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Things I did as a child really doesn’t help me with my socd. This is one of my main triggers because I actually did these things and I regret them to high heavens. Anyone else have this issue

NON-RELIGIOUS/AGNOSTIC PEOPLE ONLY i’ve been dealing with this same ocd theme for years and it gotta do with accidentally summoning something just by thinking about it and then something horrible happening to people in my life and celebrities i enjoy. and sometimes my ocd will throw this compulsion/intrusive thought at me which is maybe if i was christian or catholic or believed in jesus maybe this thought will go away. and obviously the way my ocd makes me feel like that’s the “right” answer to solve this issue makes me feel petrified. does anyone have any advice on how to relax my mind when it comes to this theme specifically???

TW!! I’m not doing well i dont know what’s real and what’s not so basically i get really really bad disturbing sexual thoughts abt family unfortunately and it feels so real and OCD makes me think I want or like the thoughts and sometimes family members touch me which sounds weird but I mean like on my arms and stuff I start laughing and smiling and I get rlly frustrated like I literally start to laugh and smile and grin and stuff and it makes me think i want these thought even more anyways so I purposely started to think of harm OCD intrusive thoughts to try and counter the ones I’m dealing with which ik it sounds like a compulsion but at least it’s working a bit and so I’m worried I don’t feel disturbed by these thoughts and I have no anxiety around them and I want to go to a mental ward but “my condition isint serious enough ” aghhhh

Also I read on tik tok or twitter that if u still feel connected to younger people that means you’re not progressing or maturing and that’s bad. I’m 25 and I’m at this odd stage in my life where I’m getting older but still feel like I’m 20-22. I feel like I’m behind people that are my age. I think it’s because I’m been bed rotting with severe depression for the past 4 years… but I’m scared this means I’m becoming a pedo in the future.

There are times my harm ocd has me convinced that my feelings of self harm or suicide and harm are real and that any moment I could commit the act on myself or my family. Is there anyone who can chime in on this. I feel like all the time I want to leave run away or avoid my family because of these thoughts. Like I shouldn’t be around my children and I don’t trust myself.

You ever have a thought that stops you in your tracks? A thought so disturbing, so out of nowhere, that it makes you question everything about yourself? That’s how it started for me. A week after my grandfather passed away, I was lying in bed, thinking about him, when suddenly a thought hit me: What if I’m not a good person? What if I never get to see him again? My chest tightened, and my stomach dropped. More thoughts followed. What if I don’t go to heaven? What if he can see everything I’ve ever done? My entire body filled with fear, and I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t know it then, but I was having my first panic attack. Desperate for relief, I grabbed my phone and played random YouTube videos until I passed out from exhaustion. From that night on, I became terrified of being alone with my thoughts. I had no idea why this was happening to me, but I knew one thing—bedtime would never feel the same again. For a while, I found ways to avoid the thoughts, but then a new one hit me like a truck. I was scrolling through the news when I saw an article about a father who had hurt his kids. My first thought was, That’s horrible. But then, my brain twisted it into something that made my blood run cold: What if I could do something like that? My stomach dropped. Why did I just think that? What does that mean about me? Am I dangerous? I tried to push it away, but the fear only grew. Being alone with my daughter became unbearable. I still took care of her, but I no longer trusted myself. I made up excuses so I wouldn’t have to be alone with her, and when my husband went to work, I spent the day in silent panic. My usual phone calls to my parents, once full of joy, became desperate cries for reassurance, though I couldn’t bring myself to tell them why. Eventually, I told my husband I was struggling with anxiety. He didn’t fully understand but suggested I work out to clear my mind. I remember getting on the treadmill and breaking down in tears, unable to run, unable to escape my thoughts. That night, I called my godfather, terrified of what he would say. But instead of judging me, he told me I needed to tell my husband everything. With all the courage I had, I did just that. My husband was confused but supportive, and soon after, I flew home to Illinois to be with my family. For the first time in weeks, I slept. But the relief didn’t last long. When my mom mentioned going back to work, I panicked. That’s when I finally told her everything. Wanting to help, she told me to pray, so I did—over and over. But instead of bringing peace, prayer became another compulsion, something I had to do to "fix" my thoughts. I was still drowning, desperate for answers, so I did what anyone would do—I Googled. Why am I having these thoughts? The results were unsettling. I kept reading, more and more terrified, thinking I might be going crazy. But then, I saw something that gave me a sense of relief: This sounds like OCD. I stared at the screen. That couldn’t be right. My brother has OCD, and his is about germs—this wasn’t the same. But the more I read, the more it started to click. That’s when I found NOCD. I made an appointment for the next day, and when I met my therapist, she told me she couldn’t officially diagnose me yet because we hadn’t finished all the assessments, but she was confident that I had OCD. At first, I didn’t believe her. OCD isn’t just about handwashing or being neat—it’s about intrusive thoughts that feel so real they shake you to your core. Therapy was terrifying at first. I had to sit with my worst fears instead of running from them. But the more I faced them, the weaker they became. After 11 weeks, I finally felt like myself again. One day, my entire family had to go back to work, leaving me alone with my daughter for the first time in months. The thoughts came: What if you hurt her while no one’s here? But instead of panicking, I used the non-engagement responses I’d learned in therapy. I would respond to the thought with something like, Maybe I could. Maybe I couldn’t. And then I would move on with my day. That was the moment I knew I was getting better. Looking back, I realized I had been experiencing OCD my entire life. As a child, I constantly worried about my parents dying, about being left alone. I used to wonder, What happens when people leave? Do they still exist if I can’t see them?These fears weren’t new—they were just amplified by my postpartum OCD. I’m proud to say that I’ve been in remission for over a year now. While OCD sometimes resurfaces with different themes, it doesn’t control my life. It doesn’t stop me from living fully, from enjoying my time with my daughter, or from embracing the things I love. The road to recovery hasn’t been easy, but I’ve learned that it is possible to take back your life, even when OCD tries to tell you otherwise. ♥️

Hi, I'm 17,about to be 18. I've been struggling with these thoughts for the past 8 months. I was wondering if someone experienced ever the same because I feel im "different". BACKGROUND: (I'm not diagnosed with Ocd but seeing a local counselor) About 9 months ago I cheated on my boyfriend with this guy S (who blackmailed, manipulated and molested me). Since then when I realized that what i did was very WRONG and so I started ruminating picking apart every single interaction and telling my boyfriend, i tried to remember every single detail because otherwise I felt like i was being a fraud and hiding things to save myself, i had many crisis about it because I had also what i think was false memory ocd. My boyfriend forgave me idk how tbh I still wonder. CURRENT STRUGGLE: Months ago I was sure I didn't wanna S in any way and i was sure even when everything happened. For the past 2 months tho I've been having thoughts like " Do I love S?" "I love S" "S is hot" "Would S find me hot?" "What if I want S?" " What if I don't love my boyfriend enough?" "What if I secretly want S?" "What if I see my boyfriend as a friend only?Do I?" And I tried testing my reaction to intimate scenarios with S, I'm scared I like it i dont really wanna love S or have any secret attraction, I wish I didn't have any of this and I want to be sure of my feelings for my boyfriend because I know I wanna be with him and I see a future with him like he brings me comfort. But a part of me keeps trying to convince me otherwise. Sometimes I think I'd rather die than have these thoughts. Im so scared of not being able to control my feelings, im scared I can't resist S and its giving me anxiety and making me cry. Sometimes when i think of those sexual scenarios with S or I get those thoughts my mind tells me to smile because i like it because I find it funny. It makes me doubt myself all over again. Like I'm always like I need to test if I'd feel aroused to intimate scenarios with S, lately im trying to fight this urge to test and test but my mind is like "just do it this once so you can be sure. I can never watch anything romantic or sexual or whatever because my mind would be like "you and S" or sometimes I'm just enjoying time with my bf and im like " yes we can just have a sneaky cheating thing thats ok" and it makes me want to figure it out to find an answer a solution because idk it just does like I need to find the meaning of it if it means the truth and all. Im worried im just an awful person and these thoughts just ruin my quality of life . Today i had a crisis where i ended up doinf swlf harm, I'm so scared of finding someone that's not my boyfriend desirable or sexual appealing or whatever it is, I also have bodily reactions when I try to imagine and test my reaction to scenarios. Now i keep groing everytime and I dont know why but i have this sensation and I dont want to havebit especially when its something S related. Does someone experience the same thoughts? Am I alone in this? Is this ROCD? What should i do?

Hey all, This is so strange to share this, and I have been judged by others and misdiagnosed many times. About a year ago I worked with an OCD therapist and it was really triggering. For me my thoughts are mainly about suicidal ocd and harm ocd centered around my children of all things. Fear that I could or would want to hurt them, then feeling so horrible that I believe I’m suicidal then I go back and forth on that. After reading a few of your posts, it makes me truly have a bit of hope that I can overcome this.

It hurts so much, so much pain, I want to give up, I feel like both conditions make each other worse, trying to fight back, trying so hard not to look for answers but this makes it so hard, I just..feel like I have very little hope, I'm so......so tired.

I’ve been struggling recently a lot with harm thoughts, and thinking I’m a bad person or dangerous or capable of all the things. I think I recently met someone and I really like them. I think they like me too. I’m really scared to let someone in because I don’t want them to have to deal with liking me if I’m a bad person is this relationship ocd? Or like if I have a severe mental health problem, I don’t know . Advice pls

Does anyone else struggle with this? I get a sense of dread and then I feel like the need to find the answer. For me it’s about like sexual reproduction or like some other taboo topic. Especially anything reproductive related to children or pets. I feel so awful after researching. I don’t know if the compulsion is to research or to ruminate about my intentions after researching. I have a hard time understanding why this happens I’m assuming it a question of morality? Like “what does this say about me if I wondered this and looked into it?” Does anyone relate to this?

I constantly think that if I do something wrong or choose the wrong thing that someone I love will be in a horrible accident or die. The wrong fork, the wrong sock. It makes me so angry.

Hello everybody! I know Valentine’s Day was yesterday but hear me out haha… Ever since my first boyfriend left me 3 years ago (along with the embarrassment of never having been able to get into another long term relationship…), Valentine’s Day has always been a stressful and depressing holiday for me. Being 23 and seeing many of the people I went to high school with getting married or even starting families makes me so unbelievably depressed. Don’t get me wrong! I’m so happy for these people, I just wish I could experience what they’re having too… My OCD loves to focus back onto my ex whom I haven’t spoken to or even seen in a little over 3 years (except recently when a childhood friend of mine posted a picture with him skiing). It frequently obsesses and conjures up very distressing and painful scenarios about him starting a family and getting married while I remain alone for the rest of my life. I still love him and always hoped I would’ve started a family with him. I know…it’s incredibly far-fetched and naïve thinking. I have gone on several dates and even got decently far in one relationship, but it only lasted for a few months due to some life changes. But nothing ever came close to my first relationship. In the spring of 2023, I had an incredibly bad crash out that left me an emotional and physical disaster. My health started to decline, I couldn’t keep up in university and had to drop out and move back in with my parents, and my mental health completely shattered after I found out my first boyfriend had moved on with someone else. So many things started to fall apart in my life that I contemplated taking my own life. I gave myself a year to fix everything, and if I failed, I planned to buy a gun and shoot myself in my car. While I managed to overcome most of my failings, there was still so much that was affected by my breakdown. I used to be pretty active (I was a runner and a weight lifter), and now I’m very sedentary. I find no joy in the things I used to love doing, I often feel tired and unmotivated. I do nothing all day, and I’m ashamed. Some days it’s even hard to want to bathe myself. All I do is sleep and engage in compulsive stimming (rocking back and forth in a chair and maladaptive daydreaming). I also have autism, so that plays a portion with the stimming. Rocking has always been a major problem for me, it overtakes my whole life; I spend hours engaging in this behavior and nothing has helped…. I finally got accepted into nursing school yet I feel no joy, it’s a private school so I’ll be shelling out a shit ton of money which scares me. I love being a nursing assistant, so this has nothing to do with not having passion. Helping people, even on here; reassuring people when I can, is the only joy I get nowadays. I know this is my calling, I’m just not happy in my life right now. I miss being active and being in university…I feel so isolated and lazy (lowkey a hermit) nowadays. And it scares me because I find myself not caring sometimes. I’ve never been so sedentary before…I’ve always been somewhat of a homebody but never to this extent. I don’t even like driving anymore or going outside. I feel so ashamed and unhappy…I don’t make a lot of money right now even though I live with my parents so it feels even more isolating. I just feel like a failure and I’m afraid I’ll never be able to get out of this rut. There’s so many things I want to do in my life yet I have no motivation and I’m too broke to go anywhere or sign up for anything…it’s genuinely frustrating. Anyways…thank you for hearing me out!! 🫶

Whenever I see a picture of someone—whether they have attractive features or even if there’s no clear reason—I sometimes get this intrusive thought that feels like there’s a man in my head moaning or saying something sexual. It’s not always tied to someone being attractive; it can be triggered by seeing a child, a family member, or just about anyone. When this happens, I get a sinking feeling in my stomach. I wonder if I’m confusing that feeling with arousal, but it scares me because the experience feels so real. I know it sounds strange, but it genuinely feels like there’s someone else in my head making these noises or comments. This is especially confusing because I can acknowledge when someone is attractive, when a family member has nice features, or when a child is beautiful without any inappropriate intentions. But then I get stuck on the thought, and I start feeling like that “man” inside my head is actually me, which makes me feel even more unsettled. I don’t really know how to explain it better, but that’s how it feels. It’s immediate and intense. I don’t know if OCD can do this but it feels like real arousal. I am scared. Please help

Okay so I’ve dealt with harm OCD from the beginning. Started off with harming my kids, going to jail and then harming myself. The harm to myself stuck around for a long time. Then it went away and other themes picked up but it keeps coming back. This is like the third time it’s come back and every single time it comes back it feels worse. It feels like this is the time something is going to happen. Has anyone ever dealt with this? With old themes constantly coming back and feeling more real? Please any advice is greatly appreciated. Thanks

Does anyone else feel that the feeling of anxiety that they associate with OCD is different from normal anxiety? For me, it’s like a distinct sense of dread and fear that starts in my stomach and makes me feel so dissociated from reality and trapped. I don’t know how else to explain it other than it’s very intense and distinct for me. Because of OCD I associate this feeling with feeling dangerous (like I will go crazy or hurt others). Occasionally (usually in moments of high anxiety due to personal relationships having difficulties), I get this feeling unrelated to OCD and it makes me completely spiral. I have intrusive thoughts, but I also just drown in the emotions of the feeling. I completely panic and break down and feel hopeless and powerless. It is so painful and it feels impossible to bear and like there is nothing I or anyone else can do to make this feeling go away and all I want to do is get it out. I will obsess over it and therefore always feel it which makes me horrible and completely relapse. I never know how to let it go even though I know there is nothing in particular “wrong”. It just makes me feel like me/the world is wrong, but in a vague way that just feels insurmountable and terrifying. Even once I start to feel the feeling less intensely I sometimes just remain trapped in thoughts and fears that don’t allow me to let it go. My girlfriend and I recently have had some tough conversations and I have been experience this anxious feeling recently as a result and I don’t know how to cope with it. It feels so overwhelming and insurmountable. When I feel like this I feel so hopeless. And it also makes me feel like I’m going “crazy” because there’s nothing I can do to make it better and I just want to get it to go OUT if that makes sense. Sorry for this ramble, but I’d really like to know if anyone has ever felt this way because I never hear people talk about an “OCD feeling” and I never feel like therapists understand. Of course, advice is welcome as well (please)!!!

The Healthcare system is so dissapointing and my emotions literally can't handle it. They keep making plans that give me a twinge of hope then suddenly changing them and leaving me crashing. They're not calling, not giving updates, it's almost like they want me to die. Like I was already a wreck and attempted three times and yet they just think they can leave me at home to rot and not expect me to end up back in the hospital. I want help and I have asked for it but they are not giving it to me!!! There must be something about me that makes them think I'm just some overdramaric teenage girl because I told the psychiatrist at the mental health unit that I can't keep myself safe and he told me to have faith and then I went home attempted again and then came back and he's like "welcome back"??? I wouldn't have had to come back if u had just listened to.me when I said I was overwhelmed.

I used to be such a rude person, and now it feels like it’s all coming back to me. I don’t really know how to explain it, but there was a time when I wanted so badly to be seen as a bad person. Because of that, I would say awful things to random people online, even telling them to kill themselves. I know now how harmful and disgusting that was, and I would never do it again, but I can’t stop overthinking the possibility that someone actually listened to me. Maybe they were already struggling, and maybe what I said pushed them over the edge. The worst part is that these were completely random people—I’ll never know if they’re okay or not. If I could go back and undo it, I promise I would. I know this is my karma for saying such horrible things, and I feel genuine regret. But regret feels meaningless if someone actually ended up taking their own life because of me. I get that I have to sit with the uncertainty, but my mind keeps fighting that, telling me, Why should you just accept the unknown when you might have been the reason someone took their own life? Maybe this feeling is exactly what I deserve for being so cruel in the past. I feel awful for all the people I hurt.

Can OCD mimic depression? With this theme I’m always wondering if I have OCD or depression. It first started out as harm OCD and now this. Today I told myself if I did have depression then it’s treatable and I would work on it. Then I started to feel depressed and emotional and like had an urge to google the difference. When I did this I just broke down because I felt like I related to them, it made me worse. However when I look up OCD symptoms it makes me feel better. So now I’m unsure. Almost like OCD wants me to believe it’s depression

Hi, I'm 17,about to be 18. I've been struggling with these thoughts for the past 8 months. I was wondering if someone experienced ever the same because I feel im "different". BACKGROUND: (I'm not diagnosed with Ocd but seeing a local counselor) About 9 months ago I cheated on my boyfriend with this guy S (who blackmailed, manipulated and molested me). Since then when I realized that what i did was very WRONG and so I started ruminating picking apart every single interaction and telling my boyfriend, i tried to remember every single detail because otherwise I felt like i was being a fraud and hiding things to save myself, i had many crisis about it because I had also what i think was false memory ocd. My boyfriend forgave me idk how tbh I still wonder. CURRENT STRUGGLE: Months ago I was sure I didn't wanna S in any way and i was sure even when everything happened. For the past 2 months tho I've been having thoughts like " Do I love S?" "I love S" "S is hot" "Would S find me hot?" "What if I want S?" " What if I don't love my boyfriend enough?" "What if I secretly want S?" "What if I see my boyfriend as a friend only?Do I?" And I tried testing my reaction to intimate scenarios with S, I'm scared I like it i dont really wanna love S or have any secret attraction, I wish I didn't have any of this and I want to be sure of my feelings for my boyfriend because I know I wanna be with him and I see a future with him like he brings me comfort. But a part of me keeps trying to convince me otherwise. Sometimes I think I'd rather die than have these thoughts. Im so scared of not being able to control my feelings, im scared I can't resist S and its giving me anxiety and making me cry. Sometimes when i think of those sexual scenarios with S or I get those thoughts my mind tells me to smile because i like it because I find it funny. It makes me doubt myself all over again. Like I'm always like I need to test if I'd feel aroused to intimate scenarios with S, lately im trying to fight this urge to test and test but my mind is like "just do it this once so you can be sure. I can never watch anything romantic or sexual or whatever because my mind would be like "you and S" or sometimes I'm just enjoying time with my bf and im like " yes we can just have a sneaky cheating thing thats ok" and it makes me want to figure it out to find an answer a solution because idk it just does like I need to find the meaning of it if it means the truth and all. Is this ocd ? Im worried im just an awful person and these thoughts just ruin my quality of life Today i had a crisis where i ended up doinf swlf harm, I'm so scared of finding someone that's not my boyfriend desirable or sexual appealing or whatever it is, I also have bodily reactions when I try to imagine and test my reaction to scenarios. Does someone experience the same thoughts? Am I alone in this? Is this ROCD? Can someone help me ?because I'm really hopeless. I csnt afford any help sincr im a minor and I need support