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Why do I worry that things will be bad if I don't worry?

Is this OCD existential? So started last week, I began to have OCD thoughts about our faces. This may sound silly to some of you, but my mind trying to get me to panic about how our faces look. It's like, it is trying to question about, "wow, our faces look like that. That's how ppl look." I'm freaking out right now and trying to calm myself down and think logical or realistic here. My heart is beating really fast and I can't concentrate. Please help me what should I do. I'm trying to tell myself, like "it just OCD, calm down". It's like it's trying to trick me into believe our faces look weird. I was okay yesterday and trying to managing it, but man I had panic attacks all today. Off and on all day while I'm at work. Its not making it any better when I look at ppl faces. Please, please tell me how I can I deal with this. I thinking about getting on medication. Have y'all ever had this experience before?

Hi there! I’ve just recently received my OCD diagnosis and found out that I’ve just been raw-dogging OCD since I was a young child. Im considering taking medication to help me and my therapist suggested Zoloft. Has anyone taken Zoloft for OCD/anxiety? Any side effects that I would want to be aware of from personal experience? Thanks !!

I get very anxious when I forget someone’s name or a memory that I can’t remember. I spend a lot of time searching until I find the name and memory. I purchased a 360 pages notebook to write down names and memories so I won’t forget; it temporarily relieves my anxiety. I have always had the urge to remember names and memories but I didn’t have anxiety until now. My first panic attack happened 4 weeks ago due to forgetting a person’s face and name. I hope someone can relate to this or help me understand what’s going on. I booked the 15 minutes free consultation. I’m feeling sad, scared and exhausted!

To the ones who have been working with their OCD for awhile now and feel somewhat experienced in handling symptoms, I have a question… If you could go back in time and tell your younger self (pre awareness of your condition) one thing, what would you tell yourself to help with your condition? I have no means to treat my OCD, and only have just joined this app and acknowledged my condition and my, now, desperate need for help. Anything will help and I honestly am needing some sense of community to feel less alone. Thank you for everything!

I’m so fearful that I’m having a heart attack and was given meds for acid reflux. I’ve had 2 ECG that were normal and a chest x ray. I’ve been dealing with these symptoms since November. Not sure if I’m just hyper aware to the point that my mind is imagining all of the symptoms of heart attack. When I don’t think I’m having a heart attack, I notice improvements. It’s so hard. It’s an achy feeling at my left breast bone that switched to the center of my chest where the sternum is located. I’ve also felt it on the right side with these sensations running through my arms. When I get worked up, I gasp for breath, get dizzy, and experience heart palpitations. I guess coming to the current moment has been my savior when I think about it. It’s the future thought of what if I have a heart attack that is scary and that lies in the future.

TW: hello you guys. i really regret doing my compulsion, my intrusive thoughts these days is not really affecting me that bad but still im doing my compulsion for reassurance and relief. i searched on google, does anybody with harm ocd acted on their intrusive thoughts, i saw some threads in reddit and i opened it. i saw a comment to that thread and the commenter commented that he has this friend that has severe harm OCD. he said that his friend has this urge to act on their intrusive thought, not just a compulsion, but on his actual intrusive thought. he said that his friend went to different psychiatrist and nothing helps and that made him breakdown more. that urges gave him so much anxiety yet he wanted to do it. thats why, in several scenarios, that friend acted on his urges to shoplift and collided his brand new car in the wall and felt regret, guilt, shame and even broke down after doing the actions. after reading that, it really scared the hell out of me. what if i do something like that? what do i do? every person that has OCD has this feeling that its an urge to do the actions and somewhat gave them/us an anxiety for having those urges. we also think that our OCD is lying to us, that the urges we feel is not an genuine urge. i think i will be starting to be in spiral again after reading that reddit comment. i really hate me, i really regret doing my compulsion. can somebody give me an explanation about this and somehow help me with a reassurance please?

No encouragement please because it wears thin. I’ve been single for 19 years. I’m not hideous, I’m a little overweight from meds but not incredibly so. Women have always enjoyed my company. I keep turning down good offers because of morals. I’ve had offers from attractive 19 year olds but I said no because I was over thirty and it felt wrong. I’ve had offers from drunk women… nope, women in relationships… nope, women have offered to have sex with me in exchange for my drugs… nope and I gave them the drugs (I’ve been clean for 7 years now). Now I have it in my head that I appear weird to them and I can’t even start conversations incase they scream pervert or something. I’m at the point (I’m 40) where I have come to terms with it. That should be depressing and I should not be okay with being single for the rest of my life but here I am settling for something I don’t want because of my illness. I know that whatever people say it won’t change a thing because they have said it for nearly twenty years and like I say it wears thin. People shouldn’t give you false hope.

I’m 28 years old and I’ve been battling with OCD since I was around 8 years old. However, I didn’t realize it was OCD until a few years ago. I’ve dealt with multiple themes of OCD that are on constant rotation. Currently, I’m struggling with real event OCD, and moral scrupulously OCD. It has made this past week extremely distressing. My husband is aware of all of my thoughts and feelings, however, that’s due to my need to “confess” virtually everything in my life. He is never stressed about the content of what I’m worrying about, but unfortunately, that serves as temporary reassurance for me, and the cycle continues. This week has been one of my HARDEST. I have been stuck in a loop over the same obsession, with barely any relief. I’m self employed, and usually the winter months are slow, so I currently have no distractions to get out of my head. I can barely eat, and I go through multiple waves of panic attacks a day. I’m starting to lose hope that I can figure this out alone. I’ve never seen professional help for my OCD, and to be honest, it terrifies me to have to explain my thoughts and feelings to a stranger. What if I never get better? I guess I’m just looking for guidance, advice, etc. I’m feeling so lost and scared.

Hi everyone. I have PANS OCD and had it early as a child around 5. It was debilitating I went though counting, contamination OCD even thinking family members were contaminated, hand washing till my hands were raw and more I had a good childhood but it was heavily OCD based which stinks. I am now 25 and have had manageable OCD throughout the last 10 ish years. Up till late last year I got it back again worse than ever.. I am now worried about asbestos and mold and lead and household things we moved into an older home and it’s been awful. I also worry constantly 24/7 about death… also We don’t have any of those materials In our home but my OCD won’t leave me alone. I went into treatment didn’t sleep the 4 days I was there and checked myself out, I instantly regretted it and tried going back but they wouldn’t let me back right away unfortunately. I am seeing my therapist once a week and trying to live life as an adult with OCD it never fully went away but it was so manageable and now I need to learn to live with crippling OCD all over again if anyone has any advice or relates to this please comment so we can talk. Thanks Lydia

i dont know what is trigger and what is not so i will just put the warning just incase, i am new here and idk what im doing, ive had therapy before for trauma and major depression and its never really worked for me, it did help me get over the trauma i got from my parents divorce but the depression never got better. ive stopped having therapy for months now and its only gotten worst. now the reason i search for an ocd test was because recently i learned that ocd isnt the stereotype of only being like wanting things neat but it's actually more than that. when i heard it dealt wit intrusive thoughts i was shocked because i always had so many thoughts that made me sad to know i was having those thoughts for example raping someone or doing sexual deeds with a minor or killing something or hurting someone or doing something inappropriate with my younger sister and those thoughts are making me want to kill myself bc i know those thoughts are bad and im just so scared im gonna hurt someone. ive also gotten to a point to where i dont care about myself anymore. the only reason im here is because i just wanted to validate my thoughts and knowing its a disorder makes me feel a bit better. i still dont care about living tho i think that sooner or later these thoughts will just overwhelm me that i will just end my life to end stop my thoughts from playing anymore, im so tired of this i just want it to end

My nervous system is on high alert.

Had for ocd for years about loyalty towards my gf would feel awful if I thought bad off my gf and thinking other girls r goood looking missing my ex ect but now I’m almost better and now don’t avoid looking at girls which I did for a year I find my self wanting to look at girls and get an overwhelming attraction feeling that I don’t get towards my gf? I find every girl attractive now and feel awful like I’m better off alone as I feel Numb a lot towards my gf but thY would be because of all the trauma towards her from ocd. Any one else struggling with this ? We have been together almost 24/7 for 2 years is this normal the lack of attraction ?

I just started Exposure and Response prevention teraphy due to my OCD getting worsed as time pass by and I would like to ask question to someone who has gone throught his process already.

Hello, My husband has moderate to severe OCD. He struggles with contamination, some checking, some tied to religion/prayer/confession and really bad intrusive thoughts. He has been diagnosed. As his wife, he often asks for reassurance. "Did you wash your hands with soap?" "Did you touch the trashcan?" Those are a few examples. How do I respond to these frequent questions in a healthy way? Any tips or pointers, because I only understand OCD very little.

I was diagnosed with ocd in second grade, I’m 21 now.. it started out with me being a “clean freak” I would have melt downs if things were out of place or order. I would also have to sing the abcs while washing my hands. If I was interrupted, I would have to start over. As I became a teen, depression and anxiety hit. This made me become messy in a way. Things being in order didn’t matter. However, intrusive thoughts and repetitiveness took over my brain. (still struggling with this BAD) for example anytime I cook on the stove, I will look to make sure it’s off what seems to be a thousand times or else the house will burn down or we will get carbon monoxide poisoning and it will be all my fault. I KNOW ITS OFF DEEP DOWN but I can’t stop looking at it because WHAT IF. I have the same problem with social media. I have to have my boyfriend check to make sure I didn’t post anything every time I get on Facebook or Snapchat. My brain tells me I posted a stupid picture or something embarrassing knowing damn well I didn’t. I can’t stop. This takes up my life. It’s so draining. Every little thing I do I overthink. I seen this app on TikTok hoping to find my people. I feel like I’m going crazy..

I feel like I’ll get these STRONG feelings that my partner will cheat on me or is cheating on me even though I have little to no evidence of this. We even just had an amazing open and honest talk about where we want our relationship to go and he’s been consistently honest and followed through since we’ve started dating. The problem is that he really enjoys his alone time and there’s huge gaps between text 5-6 hours. This isn’t a change in behavior because it’s been this way since we started dating 4 months ago. But now since I’m falling in love with him I am so worried something terrible will happen or is happening and I ruminate looking for evidence and looking for signs that I’m right everywhere because my biggest fear is being cheated on and lied to for a long period of time without knowing. I do have self esteem issues that I need to work through as well, but it’s hard because I’ve been cheated on before and it was devastating and has left me with more trust issues then I’ve ever had. I’m even open and honest about my fear of cheating and no matter what he says or does it DOESNT alleviate my anxieties and my “gut feelings” (although I hate that term because what even is that?) I waste hours looking at videos, reading articles of cheating partners, the signs to look for, stories of the partners or got cheated on. I know I would never cheat on him, my ocd fixated on what he could do, what is he capable of doing, and how can I protect myself. I’m so exhausted and defeated. What do I do?

Does anyone struggle with feeling like when something good happens in your life, or your excited about an accomplishment that you feel undeserving of it? You feel excited or happy about something then the intrusive thoughts come back saying "no you aren't a good person so you don't deserve to feel good" almost? I am really struggling with this bc once it sets in, it prevents me from moving forward and continuing the thing that was making me happy bc I don't truly believe I deserve good things. Any helpful tips to come out of this? I'm working with positive affirmations reminding myself "you are a good person with a loving heart" but it's like I'm lying to myself when I say them.

I’ve been on Paxil for a year never had anxiety or my one intrusive thought that made me so anxious and stuck , after seeing the Lindsey case I’ve been horrible my doctors upped my Paxil to 40mg still having my one intrusive thought stuck !! Anyone have any ocd medication that really helped them thinking of switching !

Hey everyone! I’m new to this app, but not new when it comes to OCD treatments. A few years ago I had to leave school/ my job in order to work on my mental health which was hard but needed. Mentally things have more or less gotten better OCD wise but I still really struggle with protectionism. I started a new job within the past 6 months that is challenging, but I enjoy enough to hopefully stay at for a few years. As of the past two weeks I have been really struggling with ruminating over my performance at work. I have been trying really hard to learn all the moving parts of the job, but because of lack of mentoring and constant little hiccups I have been stressing. Currently I have been overwhelmed/ overthinking so much that I have been messing up my work and it seems like my coworkers are pretty annoyed by constantly having to correct me. It’s honestly my worst fear as a perfectionist to feel like a burden. My intrusive thoughts as of late is that they are going to think I don’t care or try hard enough, that they talk bad about me to each other, and that they are going to fire me. Has anyone else experienced this type of OCD perfectionism that affects there performance within school or work and if so is there anything that you did in order to help recenter yourself in the moment to stop your brain from running in circles?