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Do you ever worry that other people are up to something? Like cheating, how do you manage the fear of a partner possibly being bad or possibly doing something bad?

I didn't have intrusive thoughts these days but right now I want to eat an ice cream and my brain remind me a year (that year was so traumatizing for me) and now I think the ice cream is related to that year, ah even it's not because was an ice cream from today , but my brain Thinks that, and I really want to eat the ice cream but my brain don't let me cause I think is contaminated for that year, but I know it's not, because the ice cream was made today ahhh help 😭 I'm crazy? 😭😭😭😭

Today’s thoughts brought to you by OCD, I mean me… yeah totally all my non doubtful thoughts. (Just a vent post to write down what OCD wants me to fear/thinks, please no reassurance needed) I don’t have OCD. I’m making it up. I read things that described what OCD was like an lied to my therapist and tricked her into thinking I have OCD. All the things I think may been OCD driven in the past weren’t. After all why didn’t I react to all of them? How come when I’ve had thoughts to harm myself or others I didn’t avoid the things I was going to harm them with after? How come I’m not reacting to my same sex thoughts with distress now like I did in February? It’s all because I don’t have OCD. I just worry about my thoughts a little more than the average person. Worrying about my sexual orientation for 15 minutes here and there, for multiple hours a day, for 4 months running doesn’t mean I have SO OCD. It just means I’m confused and discovering my true sexuality. After all I’m not googling or asking for reassurance. You’re only thinking about doing those but you don’t. Besides if you’re looking for reassurance that your aren’t a different orientation than you think, doesn’t that mean you actually are? You’re just finding out your true sexuality now like some of those stories you’ve read as part of your exposures. It’s just a mix of repression and late discovery and the only reason you’re so worked up about it is because you have to leave your wife who you don’t love the way you should. Even if she left you and you moved onto another woman, it’s only a matter of time before she realizes you’re actually gay because of the thoughts running around in your mind. Just come clean with yourself. You’re making OCD up and using it as an excuse to be in denial. You don’t have it as severe as many of the other people whose stories you’ve read or have the exact same experiences. You’re misinterpreting memories as being possibly OCD driven just to fit your narrative because there were a lot more “normal” times in your past than possible OCD ones. Besides how can someone say they aren’t their thoughts? You have your thoughts for a reason and you have to know what it is. What gives you the right to say which thoughts are yours and which aren’t. Even then how many are yours? How much time do you spend thinking about them? There’s too many variables to consider.

I have trouble leaving my home because of panic disorder and my OCD. I’ve not gone out longer than an hour and a half in 4 months. Today I went to a convention for 7 HOURS. There were times it was extremely difficult, and I wanted to leave, or I’d have an intrusive thought that something bad would happen to me, but I was able to squash it . However, now I’m home and I’m panicky 😫I can’t stop overthinking . But I can’t believe I did that today!

So I have been 5 days without intrusive thoughts which is a big accomplishment for me. Yesterday broke the streak. I was job shadowing and this girl i thought was so skinny and pretty how does she not have a boyfriend and i thought I was a dude i wouldn't turn my head away and now I'm thinking no one has said this before and that this means something. I know it's my ocd acting up but it's annoying. Plus it also tried to say in a narrative that sounded like me that I would date her and i immediately felt disturbed which just again told me everything about who I am sexually as a confident and comfortable straight woman

How’s every one doing? I’ve been working on myself a lot lately. OCD therapy, regular therapy, breathwork, Pilates, all the things. Overall I’m feeling stronger every day, but still have triggers and sometimes the OCD rages. I just want everyone to know I’m rooting for you all. OCD is so hard, and I’m so proud of each and every one of you for fighting it. Sending you all lots of love 💖 Pic is a photo I took at the lake this weekend. It was so peaceful.

I don’t even think this is OCD I’m just looking for advice on this: I fancy females but the thought of sex with them makes me anxious, nervous, guilty and sick why is that, also I’m a male.

My entire life anytime I saw something on the news or heard about someone hurting a child sexually or beating/killing them, I would get so angry and sick over it. I still do but ever since developing ocd, my ocd tells me i’m just like those people and really tries to make me believe it and question myself. This theme also latches onto my own family and my children. It’s the hardest and worst theme i’ve had. It makes me not want to live and is so unbearable😩😢

A little bit of a bummer post today but mostly a really proud one. Yesterday was, unfortunately my last day with NOCD, due to reasons related to my health insurance, continuing to pay for services OON is not affordable, yay US healthcare 😤 But I am so thankful to my therapist, and NOCD for the spot I am in now that I haven’t been at, mentally in years. While I can identify earlier moments of events or actions possibly related to my OCD, the one that affected me most was just a few days past exactly 7 years ago. The thought that started it all for my SO OCD theme occurred while I was being intimate with my gf at the time and my head thought “I wonder what this would look like if this was a guy”… That one split second thought caused me to spiral for the rest of the day and into the next. I could not get out of my head, I was numb to the world around me and when I went to a local urgent care and they asked the question - “have you had thoughts of self harm” - I admitted I did, I didn’t want to act on them at all, but I did I was admitted to a local mental health unit of a hospital that day. I was diagnosed with GAD that day, and while I only stayed for a night, the constant thoughts and the complete feeling of numbness, that I experienced for weeks, is something I’ll never forget. I viewed myself as weak, as useless, as broken, and I did for a long long time even if sometimes I forgot about those feelings. It didn’t help that my parents are not supportive of mental health issues, although I can see now where I got mine from. I came across, what was known as HOCD at the time, now SO OCD, a few weeks later, and knew what I was experiencing was that. Even the HOCD tests that I took at the time highly suggested that, but I completely overlooks the OCD aspect. To me, SO OCD was like a cold, I caught it, and it would go away with some medication, which was what was happening. Every morning I would see how long it would be until I had a thought about my sexual orientation where I would, what felt like a moment where I would snap back into my head. It got longer week by week and so to me, I was cured. But I wasn’t. In between the moments of that time and now, I met my now wife, got married and had a child with another on the way. I had a lot of very very good moment, a lot more so than bad, but those events scarred me. While OCD tormented me quietly in other ways: - you lost weight to quickly while dieting, I think you have cancer, better try eating more just to make sure - you can’t fall asleep, what if you have this super rare illness where you’ll never be able to fall asleep again and slowly go crazy and die? - what if your newborn daughter is crying because she can see into the future and knows that you’re going to die today, it’ll probably be from that aneurysm you’re so worried about It always jabbed me with reminders and thoughts that would harken back to one of the most traumatic periods of my life: - you should kiss your friend - don’t you think it’s going to be hard to be completely straight and married to your wife for eternity, even in the afterlife - oh look a gay dude, remember how you never fully figured out if you were actually gay Those moments and thoughts always felt like a gut punch, but they would go away, until this year. If I had to make a list of triggers it would include but not be limited to: - learning that someone I had interacted with a bunch of times during those “gap” years was actually gay, and sold records which always created thoughts whenever I listened to my record player while working - seeing a documentary about Aaron Hernandez and reading his story on Wikipedia which included a snippet of him blaming him being raped as a child for his potential attraction to men, for which may or may not have happened to me (I don’t think it did but the dad of a friends house I went to a lot when I was little, was convicted of child molestation) - viewing my medicine that I would only take on and off again as the way to get the thoughts to stop - recognizing that my wife and I weren’t able to spend as much time together as we used to, which generated ROCD thoughts first The thoughts progressed more and more for weeks. I was trapped in my head, almost 24/7, trying to make the thoughts stop, reliving thoughts that just reminded me constantly of that period 7 years ago, all while I became more and more depressed, anxious and distant. Eventually, while my wife was visiting for lunch at work, I broke down crying and told her everything. I knew it was SO OCD, but was only starting to realize what OCD actually was. I came across NOCD through a YouTube video, and after trying and failing to find an in network therapist in my area, or someone in network that didn’t have wait times for months out, mainly because I couldn’t google as efficiently in my state of mind, I reached out. I was able to speak to someone so quickly and start working with a therapist just a week after Wilda Rodriguez-Barnett, I highly, highly recommend her, she’s amazing. I did the DOCS and received a score of 22. Today I leave with a DOC score of 4. With her help and ERP therapy, I have truly found so much more peace in my life that I didn’t have for years since that traumatic period. The thoughts are still there, and I know they always will be, but I know that I can handle them with the tools ERP therapy has provided me. Even the other day when I had a health concern pop up, I resisted the urge of googling which I know would’ve sent me into a spiral. I wrote a lot and I still feel like there is so much more that I can say but I’ll try to wrap up this novel of a post with this. When I started ERP therapy I was skeptical. I was hopeful it would help me but I was skeptical it would. Being exposed to my fears was not something I was looking forward to, after all, I had the life I always wanted and even more than I ever thought I would have with my wife, so what if I was actually gay. OCD wants us to live our lives in fear. It will concoct any little thing it can, whether it be a thought, feeling or urge, to plant just a seed of doubt which we water and grow ourselves until it attacks. I know these thoughts will never go away and I don’t think anyone should view OCD recovery as that, although I think we would all want to, but I do know the life I want to live right now. I know I will never be perfect in resisting my compulsions, but I feel confident that I have the tools to recognize what is going on and stopping OCD from creating the fear that it has.

I’m so confused right now. I know that no one is ever perfect, and I really want to grow and deepen my relationship with my bf, I don’t want anyone else. I care so much about him and I feel safe with him. But Im worried because there are certain things he does that are very cringy and sometimes embarrassing or annoying, and he can also be very hyper. I guess it’s hard for me to pinpoint what exactly I feel when he acts cringy or hyper or embarrassing, I think I just start to feel judgy towards him and annoyed and maybe even embarrassed sometimes. It can just be a turn off. But I don’t want to be judgy towards him for those things, I don’t want to feel that way about him, it can just be tough sometimes. I’m also good friends with his sister and she is definitely extremely hyper and weird sometimes too but I don’t feel judgy towards her, she’s great, and she’s super friendly, she just has her moments where you start to question her sanity, but she’s really genuine and just a beautiful person. I guess it’s just different when you’re dating someone, because it can be a bit of a turn off. And I worry that it’s bad to feel that way, to feel turned off by that behaviour. And I want to do everything in my power to fix it. I feel terrible, because he is literally such an amazing person and I want to plan a future with him, but I’ve been fighting so hard for months, trying to work through all my feelings and being scared of what I think and feel. I’m so tired. What if it’s not ROCD, but I still want to make it work. It feels like the minute it’s not OCD, these become real reasons to leave, but I don’t want to leave. I want to make it work, and I’m worried it’s not OCD, but even if it wasn’t I’d want to fix it and make it work.

Four months ago, I began taking 25mg of Zoloft, and my dosage has since been increased to 100mg. This increase has significantly alleviated the anxiety and heart palpitations caused by my OCD. However, it hasn't been as effective in treating my depression. Alongside medication, I'm currently undergoing ERP therapy. Given the mixed results, I'm considering either switching medications or augmenting my current regimen. I have a consultation with my doctor tomorrow to explore my options. I've heard from others that finding the right combination of medications can make a huge difference. Does anyone have experience with a multi-medication approach that has been beneficial for them?

Something is always bugging me about my bf, it’s getting so annoying. I just want to be happy, but something always starts to bug me, and it makes me worry that I should leave or that I should try to change how I feel about the things that bug me. For example, right now it’s the fact that my bf is crazy hyper sometimes when he’s with our friends, and it comes out in the way he acts and the way he talks, and I could be over analyzing it which makes it feel worse than it is, but it can be cringy and even annoying sometimes. Part of these feelings could be coming from the fact that I was probably that way when I was younger, and it probably got bullied out of me, and now I’m always worried of being judged or disliked. But in general I would say that my bf acts “differently” than most sometimes, especially when he’s hyper. I want this relationship to work so so so badly, I want to have a future with him, I’m just trying desperately to work through all the little things that bug me, because I know they mean so little in the grand scheme of things, and yet I can’t stop being bugged by them. I feel a sense of urgency to do something, to change the way I feel and think about it. It’s so frustrating. I just want to live him. He is so amazing, I just want to plan a future with him. But I worry because in those moments when he’s being crazy and hyper and cringy, I start to feel like maybe I don’t actually like him enough, because if I did I feel like I shouldn’t be put off by his weirdness.

How can I respond to some of these intrusive thoughts without feeling like I need to fight, resist, and etc?? They’re extremely distressing and make me question myself, my reality and my health/brain. I’ve tried just distracting myself, ignoring it, and letting it scream at me. But then it comes back with scarier ones and I’m just struggling . I’d been doing good with them lately but suddenly they’re awfully intense and hard to ignore Help😞

Hello, Since coming to terms with OCD in my life, I've thought a lot about parenting. My kids are 10 and 6; two wild boys with too much energy. One has an ADHD diagnosis and his little brother probably has ADHD too. To give you the details of my situation, I've been an at-home dad for ten years and spent nearly every day with my kids, including parenting through the pandemic. OCD has made parenting harder and influenced my behavior on a daily basis. In hindsight, I see how much I've needed to control my kid's schedules, activities, and plans. To some degree, I did this to survive the natural chaos of little kids, but my need to control has become really intense. It bothers my wife and she has to remind me to chill, particularly on days when she's home and I don't need to develop a plan for the day. Ten years as an at-home dad is a long time and this has led my need to control to become ingrained in my daily functioning. I feel stuck in this role now and don't know how to move on. I don't know how to let go because I'm obsessed with supervising their daily life and fear what will happen if I'm not around to maintain control. My mind leaps to worst case scenarios of my kids getting hit by a car in our neighborhood or getting into fights with unruly kids or experimenting with alcohol or drugs because of older kids in our neighborhood who don't have parents supervising them ever. My mind really goes off the deep end. OCD and parenting seems to have made my world smaller and I don't know how to detangle myself from this situation. When it involves the care of your children it's very hard to walk away and put your needs first. I often joke that my kids are like a tractor beam sucking my back into their wants and needs. If you are in similar situation or have experience parenting with OCD, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Please keep it constructive and kind. I already feel like shit about this because my inability to move on from this situation has caused my family to struggle financially and probably in others way too. I know it has taken a toll on my mental health, which has negatively impacted my family.

So I’m in a relationship with an amazing guy, like he’s literally so great, and yet there have been a lot of moments of doubt and worry over many different things, some of them I know are small and insignificant, and yet they feel so big. But right now, I’ve been experiencing thoughts and feelings that don’t necessarily worry me, but I still try to understand them and analyze them to no end. For example, I’ve realized that I become a little irritated and weirded out by my bf’s overly hyper and cringy behaviour around his friends. I sometimes think he’s just a little socially awkward and he doesn’t realize it. I can’t quite explain it or put my finger on it, but it’s irritating, and a lot of it has to do with his voice. I don’t want to be irritated by this stuff tho, I don’t want to feel irritated by his voice or his hyper and cringy behaviour, but it can be a bit much sometimes, and I worry that it’s bad for me to feel that way. I just wish I could make that feeling go away. But even with this, I’m not feeling worried as much because I know I really like him and I want to make this relationship work, and yet I still feel the need to analyze his behaviours, trying to make sense of why he acts and sounds the way he does when he’s with friends, trying to understand how I feel about it, and how I would feel if it was done/said differently or by a different person. It’s all just a mess, it’s so confusing, and it’s even more confusing when I’m not feeling anxious or worried, but I’m still finding these quirks bothersome. I really just want this to work out, you have no idea how badly. It’s all just so confusing and I don’t want to let those flaws become dealbreakers. I’ve always been worried, even since the very beginning, that his minor flaws would become dealbreakers, it was like I was fighting a part of myself that felt it should be a dealbreaker, but I don’t want it to be. I just want to stop feeling this way about every little inconvenience, annoyance, or flaw. I feel like I’m constantly fighting myself.

Hi! I know everything works differently for everyone but what medications do you all find help your ocd the most?

Does anyone suffer from the fear of schizophrenia or having psychosis or being possessed just want to know I’m not the only one I feel like us as ocd sufferers think we’re alone

Hi!! I've been doing pretty good lately but the thoughts haven't stopped the anxiety is less now. But tired of hearing the thoughts. I'm a confident straight woman and all ai want to be with is a man. I've been single for years and i have been wanting a boyfriend. The thoughts are making me feel like I'm just lying to myself and it's annoying and frustrating.

Every time I talk to my bf I feel worse, but when I’m not talking to him I feel fine. I don’t know what to do. I keep obsessing over everything he says and the way he sounds, and the way he acts. I feel like I don’t like him anymore. It’s all so confusing. I’m so scared of hurting him. Looking back I’m pretty sure that I was experiencing ROCD or relationship anxiety, but now I’m worried that it’s morphed into real feelings. I’m so scared. I’m so worried. I cry almost every day. I’m so tired of it all

Everything is so chaotic right now and I feel like I’m making a terrible mistake in my relationship. I’ve never been in a real relationship before now, just a lot of failed talking stages and infatuated crushes who didn’t even bother to look in my direction. And now I’m with someone who truly does love me and care about me, he checks of all by boxes, but now I’m worried I don’t actually like him or I’m just not that into him. I’m worried this is one of those things where they’re great on paper but I just don’t feel a strong enough attraction. I feel so confused and stressed and doubtful and anxious all the time. I don’t want to hurt him, and part of me so badly wants this to work out while the other part of me feels like I want to leave. The thought of being with him forever scares me and I worry it won’t be right and I won’t be happy. I also worry that I’m convincing myself to stay when I shouldn’t or deep down don’t want to. Every day it feels more and more like I want to leave. It’s just a mess. I’m worried I won’t ever be happy. I’ve been fighting for this relationship so hard, I’ve been trying so badly to make it work, and despite all the stress and anxiety, I’ve stayed. But I’m worried I’m just forcing a relationship that isn’t right. I’m so lost