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does anyone else have this? when I had panic attacks in the past I’d fear death, but now I’m more afraid of losing myself and being taken over by some psychotic version of me. It makes every panic attack that much more debilitating , because I’m fearing losing my brain, my future, everything…and never going back to normal.

Hi everyone, this is my first post on the forum, and honestly, it’s one I wanted to use to reach out and feel a little bit less alone, and possibly ask some advice to people who have been where I currently am! I have gone through a few OCD themes over the years, including harm OCD, POCD, moral scrupulosity and a few other smaller themes, but in the last year I’ve really hit Existential OCD hard, as I’ve managed to accept and move past all my old themes. It started out quite “normal” for Existential OCD; Solipsism fears, Simulation fears, am I even real, what even is real kinda stuff, that I’ve often come across when looking at other people’s experiences. I’ve done a lot of work to move past these themes and have had a good level of success. But recently, and this is what I really wanted to reach out and see if anybody else has experienced something similar; I’ve found that I’ve started experiencing fears around more physics based things, I was freaked out by the fact we are made up of atoms and how can we be us if we are a load of little floating items, I was freaked out by things like multiverse theory, black holes and many many more physics based concepts. I’ve been struggling to move past these as, as my brain keeps reminding me, they are real, proven concepts as opposed to things like simulation theory which, maybe is, maybe isn’t. Has anyone else been down this road after the “normal” existential topics? And could you share some insight into how you might have moved past these particular fears that are more grounded in real concepts as opposed to more philosophical ideas? Thanks guys!

I really need help. I am severely dissociated to where I can’t feel joy for anything at all. I’m stuck crying all the time. I have a history of emotional abuse from my father growing up so it’s made it really hard to trust people. He verbally abused me and never made me feel good enough. Then he died when I was 21 and I dont remember him telling me he loved me even then. Or a time when he meant it unless I accimplished something. It always felt empty. I tend to sabotage relationships and don’t mean to and find flaws in everything. I even get jealous of children and never wanted any in fears that I wouldn’t be as loved as much as them. And fear I would bring on the traits to them that my father did to me. I realize everything I do is an OCD compulsion and also I have such deep rooted fears. Fear of the future, but also the past. I loop about my husbands appearance even though I love him dearly and I dont want to think that way and it makes me sick. I think about the past and how he brought up things in confidence after we got married because he trusts me and he felt ashamed, but it still spiraled me out due to my own insecurities and my brain is like “what if you never accept his past and can’t move on from it”. Finding out new info spirals me out even if it’s something I know he legitimately cannot change or control and it was not anything that someone should not have been able to move on from. Even though I have a past myself???? That is 20x worse than his. My brain adds extra meaning. I constantly fear that I’m being cheated on or will be left, or how things can go wrong at any point. I’m afraid of having kids because of what I just mentioned as well as the fear of medical intervention and something going wrong. I’m afraid of people dying. I’m afraid of people hating me and I’m a huge people pleaser. I feel like everything in life I’ve never done for myself, and I have a huge fear of being by myself. I have constant compulsions and have since I was a child. But right now I’m at a breaking point and I’m like what do I want to even live life for if I’m so jealous and afraid of everything. And I never do things for self enjoyment. I have like no self identity at all and I always feel like I have to tell people about my achievements or how I feel in hopes that the little girl inside me will be heard. Am I too far gone with having these thoughts and also complex PTSD with the OCD? I feel like I’m stuck in a perpetual hell. I haven’t had a breakdown this bad since I was 11 years old. I spent 4 months crying and crying not knowing what was happening to me. Then I snapped out of it somehow. But I’m an adult now and it feels like my life is crumbling around me. I’ve been so scared to work because of fear of criticism due to the emotional abuse which I’m just now putting together… and also because of not trusting myself. I always ask for outside opinions. And I fear things going wrong all the time. I quit my last job due to POCD because I was working with children. And now that I’ve reached a point where I feel like there’s just ambiguous questions with no answers I felt a switch flip in my brain. For the worst. All my emotions shut off and it’s just been hell on earth with constant thoughts and dread and self loathing. I’m so tired of feeling afraid and alone. And I know a lot of it is a bunch of inner pain. I’m not even really looking for sympathy I just feel like I’m beyond help because of all I’ve been through. I can’t feel hope right now and it’s really scary. I have had pretty much every OCD theme there is and have lived my whole life in constant fear and anxiety. ROCD (main theme right now), POCD, HOCD, SOOCD, Health OCD (big one right now), existential OCD, religious OCD, fear that my husband and I won’t be together after we pass. Or that I’ll be replaced by another person if I were to die. Or if he dies before me. Plus I feel sad when friends say certain things or anything triggers abandonment. I am so caught up and I know it takes a mindset shift for this to all get better, but how with so much working against me? I’m so terrified. And I’m self hating so bad.

This lady always posts and she’s for sure of God but every few weeks I get in this spiral and I’ve seen so much he’s comin in September. And I know he’s coming soon but I try not to think about it cuz it spirals me or if I’m just ignoring the fact I know he’s coming. The one that says we won’t be here for Christmas makes me sick

Idk how to caption it other than that. My whole life I’ve had an issue with memory hoarding and the upside has been that I have a really vivid memories of my childhood and I get to remember my best days, the main downside has always been I have a lot of childhood trauma too and I remember every detail meticulously like I can relive and reanalyze them which has caused issues in my healing. However as much pain as it is to remember bad things so well it’s always been a bit of a comfort bc at least I know for sure even if other people don’t know or don’t believe. But as of lately I I’ve been forgetting things, whether it’s what time I’m supposed to work (and I have compulsions when checking my work schedule bc I’m always scared of reading it wrong so I usually open it up read it close it and open it up again 2-3 times so I usually KNOW) or what day it is, or just small things that I don’t remember saying or doing that other people swear on. I just have always felt like I know at the very least I know and lately I don’t and I’m so scared of going crazy and losing myself like literally my biggest fear. So I hate this. Today is Friday I was convinced yesterday was Friday and I woke up today for my Saturday shift completely convinced today was Saturday. I hate being wrong and making those small mistakes because it’s terrifying to think about what else I’m remembering wrong, or what else do I not “know” that isn’t actually the truth? I’m just so scared of losing myself mind. Has anyone ever experienced anything like this?

Hello lovely community, I’m curious if anyone else has dealt with existential OCD, especially with a fear of life having no meaning. My biggest compulsion is doing something meaningful and checking if I feel different, like happy or elated or fulfilled, which usually leads me to feel the opposite. How do I prevent compulsions that are so automatic? Even if I’m just making jokes or hanging out with friends, I’ll automatically check how I’m feeling. I worry often that my OCD will get “worse” and become unmanageable. I’ll often check my emotions or thoughts or feelings to see how my OCD is in that moment, to see if its getting worse or better, which leads me to constantly be on high alert and very aware of my thoughts and feelings. I’ll also avoid doing things I love or overindulge to check my emotions. Any advice would be appreciated :)

It is crazy how long I have been suffering from OCD without even knowing, since most of my compulsions are mental. Now that I'm more able to identify OCD, it is insane how sneaky it is and tries to direct every negative emotion towards my theme. My therapist is wonderful and even though some of the things she says trigger my OCD. I know it's because I can't know for certain and that's the whole point of OCD therapy. I'm nervously optimistic about the future, but the idea of not knowing for certain is still really triggering for me.

Hi guys, im kind of spiraling right now because I read on reddit but also in articles that when women take the birth control pill for a long time and get off it they notice that 1) their taste in men changes and 2) their sexual orientation changes (that it was basically masked by the hormones and they are actually into girls). I'm super scared because I believe that SOOCD (or not) started for me at a young age (I remember watching a movie and they zoomed in on a women's legs and I felt something down there and got so scared). So when I started the pill I was about 16 years old and had already experienced SOOCD (if it really is that but I was also diagnosed by a psychologist). But this is when yous tart discovering yoruself. And then I met my now fiancé at 20 (I still had doubts about my sexuality) but I was/am happy with him. I am now trying to handle my SOOCD by saying no one is 100% anything and sexuality is so complex and can be fluid and that today i am choosing to love my bf and its been going ok (the thoughts are still here but without the anxiety so thats fine). I'm 27 now and I'm just scared that once I get off the pill I'll realise that it was never SOOCD, that I was never into guys and it was just the hormones and society and that I will leave my fiancé and ruin everything and would have lost all this time. The most horrible thing is that when I imagine it it feels real and it feels like I'll be happier with a women and I'll just be sad because im losing a friend and not the love of my life. Did it happen with someone here or do you have any advice?

Where it's like "help the poor, oppressed, marginalized or youre a bad person" but also "don't help them too much cause that's saviorism" but also "don't talk about how you help because that's virtue signaling ," but also "silence is complicit speak out!" Like how do we know if we are doing the morally right thing?

I honestly don’t try to be up here a lot because it’s become a compulsion of mine. But I wanted to come up here because honestly I’m just so tired. I’ve seen so many disheartening comments about the color of my skin on TikTok like almost in every comment section regarding black people doing a crime. It’s to the point my people have started doing the same thing because of so many comments we get about our skin color on the daily. It’s to the point so many creators are getting exposed for being racist like just the other day Joey was caught being racist I honestly liked his content. Even other races don’t like us and of course there’s the trump supporters I really can’t be friends with people like that honestly and truly because they voted against my rights. But it’s to the point I have to think in the back of my head everytime I want to defend a white person or show support or even friend one it’s like I have to think do they even like you ? It brings me genuine tears that I have to think like this and I can’t be that little girl anymore that would be friends with everyone even then my white friends would tell me about their parents not wanting them to date black people but I was a kid so I wasn’t even listening Frl it’s all just sad man maybe in the next life it all won’t be so complicated.

Hi everyone This is my first post been going through rough 4 years many many themes but my current theme is fear of psychosis this is the roughest one so far and actually believed I was in phycosis and still doubt it sometimes when it was at its worst I was jumpy and questioning why my mind was suddenly hyper analysing things I don’t normally care to notice my normal floaters in my eyes kept playing tricks on me and still do when the odd one jumps up or moves quicker than normal, feeling like I was seeing shadows or mistaking any faint noise as a whisper or something to be alarmed at, vivid patterns and pictures in my mind when I shut my eyes for bed and bothered me so much made me feel like I had taken some sort of drug, having to get reassurance from everyone that they would see the same fly I saw just fly into the room. It has become abit better the more aware I have become but it’s still a fight sometimes to not want to check or google or question this theme was the key to getting an OCD diagnosis. Finally in therapy and trying to label it as often as I can now. My takeaway is lack of sleep and hormones really do make it worse or even trigger it but now the fear is here, it is all the time even if it’s more mild when getting better sleep and at certain times in the month ! I’m finding it a hard battle now I’m aware it is OCD I’m doing emdr hopefully it helps. There is always that underlying fear that I’m missing something or I’m in that age bracket I hope one day I can look back and say I got through this particular phase but at the moment it seems hard to think my brain will ever “relax” again I would like to start enjoying my life again. I’m from the uk and would love to find a person to chat too in a similar theme to me it would be nice to help each other out on those bad days and even be able to make some light out of our similar experiences if that would help I’m 26 female.

I have been diagnosed with OCD by a therapist on NOCD for about 4 years now. I went through therapy here and I was officially diagnosed. My mom knows about the diagnosis because I’ve pretty much told her all my struggles and unfortunately confessed a lot of what I was dealing with in the past. She was not understanding at first and told me there was no way I could have OCD that I don’t “clean and organize” like people she has worked with before or been around. I told her that I wanted to go through therapy at the time and she said no and really said some mean and hateful things. Eventually though she did start becoming understanding but not in the way you would think. My mom isn’t exactly emotionally supportive. So talking to her about everything was really hard to go through. Well getting into what’s bothering me….in the past I have thought maybe there was a possibility that I could have autism. I’ve seen people on TikTok talk about it and what they have experienced and it was similar to me but I pushed it aside and never talked about it with anyone. I do struggle with “misophonia” and my mom is also aware of that even though she doesn’t believe in it either and that I’m just “misdiagnosing” myself. Well today she randomly says “There’s a video I watched earlier that I think you should see. I think you have autism. I don’t think you have OCD. You were misdiagnosed and it’s your trauma that is making you think you have OCD.” And it really hit me the wrong way and was quite triggering. The things that I have put in my head and all the hate towards myself before I was diagnosed came back because I was starting to second guess myself. I told her you can have OCD and autism at the same time. There’s no way for me to know unless I’m diagnosed and she said you don’t need to be diagnosed you kind of just know or something like that. But it really put it in my head that I’m making the OCD symptoms up and what if I really was diagnosed and it confirms that I’m a “bad” person. Sometimes I wish I never told my mom anything. She has never really shown care or understanding towards how I have been feeling for years. Who knows, maybe I do have autism but I know for a fact I have OCD. I just hate she put it in my head that theres a possibility I’m an imposter and I’m really what my mind tells me I am. If anyone relates to this please reach out. I’m not really asking for reassurance I just don’t know if I should listen to my mom. Yes I’m an adult. I’m 26 and still live at home. Now that she thinks I have autism, is she going to use it against me too? This sucks so much 💔

Feel like I’ve been stuck in a spiral for a while. My OCD has come in waves over the years but this time it has been so debilitating. I’m in therapy, but I really struggle with sitting with uncertainty. My therapist will tell me to say, “Maybe, maybe not”. But so many of my fears and so much of my uncertainty feels too risky to just, “not figure out”. And if it’s not just thoughts, it’s actions or events. Whether it’s an event from years ago or 5 minutes ago, I feel like I’m ruminating and trying to perform memory recall. I analyze every action, thought, decision. I’m full of guilt and dread all the time. And then I realize how much it’s affecting my family and ability to be a fun and present parent. Most days I’m hardly functional outside of meeting my kid’s basic needs. I feel like I’m wasting so much time, but I just can’t get myself out of this constant loop. Every day brings a new event or theme or thought. I know I need to sit with the uncertainty but it’s so hard.

I CAN'T STOP THOUGHTS. I think about meaning of life, time, afterlife and other shit. I can't stop thinking. I cannot distract myself. When my thoughts are the worst I'm thinking about su*cide, and it scares me because I'm not suicidal and I don't want to die. But what if I do something with myself? Please I want any advice what to do, I can't afford therapy at the moment

i figured it’s better to reach out than to keep this buried. if you have anything—resources, insights, advice—that could help me, please send it my way. anything that might bring clarity, support, or even the smallest sense of direction would mean a lot. diagnosed Borderline w/ OCD July 29th i haven’t written in quite some time. journaling, once a refuge, became a mirror i no longer wished to face—each entry echoing the same obsessions, amplifying them, feeding their rhythm. i lost the spontaneity, the irregular cadence that once made expression feel free. instead, it became a ritual of rumination. recently, i’ve begun making small, deliberate changes—adjustments wherever i feel the pull. i’m starting to understand that who i am is an ever-shifting convergence of thought and temperament. my personality isn’t fixed; it’s a reflection of my internal weather. tracking my moods has helped illuminate certain patterns, revealing how my triggers unfold—but pinpointing those triggers remains elusive. the inconsistency, that quiet turbulence within, makes it difficult. there’s always a friction between my need for comfort and my hunger for transformation. i’ve always judged that contradiction in others—yet here i am, mirroring it. i’ve slowly dismantled many of my defenses, not out of strength, but out of exhaustion. in surrendering control, i’ve made room for meaning. for once, i’m not chasing perfection—I’m chasing something that feels true. psychology is calling to me. it feels like a path that might finally align with the way i think and feel. i’m changing schools, moving in with my father for a while. i need distance from this space that has become both a sanctuary and a cell. my environment dictates so much of my being. that’s how i know: if i can shift the world around me, i can begin to reshape the world within. i’m tired of this ache, this heaviness that keeps finding me no matter where i go. there’s still a part of me that longs to disappear into it—to wrap myself in the numbness, to retreat into that dark shell i’ve outgrown but never quite left behind. but i know now that denying my humanity only deepens my suffering. this endless attempt to regulate every thought, every impulse—it’s tearing me apart in slow, invisible ways. each obsession is a tiny collapse. i pray for the still moments, the ones where i’m not paying for the chaos inside me. i want to take responsibility, i truly do, but none of this feels like something i chose. i didn’t ask for this. i never would have. nothing so far has brought me the fulfillment i crave. i need to rebuild—to design a life rooted in stability, in truth. but it’s hard when i wake up feeling like a different version of myself every day, like i’m holding court with a rotating cast of souls, each demanding a different truth. i hope therapy can help me unburden all of this. i want more than survival. i want peace. i want joy. i want to be loved in a way that doesn’t feel conditional, and i want to love back without the fear that i’m incapable of giving what i receive. i want to be able to hold my instability in my hands and say: i am not afraid of you anymore. but that courage flickers. depending on my mood, my willingness to change rises and falls like a tide. i remain, at my core, a frightened child—haunted by the same small, inconsequential fears. i don’t know why i want to live, and that unsettles me. i don’t know why i long for connection, and that unsettles me too. i just want to emerge from this with something real, something that belongs wholly to me. i’m tired of being fragmented. i’m tired of being stuck in this cycle of becoming and unraveling. i want to belong to myself. i just don’t know what that truly means.

Hi all it’s been a bit since I’ve posted. I’ve been doing ok ish Today has been weird, idk if it’s cuz I upped my vyvanse to 20mg and it’s making me anxious or if everything is just colliding rn It feels like idk myself anymore. I’ve been flipping between ROCD, soocd and tocd the last couple of days/weeks. Rn I just feel horrible and idk why but I’ve been on my period for 11 days now. My period usually lasts 7. When I’m not on birth control. I’ve been on birth control since October of last year and hadn’t had a period till coming home end of April/early may and now it’s back again. I’ve been ranting to chat gpt (Ik it’s bad, I just didn’t know who to turn to) Rn I’m just really in my head about my gender and I’m anxious and crying and I just don’t feel good. Context for tonight’s thought I was doing my skincare, I’ve been trying to develop a routine cuz I’m bothered by the texture on my face and how it makes my makeup look. I’ve always felt less pretty than other girls tbh. Anywyas. As I was doing my skincare I had this thought just happen across my mind of “what if I dislike my skin and face so much cuz I’m trans? What if the reason I’ve been depressed lately is cuz I’m slowly becoming dysphoric and hating myself?” When in fact I think the issue is: I haven’t seen my bf in a month and a bjt. I’ve been bleeding for 11 days. I’m in summer classes and stressed about the comjng semester and how much work I have to do to catch up cuz I’m in pre med and I’ve been fucking slacking lately and I truly hate myself for it. I miss being hugged by my bf. I’ll admit I need a good dicking down tbh. My brother is a whole other story while I’m home. I just feel. Gross and bad. And I’m worried I’m trans. I’m worried I’m a lesbian or smthn. I’m worried I don’t love my bf deeply enough and it’s all just circling in my head a lot and I just feel like curling into a ball. I’ve always been a tomboy, I mostly hung out with boys cuz the girls never liked me. I was weird. I loved dragons. I had imaginary friends. At one point as a kid I tried a different name, I think it just didn’t fit and I grew out of that and just went back to my normal name. But now I’m worried I just repressed that. But I see a lot of girls who also went through the same thing and are also just women. But I’m so scared that I’m “not letting the TV glow” like that trend (that shit made me so anxious. I have trans friends and I love them but im scared of it for myself) I feel still sorta tomboyish but dress feminine, once in a blue moon ill dress semi masculine and now I’m worried that means im either trans or a lesbian who wants to be masc. but I’m not. I don’t think I am Idk who I am anymore. Idk if it’s just ocd or if im actually discovering smthn Im just anxious as hell tbh. So I don’t think that’s the case. I’m just sitting here. Looping in my head. My typical “drown out the noise” tv shows won’t load properly cuz of our new wifi and it’s really irritating me. What if I’ve been lying every time I try to do a “are you trans/genderfluid/non binary?” quiz. What if I’ve been lying to my bf. My friends? My family? I keep thinking to myself, if I wasn’t with my bf would I dress the same? Yes I would. I’d still wear my cardigans. My sweaters. My dresses. I’d try out new styles like I want to rn with him. I’m just worried that teying smthn would make me realize smthn about myself but I don’t think it would. Idk. I’m just in all these irrational thoughts. Jumping to conclusions Any advice would be appreciated. I mostly just needed to vent about this.

This one's a "what if" exposure; a way to trace the anxiety spiral and sit with the discomfort it brings, instead of trying to avoid or fix it. Here’s how it works: Start with your anxious thought: 1. “What if A happens?” Then go deeper: “Okay… if A happens, then what?” → “Then B.” 2. And again: “What if B happens?” → “Then C.” 3. Keep going (following the fear, not avoiding it) until you land on the core fear, the real root of the anxiety. It’s usually something sticky, existential, or deeply uncomfortable. 4. Once you’ve found it, stop. Now sit with it (the feeling). Notice how it shows up in your body. Where is the tension? The tightness? The urge to escape, fix, or seek reassurance? And just let it be there. Without trying to solve it. Just you, your body, and the fear; without resistance. This isn’t about fixing the fear. It’s about making room for it. It’s about learning that you can feel the fear and not let it control you.

TRIGGER WARNING FOR MENTIONS OF GASLIGHTING AND MENTAL HEALTH STIGMA I was looking to laugh with some memes in a Reddit subreddit but I ended up stumbling with an antipsychiatry post saying that OCD is a bad diagnosis and that mental health is a myth, and something about OCD being something that's blaming an external entity and being gaslighted, and I'm panicking now, I know it's a post only but it was enough for me to get triggered and completely question who i am. I kinda don't know what to do, after all i did get told that I was suffering with OCD but that post sent me into a spiral questioning my identity and who i even was and what my thoughts even mean now.

I'm 15, from Dhaka, Bangladesh. A religiously judgemental place. I have past history of Cptsd from emotional family abuse. I've been an agnostic. My ocd had taken different forms and shapes since I was 8. But this time, this has made me almost insane over obsessing and getting fears over "what if they are right, what if god is real" (core fears- fear of toxic judgment, extreme fear of being misunderstood and abondonment) thoughts and when I give into the spiral, sometimes I even question that "what if ocds are just cover up for *dark religious truths* and sh" :( I don't have a ocd friendly environment and people around can make me feel even worse. This thought makes me even more scared.

I am 23 weeks into 10 mg citalopram and I have random urges to accept myself as ace / aro whenever I view r/asexuality like warmth and pulls but when I think about men I have throat burns. Last night, I asked AI about this and it it said it was self acceptance and my feelings for men were self acceptance and my feelings for men were me forcing attraction or something and I cried then I repeated to myself I am ace / aro all night and I felt calm or my urges built up so it must be true. What would an OCD therapist say