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Hello. Did any medications help with sensorimotor OCD? I started Zoloft a week ago. Thanks!

Does anyone ever get scared that they are going to be stuck like this forever. Or that eventually you wont be able to fight against the thoughts and it just sends you into a spiral. Also sometimes it feels like an urge to act on these thoughts and its really scary and i dont know how to deal with this and im just really scared and i just wanna get better. Any tips?

Went through absolute hell last week sticking with ERP and not seeking assurance on a massive obsession of mine. Since those three days, my thoughts have been really clear of that issue. And now here it is again. I hate the cycle. It makes it hard not to anticipate that things will randomly get worse on a good day.

I have been in a serious relationship with my girlfriend for a little over a year now, and for the first six months I loved the way she looked and never questioned my attraction for her. She is currently over seas studying abroad and the distance has really flared up my ROCD. I catch myself noticing EVERY FLAW about her appearance and comparing them to others strengths. I still find myself attracted to her especially when I see a pretty picture of her, but the not so flattering photos of her seriously make me contemplate breaking up with her to find someone more “attractive”. It seriously tears me apart as I can’t help but know her flaws will always be there and will only become more prominent with age. She always tells me how handsome I am and I can’t say she’s beautiful anymore without hesitation and the ROCD talking in the back of my head. I love her so much and can’t imagine being with someone else, which is why it is so upsetting. I just want to love ALL OF HER including her flaws as she does for me. Can anyone relate? If so, have you been able to get over it?

Idk if this is OCD but I can't stop using qtips/ cleaning my ears. I get ear infections quite a bit so I clean my ears every day. This prevents and causes ear infections. I can't stand the feeling of wax in my ears so if there is any new wax I scratch. This causes infections. To prevent scratching I clean them which works for awhile until it causes an infection. It's never ending. I have no idea how to stop the cycle. My family says it's not OCD, it's just sensory issues because I'm autistic. I don't want to be saying I have OCD when I don't and make someone upset. I put trigger warning because I have no idea if this post will upset someone. I'm super new to this.

Hello, I have recently been dealing with lots of handwashing and having trouble using the bathroom or showering due to feeling dirty or contaminated after touching things. It’s made me quit my job, isolate, not eat, and not wanting to use the bathroom. Has anyone gone through this? If so has anything helped? Hope everyone is doing well <3

Can anyone else with ROCD tell me their experience with it and their partner? How you’ve navigated it and how it’s affected you? I just need ti know I’m not alone with my thoughts that throw themselves into me when I’m with my girlfriend. Thoughts of hating her, of hitting her, breaking up with her, being angry for no reason, and more recently a forced numbness that scares me. I think the numb could be separate and could be stress and burnout from taking care of her the past few weeks emotionally without breaks pretty much and I’ve been drained and I’m scared my love for her won’t come back but I’m sure that’s not true. I’m sure it will. I hope it will but before when I had these thoughts they scared me a lot more now in more numb to them. I get scared that if I’m not obsessing over her then I don’t love her, or if I don’t want to be with her 24/7 then I shouldn’t be with her at all. Could anyone share their experiences?

does anyone feel like ever since they started with intrusive thoughts / compulsions that you feel as if your brain has turned to mush and your intellect has vanished. it’s really hard for me to string sentences together & i feel as if everyone who speaks about ocd has this way of putting it that i never will be able to. i’m still untreated & in the dark to be honest. when it comes about speaking about what ive been through as well i can’t remember everything only the really bad episodes, it’s like my brain is hiding it away from me waiting for a day for me to remember and traumatise me all over again. i’m also petrified of saying the wrong things to people and potentially worsening their ocd or seeming to be uneducated about it and like i have no idea what i’m talking about. i’m still learning but i’m frustrated that i feel as if i still don’t know anything. does that make sense?

What do you usually press when you’re selecting how much time to warm up your food in the microwave? Increments of 30 mins like 1:00, 1:30, 2:00 etc? Just realized I do Just Right compulsions with the numbers… thinking about pressing 2:00 is making me uncomfortable

My 9 yo daughter began her OCD symptoms when she turned 8. Her dad has it so we recognized it. She sees a therapist who told her to make her OCD into a being. She named her OCD a silly name to help her separate herself from her anxieties and subsequent compulsions. It’s hard to know what she’s supposed to do with this “creature” as verbalizing it is difficult for her. Should she try to push this being away when he pops up, or is she supposed to work with the being to coexist? I just want to be as helpful to her as possible.

I read yesterday on Google that ‘someone that is good for you might not be for you’ and ‘just because someone is good for you doesn’t mean you will be attracted to them’ and I’ve started to spiral after a good recovery time, obviously due to my thoughts I find it difficult to feel attracted to my bf at all times but now my brains convincing me I don’t have to be with him just because he is good for me

Almost a year ago I was diagnosed with Leukemia. I have been in remission since August. But now I am afraid of everything health wise and convinced something is wrong with my heart. I went to a cardiologist and he had me wear a heart monitor for 2 weeks. I just took it off today and won’t get results for another week at least. I still have to do chemo once a month for another four months. But I’m obsessively checking my pulse, I’m constantly worried and I’m convinced that there’s something wrong with my heart and that I will die before anyone can help me. I’m terrified all the time. It’s debilitating. I’m seeing two therapists and I’m medicated and nothing seems to help. I feel crazy and that no one is taking me seriously because they think it’s all just health related anxiety. I don’t know what to do anymore. I just want to live my life and be happy that my cancer is in remission but I can’t because of this never ending fear. I’m hoping to find some help here, or at least find someone that can relate.

I don’t know if I have OCD, but I’m in the verge of asking my mom to maybe go and get me checked. I will get a thought or several thoughts in my head and then think about them for HOURS and not be able to do anything else until I am satisfied. It is usually an agenda and I will go over it again and again in my head until it drives me crazy and I break down. I get thoughts in my head while out in public usually, ones that I am so ashamed of and make me feel disgusting. I also get unnecessarily angry and violent when certain sounds happen. Especially coughing. I don’t know if it is the repetitive part of it but when I say angry and violent I mean it. I think this might be misophonia, but I heard the two are related. Anyone with OCD, does any of this seem familiar? I’m hopeless at this point

This is my first time posting here. At the beginning of this year, I started obsessing over an event that happened two years ago, which then led me to obsess over events from seven years ago. I'm certain those events happened, but now I'm unsure if my thoughts are intrusive or if I truly did something unforgivable. After reading someone's real event, I had a disturbing memory of doing something the exact same thing. It's the first time I've ever had this memory, and the problem is, I can't remember if it actually occurred. Every time I think about it, the details change, leaving me with no concrete answer. I've searched through all my pictures, messages, and memories, trying to pinpoint if and when it happened. Ultimately, I know I can't change the past, and even if it did happen, there's nothing I can do about it now, but it haunts me every day. If I did do this, I feel undeserving of anything good in this world. It's affecting my relationships and work, and I fear that if I accept it as false, it might resurface later, potentially ruining my life. I've always condemned this act, but maybe I myself did it as a teenager and either forgot or chose to forget.

this has been happening for a couple of years now but it has been plaguing me even more lately but i find it SO HARD to stop feeling weird and overly conscious of myself around other people. like i cannot stop myself from thinking that everyone thinks im acting weird and being awkward. My brain keeps telling me that anytime i open my mouth i sound stupid and childish (another things I've been struggling w: actually feeling like an adult) and i feel like i can't be in public sometimes bc it's too overwhelming to interact with others. this doesn't happen to me w people who are close to me thankfully, but anytime im around anyone who is new in my life, such as the people at the place where i volunteer, i feel this overwhelming sensation of desperation to not come off as socially inept. The social anxiety is causing me to have all these chaotic and very useless thoughts that i know are not true. Like i highly doubt people are having negative thoughts about me and my behavior but my brain refuses to accept that and keeps whispering "they don't like you, you're annoying them, they don't want you here, they thought what you just said was stupid, etc" I wish i could go back to the times where i didn't feel all of these things so strongly!!! Like what went wrong!!! (I mean I can think of a few reasons but still. I thought getting older would mean I could shed some of my fears. Not that they would get worse) anyway im sure there are other ppl who can relate. If anyone has advice about how to deal w these feelings, I appreciate it <3

Hello anyone reading, I just wanted to vent here because at this point i’m not sure what to do or if i’ll ever be normal and my OCD is causing my mental health to go down the drain badly. It’s so debilitating I can’t do anything daily other than focus on it. I can’t feel comfortable anywhere, not even in my own home. I deal with the type of OCD where i’m convinced things are contaminated with chemicals or feces or any number of things. TMI: For example when I used the bathroom the other day in a public one and it went off on its own so now i’m convinced I had feces all over me so I had to shower and wash my clothes. Now i can’t even sit in my car cause the seat supposedly is covered now too from the drive home. I can’t touch anything on my floor or anywhere for that matter without washing my hands like my phone charger or my feet/shoes/ankles, door knobs, handles, anything cause i don’t even know why anymore. I’m terrified of cleaning products being on me or touching them, people spraying anything. I can’t have my windows down in the car anymore because i’m terrified of someone’s window washer fluid getting all over me. I watched a video about a guy accidentally drinking paint thinner cause he kept it in a water bottle and had to convince myself that my water wasn’t paint thinner and etc These are just some of the examples I have and I don’t know how to get over it or handle it anymore and I feel like I’m literally going crazy. Any suggestions or advice would mean a lot. please

It’s a long post. 🙈 I’m embarrassed. Brand new diagnosis. I’m 40. My OCD subtype seems to be “Order and Symmetry.” 1st session I arrived feeling good. I finished all the homework early and was excited to begin. We didn’t get through the full assessment; I’m pretty sure I talked too much. I was too detailed and we had to finish at today’s appointment. I arrived at today’s appointment stressed and got more stressed as the appointment progressed. I only realized a day or two ago that there was more homework (which I don’t mind- in fact, I enjoy!), but then, after I made note of it, I forgot all about it until signing in today’s Zoom. We spent the whole appointment completing those forms together. I had terrible difficulty doing the forms with my therapist. I was/am so afraid of answering a question without a true enough rating or expression of my experience to give an accurate assessment of my condition. I don’t want to over score or underscore myself! I only experience my life, so I’m not always sure if something’s unusual- it’s just my normal. Even though 3 professionals have now mentioned I should look into treatment for OCD, I still feel like treatment professionals will think I’m not OCD enough to warrant the attention. On the outside, I’m fully functional. It’s only once you start to consider the whole picture- my social habits and motivations for organization and having knowledge of what’s in my brain- that an outsider might put the pieces together. Now that I’m cognizant of its presence in me, so many things make sense. But I second guess myself when talking about it to treatment professionals or completing rating forms. I almost feel like I need a whole bunch of talk therapy first for verification that- yes, this is a manifestion of OCD, or that was, or that was. Figure out what it is and what it looks like in me, before the real work on behavior modification can begin. Or more time for me to explain what OCD looks like in my head first- like following certain rules or processes to keep life ordered and calm, and then making certain accommodations and new rules when something can’t be avoided- and of course, the people in my life have no idea when a rule or formula has changed and are caught out in the dark! 🤣😩 Therapist told me not to be hard on myself, told me not to overthink it, but I felt like she was frustrated with some of my answer paralysis during the assessments- not knowing how to scale myself. And goodness, I’m not throwing shade. I’m just stressed about getting it right! And surprise! We didn’t get to all we were supposed to in today’s session!

I feel like I'm having a mini episode of some sort. I think it might be PMS-related, and it doesn't feel good. I feel like I'm depressed and stuck and every little thing is wrong. Like I was thinking of straightening my hair today, but then I got really anxious because I know I wouldn't look like myself after. Feeling out of touch with my self-image even in the slightest makes me start to spiral. I often say that when I'm having an episode, I feel like "nothing". I don't feel like me, I don't feel like anyone, I just feel like absolutely nothing. I don't feel like a person. I feel like a zombie. I feel dead. I feel gone. I have an appointment with an ACTUAL, real, female psychiatrist, but it's not until July. I'm scared of waiting that long. I'm just so very sad right now. I feel stuck and I wish I had the proper help NOW. I don't feel like any meds I've ever taken have helped at all. I just always assumed if I wasn't having an episode then that meant they were working. I'm starting to be convinced that there is no help out there for me, and that I'll never have answers and will just keep living in the dark, guessing for the rest of my life.

I have been heterosexual all my life and been exclusively attracted to women in all aspects. Although, admittedly that I find all people aesthetically attractive (regardless of gender), it was in my nature to complement them and admire them for who they are. I’m currently in a committed relationship with my girlfriend and have been happy up until the end of 2023. It wasn’t until the start of January where the normal things that I did made me question about my sexuality. I kept obsessing over it and overthinking about it up until the point that I kept asking for reassurance from my family and partner as well as none-stop researching about it. It has been taking up my time in school and I’m losing my sleep. My mind was telling me that I was bisexual or gay, but deep down it felt wrong like it wasn’t me. I was having thoughts and fantasies that would wake me up and feel repulsed. I am slowly staring to get numb and be emotionless. I also have been very anxious and have started to get attractions and arousals that I didn’t like. I’m also starting to lose attraction to my partner and there have been instances where the thoughts were so close to convincing me. I just want to be happy with my girlfriend and I don’t want to lose our relationship as well as our future. I don’t also want to lose my self. I have been getting false attractions, groinal responses, thoughts and images that are bothersome and makes me feel repulsed. It gets worse whenever I analyze my past. I don’t know what to do and I just want to cry.

My ROCD has been hyperfocused on why my sex life with my husband has been a lot less frequent. Thinking he’s lying, thinking I’m not good enough, etc. I started getting triggered by romantic scenes in movies and books, they make me really sad and want to stop watching.