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i feel like something bad is going to happen any time i make a change.. or do something different. like my hair or my makeup. or i’m getting a new phone soon and i was excited but now that im thinking about it im scared something is going to happen bc im changing my phone.

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 😅

**TW for anyone who’s like me a picks up new fears** I’ve been struggling with intrusive thoughts about inappropriately touching people I care about. These thoughts are distressing, and I never act on them, but sometimes I feel this overwhelming tension or urge. To manage it, I end up doing things like lightly smacking someone’s knee or arm, or poking them in a safe spot like their ribs. It feels like it helps release the tension or stop the thoughts. It scares me because I feel like it might mean I’m dangerous, even though I know I would never actually hurt anyone. I’m assuming it’s some sort of compulsion. Does anyone else experience something like this? Any advice or insight would be so helpful—I’m just trying to understand this better.

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

Starting a job soon working to end child sexual abuse. I love this job, and I am so excited. Right now though, I feel so so so so bad about myself and things I have done. I keep ruminating over past sexual encounters I have had, parties where I have blacked out in college and etc. I am worried someone will come out and say I assaulted them and I forgot. But now I am worried I misremembered and maybe I just assaulted this friend. Another is my friend my child hood who I was completely toxic with. Like very codependent, and she was 2-3 years younger than me. We had some very sexual conversations and I look back and feel so disgusted by myself. Lastly, I have a friend who I no longer speak with for different reasons. That friend and I were at a party and I touched her thigh, she moved my hand off. I put it back and she moved it off again and I stopped. Are these horrible? Am I horrible? I have been healing and in therapy and learning more. Honestly because of the internet and some online grooming from when I was a child I thought this was all normal. It wasn’t until after I graduated that I learned it wasn’t. I feel so so so so horrible. And I feel as though my life will fall apart. What if these situations are worse than I remember? What if something happened that I don’t remember? I just do not know what to do. I cannot even think really. It’s hard. I got this new amazing job working to end csa, but what if I’m not a victim, what if I’m a perpetrator? I don’t know what to do.

As ive said before, my ocd was so strong and life consuming that my therapist thought i would need to go to a facility so that I could be better taken care of. I thought i wouldn't survive the year and started to come to terms that I might have to do the unimaginable to ensure that I could never hurt anyone or say anything wrong. Ive now been a conquerer for over 6 months and its been a year since I developed this severity of OCD. I worked so hard with my incredible therapist to conquer my OCD and to embrace the uncertainty that it preyed on. Id like to make it clear that I still get intrusive thoughts from time to time, but they mean nothing and they do not affect me day-to-day. Sometimes theyre even laughable despite them being day-ruining in the past. Do i slip up and compulse here and there ? yes of course! im human and i make mistakes, but Im equipped to respond to the thoughts and setbacks which allows me to continue moving forward instead of letting it set me back. Today, I have so many things to look forward to. Im applying for schools, Ive taken internships, I have a close relationship with my friends and family (despite the fear of harming them being what my ocd preyed on, and what originally made me push them away), and I can genuinely say Ive gone weeks and months without compulsing and giving into a thought. Ive also learned to use my social media to raise awareness about OCD and have learned that it's way more common than I thought (one of my good friends had been suffering for years in silence). Using social media, ive also been able to lead those who may have it to NOCD (such as my friend and a few others). I promise you, this is the perfect place to learn how to overcome it (whether it be Harm OCD, Symmetry OCD, Germ OCD- whatever). There is so much to look forward to. OCD doesnt define you and it doesnt have to ruin your life. AND YOURE NOT ALONE!!!! (a song i listened to on repeat to help give me the courage to keep working and doing exposures was Tiny Dictator by Sophie May. Even if you dont relate to her themes, it makes you feel less alone knowing someone was brave enough to sing about their OCD and put it on spotify) Good luck to all of you, youre doing amazing and remember to be kind to yourselves and each other <3

I know a few of you saw my posts about my ERP and the googling urges. That didn’t end up going well. My therapist actually decided we needed to halt it for now. The thing is it’s almost like I learned googling is harmless from those few exercises and my brain keeps generating more things to google. Normally I would just spiral and be done but now I can barely hold back from searching for long. I eventually give in. I’m horrified because it feels like I want to find illegal content. I swear on everything I am, I don’t want to find anything even close to it. I’m freaking out because I don’t understand what’s happening. I keep compulsively searching/testing/checking or idk. I keep remembering details and I feel like I need to google again to be sure of something. I feel absolutely insane can someone please help me??? I’m petrified I’m going to get in trouble.

Does anyone have any advice on how to deal with intrusive thoughts&images. At first i had intrusive thoughts around my partner, now it’s centred around me & I can’t be around window ledges or medication due to a story I read online(it’s too triggering for me) . Sometimes I feel like I can’t leave my bed due to the thoughts being so overwhelming I just break down and want to sleep. I aren’t taking any medication or therapy yet. I worry that if I don’t give my thoughts a reaction that my thoughts are true and not OCD. I’ve had these thoughts 24/7 for 2 months.

I feel awful that I keep coming on here whenever I’m down bad but oh my gosh OCD is the most painful shit that I have EVER experienced in my life and I have a physical chronic illness…. I hate to say it but I hate living right now it’s too painful… im crying as I type to the point where my stomach is hurting, I have pretty severe ocd I do have generalized anxiety and idk if that is connected with ocd but because of that I have most of the subtypes REAL EVENT OCD,POCD,ZOCD,ROCD,SOCD HARM OCD, you name it and I got it!!! a lot of also why I have have those theme is trauma growing up and involving those things^ as of right now i’m 25 and a women with the most loving boyfriend in the entire world before my ocd hit me I NEVER questioned my love and care and attraction with the love of my life I always knew I was going to marry and be with this person the rest of my life! Now with ocd it confuses me soooo much and now I think I’m gay and didn’t realize or indenial and listen I get it “don’t look for reassurance!” “It’s not the thing ocd is attacking that is the problem ocd is the actual problem!” Here’s the thing with that if I’m in a relationship and I’m gay that would mean I would have to leave that said relationship and to say that “oh yeah that stuff happens and you’ll move on” is absolutely devastating to me this is THE LOVE OF MY LIFE and your telling me that iv been lying to myself this whole time or that I didn’t realize?!?!? And that sexuality can change (even though some say it can’t google says otherwise and some people have said it can’t idek anymore) and all this other BULLSHIT I can’t take it WHY?!?! why does this have to happen why can’t I just be with my love the rest of my life?!? and yes before anyone says anything I have been attracted to girls more so when I was younger watching lesbian porn liking the body’s and fantazing them sexually it stopped when I got older but I still don’t get disgusted with women who are pretty it just makes me uncomfortable because I’m with the love of my life and before I remember talking to my partner and discussing certain childhood things I experienced and we discussed that we both could be a little bi and for certain I’m (demi sexual so I don’t even really care about looks) and I truly didn’t care!! NOW I do care even with being bi because again I don’t like thinking about anyone else but my partner but I do also know my parents are homophobic and I do think about if I am gay they wouldn’t be okay with that and I also dont want to deal with that so now I sound like in indenial right?!???? I didn’t even care about labels before my ocd it just didn’t matter but now it’s effected my sex life and it’s hard for me to enjoy sex with being so confused I’m so confused I googled everything can you still have sexual fantasies with same gender but still be straight? Can you fantasize about same gender or imagine marrying them all of it !!! And non of that disgusts me it just makes me uncomfortable AGIAN only bc I just love the partner I’m with right now!!! I’m so fucking confused do I have to leave my partner and accept that I’m gay is that going to happen in the future if I get better with ocd and find out it’s been true all along?!???

so, sometime ago, 10 ish years ago to be exact, i was sexually assaulted under the influence of drugs. it’s come & gone with varying levels of intensity throughout these years. for some time, it didn’t seem to bother me. i changed my whole room around, threw away those clothes, did more drugs so i could sleep. eventually, i stopped doing drugs or misusing medication entirely. i rejected it and throughout those years it was still in the back of my mind but i refused to think of it. it seemed better this way knowing what i know now. my cousin told me to go get help for some of the trauma i had experienced in the past as it was showing up as anger and inability to trust in my life. when i did this, the counselor asked some very hard questions, we discussed out loud, in detail the things i recall. she labeled me as a crisis patient and pushed me through to a trauma crisis therapist. we spent about a month of preparation for this program before we terminated our sessions together. so i never went through to see the crisis trauma therapist, nor did i finish all the preparation work me and my (at the time) current therapist were working on. this is when it all seemed to bother me so much more. this was about two years ago. i was scared to be around men once the incident initially occurred, but this went away as i rejected what i remembered. since then, i’ve been scared to be around men where up to this point i had gotten over that, intrusive thoughts (this was before OCD), and nightmares all started to reoccur. fast forward to now, i met my lovely boyfriend again, after we had a thing several years ago. back then, i was not so scared to be around him. in the beginning of me and him reconnecting i was scared out of my mind, constantly worrying, scared of sex and to be alone with him. when we first hung out we were cuddling and his leg was on me and i was worried, i asked him to move his leg, he did. well given some time we got through this together (me more than him) and it all seemed to be great for a short time. i know i could trust him but we were play fighting one day and he held me in a position we normally would have sex in and it gave me a thought, “what if we’re having sex like this and he decides to rape me and i can’t get away?” this thought stuck for days. so much so that i told him i didn’t want to do that position for the time being. i had a few more thoughts similar since then but brushed them off when given them time. lately, for the past month, the incident 10 years ago seemed to be fading from my mind how it used to. some days i totally forget about it, some days im aware it happened but it doesn’t bother me. the point is i was having less days where it impacted me so heavily. the other night, we were doing something, i don’t even remember what, and i got an image in my head that basically showed the position we were in and instead of me seeing what was right in front of me, when i blinked its like i saw how this position (not even sexual this time) could go horribly wrong and how, if he wanted to, he could just flip me and hold me down. my question is are these intrusive thoughts? and if they are, are they OCD related? and if so, why am i getting them of my bf and not have the flashbacks of the man himself in these specific instances? my bf would never in a million years harm me. it’s not fair to him whether he knows about this or not and it’s not fair to me to be scared sometimes for no reason. i need to know what’s going on. thank you.

Is anyone else's parent being willfully ignorant? My psychiatrist literally told my mum I have ocd and anxiety and depression yet my mum gets so mad at me when I'm anxious and depressed?? She yells at me that im lazy and need to think of my future when I'm just trying and failing to keep myself alive I honestly believe she wants me gone. She makes horrible comments about how if I keep going this way I'll get locked up and do I like the way I am and that I'm getting worse instead of better and it's like how is any of that supposed to help. Today I stayed home from school and she said I'm not even supposed to be here so I should just shut up. Two weeks ago she grabbed me and literally pushed/threw me onto the floor which in theory a few years ago would have only gotten me a little upset but now with my ocd?? When she knows I'm TERRIFIED of germs? When I've avoiding even touching her and now I came into contact with her nasty carpet and bed. She said I was talking too loudly and obviously after that I was super freaked out and started yelling because now I had to shower and my whole body is crawling and why the hell would she do something so horrible knowing that I've been avoiding any sort of contact with her and any dirty thing for months? I don't care if she was mad because who the fuck does that? It was a whole argument and I threw my meds away and my neighbor heard me freaking out and came in the middle of the night and my mum said I was just "stressed" like yeah you THREW ME ON THE FLOOR. A day later she was trying to gaslight me about the situation I'm just so sick of this.

Okay so for example I have a fear of hitting people and when I was walking in the hallway I saw someone and it felt like I zoned out for a split second and was about to act on it even though I would never! I also felt my hand move a bit, this is destroying me I am terrified of myself I can’t deal with this torment anymore I hope it’s OCD and not that I’m evil

Anyone else ever struggled with real event obsessions related to being a perpetrator of COCSA? A while back I had an obsessive episode about this, and it caused me to spiral so badly. It was so rough. it’s especially scary for me because I can’t confidently remember what I did or how old I was when it happened. The one thing I do know is that I was 5 years older than the other person, which just makes me all the more mortified and terrified, especially when I try to put it in perspective of how old I *might* have been at the time. (Hypothetically somewhere between 9-10) When I first had this thought pop into my head I spiralled so so hard. I spent so long replaying everything, trying to remember what actually happened, and every time I replayed the moment, it changed in my mind. I’m so scared that I’m a perpetrator of COCSA, but I can’t confidently say to what severity. I don’t think I could ever admit this openly to anyone, but part of me feels an overwhelming kind of guilt that could only ever go away if I confessed. It even makes me feel like I should be confessing to people like my boyfriend. I feel a sense of obligation to share this with him, I think partly due to the fact that I see us getting married in the future. But I don’t think I ever could tell him, and that makes me worry for the future of my relationship. I don’t want to build a relationship on secrets, and this secret feels so overwhelmingly heavy. At one time it even made me feel unworthy of love. But it would ruin our relationship if I told him. And even if I did decide to confess, I wouldn’t be able to confidently say what happened, because I don’t even know anymore. I’m stuck with an unsolvable problem it seems. The guilt is unbearable at times, and it comes and goes in waves. I’m scared that one day when I have kids the guilt will come back again in a huge way and I’ll be forced to confess. I don’t even know if this is “OCD” and I don’t want to label myself. I just know I’m experiencing some rough problems and I feel like no one can relate to my experience. At the worst of it, I felt so isolated and unlovable.

My major theme with ocd is contamination and that's mainly what I focus on with my psychiatrist but now I'm starting to wonder if the stuff I dealt with in the past that I dismissed where actually just ocd so someone pls tell me. - I used to have a thing with days having certain colours or 'vibes' and having to eat specific foods on certain days in 2021. An example is monday is red green warm colours and I can eat rice on Mondays but not Tuesdays. This wasn't a huge problem because I'm privileged enough to be able to choose what I eat so like I mostly just followed everything I thought because it felt write. I have a few things with food that are hard to explain. - everyday after school for months I would do a mental play by play of everything that happened that day and everything I said, every little bad joke or slightly loud laugh or almost rude comment I made and I would play it over and over in my head until I could make myself okay with it or parts of it and I would worry about it all night if I couldn't make it okay. This was every day and just mental stuff like I didn't do any actions except maybe sometimes I would text my friends and remind them and then ask them if what I said or how I acted was weird. But I wasn't doing anything like objectively bad I was just anxious. This was in 2023 (did not tell my psychiatrist this) -at the very beginning of 2024/christmas of 2023 I started having a problem with books and audio books which was very distressing because I've loved reading novels since I was 10 and it became like an actual thing that made me anxious. Like is started thinking I wasn't comprehending the words right or I would think I read something wrong even tho most times I didn't and it would usually be a small mix up.like if I thought it said blue instead of red and I would freak out and reread paragraphs over and over again and became super scared that i couldn't read which like fueled me being more anxious about it when.i tried to so I stopped reading books for months because it stopped being fun. Same with audio books like I would go back 15 seconds if I thought I misheard just one word and it didn't matter that 90% of the time I heard it right, that 10% is enough to make me feel like shit. (I mentioned the books stuff to my psychiatrist but not in much detail but she did agree that it is part of ocd) -more recently with social media and unimportant and feels silly but I have to do things in order like like the video then like the comments then save the video to favourites and if I did it wrong I will undo everything and do it again and sometimes I'm scared I didn't save the video right even when I stared at my finger do it so I go back and do it. I am pretty sure this is ovd but I never resist the compulsions because it's so easy and such a quick thing that solves the immediate anxiety I get about it also I will not be me mentioning this to the doc becuase I don't want her to think I'm silly. -minor minor possible harm ocd?? I sometimes get strong urges to hurt myself in like unrealistic ways that I can't imagine telling anyone like I used to self harm but this is like things that I can't do like smashing my head or stabbing myself and I know it's intrusive because I don't want that but it makes me super uncomfortable and like I need to do it. It only happens once in a while so not as frequent and only when I'm bored or overwhelmed.

Does anybody else get the indescribable urge to cut yourself, you don’t want to but you feel like you have too.

I can't stop thinking about ending my life. I feel like I'm not even living, I'm just surviving. Everyone is capable of being a person and functioning and I'm just stuck here avoiding everything. My psychiatrist said my ocd is severe and it will all take time and I'll start erp and I'm already on medication but I just feel so depressed and like I won't be able to handle erp and it's already too late for me. I feel inhuman, it's debilitating. My major theme is just fear or contamination, I can't even make myself a meal I can't touch anything in the kitchen. I get stuck in the shower for 2 hours and when I don't shower because I'm depressed I feel like a walking germ. My hands are a mess, my school work is shit, I avoid and avoid and I'm just so tired of "living" like this. My psychiatrist said they don't have any therapists available right now like.... excuse me? What do you mean u don't have any 😭 I honestly don't even know why I'm typing this becuase nothing helps, nothing ever will. I'm so deep into this I can't get out, my room looks like shit, I can't live in this body anymore, I really can't. I let everyone down, I am and will be such a dissapointment. I don't have any dreams or goals or passions I just wasn't made to be here. I don't know how or who to ask for help like there's nothing anyone can do, I'm already on meds. I can't keep being like this, seeing everyone judge me for acting insane.

I often have very visceral and horrifying images of myself dying, usually in an accident that nobody expected. Sometimes I imagine images of my family or friends dying in the same situations, and it drives me nuts. I tell myself I think this way to get attention, like it feels like I have this voice in my head that tells me I want attention so bad that I create fake scenarios in my head that make people feel sympathy for me. But I don’t want to believe it, I don’t believe it. I feel like I’m in a constant battle in my own head!! Does anyone have this same issue?

sorry for repost. I don’t know if people aren’t answering because they think im weird or gross. but here I am going to upload a post that I made, it has contents of trauma, sexual themed ocd, zoophilia ocd. I need some help, or advice on how to forgive myself or if I should even forgive myself? Some actions are unforgivable, for example (abusing animls, pdo philia , r4pe) and I’m scared that I am unforgivable and irredeemable. This compulsion happened a couple times. I’m scared I morally failed myself and my pets Here’s the post:

I'm constantly worrying that I'm gonna take a bunch of medicine and overdose. I've had this theme for years and it's only gotten worse. My mom currently has all my medicine in her room because it's gotten so bad to the point where I don't feel comfortable around medicine at all because I'm scared I'm just gonna take all of them and die. I've always been a hypochondriac so whenever I have physical symptoms from my anxiety my ocd start to tell me that Im experiencing the symptoms because I took medicine. Whenever I swallow sometimes I convince myself that I'm swallowing a pill. Whenever my mom gives me my medicine she always tells me to grab a water bottle so now everytime I want some water just to drink it my ocd convinces me that I really just want to drink the water to take a whole bunch of medicine with it. At this point I don't know what to do I'm currently not seeing a therapist right now and I think that can be a reason why it's so bad as well. And it's been a little over a month since I started taking Zoloft and going off of Escitalopram. My ocd was bad with escitalopram as well but now it's accompanied by physical anxiety symptoms which causes me anxiety and in turn makes my ocd worse. I just need some advice.

TW currently I’m very in between my life continuing or not. I am a monster I am. I have become the monster that did harm to me as a child. Here’s the story. I was picking up my nephew and rocking him back and forth when I noticed I got a groinal response and felt so disgusted by it. I continued so I could put him to bed and the response continued so I stopped because it’s just so disgusting that my body would respond to that. My brain is trying to tell me no you liked that , you kept going there’s more and you’ve become who you feared. I know nothing more happened, I know I let him go because that’s just simply disgusting.I love him to the moon and back and would never implement such hurt but now I feel like the damage is done. He didn’t cry or anything because I was doing it, he only cried because he was fighting the sleep but he was already tired. Still , I stopped doing it and used another method to help him sleep. Anyway now I just want to end it all because of that. I don’t deserve to have a loving family or my life.