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I need help. I feel out of control. My therapist has left NOCD and I stupidly told her that I didn’t need to see another therapist (I had been doing ok with the ocd and the anxiety for a while now). Literally two weeks after that, I’m full of anxiety, full of ocd thoughts, and I can’t get out of it. My brain wants an answer right now but I don’t have one. The trigger to all of this seems to be the upcoming civil marriage my sister is going through next month. I have my reservations and opinions of her decision but I ultimately cannot control her or anything she does. I’m worried about her making a terrible decision. She’s 20 with no job, she’s going to school, still lives with my parents and I (and will continue doing so even after she gets married), she’s always arguing with her partner, etc. the list can go on. I’ve tried to speak up in a respectful manner but it seems as though (obviously) nothing will change. The next thing I’ve been cooking in my brain is the idea of moving out from my parents house. For context my parents and I live in Florida, a year ago my parents bought property in Georgia? Which is beautiful and peaceful, and for the longest time I had been trying to convince myself that living there with them in the future would be a good idea (the property is big enough to build my own home). But as of recently I’ve been feeling like moving there wouldn’t be what’s best for me, especially with everything going on with my sister and seeing my parents just go with it. Besides that, I want to be able to have a balance between country and city, and over there, there’s only country. I’m worried about so much that I don’t even know where to start to help myself. My boyfriend is super supportive with pretty much anything and everything I say, but I just feel like I don’t want to continue burdening him with my problems, I want to be able to go to him and just tell him my answers and plans. I don’t like not knowing and I don’t like drastic change. Someone please help.

It’s my senior year of high school but i have not been to school since November due to an intense OCD episode that was completely debilitating. I was misdiagnosed with GAD twice and just three days ago properly diagnosed with OCD, i start treatment in two weeks. I have been taking sertraline which has worked wonders for my anxiety but i am still having intrusive thoughts, depression, among other OCD symptoms. I don’t know what to do, i have discussed with my mom potentially dropping out and focusing on treatment, but idk if thats a good idea im just scared to embarrass myself at school or have people judge me for things i cant control because of OCD. Im also scared to be around people younger than me idk what to do im so conflicted, any advice?

y’all i need a little pep talk. im going back to school tomorrow and im worried about if im gonna start having harm thoughts about people at school and then of course tack on the worry of it affecting my grades. or the even bigger worry of having a thought and liking it

Hi, does anyone have any tips or advice over how to not allow the intrusive images or themes consume to the point of freezing up in petrified fear. I feel that I ruminate over my OCD theme to the point where I’m super anxious or I’m depressed and find no point in my day to day activities because I feel that I need to think over my theme. But I go no where with it than into a freak out mode. Any help or advice is welcomed. Thank you.

Hi everyone, this is my first post here. I have OCD for as long as I can remember. But the last year it has become unbearable... I don't know how to move on... My brain began to generate terrible, and scary thoughts about the people who are the most important and dearest to me. It's tough even to write about this... My fear is based on "magical thinking" and the belief that if I think something bad about someone I love, bad things will happen. And the more I worry about it, the more terrifying scripts my brain creates. Here is my OCD story in a brief summary. I started to have intrusive thoughts as a kid. Even in my childhood, my rituals were mostly mental. During my college years the obsessions almost disappeared. Then a few years later they came back (probably because of stress at my work), but I still could live with intrusive thoughts because they didn't take up most of my time. Everything has changed recently, after a chain of traumatic stressful events occurred in my life in a very short period of time. My anxiety has increased significantly, OCD has gotten worse. When I was looking for some useful information about struggling with intrusive thoughts, I read a post by a woman in which she wrote that she was afraid of accidentally cursing her child. I understand that it sounds crazy and there's no logic at all, but after a while I realised that this thought popped into my head and I can't get rid of it. This really scared me. I know that OCD quite often attacks the things we love and care about. For me, it's my family. I'm afraid that I'll wish my loved ones something bad and it will hurt them... These thoughts come up against my will. I realize that this is illogical, and probably the only person I can harm with my thoughts is myself. But the "what if..." thought destroys me. Unfortunately, I can't afford the ERP therapy because I live in Eastern Europe. At this moment, I'm researching sources and specialized literature on my own. As I understand one of the main factors in the success of therapy, and one of the first steps is the acceptance of the thoughts. But in my case, the problem is that there remain a couple thoughts that are still in my mind unacceptable (like wishing bad things on my family). I don't know what to do about it... I'm so desperate... Maybe someone has experienced something similar? I really want to believe that there is a way out of this trap because OCD is taking everything I care about... I'm really scared, and it's occupying all my mind.

I feel like OCD is just my entire personality at this point. It’s been going more haywire than usual lately. Just fell into a vicious cycle of over analyzing nearly every thought I’ve had and trying to piece together everything. Just realizing that nearly everything I think just follows the exact same pattern. I felt like I had a good handle on my OCD for a good while, and now it seems to have spiked again. I just feel so low. I hate when you feel like you’re doing good and then it just goes all the way back to the bottom again. Makes me feel like I didn’t have any type of progression. My issue lately is I’m constantly obsessing… and if a close friend that I feel comfort towards talk to me, I’m always telling them my thoughts. It gets tiring. I’m sure they’re tired of hearing about my OCD. I am, too. But it’s hard not to talk about it when it’s pretty much all I’m thinking about. I know my friends aren’t my therapist… I’m not asking them for advice, I’m simply venting because I’m struggling — but I just hate it. My thoughts are all over the place, just feeling really alone and sad. I know realistically I’m not alone. Not the only one going through this. I hope someone can relate to this. I need that reassurance right now. Not an OCD reassurance. I just don’t want to feel alone. I need a hug. I feel so mentally sick. I hate that my brain is like this. I wish it wasn’t.

I gotta share this because I think we can all get through this OCD! But you gotta put the work in! The homework therapist gives is to help us, and for me, i think i had a breakthrough. So I am a month into my ERP therapy through here and let me tell you… it sucks most days. What i like about my therapist I got on here is she told me she’s been working in hospital and prison wards, so she’s probably heard and seen some stuff and what I got probably ain’t that bad. I started with CBT but my OCD was getting rough after about a year so now I’m giving ERP a try. I was asked to write a letter to someone that I believed was triggering my OCD and so I did. I went through a whole spiral with my POCD, honestly I feel like a monster. But! I’m also recalling some stuff I have kept suppressed and never wanted to mention in therapy, and I think it’s probably time I process that stuff, no matter how ashamed or guilty I feel. Ultimately, it’s probably what is causing the doubt disorder to overtake me. So for those of you struggling, keep going! And be completely open! I promise you your therapist has heard some stuff and you are probably far from what they have heard.

My my name Brendan Simons. I first learned about my OCD when I was around 6 years old. It all started when I was in my daycare, and one of the kids was talking about the scary ghost of bloody Mary, and spinning three times in the mirror while saying her name will make her appear and harm you. As a kid, this horrified me as someone that was very afraid of ghost this led to my first experience with OCD. My OCD took this to a new extreme touching doing or saying anything threes times would cause harm to me or somebody that I love and care about this lasted around five years it seems to be a theme in my OCD that keeps coming back, but not always in the way of numbers are doing things multiple times. Later, on in life in my teenage years, it seemed to change from Numbers to that just right feeling. As I’m sure some of you as experienced as I’ve looked online and many people have had that just right feeling, it’s very hard to explain what we’re talking about but I would repeatedly do my actions over and over many times of whether that’s turning on and off water touching closing a door multiple times until I felt just right and if it didn’t feel right, I thought something bad again what happened to me or somebody I care about. More recently, my OCD has come along with intrusive thoughts, and it kind of like what was going on as a teenager with the just right feeling but now my mind tells me to think of harm to somebody that I do not care about so that way it will not affect somebody that I do care about. As family ages my worries continue to grow and I have just recently moved out and live on my own now and I’m very very stressed about my family back home. Now recently, my OCD has started to take over my life. I was prescribed Zoloft for anxiety and OCD and have noticed small changes in my personality. I feel like I have been able to resist the compulsions, but it hasn’t fully taken this anxiety feeling fully out of the picture. It really takes over my day-to-day activities and I still find myself doing multiple compulsions and rituals to try and prevent these things from happening. I understand and I’m self aware that me doing something or a ritual multiple times will have no effect on anybody at all in the world, but for some reason my brain overpowers that and gives you that what a feeling what if this were to happen. Join this app to find people who have possibly has similar experiences just like mine or any advice to help me get through this. As I live in a town that I’m unfamiliar with I know nobody here and I’m just trying to make friends. Please don’t hesitate to reach out.

Please , please… someone give me some advice who is or has been in similar situation?? I need to stop confessing to my partner. I know it hurts him, he said he knows I cannot control that I have a mental illness, or that I have these thoughts in my head but not to put them in his head, he doesn’t want to think about them which is understandable it’s not just random thoughts it’s intrusive thoughts revolved around ROCD, SOCD mostly are my ocd themes that I confess to him… we have spilt up over this before and he gave me another chance and just continues to do that, because I just keep doing it, I know what I’m doing, I know it’s wrong, but the anxiety ocd gives me nothing else will calm me until I confess either to him or if it’s not him it’s my mum, either way I’m still confessing the difference is it doesn’t hurt my mum when I confess, she can handle it, my partner cannot. I hate myself for doing this, I don’t know how to get out of the OCD haze… best way I can describe when I feel anxious over ocd is a feeling of DOOM. 😔😭 please pray for me… please pray for my partner, my daughter, mother, everyone who is affected because of my mental illness… 🤎

I was on an anonymous erotic site and this woman wanted to do stuff with me. She was in a relationship with another woman on the website. She said that she wanted it and that she hadnt done it with her wife in a long time. Long story short we explicitly chatted online but i feel guilty because of the experience. She said i didnt ruin her relationship but i feel like an evil person for doing it. Am i a bad person for this? Someone told me that because its an online chat site, that i have nothing to be sorry about but... i still feel like a horrible bad person who doesnt deserve love...

does anyone remember what their first experience with OCD felt like? im pretty sure i know the exact minute it happened. I was nine and my cousin was over for a sleep over, i remember she was on my bed watching a youtube video, and i was on the floor watching a youtube video. Then all of a sudden i got this horrible feeling it felt almost like deja vu? but i was terrified and i was so anxious i went and threw up. After that my mind was never the same, at the time i was so scared that i had been possessed because thats what i imagined it would feel/ look like, i became obsessed with the thought that i had become possessed. i kept asking my mom for reassurance that I hadn’t gotten possessed or had “made god angry.” im just wondering if anyone else has had a similar experience or if maybe that wasn’t OCD? Part of me still wonders if maybe i actually am possessed and i don’t have OCD even after 10 years. I obviously know thats not true but it’s always the “what if” ya know?

i wish i could get diagnosed. i feel really guilty whenever i try to talk on this app because i think im faking it. i’ve done my research but what if it’s not real? what if i’ve just slowly shifted my habits into fitting the mold of the symptoms so im convinced i have it? i think it would make me a bad person to even think i have something that im not diagnosed for. and if i do get diagnosed and it turns out i dont have it, then i’ll be a horrible horrible person. i wish i could diagnosed. i dont want to deal with this ontop of every other thing my brain forces me to think about. i think im faking it everyday and it makes me so anxious i find it hard to breathe sometimes

I'm struggling with myself esteem right now. I'm wondering how I can raise my self esteem without giving into compulsions and ruminating on obsessions. I know that if one has OCD they should not seek reassurance. I could be wrong with this definition or perspective on what self esteem is, but isn't a big part of self esteem based on having reassurances or having schemas about one's self that they are a good person, deserve love, and have good things happen to them? Deserve may be loaded word but for simplicity I'm using it in this context to describe feeling that I or one should feel good about themselves and have good things happen to them. What I mean to say is doesn't self esteem take into account evidence of whether one is a good person, that one holds values that make them virtuous, or one has qualities that make them a lovable person, and one uses such perceptions of one's self to re themselves that to maintain or raise their self esteem a form of reassurance? I may be wrong but reassurance with people who do not have OCD may be a few quick mental reviews of what happened in the past or whats happening in the present to asses themselves, however the people without OCD only need a reassurance or two to accept their persecutive on themselves based on the events that have happened or are happening; and such reassurances in people who do not have OCD do not become obsessions of needing to know for certain that how one assessed themselves is correct. I know someone with OCD needs to sit with the discomfort of doubt and uncertainty that obsessions remind one of, then refrain doing compulsions to make one's self feel less anxiety along with being ok with the idea that one's obsessions may or may not be true or can become true if one doesn't do their compulsions. This makes erp tough but so important and necessary. So then how can I, a person with OCD, have good schemas or conceptions about myself, that I may look to for evidence that I use to reassure myself enough to accept them as a fact, and that which would help me then have better self esteem without giving into my compulsions of reassurance to alleviate the stress I feel from the doubt I have of from my obsessions of whether I'm a good person that should be loved and respected? In other words, how can I do ERP and become comfortable with being uncomfortable with the uncertainty that arises from preventing myself from doing compulsions, while also reminding and/or reassuring myself that I'm a good person enough to feel and think of myself as a good person? I think that my low self esteem comes from partly that I'm always obsessing over whether I'm a good person or not. If the feeling and/or obsession of being a bad person spikes, then I feel I deserve to have bad things happen to me at worse, have good things not happen at best, feel undeserving of love, feel I'm a failure of a man, and etc.. I think another major of component is I was bullied a lot in middle school and high school and I use to be very sensitive and cry. Then I went to college, and when someone would bully me or do something to me that was akin to bullying, I would get angry instead of crying partly to feel more masculine and partly because I had had enough of people treating me like that. If my rambling and run on sentences are hard to follow, I can try to explain further if you ask me to explain what I'm asking. tldr: I think someone, whether they have OCD or not, needs to reassure themselves of certain perceptions they have of their qualities that will raise their self esteem. My question is when does that become the compulsion of reassurance or seeking certainty about making sure they don't have qualities that they feel may be indicative of them being a bad person or reminding themselves they have good qualities that would lead to a improved self esteem, and when is just one stating their perception of themselves to themselves to have evidence that would raise their self esteem?

Hi everyone, recently diagnosed with OCD when I retired from teaching after 35 years. been with NOCD Since August 2023with a great therapist but still at the 2 appt per week stage, have a difficult time with intrusive thoughts popping up throughout the day and with sitting with uncertainty while doing my homework- rumination is the biggest issue for me while doing homework. Will be turning 65 in February and having some issues with Medicare so I may have to stop treatment. I had seen a post in which someone recommended a book or workbook about OCD that really helped that person. I think the authors first name was Brian. I will ask my therapist on Monday, but if anyone has any recommendations, I would really like to know. I’m using my non engagements responses and telling OCD ‘ I see you but I don’t have time for you today’ etc and working hard to move on with the day. Thanks.

I recently found out that I have OCD and it’s becoming harder and harder to enjoy every day that passes. I spend hours a day, reflecting on all of the bad decisions I made out of ignorance or out of intention. I don’t know if I can ever forgive myself for what I did but I also don’t know if it’s the OCD making it worse. I was wondering if you guys have any tips on how to distinguish between guilt over what you’ve done in the past versus the OCD. I just want to be able to enjoy every day, but I’m plagued with guilt!

Hey im Felix and I’m 20 years old. Ever since a couple of weeks I can’t get a certain thought out of my head. It started in a period where I got my heart broken and had to move around quite a bit due to family reasons and work, which was very stressful for me. I also started having some physical problems since then. The thought that is stuck in my head is that I ruined my life by smoking a joint in summer and will never be happy again. I feel like I deserve the OCD because of it and it will never go away. Did anyone experience something similar, please respond I’m desperate. All my love, Felix

Because i overthink the smallest things, in my relationship i end up believing a lot of my anxieties, jumping to conclusions and making assumptions. This has many times caused such big arguments between me and my bf, many of which turn out to just be that I did not understand him on something, or that I have these crazy expectations because I constantly want everything to be perfect. I read into the tiniest things so often, that my bf has often felt that basically any little thing he would do I would somehow find something wrong. It overwhelms him, and it overwhelms me as well. The scariest thing is that me just reading something on social media can trigger this. I hate seeing “couple advice” or “relationship” videos on social media, because it causes me to overanalyze my entire relationship and the whole thing of “if you look hard enough for a problem, you will find one, and my brain will practically make up a problem, and will turn something so insignificant into something that i just freak out over. I really do not want to be like this… im tired of constantly freaking out over nothing. I want to be happy, and that has become so rare for me that when i do notice myself smiling, it is something I celebrate over. I dont know what to do anymore.

I just want to obsess and attach a whole story. What if I’m stuck this way. What if I go crazy and can’t remember what I’ve done. What if I stop loving God and turn to new age and I become evil and start hurting people. I just can’t. I have never thought I was evil. My entire life until I had my daughter and my mind told me she was of the devil. I was so mad at myself. How could I think about my precious gift this way? And now I’m so clueless as to why I even exist and how could this happen. It’s like nothing is real an tangible anymore. I feel like everything is such a blur in this life. I want God to be real. He has always been my whole life. It even makes 100% sense to me at the same it doesn’t 😭 I didn’t waver on my beliefs at all before this kid and it’s like me thinking about her like that has caused me so many problems along with horrible side effects from meds that made me see things in slow motion. I’m in therapy but it’s take so long to heal and for me to love my life and me again. I feel like I look at my self and think. You can’t trust you anymore. This world too has turned upside down to me. I am just so heartbroken. I want to be a good person an it seems like I’m going to turn evil any second and I’ve never been purposely evil or mean to anyone. I got bullied as a kid. 😢. I feel like I’m losing my identity an understand who I am.

So recently me and my friend got into a huge fight and they brought up how I always made them uncomfortable, I didn't realize that then and I would always joke about things without realizing it might have affect on people because I was joking and now that I'm thinking about it I feel disgusting, I feel like I molested them without having the intention to molest them(??). I wish I really knew sooner and that this would never happen. Maybe I am a monster I don't know.

I don’t understand the concept of using Maybe or maybe not. When having very taboo thoughts. Like I feel it makes my ocd worse. Can someone explain?