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I keep spiraling into these “what if” thoughts, particularly about things I might have done to family members in the past ( like what if i s@’d them), which I honestly don’t remember. Out of concern, I asked a friend to check in with my little brother about whether I'd ever made him uncomfortable (they asked him over text), but the response wasn’t what I hoped for (he told me my friend was asking some questions and how they thought i was a bad person). I also left my brother a note, but he never answered. I feel completely lost. I genuinely want to talk to a therapist about these feelings and the guilt that’s consuming me, but my parents are hesitant due to a previous therapy session where I shared too much about our family dynamics. Right now, I’m feeling isolated and worried about what I might have done in the past, and these thoughts are affecting my daily life and with school coming back i dont think i can honestly do it anymore.  I’m even having some dark thoughts and contemplating overdosing. Idk how to cope or honestly if i want to if my “what if” thoughts are real i know noone would want me alive its honestly disgusting My parents told me they would’ve known if I did or my baby cousins parents but I can’t stop thinking like what if I just did it in secret and they didn’t know or what if I did it and I forgot and they forgot idk what to do I feel at a loss.

I hate pocd so much… I hate it so much. I just want to be happy but this will never let me be happy. Idk if i only have pocd but my mind makes me think that i’m attracted to anyone I get close to. My mind doesn’t care how inappropriate it is. I hate this so much. I live with my family and I never go out. I’m stuck here with my thoughts and the people who trigger the thoughts. I hate saying that I feel so disgusting. I feel like a horrible disgusting person. I wanna live a happy life but I know itll never happen. I don’t want to kill myself but I wish I could just die. I just want it all to end. I don’t understand what caused this. Why me. I do believe that I can be a bad person sometimes. I’m so rude to my mom and I have a bad temper and no patience. I hate myself for it and I always try to blame my dad because he acted that way my whole childhood. What if this is my karma. I hate this so much. I wish I could just go to sleep and wake up without an ocd thought. Sometime I think about taking medication but i’ve seen people struggle with choosing the right one. And I’ve seen people taking them still struggle. This will truly never end. What if while taking medication the thoughts are still there and it was never ocd. Im so scared.

Hey everyone, I'm hoping to share my story in hopes of finding some understanding and maybe some advice. When I was around 8-10 years old, my older brother showed me something explicit that impacted me deeply. Fast forward to ages 13-14, and I started having some confusing feelings and impulses related to smelling and licking underwear belonging to my brother and dad. No matter how hard I’ve tried, I can't seem to shake off those thoughts or these behaviors. Things took a turn for the worse when I made a mistake involving some inappropriate photos from a friend. I sent pictures of my friend's behind because I was trying to impress someone and wanted photos from a 17-year-old I was interested in (i would also beg for photos from him). Unfortunately, He  later told me that he had manipulated me the whole time, keeping me in a "loop of mystery." Honestly my overtly sexual behavior over text caused rifts in my friendships (even though I'm so shy in person), and while some people managed to forgive me, there’s still one friend who's upset and won’t let it go (rightfully so honestly) Since then, I’ve struggled to connect with people at school, as I’ve been overly flirtatious and it seems to have made others uncomfortable. The guilt from these moments is overwhelming, and I think it might have triggered something like obsessive-compulsive disorder (though I haven’t seen a doctor yet). I keep spiraling into these “what if” thoughts, particularly about things I might have done to family members in the past ( like what if i s@’d them), which I honestly don’t remember. Out of concern, I asked a friend to check in with my little brother about whether I'd ever made him uncomfortable (they asked him over text), but the response wasn’t what I hoped for (he told me my friend was asking some questions and how they thought i was a bad person). I also left my brother a note, but he never answered. I feel completely lost. I genuinely want to talk to a therapist about these feelings and the guilt that’s consuming me, but my parents are hesitant due to a previous therapy session where I shared too much about our family dynamics. Right now, I’m feeling isolated and worried about what I might have done in the past, and these thoughts are affecting my daily life and with school coming back i dont think i can honestly do it anymore.  I’m even having some dark thoughts and contemplating overdosing. Idk how to cope or honestly if i want to if my “what if” thoughts are real i know noone would want me alive its honestly disgusting My parents told me they would’ve known if I did or my baby cousins parents but I can’t stop thinking like what if I just did it in secret and they didn’t know or what if I did it and I forgot and they forgot idk what to do I feel at a loss.

How do you guys cope when your obsessions target people you’re close to? I recently had a sexual thought about a friend of mine and it started snowballing. We’ve been texting more and my brain keeps saying that it’s flirty, and if I were in a situation to kiss her I would. She’s a close friend of mine and I didn’t have sexual thoughts about her until recently. They make me feel disgusting and guilty, and the onset made me feel like my body was on fire. It’s starting to latch on to other friends, and my brain is saying I’m “tempted” by them, and if they came on to me I would give in and like it. I had SO-OCD as a child, and did engage in some play kissing with friends before my SO-OCD happened. (My OCD latches on to that a lot too as proof that I’m gay). I remember the anxiety I had about what I had done with my friend, and this feeling I have now imagining kissing my friends feel similarly. I don’t usually write on here to avoid confessing and reassurance seeking, but I’m at a loss. I have a heavy feeling in my chest and I don’t want to have the thoughts, but part of me thinks I might be liking them and maybe it’s internalized homophobia. I could handle being bi, but the thoughts about my friends and losing control feels so wrong. I’m just confused and want to know how to process when OCD starts attaching to people I’m close to.

i started therapy not too long ago and i really feel like i can’t talk to him at all. it’s so uncomfortable because the stuff im struggling with are all sexually related. each time he asks me about my intrusive thoughts i can’t identify them, ive been given homework to do and i haven’t even started it because im struggling so much to identify what is me and what isn’t. he isn’t a specialist in ocd either, he said he’s worked with people who are worried about the same thing as me but it doesn’t reassure me. in all honesty i dont think it would change anything if he was a specialist in it, i’d still most likely feel the same way. each time we talk about it (eg thought fusion and all) i doubt every little thing he says. it feels like i can’t open up to him in the slightest, when i try to it feels like im lying or if i start to i automatically go back on it and suddenly dont have the courage to talk about it. ive never told anyone my intrusive thoughts before, not even my mum and i tell her everything but i’ll never tell her them. he said he understands why im too scared to write them down, if i do it feels real but i can’t even identify what’s intrusive and what isn’t anymore, there’s no more anxiety. im just constantly thinking about things i don’t want to think about. i don’t know what to do, im spending money on the sessions but i just leave feeling even worse. i’m NOT doing too bad right now so i feel like i don’t need therapy but i know if i was to leave therapy it would most likey get worse again. is this normal? i don’t understand at all. i’m literally lying to him because im too scared to open up.

Just wanting to put this out there to see if anyone else relates. I’ve always tried to pinpoint the root cause of my most frequent “themes” for my intrusive thoughts. I experience Sexual Orientation OCD, Gender OCD, Relationship OCD, Pedo OCD, Harm OCD, and few others that I feel I’ve gotten better with like Germ OCD. I think my OCD really began when I was a teenager and the more I think back and think on my themes and their impact on my mood when they happen, makes me try to relate them to some trauma I experienced as a child that causes me to question my reality and beliefs. Like being called a lesbian slur in school because I was self conscious of my weight and so I wore boy clothes because they were more comfortable and not form fitting. And I also think I may be autistic due to many reasons (like the sensory issue of clothes being too tight) but one being that I mirrored people I wanted to befriend or be liked by and this was a problem in school growing up because I tried skateboarding and sports and such to impress boys because I thought to be liked by them, I had to relate to them and it happened again in high school when I tried to be “country” and like hunting and trucks and all that to fit in more with my new school that was in a small southern town. All of this to say my whole childhood, all I’ve wanted was to be liked, loved, and to fit in and I WANTED to be feminine but femininity didn’t fit with my body size/shape and all the girly things just made me too seen and like everyone could see every flaw I had in bright neon colors. Thankfully as I’ve grown up I’ve found my own style and way of expression and embracing my femininity and curves. I’ve let loose on my personality to be my authentic self but my thoughts throw me back to when I dressed and acted more boyish to fit in and get boyfriends saying “you’re not feminine, you’re masculine, you’re just acting feminine” amongst other thoughts and it makes it hard to enjoy being happy with ACTUALLY being myself because my mind keeps telling me I’m faking. I also had trauma with being groomed growing up by older men and my older sister practicing kissing with me even though I didn’t want to (we are 2.5 years apart) and that gives me intrusive thoughts about finding younger people attractive (like teens much younger than me) and gives me anxiety when I’m trying to change my nieces diaper giving me intrusive thoughts like “don’t touch her there, don’t look there, you’re violating her” when in reality, I’m just trying to make sure she doesn’t get a UTI from not being wiped all the way clean after pooping. This was a much longer post than intended and I could keep going with more examples but I just want to see if anyone else can relate to this and what has helped them.

Does anyone else struggle with a fear of sex/sex avoidance? I’m 23 and have dated quite a bit yet when it comes to having sex, I always pull the brakes before it can happen. I’m too scared of the intrusive thoughts and that having sex would confirm my fears. It’s ruining my ability to have meaningful romantic relationships. I feel like I’m completely alone in this. :// It’s not normal to avoid sex like I do.

Huge trigger warning related to porn and pedophilia. Please don't read if it makes you uncomfortable. Thank you if you get to read this long post. Something awful happened recently. I was watching porn, I won't say what page because idk if it is allowed, but it is the most famous porn page there is, so you'd think you wouldn't find something so horrifying there. The problem is that one of the automatic pop ups that appeared really terrified me because the girl looked way too young. I'm not sure if she truly was underage, but she looked it, and I can't express how horrifying it is considering if she could have been. I feel like my mind is playing games with me. I can't tell if it was paranoia or reality. My memories are really fuzzy, as I was on a state of shock when I saw it. I remember feeling scared right away and trying to look up how to report it, but the page refreshed on it's own and I never saw the pop up again. I felt so gross for seeing that, and guilty for not reporting it. It was an accident, but I can't help but think that I enjoyed it and that it is my fault for watching porn at all. I am a monster. If this had happened to someone else I wouldn't question it so much, as I know that I didn't look at it on purpose and tried to do the right thing when I saw it. But I already hate myself because years back, when I was 16, I discovered loli. Which is really wrong drawings of young characters. And since then I've been obsessed with the topic and developed pocd. I never looked for those drawings again after that, I dont enjoy them. But I've accidentally found them again on the internet and it's made me feel disgusting and evil; but at least I had the certainty that it wasn't real, until now. I think that this is recent event is further proof of the monster that I already thought I was. After what happened, I immediately contacted a therapist, but tbh, I don't think that I'll ever move on from that. Life isn't looking good right now.

This may be a little taboo so discretion advised. I stumbled upon this Twitter community that’s labeled to post 18+ Porn content and I’ve went in there a few times to view the posts. For some context I’m 19. For those of you who may not understand how Twitter communities work here’s some context for that as well. In these communities they are separated by a topic and everyone can join the community to then collectively converse or share media/pictures about the topic. Of course people made porn communities and anyone can post in these communities. Obviously knowing this I try to be as careful as possible by only viewing videos of individuals that are obviously above 18. I should also add this particular community has moderators that are supposed to be verifying videos and deleting anything that is suspect or not compliant with the rules but sometimes i worry the people in these videos aren’t actually 18 like they are supposed to be. I have every reason to believe they are of age except the fact that anyone is aloud to post in these communities so I fear I masturbated to a minor or viewed child porn without knowing they were underage because I misjudged by the video. I am currently in therapy and I have been for a while now so I know I should stick with the facts and really try to stick with my core values but this really is sticking with me and I don’t have a meeting for a few days can anyone help? (Also I should add I don’t have any of these videos saved and I didn’t share them either only viewed)

hey has anyone ever had like groinal responses but it always happens at weird times? Like when someone is fighting, when ur mad, or when ur stressed out. i’m scared i get turned on by bad things happening. my parents just fought and my mind keeps trying to tell me that them doing that makes me happy and then i got a groinal response. really struggling with this lately.

I've had some bad trauma in my teen years and it was enough for me to complete shut down when it happened. It was also followed up by a dude, unwanted exposure to pornography. The sad thing is on average people around the age of 13 are exposed to it, which I was. I'm not even gonna mince words. This stuff really fucked me up. It made me act out really badly online and in person. I talked to a lot of random people online and it was sexual and I was pretty mean to people in person from time to time. I don't even know why I was so mean, but I was. This stuff was really bringing out the worst in me and I was addicted to the content. I can't help but think about the memories and they make me extremely uncomfortable. I take no pride in my actions as a teenager not because I want to blame myself for it (although subconsciously I tend to) but because of all of this unresolved trauma. Questioning the positives of my life, low self esteem, insecurities, not letting go of the past, having trouble communicating with people, and how I feel about myself. It all stems from this and I think being bullied in childhood. I think what happened in my adolescence has more of an effect on me though. My whole life I didn't have OCD until 2020. The very same day I found old messages from years ago that were sexual involving a stranger online I didn't know. It gave me so much anxiety it felt like my mind physically change. And boy did it change for good. Ever since that day, I've had POCD and real events obsessions and they still stick to this very day. Could it be that OCD was some kind of amplified warning sign? A sign that I went through a really rough time when I was a teenager? I'm beginning to think that it was in some ways. This stuff hurts a lot and it's hurting my adulthood. I don't know what adulthood could have been like without OCD but all I do know is that I'm constantly thinking about this non-stop and it gives me a lot of shame and guilt along with unhealthy coping mechanisms that have hurt me many many times in the past. Even still, they're very hard to stop. Much like compulsions. All of this stuff still greatly bothers me to this day. It's the unresolved trauma that keeps me on edge and unable to just relax and be okay with myself.

My Ocd turns everything innocent and normal into something horrible. Sometimes when my daughter and I are watching tv she will want to play with and brush my hair. It feels so nice and relaxing or she will cuddle up and rub her feet on mine which is relaxing and makes me feel sleepy but ocd ruins it by telling me it’s inappropriate and that i’m enjoying something inappropriate. One day I saw a snapchat video my young grandson made of himself just out of the shower looking at himself shirtless in the mirror and I was thinking that he thinks he’s so cool and is probably going to flex like all boys do and laughed to myself but then the ocd kicked in and said that I was attracted to him and it made me so upset because I never have and don’t think of any child in that way. I don’t feel that way so how can ocd try to make me believe that I do?? How can ocd be more powerful than my own actual thoughts and feelings? This disorder is so debilitating and upsetting. I can’t live like this.

I hope someone can respond... Im genuinely so triggered and so anxious... This youtuber was accused of grooming a minor, making inappropriate sex jokes with a minor, and planning to meet up with him at dreamcon when the minor turned 16, talking about doing explicit stuff in the presence of minors, etc... this was all when the youtuber was 20 and the minor was 13... POCD is saying that my situation with me venting about 18+ HOCD stuff to people in the PM's on an OCD groupchat I found from NOCD, including minors, means that I am just as bad as they are... or worse... I pm'ed them from the support group and vented to them (including the minors) about my 18+ HOCD struggles... I dont ever want to ever be attracted to minors in any way... I dont ever want to ever engage in any inappropriate relations with minors in any way...

My OCD flared up and went to town on my mental well being yesterday. Intrusive thought after intrusive thought, groinal response after groinal response, rumination after rumination. All three of which lead to a dark rabbit hole. Trying to figure out if I am capable of any of those actions presented in the thoughts, coming up with scenarios in which the “possibilities” is high for said actions and lastly, trying to determine if I need to unalive myself or have myself institutionalized to prevent all of it. I know it was all just what I would usually tell many of you, “A bad day with OCD,” but today as the title says. I’m just emotionally drained. Don’t care to fight back against the OCD. If the OCD says I’m a pedophile, maybe I am, maybe I’m not, I don’t care. If my groinal area wants to move, let it, I don’t care. Now for my personal question, anyone ever get to this point? Just emotional indifference? Please reply, today is already a bad day but I promise to try to have a better day tomorrow.

I am 16, my name is marie. I am in desperate need of help. Here are afew of my stories. 1. and ever since I was 8, I want to say, I have struggled with POCD. I always felt like a predator to my younger niece and cousin. I’ve grown to hate her for solely no reason, and with my two other nephews that came along, I’ve also grown to hate them. Only because I don’t want to seem like a predator, even though it’s in my mind, do I want others to know I hate them and have no liking for them. There were other cases where it isn’t my niece and nephews and I just always had a hatred towards children I felt like if I actually had a bad experience with them I would’ve seriously harmed them. 2. I have no connection to watching Gore, or I was never exposed to Gore until the age of 12, which was a hard year for me. In 2019-2020, I believe it was when a complete stranger, Ronnie Mccnut, killed himself on a livestream, and people made it an internet meme for years after, and still to this day, I see it. I can’t remember if it affected me at 12, but that was the only time I saw it. Now, at 15, in March 2024, it came back to me. It feels like a curse. I’m just so tired. The same nightmare has been going on for months. Since March, it’s more just memories than just nightmares. It feels stupid because I don’t know the guy, but I always have nightmares of him, and I haven’t even seen the video since I was 12; ever since. I cannot sleep ever since I have had no proper sleep schedule and could only sleep when it was daylight at 6-7 a.m. and wake up at 2-3 p.m. My friend is not helping; she’s saying he’s spirit is attached to me, and I’ve lived thinking for the past few weeks that he was attached to me and wanting to curse me in some way and I felt like I had to kill myself/ felt like I was going to die the same way as him. I always had a fear that if I came to someone online and told them my intrusive thoughts, they’d always use them against me. My other friend who is diagnosed with OCD says I have all the symptoms and I just need to be treated. I can’t afford it, and I hate therapy.. my father is always involved for the consultation and laughed at me the last few times. I was forced into an eating disorder clinic from my narcissistic sister and that did not go well. Ohio health care is no help and they don’t care for you. 3. I don’t remember much but around age 14 to beginning of 15 I always felt the need to die, I felt like I needed to kill myself for everyone’s sake there’s no explanation for this one I was a normal kid I was going to school, good grades I have friends I was going to events I just had this task to having to kill myself, yes I’ve attempted a ton at the age of 14 and luckily I haven’t had any serious harm done to me. There is nothing more to say to this it’s a fuzzy memory.

I have a friend who has pretty bad OCD. I wont go in to depth about what he worries about but its not the same as me and is more to do with sexuality. We talked for hours and hours about it yesterday and he definitely felt a lot better after talking to me about it. I have POCD and he knows about it, but not the specifics behind why I worry about it. Now hes told me his specifics I feel I have to tell him about it because "what if he would think im a creep if he knew about my OCD". Strangely from our conversation he ended up feeling way less bad and I ended up feeling more bad. Since the conversation I cant get it out of my head and Im getting a tight chest again. What should I do any advice? Thanks

I hope someone can respond... Im genuinely so triggered and so anxious... This youtuber was accused of grooming a minor, making inappropriate sex jokes with a minor, and planning to meet up with him at dreamcon when the minor turned 16, talking about doing explicit stuff in the presence of minors, etc... this was all when the youtuber was 20 and the minor was 13... POCD is saying that my situation with me venting about 18+ HOCD stuff to people in the PM's on an OCD groupchat I found from NOCD, including minors, means that I am just as bad as they are... or worse... I pm'ed them from the support group and vented to them (including the minors) about my 18+ HOCD struggles... I dont ever want to ever be attracted to minors in any way... I dont ever want to ever engage in any inappropriate relations with minors in any way...

Also just now someone messaged me with 17 comments and i couldnt see them... im so scared they think i did something inappropriate and horrible when i dont ever want to ever groom, or be inappropriate with minors in any way...

I’m so scared of my brain, it keeps giving me weird intrusive thought I don’t want and I’m terrified, my biggest suptypes are pocd and iocd, I can’t even be around me people I love anymore without being scared of what my brain is gonna come up with Like I can’t even be around kids anymore without feeling guilty and don’t feel safe leaving the house, I feel like I’m overly aware when there kids around me, and I try to avoid looking at them, every time I see a kid my brain gives me some gross thought that I know that I don’t want Im terrified of hurting a kid and I know that I never want to but I feel so disgusting, I can’t even think about my younger cousins without my brain being gross but my brain just won’t stop, it’s so distressing, I feel like being asleep is my only escape from it, I don’t even want to wake up anymore, I don’t want to die but I don’t want to be awake

I have been having a lot of fears and intrusive thoughts lately and it’s been hard for me to help myself believe that it’s all just ocd and not that im crazy. I just wish the thoughts of “what if this, what if that” would just stop. I feel like i am so close to just breaking down and spiraling. I have held it together for a while, just going day to day with these fears but it is getting harder and harder every day to not spiral out of control and have a panic attack. Constantly im thinking “oh you thought this person looks generally beautiful? You must be x, you are a horrible person” but i know in my head that it doesnt mean anything to merely think someone looks good, a lot of people are beautiful or have attractive features and someone just acknowledging it without any bad intentions or thoughts doesnt mean anything but i cant help but think that it means something bad. I dont know what to tell myself to just calm myself down. I would never do anything to hurt anyone and i have no desires to ever do anything bad or inappropriate to anyone, especially kids. I am just always thinking that some thought might mean something really bad, and all those thoughts are is that i notice features that might be considered attractive or beautiful