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working to conquer OCD
i did something not very good and i cannot move on from it because i truly don’t feel i deserve to. it’s like inhumane and i don’t feel like i should ever be happy. trying to forgive myself and move on is the hardest thing to do.
Last year my dad tested positive for Covid but I went to the movies with my brother a day or two after! I wasn’t gonna go but my brother wouldn’t stop asking so I caved in and went. I wore a mask and thought I wouldn’t get anyone sick. Even worse, I went to the supermarket afterwards! Only because it was a quick trip and I passed people quickly. I can’t remember if I wore a mask but I’m sure I did because I wore one at the movies. But don’t I belong in jail for being so careless? Or at the very least, shouldn’t I feel guilty everyday for the rest of my life? I’m a monster. I can’t live with myself.
Recently I have started obsessing over my looks especially with regards to aging. I feel that I'm getting "old" (silly I know, I'm 25 turning 26) and I feel like I'm getting body dismorphia or something. Ive realised I'm scared of losing my youth (not necessarily with regards to looks). I am scared to become an actual adult with responsibility. This also correlates with me moving in with my boyfriend and things progressing towards more serious stuff (engagement maybe?). And next year I'll graduate. It's all so scary. And I feel like I'm very very strict and obsessive with a lot of things in my life right now. Anyone relate?
I am almost 18 right now and when I was 16 and under I did some horrible things I regret and make me feel like a bad person. I won’t go into detail but stuff people would find weird/hate me for. I am quite popular on social media and I see people getting cancelled so much on TikTok for things I used to do. It scares me. I acknowledge that what I did was bad and don’t do it anymore/havent done it again but the things still haunt me :(. I imagine scenarios of being cancelled and being infamous and everybody hating me. The stuff I did was because I was immature/didn’t really know it was wrong but I still feel like such a shitty person. I really want to be a good person and try to and whenever I try to think “I’m a good person” my ocd cancels it by reminding me of all the stuff I have done and I can’t call myself a good person. It also affects my boyfriend as well and my ocd latches onto him being imperfect. He has done things wrong/ things that have upset me, but my ocd takes this and uses it to show me “he’s a bad person” and we are both “problematic” I’m currently obsessing over it.
OCD Journey Stories
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Most of my suffering was subtle or silent. The OCD that plagued me was mostly in my mind.
By Grace Anderson
Read my Perfectionism OCD story →Feeling like a bad person has always been one of my reoccurring struggles with OCD. I’m working through trauma therapy at the moment and recognizing a lot of stuck points, and connecting a lot dots in relation to my OCD. But I feel like even if I make a small mistake or mess up, I can’t give myself grace - and I assume I’m an awful person. Obviously, my realistic self reassures me I would never intentionally hurt someone or have malicious intentions in situations. But sometimes I go round and round, and even think the only reason I think or want to be a good person is because I’m scared of being a bad person? I know that doesn’t make sense but it fucks with me and I’m sure only this group would understand. Anyway, today for example: I got sorta mad at my bf because he was trying to smack my butt and accidentally hit my back. And I said “ouch, stop - you got my back.” - in literally the least menacing way. And we laughed it off and he felt bad. And then I just couldn’t help myself from apologizing to him because I felt like I overreacted somehow. He seemed very confused and was so sweet about it. But I just felt like I overreacted, and I told him that I felt gross - I was trying to prepare food and it caught me off guard. And he was like “no yeah, that makes total sense - you literally don’t have to explain yourself or apologize at all!”. But I just got into this weird mood now, where I’m convincing myself I’m a bad person and a bad partner. And he should be with someone who is truly the sweetest person ever and beautiful to add on to the obsession. Sometimes I just don’t know what’s wrong with me. I know I’m not a bad person but sometimes the OCD itself is very annoying. I feel like this wave has passed, and I’ve worked a lot on grounding myself and bringing myself to reality. Which is great! But I would really love to know if anyone else struggles with this kind of thing and what helps them in these times?
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.
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) :(
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.
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 everyone. I’m new here and am still learning about erp therapy. I was wondering how I can love and accept myself with ocd. The version I want myself to be is the complete opposite of who I am right now. I’m not living in the moment and compare myself to my friends a lot who have strong personalities and sound like they’re more mature than I am & cope better than I do & are smarter than I am. How can I practice self-love while practicing erp therapy?
I am mostly recovered from HOCD but my issue now seems to be that I’m very obsessed with my appearance and if I look like a lesbian or not. I’m not super feminine looking and I work from home so some days I just really don’t care to do my hair or makeup and I’m fine with that and I don’t believe that makes me less feminine. But I can tell a difference between the way my straight feminine friends look when they don’t try vs how I look when I don’t try. It’s both true but also not helpful for me to compare. Idk how to not be obsessed about this.
I gave into a major compulsion after a major trigger. I haven’t done that in many months. My anxiety spiked because of a trigger. How do you forgive yourself? I feel like a failure. 😞
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