ego's wants. but if you notice that attractive something, it stands out and you're taken aback by surprise because it looks attractive, the fact that it made you notice because of its attractiveness means necessarily that you were attracted to it no? even for a short moment... i cannot tolerate that.

I’ve been experiencing intense existential OCD for a couple months though and has led to a bit of depersonalization. I feel both hyper aware / uncomfortable in my own body (with my own eyesight) and simultaneously detached from it and my surroundings. The thoughts have spiraled so much it’s hard to think about getting out of it and getting back to “normal.” But I have hope bc I know I want to get back to my life and feel love/joy again. Any success stories? Encouragement? Hope everyone gets through their current themes/struggles. We can do this 🩷

I've never been diagnosed with OCD, but have thought for a long time that I do have it. I've tried to bring it up in therapy but have been shot down as "OCD tendencies". Luckily I'm with a new therapist and am planning to bring it up again. Especially after reading a lot of your posts, I'm really resonating with them. Especially my anxieties and obsessions with my health. God forbid I feel any weird pain or ache, I instantly think I'm dying. Sometimes I get a weird pain in my head and think it's a stroke or aneurysm. Ill go as far as the perform the stroke FAST test. This happens multiple times a day. I also have HUGE anxieties about death and my mortality. If I think about it too much, I get this deep cold pit in my stomach and spiral. Even talking about it causes me sooo much distress. I'm just worried I'll be dismissed or told I'm just self diagnosing because I related to a post online. But if any of this sounds accurate, please let me know. I'd love to be reassured of my obsessions rather than just dismissed as being anxious.