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Hi! Does anyone think my ocd could’ve spiked through perfectionism in sports? I play sports at a high level and I’m insanely hard on myself. Is this a thing?

I’m religious and kind of practicing, unable to fully commit because an inspirational message shared by a prominent member of the religion turned into a trigger for me. Essentially, the central message of the address was that, when it comes to how we spend our time, we could be engaged in good things, even better of things, or the best things, and it’s up to us how we want to spend the time God gave us It’s caused me to develop the phrase “good, better, best” as a mantra and I feel constantly overwhelmed now. No matter what I’m doing, in the back of my mind I know there are better things I could spend my time on and it causes me to feel intrinsically guilty for simply trying to enjoy my leisure time It extends into long-term things as well. For example, last year I had to change jobs because my OCD was affecting my job performance. I went from a web developer to computer repair and it feels like I dropped from a “better” career to a “good” career. It feels like I’ll never be satisfied with myself in terms of my profession until I can get back to coding, which I don’t even know would be a good thing for me, mental health-wise I wake up most mornings already feeling like I’m failing to measure up to some impossibly high standard that no one even set for me, and it’s exhausting. I don’t know how get by when I feel like all my energy is spent stressing that I’m not the most productive person alive

My daughter is almost 9 and she was diagnosed OCD almost 2 years ago. I am looking for support on how to support her. She has reassurance compulsions, always needs to know everything is okay. This can be from touching something or smelling something or walking by something. She asks me like 400 times a day.. she also needs the house in perfect order all the time. She is the 2nd oldest of 4 and can’t handle anyone playing with anything or things being out of place. She won’t ever relax and is constantly cleaning and reorganizing the house. She also is very fearful of being sick and is scared that everything will make her sick. She also has a really hard time making friends because it’s hard for her to hide what is bothering her. I thought she might have hfasd, and her psychiatrist agreed that she might but I figure if I can start helping her OCD then maybe I can help her as a whole. She just has a lot of anxiety attacks and I am burnt out on what to do. I feel helpless in how to help her. There are 3 other kids I am responsible for and she consumes almost every moment of my day, except for when she is at school.

My friend on here just finished reading his first book and I can’t help but feel jealous I want to finish reading or even start a book too I used to love to read when I was younger but I can’t read anymore because of my attention span and anxiety what if I didn’t retain what I read do I need to go back to that page so I can make sure I understood it … what if I read it too fast or skimmed over it …I used to have an attention span when I was younger but it’s like it was wiped away and I was consumed by anxiety so it’s like what’s the point in reading I’m so sad I can’t even listen to an audio book because the same thing happens I just want to scream at my brain to shut up

Good afternoon, Background: I am a 34 year old male who has a wife and two kids, four and one. I have had anxiety since I was in elementary school. In the third grade, I would go to the nurse every school day because I thought I was sick. I also struggled with thoughts about burglars entering the house, my family getting hurt, etc. I got "passed this" (not really), but then I became obsessed with rituals when I played sports or was in high tense situations and felt tremendous anxiety when I didn't do them. I graduated high school and moved to college. While at college, I was officially diagnosed with OCD. What brought this on was I couldn't walk past a certain crack in the sidewalk without thinking an intrusive thought. This repeating helped take away the pain and sadness of the thought. After talking with the licensed school counselor, I started taking Sertraline and continued to deal with repeating. However, I was able to live my life and came to the understanding that repeating would just be part of it. At that time, I thought "I would much rather have anxious thoughts, repeat, and move on then try to face them." What Led Me Here: I had ups and downs regarding my mental health in adulthood, but I never really put much thought into it. COVID 19 happened and my son was born in 2020. I found an OCD therapist that helped me deal with intrusive thoughts about my newborn son. I would ruminate and think about whether my son would get hurt or die. I didn't feel bodily anxiety in this situation, because I would just repeat and the thought would go away. I worked with my therapist until the negative feelings went away. It seemed like everything was fine, until 2024. This past winter, I began to feel bodily sensations related to anxiety. I reached back out to my OCD therapist in January and started working with her again. At the end of February, I had an anxiety attack for the first time in my life. The feeling of anxiety I had never felt before lasted for a week and a half and it was extremely difficult. I was always proud of myself when I told people, "My OCD has never affected my ability to complete tasks or do important things." This wasn't the case anymore. I had to take a mental health day for the first time ever. I was able to get through that experience. Two weeks later, it came back. It lasted for about two weeks and my therapist helped me get passed those feelings. Instead of working with her every week, we moved to every other week. Fast forward to my current situation. I had not felt that bodily anxiety sensation for a while, but it came back when I got home from a five-day golf trip. Intrusive thoughts about not wanting to be a father or husband filled my body when I got home. The anxiety feeling returned and now I am here. **If you have read this far, thank you. I feel like it is important to know my story. These three encounters with anxiety and OCD has shown me that I have not been doing my part in getting myself better. I am always looking for short cuts and ways to barter with my anxiety and mental health. Now, I am attempting to not argue with my OCD and let intrusive thoughts in. My therapist and I are working on I-CBT (Inference Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) and I wasn't following through with the plan my therapist and I came up with together. Why I Am Writing this Novel I am trying to be positive and believe my core values (wanting to be happy, be a dad, be a husband, etc.), but I no longer have repeating to fall back on. Now, it is just rumination, obsession, and assurance seeking - the battle within. These past couple days, I have struggled mightily with my happiness. It is constant negativity in my head: - "Why bother? You will never be happy" - "You are a horrible parent. You would rather watch TV then be with your kids." - "You are a horrible husband. You are putting your wife through all of this." - "OCD will always win and dictate the life you have." - "See! You are feeling anxiety, so all of your work is worthless." I know the answers to my obsessions. I know the tools I need to use. I am just very afraid that I will not get better. My son, daughter, and wife deserve a present family member. I simply cannot live life like this. It is not a life full of happiness. It is just a life of continuous worry. I mean, I am already feeling dread about my kids growing up and graduating and they are four and one! Again, thank you for reading this. I just want to be better.

The fear: I’m not good enough The obsession: my pastors righteousness The compulsion: trying to prove his unrighteousness The story: my wife and I got kicked off the worship team because we were arguing a lot, it’s a lot better now but it’s still not where I’d like it… the pastor who kicked us off is guilty of adultery and in my state that’s even a felony. I’m feeling not good enough because I’m not righteous enough to serve but I haven’t committed adultery… there’s a major conflict here. To make matters worse, my wife picked sides with the pastor, even after I begged him to at least let her serve on the worship team as I self deprecated to prove that she is blameless and that I should be the only one to suffer this punishment. This all happened in January, now it’s July and I’m having a hard time still… Help! I just want these thoughts to go away and leave me alone… I can’t prove his unrighteousness, everyone knows about it and they like him more than me because I’m some sort of OCD freak to them, or maybe that’s just the OCD talking… help!

When I was 12 I made one of the biggest mistake in my entire life. Last night, my brain decided to replay that feeling over and over again to the point of starting to hate myself for it. Now I can't stop thinking that I need to be punished for it, I should never be forgiven and that I am a bad person. My partner should break up with me because I am a bad person and they don't know about it so I don't deserve to be loved at all. I know, however, that I made that mistake a long time ago, that I am a completely different person and that I am a good person now, and that's what matters. But I can't get myself to forgive my past self because if I forgive him, that means I'm a bad person for condoning what I did. Do you have any advice on how to overcome this? Thank you in advance

One long-term theme for me is obsessively taking photos of my face and staring at, trying to fix, editing, will away, features that I don’t like. At its worse it will go on for hours like any other self respecting obsession. Does anyone else have this? I also hyperfocus on features and see them through a likely distorted lens, so my nose looks bigger than it is, my face more asymmetrical, etc.

Not good. My mom and I used to have like a mental link but now she can’t really figure out what’s on my mind after my blow up. I had a choice, to regulate and do my best to figure things out it may have been difficult but it was technically the easier way since nothing bad would happen to anybody. But I chose to just let it all loose and tell my entire family everything on my mind. All thoughts anything really. Not true thoughts thou not really me I think I just let anything that disturbed me come into the light which was most likely not even true not me just a thought or stuff I already knew the answer to and so my thoughts were also untrue. I put myself in a space where I could just be comforted to let loose and I did. I didn’t take it or life seriously and now I am living the consequences with really tattered relationship with my sister and odd dynamics of mom and dad. Why did I do that? Because I kept on feeding the beast of my negative thoughts I didn’t pull through I didn’t take it seriously even though I was scared. I think my mom can’t read my mind because all I am really thinking about is how I could have done things differently in the past and how even after I kept on making mistakes and now my sister is pulling even more away not just boundaries but pulling away. I don’t feel real but that’s not fair to others in theory I get it but I just feel dead on the inside like my beautiful soul died and won’t come back. I don’t know what I want from this post. What I really want is someone to tell me I can go to the past and change all this. This is literally the worst most horrific thing I have ever experienced or done. Pls someone idk anybody help. Idk if I want reassurance or not because I’ve heard so many people say it I just want something that speaks to me hopefully something that sparks something in me to keep on living and doing my best to mend all of this. Pick up the pieces I broke and not feel so broken 😞which I am not but something like shattered

recently, i have noticed a significant spike in my perfectionism OCD. what are the best ways you know to cope with knowing everything is imperfect? i know this is a fact, but my OCD will not leave me alone until i feel like i’ve “perfected” everything as much as possible (which obv leads to more compulsions) :(

Tell yourself the opposite of what your thoughts say. You're allowed to make mistakes. You deserve love. You deserve to follow your dreams. You deserve kindness. You deserve to be happy. You deserve to go through life embracing all of who you are without judgement. Time and time again I get stuck in this superfluous loop of remembering what i didn't do right. What didn't go well. The bad things that happened to me. The mean things people have said to me. The guilt and shame I have for addictive behaviors. The things I wish I didn't do in my teen years. You know what though? That's all BS. You did the best you could. You tried with what you have. There's no use ruminating over it. I know this is easier said than done. I know this is difficult. I know that OCD can make this worse for us by making us think about the very things that bother us over and over again. I know it sucks. It really is a pain. But with practice, and reminders, I think we can do this. I think I can do this. I think you can do this.

So even tho I'm not yet diagnosed, I am very sure that I have OCD because of other things unrelated to this post. But I was wondering if someone else also knows these situations and thinks this might be OCD as well^^ Sooo these are just three Situations but they are representative for other very similar things that happen to me every now and then. 1. So i was wearing a knitted jacket and noticed a lose sticht. This already made me angry because the jacket wasn't "perfect" anymore. So I took out my sewing kit and fixed the sticht and made it look as good as possible (and it DID look good in the end!). Nevertheless i had to check the entire day if it still looked good or if it looked ugly/unprofessionally done and then I always realized it still looked fine. 2. Whenever I wear tight pants or pants made out of thin material, I always worry about "something showing" through the pants. So I always have to check if people can see something and then I worry about people thinking I'm undecent/pervers for having a body that shows through clothing 😂 3. I was in the train the other day and there was this weird smell. Maybe someone was sweating or something. And then I started to believe it was me smelling weird and then I felt so gross, even tho I knew it was propably not me smelling bad.

I’m very anxious that I’m making the wrong career choice (I’m two semesters away from getting a bachelor’s in software engineering) and I’m worried my real passion is in being a life coach/filmmaker. I get so anxious that I’m making the wrong choice that I’ve dropped out of school three times in the last six years and I have no idea how i’ve made it this far in my degree. On the other hand, whenever I quit school, I feel so much relief and then I pursue filmmaking and get equivalently anxious and end up quitting that. It’s gotten to the point where this is a weekly/daily cycle and completely debilitating. I tend to seek external validation on my choices but it makes it worse. Help.

I feel like there are times with my OCD that I don't feel anxiety but just feel this low grade, nagging, constantly under the surface guilt/sense of dread. Does anyone else have this? Like this morning I woke up and remembered something that happened yesterday that wasn't great and now it's not even specific "what if" thoughts or fears, just like this feeling that I did something wrong and everything is wrong because of it. I listened to an OCD podcast yesterday and they mentioned that there's also a lot of guilt and shame with OCD but that anxiety gets focused on more and that was helpful because there's this whole other set of experiences I have that I feel like are related to OCD but aren't necessarily anxiety or fear feelings. Anyone else have this experience?

I have been boycotting McDonald’s and all the fast foods and most brands that I know of that support Israel. Especially McDonald’s I haven’t eaten it since the news came out back in October but recently I ate it because my brother and his girlfriend were paying for most of my food from other places on Uber eats. They had limited choices as well because we were in hotel and they kept spending money on Uber eats to buy all of us food and they were running low. They didn’t want to eat McDonald’s because they know who they support but my brothers head was hurting and they were hungry , so we decided to eat some but they were telling me it’s okay you’re not gonna eat it again it’s only for this one time because ordering Uber lift or Uber eats is too expensive. But now that I ate it just feels like I broke a value or moral and idk if they’re that easy to break because I thought about it now but I could’ve easily just starved until the next day when I got back home. I know I only ate one time but that one time was enough for me to feel ashamed , which I feel I should be for knowing what’s going on. I do what I can to support Palestine but after this I need reevaluate myself.

Does anyone struggle with confessing? Not necessarily to police, but to friends? I saw a friend who I haven’t seen in a while and I just kind of info dumped about my struggles over the past two months. Which involve the thought that I’ve killed someone and repressed it. Which came about after other fears that I would go to jail for various things from my past. I also had a really bad reaction to an antidepressant that kind of exacerbated my anxiety and OCD symptoms from bad to unbearable. Hence the irrational thoughts about murder. And it’s been really hard to shake. I’m not freaking out as strongly as I was before, and I’m WAY more able to function on a daily basis. And now my OCD is going crazy and saying that she’s going to report me to the police, I’m going to go to jail, etc. But this is a friend I trust who understands mental health. I just hate that I can’t trust myself or my friends because of this awful thing. I’ve had insight the entire time. Realizing that this is not a true memory. That it goes against everything I believe as a person, etc. But then that insight triggers me into overthinking that I’m just reassuring myself and I should stop it. Because I also have perfectionism OCD about my recovery and doing it exactly right or I’m a failure. I guess what I’m really looking for is a shoulder. Someone who understands. Just some words of encouragement that it does get better and that I’ll find my way back to myself.

My placement is started I have many fears related to ocd, patients, me and Nursing. Example contamination then reassurance that I will not get infected. Then health related ocd. Other thing is which is not ocd is I hate getting up early in cold weather and go for job. Maybe I have trauma to start a day and managing time for patients which now creep me out that how will i manage just a placement and how will I do job. Also always thinking in advance how will I enter in hospital, whom I will ask where I'm working, am I in right hospital because it's first day if not iam already late. Any suggestions to motivate myself for doing placement I actually kind of gave up and it's the last placement of nursing

I’m starting my first year at college after this gap year I used to improve my mental health aka ocd, and I’m not super sure how this will go. I’m living on campus, and I’m super excited to start classes and move in, meet new people. I just know it will be overwhelming, and if anyone has tips on coping with that, so my ocd doesn’t go absolutely wild, it’d be greatly appreciated

Hi all! I just wanted to see if anyone has any knowledge about when exposures become compulsive. My OCD has often centred around the anxiety itself and it never going away so my themes often jump around meta OCD and the fear of not getting better / doing exposures wrong. I find it always gets very complicated when OCD latches onto the exposures themselves.. I have found that saying “maybe, maybe not” to intrusive thoughts in the moment often comes with that temporary feeling of relief similar to that of compulsions. Is there a chance this in and of itself has become a neutralising technique? Does this sound mad? I’m struggling to find relevant research around this topic so if anyone can help that would be great. (well aware this could just be another obsessional fear!)

I keep thinking back on my past and worry if I ever actually had empathy or ever really cared about the things I care for, or when I think of bad things that happen, I try to think of my emotional reactions to them, and most of the time I can’t feel anything to them and when I think of a past memory of my reactions to them, I can’t tell if I was genuine about it. It’s pissing me off and confusing me, why do I have to be like this, why can’t I just be normal or just never worry about anything? It’s changing my perception of myself and who I am morally, I think back to all the bad things I’ve done as a kid and of recently and I fear that I haven’t changed or progressed forward as a person, I want my morals to be genuine and to feel like a genuine person. I’ve been told that I’m a good person by my sister, but I just can’t live by that somehow, it’s like I need to find evidence of it by using my memories of my past actions and thoughts just to prove to myself that I am good, and like it’s so confusing, it’s like I’m trapped in hell, scared that I won’t be the best person that I strive to be like, and when I say that, it makes me question if I actually want to be good or if I just want to be good to go by societies norms of what being “good” is, and like idk, it’s just so annoying and it scares me so much, it has made me scream and cry so much to get this feeling out of my body. I hate it.