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Sometimes I'll have the general feeling Something Bad is going to happen. Is this common with OCD?

What would a good start/hook be for a college essay about OCD. I mean I can’t just be like “when I was 10 I thought I was sexually attracted to my sister….” although that would definitely get their attention 😭

I don't know what this is but I don't think I can take another thing wrong with me. Everything in my life is going down hill and I'm so afraid of more things that would impact the quality of my life. So I was really worried about my eyes for a bit and then out of nowhere I started focusing and seeing sort of like static or pixels or noise when looking at a plain wall. I'm okay when I'm distracted though. Then today I was out on a walk and I noticed when I'm looking at the trees when it's a bit dark I can see that noise, static mostly when I don't focus on something. I'm so scared it's visual snow. I've also been really focusing on eye floaters. I can't take another thing wrong with me. I want to cry:(

I don't know why I did this but I decided to help a minor with OCD. I don't like talking to children and I made that clear to myself at the time and to this person. But, I still did it. I just wish I knew why. I hate that I still did it because it's given me a ton of guilt now. They suffered from POCD and I do as well (which is ironic since this is giving me bad POCD triggers) and all I wanted to do was help them with OCD. I just don't understand why I would take it to DMs. It makes no sense. There's people I have replied to on here and I don't know their age and they could be minors, which gives me less worry but still worry. The biggest problem I have with this event is the topics we discussed within OCD. Since it's about POCD and I think SOOCD we spoke about pretty sensitive topics that aligned with our OCD. But I just feel like I shouldn't have. I sometimes think to myself that if I were a therapist talking to a minor about POCD, that wouldn't be wrong. It's their job to do so. It isn't my job to do that though. I guess I just wanted to do good? But why with this person in particular? They knew there were things I was uncomfortable with and didn't want to go forward with. Eventually I stopped talking with this person because I felt like I was no longer helping with the constant reassurance I was giving and I was just too uncomfortable with talking with a minor. I just wasn't okay with it and I'm still not okay with it now. I want to tell myself that I was just trying to help this person, I knew I didn't want to do anything wrong, but I felt like I did something wrong inadvertently by just doing this. There were pretty adult key words that I can recall in the conversations we had and that disturbs me greatly. From the receiving end and sending. This never gave me intense anxiety at the time so why now? I just can't let go of this. I feel like I've committed a crime and I feel like my life is over everytime I think about this. I feel like I'm just failing my life. It's hard to do anything and be happy without thinking about this. I get worried that I'll be called some kind of groomer because of this even though my intent wasn't to take advantage of this person. Only to help them. Again, I don't know what made me go with it but I went with it.

I got diagnozed with OCD two years ago. Since my teenage years, I suffered from recurrent depressive episodes and also OCD related themes. I am currently doing ERP with NOCD but I feel I need to address my depressive moods as well. Is anyone doing ERP and CBT or talk therapy or anything else in parallel or has experience in treating both in parallel?

As a high schooler, I hung out with the wrong crowd... while I wasnt the type of student to vape or drink or get myself arrested, I would listen to my friends and laughed when they talked about making fun of people who didn't deserve it... or listening in on, or looking at dirty secrets about people we interacted with... as an adult, as someone who has grown and matured, I feel bad for participating in this type of behavior, and while i didn't initiate or partake in these behaviors that my friends personally did, i feel like me listening in or laughing makes me feel like a bad human being... im about to be 23 now, and these events occured when i was 16-17... i feel like a bad human being and my intrusive thoughts love to tell me how horrible of a person i am now... i genuinely regret it... i want to be a good person who does good things...

I strangely woke up early, from an unexpectedly nice dream. I felt good. This wasn't what usually happens, so I was a bit worried. I was waiting for intrusive images to appear but they didn't. So then I willingly remembered about bad things, about previous traumatic triggers and I was reminded of the horrible impression they left on me and I got in a bad mood. It seems like that to all the happiness in the world I'm going to have to confront myself with all the traumatic triggers I have encountered throughout my life. You can't forget about triggers, they will always be stored in your memory and I'm sad about that. I remembered that time where I had a horrible intrusive image, it was a n*ked image, and I was afraid of my mind associating it to something real, so my brain obviously did that. It gave the intrusive image the face of a girl I used to babysit when I was younger. And it was different from usual intusive images, because it was associated to reality. It was the first time something like that happened to me. I can't shake off the innocent face of her and the fact that my brain did something like that. And after that I was thinking why intrusive images about real individuals that I knew in my life would leave me such an unusual stronger effect than other intrusive images, of vaguer triggers, so I remembered this triggering ad that kept appearing on youtube and I did something horrible: I used her as an example to see if it would leave me the same traumatic impression as the other one, I pictured her n*ked. So it wasn't an intrusive image but something that I willingly did and that makes me feel guilty and not innocent like a victim of OCD, I'm not "justified". For some reason it didn't trigger me, maybe because the image was vague, not vivid, it was more of a vague idea with a random not visible triggering element in it, so it wasn't like graphic like past intrusive images. But the fact that it didn't trigger me and that I got worried about what I did a bit too late for my liking bothers me a lot. I didn't realise it at first, but maybe because I was being rational. It doesn't trigger me still, the image that know has become a memory that persists currently unwanted in my mind is vague, but it bothers me a lot that it wasn't an intrusive image and that I thought about it. I didn't have ill intentions obviously, I didn't think about that because I liked it, I was trying to have an explanation. But still why would I do that? I didn't have the permission to do something like that at all, not that I would need it in the first place because it shouldn't happen in the first place. I feel horrible. The follow up questions are not me asking for reassurance but questions that I want to know to not feel like the exception, to see if it a relatable experience, because it doesn't feel like it. Has something like this happened to you? If so how do you deal with these type of intrusive images that take things from real life and make them feel more triggering? What about the ethics and morals of the last part? It wasn't an intrusive image, I did that thing, and it's clear that I didn't like it, but how does that change what I did? I don't think this is normal at all, or did this happen you as well?

Hi, I have been having extreme stress for years and after my brother's diagnosis of his MS i started to develop physical symptoms like tingling in legs. I became restless and scared that I have the same. I ended up doing MRI which were all clean but I wasn't able to stop the body checking. Then I was put on Zoloft 50mg and nobody told me about the side effects and I had all of them including first time panic attack and visit to psychiatric hospital. Been told I have to ride out the worsening before it gets better. I struggled but I managed to continue until I started to get better. I saw light end of tunnel and out of blue first time i started having obsessive thoughts in graphical form of hurting my family and people on the street. Everything I see appeared in my mind destroyed. ( See a window it will break, see peoples neck graphic images of it getting cut) this keeps repeating constantly. I thought it will stop due med adjustments but it didn't. It started cause me so huge distress that I developed tinnitus that is constantly there. I got scared of any meds and with talking to my doctor i tapered off the med but the obsessions and the tinnitus sadly remained. I am being tortured by the fear of having OCD and those thoughts that don't let me in peace for the rest of my life and that I will never be myself again. When they leave me in peace for short time I ask myself "where are they" and ofc they reappear. If I will visit my parents the first thing I think of are this thoughts and not something beautiful or positive and that really keeps me from losing joy of visiting people I like.I accepted it that this are thoughts and that they pose no harm to anyone but since it's constantly there i can't focus on my life and i feel like sitting in the cinema and watching images or videos that I don't like and the actual fear isn't from the content but the fear that my life got ruined. The most distressing feeling is actually how my brain is repeating everything that is against me at that moment. If i try to meditate and try to imagine a nice and beautiful place with a tree that is green my mind turns it to burning. Same is with a house or if i imagine a person it endsup being killed. Can it be OCD or this sounds more like severe GAD? Has anyone with similar experiences an advice for me?

my mom shared a post with me about someone we knew being arrested for cp things. i’ve been obsessing over it for like 30 min now. i feel like i want to watch those things and i would like it. would i actually do it? no. do i feel like i would like it? yes. what if this isn’t ocd and i’m actually like that. i’ve done things in my past as a kid that could make me believe i’m a pdo and i just think what if i’m still like that or what if i am that. i feel like i don’t deserve to live. i’ve been imagining these types of things to test if i really like it and i feel like i do, i feel gross.

I’m gay, and I’ve always viewed gay porn to get off, but ever since last year, it’s been difficult to actually do that cause it feels like I’ve grown..well, bored of it, but it’s the only porn I can and will ever view. But there’s times when I’m trying to enjoy it and then these thoughts show up in my head and it feels like I’m getting excited by it but I always stop cause I don’t wanna touch myself to something like that yk? But it hasn’t stopped in so long and I don’t know what to do. Even when I’m not doing it these thoughts sometimes give me feelings of “excitement” as if I’m really being turned on by them, can that be related to porn addiction too? I can never EVER look up cp or anything violent, but could these thoughts be showing up because I have a porn addiction? There was a time when there was a thought stuck in my head and I still felt the urge to just watch porn and touch myself but the thought was still there, even when I finished. And it was unfortunately very vivid. I cried and kept telling myself I couldn’t be this person, but the thought was there, I felt the need to do it and I still did it. Wouldn’t that prove that I am what I think I am? How can I enjoy watching gay porn for so long then out of nowhere I somehow want something else? I don’t want to do harm to anyone underage, I just want to understand how this could happen and if this is all still part of OCD or I’m just a porn fiend. Cause the saddest part of all of this is, I still want to watch and enjoy myself to GAY porn, but Idk how to do that without the thoughts showing up. If that’s even what they are anymore.

Whenever things get really bad for me mentally I retreat to watching porn and then I fall back into my bad habits and it usually lasts for a while. But then I see things I won't want to see and I get disgusted and click off. Then there's things that surprise me in a video and it makes me uncomfortable and then I click off. I know it's not what I want but it still bothers me because it's simply OCD. I just can't wait to get out of this place in my life. I hope meds will help me and put me back on the right track. Worst of all is when I click a channel that I'm hoping has what I'm expecting but it has very nasty things on the front page and questionable characters in material and I just click off completely. It's all part of the surfing. This has been happening for years now and I just want it all to stop. Both the porn addiction and OCD. It's a bad combination but I just don't know how to cope without going back to it when things get really bad.

So.. I'm not okay. I'm not doing okay right now. For this week I haven't really been okay. I don't think I've ever really been as happy as I used to be since high school began. I can still be happy and laugh at things and enjoy some parts of my day, but I'm not fully enjoying these things. There's always things I'm worrying about. There's always imperfections that I notice about myself. There's a lot that I need to work on, and it's been here. OCD hitting me in 2020 made everything in life even harder than it already was. For four years now, I've been struggling with this. Horrible anxiety that is making me question everything about my life. The things around me, myself, and the future. There's things around me that aren't in my control that are bothering me and things in my control that are bothering me. All I can do is try to distract myself from these things, but that's becoming harder and harder. Lately, I've had a terrible relapse in my OCD and it's caused me panic. I was feeling absolutely horrible about something that I remembered a couple of years ago. It led me back to my old habits and everything came back full force. I'm just not happy at all. I'm not happy with myself. I'm suffering from OCD and it's not fair. I have extremely low self esteem, I don't believe in myself often, and all I see are the problems that I have. The mistakes. The screw ups. There are good things that happen, but they never seem to outweigh the bad ones. I really hope medication will help me with this. I can't really take dealing with this anymore. I don't even know where adulthood would have been like without OCD. It hit me when I was 18. In questioning so much about my life and I don't feel like I'm ready to handle all of this. I don't feel like I'm ready for the adult world at 22 and it just doesn't feel like I've prepared myself for this. I'm not really sure how I can to begin with though. There's someone that I fancy in life. They're an introvert like me. We have common interests. I love seeing them. I love talking with them, even if it's not much. I love listening to them talk so much. I just really enjoy their company. But I'm not ready. I don't feel like I deserve to be with this person because of all of my problems that I'm dealing with. My OCD. My 10 year porn addiction. My low self esteem. My worrying. My relapses. I'm just not ready. I'm really trying to just find myself as an adult in the world. It feels like I can't really live my life because of OCD picking on me in any way that it can. I just don't know what to do. I get vivid images in my head. They sometimes enter my dreams. I compared my childhood to my adulthood and it hurts. A lot. I just don't feel well. There's things and people that I'm thankful for. There's things and people that I appreciate. There's things and people that I cherish. I wish those were all easier to focus on. Instead, I'm constantly thinking about things I can't change. Bad habits that I have trouble undoing. Mistakes that I wish I hadn't done when I was younger. Things I wish I knew at the time. Should've. Would've. Could've. I guess I just want to go back to life where I was hopeful about things. When I didn't have any reason to doubt something or someone. Or even myself. Back when I could have so much fun with things without a care in a world. Back when I could truly live my life. I want to cry but I just don't feel like it. I just want to be able to forgive myself. Believe in myself. And not worry about myself so much. I just want my life back. I just want to be where I used to be. I just want to be OCD free.

TRIGGER WARNING FOR CSA AND CHILD ABUSE so I had a friend named Asher He was really okay before he started to traumadump on me He was talking about sh as something normal and I didnt care enough about him to try and do something with it He was also talking about his obsessions,there wouldnt be anything bad in it if I have agreed on that because with my severe anxiety I started to mirror his obsessions,th3y are still with me till this day I only cared about him cause he was alwayd reassuring me and I thinked of him as someone with the aesthetic I like The end of our relation started when he was smoking ciggarettes at the age of 13,because of that I was so scared and disgusted Ive been in a constant anxiety attack for a whole 4 days Then he told me about his disgusting relationship with his parents and sisters It was just making me want to vomit Talking to him was hard But I build a really strong obsession over how he made me feel so I kept with contacting him The thing that made me completly despise him was when we were joking and he told me about how he had sex at the age of 12 while his ocd was really severe I was so fucking disgusted,especially because he didnt wanted to answer on with who he did that I was so scared,I didnt care about him but on how did that affected me I feel complete disgust to him,and I feel awful with it I know he was a victim but the way he said that and just all of this was too much for me(I also have sexual trauma and I hate any kind of sexuality,and the worst part is that I feel complete fear and disgust towards people who got graped or are hypersexual.I know its wrong and disgusting but I dont know how can I help it) I got so scared I had a severe anxiety attack where I could barely breathe It was all so scary and overwhmeling The second he told me that I started to feel this extreme rage disgust and hatred Since then,I didnt talked to him I dont know why but I immediately started looking for new friend I would call in automatically Because I was so fucking scared and panicked All of this made me go into socd episode which lasted for a month or two Now I have intrusive thoughts about "what if something will start to remind you of him" and thats awful I know Im not a good person and Im dissapointed with myself,but when Ill just get a therapist I surely will try to work on it

does anyone else have like videos of ppl with gofundme’s or like sick animals who need donations pop up on your fyp? i sometimes get overwhelmed when they do pop up bc it kickstarts my compulsions and i start praying for them and then share their video to boost it. and that’s fine, i want to help. but the problem is that on my fyp it pops up back to back sometimes and then i get really overwhelmed. i was just wondering if anyone else feels this way 😭

Hi. Welcome to story time. Back in 2019 (wow, long time ago) was the first time a doctor first mentioned the possibility of me having OCD. I was 19 back then. During childhood, my mom would call me “impressionable”. Anything could trigger me into a spiral of crippling fears, and I had rituals to try to escape them. At 13, I started picking at my skin. It was mainly about need for perfection, and when I felt I couldn’t achieve it, I hurt myself. I had bad acne that triggered me into picking a lot, and even worse things, like I needed to expunge the “imperfection” out of me. Doctors never took it seriously. They wouldn’t even treat my acne because they’d say my problem was only my habit of hurting myself, but then they’d send me off with a “just stop doing it”. I never stopped. I hated myself. I hated myself for how much I felt things, so uncontrollably in a highly sensitive and even irrational way. I’d pick at my skin for hours on end all throughout my teenage years. At 19, a neurologist casually mentioned to me that skin picking could be related to OCD. The ground seemed to shift beneath my feet. He sent me off with antidepressants after 10 minutes of appointment at best. I was just left with this piece of information and no guideline at all, no afterthought about how that might affect other pieces of my life. I found this app and started engaging myself in every discussion trying to piece together what I really had and what was going on. Ironically, anything OCD related became my obsession. Then I went to a psychiatrist, and he brushed it off saying I only had bad anxiety. A really shitty therapist I was seeing at the time told me very rudely that I was only trying to justify my bad actions by blaming them on a possible disease. So I told myself to forget all about that previous nonchalant and catastrophic diagnosis, but still took my meds and went on. All was fine for a while, until it wasn’t. Because things never truly went away. I still couldn’t understand why I reacted to things the way I did, and how to make it better. I then started thinking I might have ADD – grasping onto anything that might explain my chronic procrastination, getting stuck in my head so intensely that I block everything out, and my need to move my hands (essentially picking at my skin). At this point, I’d been to other four psychiatrists. One of them only listened to me for like 5 minutes then told me I was really exaggerating and took me off my meds. I went through a really dark hole. After a while I got to another one, he listened intently, and finished it off with “I don’t believe in diagnosing people but you seem to be going through it”, and gave me another prescription. The third one followed that same line, but asked me to consult with a neuropsychologist. So there I went. 10 stupidly expensive sessions later, she tells me I’m too depressed for her to really assess if my lack of attention is really ADD. But, yeah, the tests indicate severe OCD. I thought it was funny at first – I mean, too depressed for a diagnosis, I guess –, then I was relieved. Ok, so it wasn’t all in my head. Then I was pissed. So, so pissed. Because for years and years on end no one had the guts to tell me what I’m convinced was very obvious to any trained medic. I mean, except for that first guy, who said it in a way that made it feel like he was telling me I had cancer then sending me off with some aspirins without even saying where the tumor was. For years, I’ve had so much pressure, from others and myself. That I could make myself less miserable, I just didn’t! Just stop hurting yourself, how hard can that be? Just stop obsessing over every little thing. For god’s sake, don’t apply enough insect repellent to get intoxicated or worry about every little bug around you until you’re unable to do anything except trying to get rid of them, what’s wrong with you? Just let go, be happy! Not to mention the crippling, ever-present GUILT for not being able to do so. For years. And even now, the doctor just told me the fact and sent me off. She never tried to discuss with me what part of my habits, feelings and thoughts might be OCD related, to the point where I still feel like I made it all up and one thing has nothing to do with another. Some part of me is relieved – there’s a reason for all of this. It takes me closer to embracing myself. Another part still feels like I was ditched in a dead end with no directions out. I have no idea what “type” of OCD I have and how to figure it out, and no one seems to care enough to try and help me understand. This was long and angsty, so thank you so much if you took the time to read my senseless rambling. Just desperately felt like I needed to share ♥️

I hope someone can respond... im genuinely struggling and i need support... I joined an OCD group three years ago that was from NOCD. There were minors in the GC, and when I was triggered by my hocd relating to stuff that was 18+, i vented about it to the GC and to some of the people in the pm's to a minors discomfort... my pocd says I engaged in P*dophillic behavior because of this... when i was just venting about my hocd... i dont ever want to ever be attracted to minors or kids at all... After doctor disrespect admitted to inappropriately messaging a minor my ocd is saying I did something similar to him and that I should be punished... I pm'ed and vented to several people in the gc about my 18+ hocd struggles, including a minor who felt uncomfortable about it... but i stopped venting to her... my pocd is saying I inappropriately messaged her and that im a P for this, when I only wanted to vent about my hocd struggles... i dont ever want to ever be a P at all... i dont ever want to ever be anything like that at all...

Hi guys I just shared my story recently and I’m scared. When I keep busy it’s a little better, but I feel really awful right now. I’m remembering what I said to my sister during our fallout from what I did and the result of it. Is making me really sad and scared. I found out she is also joining NOCD so I’m a little worried she will see my post and I realized I never said my “intrusive” thoughts were not true. What if she thinks I meant all of them, I don’t think a lot or even everything I said to her was even true it was practically all false and untrue intrusive thoughts but I can’t seem to totally trust myself on it since I feel like I’m just saying it because she might see this, but also I’ve been wanting to tell her it wasn’t true what I said and did. I feel a relapsing of emotions I want to go back and change it I hate my reality it’s good but I’m constantly reminded of what I did and I feel sick. How does one live with this change and move on when the person you love the most you push off the edge and now she drew boundary off of our relationship it is getting a bit better but it’s nothing like before we were so close we shared and told each other everything, I feel like I want to die and come back to everything back in the past to be different. How do I live like this…. She is doing it and I know it’s really hard and I know I’m victimizing myself but I wonder if I was even doing my best I wasn’t working on my techniques because I felt it didn’t work and I let go but I didn’t realize how bad it could be I mean that’s why I went back to therapy but even then I wasn’t working completely on it despite feeling like I did sorta. Was I doing the best I could then? I hope so but if that was my bets I feel like a loser. how do I go through my day and be excited for life when I feel so distraught and depressed. I need help so bad.

I’m just feeling so freaking upset. I’m constantly having to talk myself down from panic attacks and self-sabotage. I’ve suffered with the same theme(s) for YEARS at this point and I’m just done I’m just so sick of it. And, I’m so freaking scared for when me and my boyfriend get married and have children because I want children so bad but I can’t even be off my meds for a week let alone 9+ months (my medication can’t be taken during pregnancy). I’m also scared because I feel awful that my boyfriend will be “stuck” with me once we get married. My OCD wants me to confess my innermost (obsessive) thoughts and feelings to him. Reality is blurred, when I have these flare-ups I’m sick to my stomach worried I may have done something bad and I’m constantly ruminating on whether I did or not. I just want this feeling to leave, and knowing that this is a persistent theme that I may deal with for a much longer time just makes me want to cry. I’m so afraid of hurting my boyfriend or having already hurt him, and it’s the same with everyone else in my life. And, I am Catholic, and the sacrament of confession for me gives me so many mixed emotions because it’s healing for me but at the same time I have to be so careful of what I say so I don’t start confessing as a compulsion, but then afterwards my OCD tells me I’m just not confessing because I’m guilty and I know it. I’m so so sick of this. I didn’t sleep last night and I can tell I’m tired physically but emotionally I’m too anxious to rest so I took some Benadryl and maybe it’ll help me fall asleep. But I just maybe need someone to talk to on this post.

i feel like i’m faking everything, like ive read it all and my brain has mesmerised it completely. i first started struggling with feeling like i was faking it when my pocd episode started, i’d research pocd to see if what i was experiencing was similar or if i genuinely was one. i read something that said some people with pocd avoid children but i don’t do this. i don’t purposely put myself them around them but if my mum is going shopping i’ll go with her and my head will be screaming at me saying im going for different reasons. the other day i went my sisters and i was wearing kinda a mesh top and my head was telling me i can’t wear that because there will be children around and that i can’t expose that to them even though ive wore the outfit multiple times before without these thoughts, ive always taken my time with what i wear because it’s not often i go out so when i do go out even to the shop, i attempt to dress as nice as possible. i still wore the outfit and it convinced me it was for that. another thing ive read is that some people with pocd can’t say the p word but i can say it, i just chose not to. i started to not say that word after i had read that piece of information. it’s not a word i’d usually say before all of this anyway but if it was brought up in conversation i wouldn’t overthink it. another reason why i feel like i’m faking it all is because im not getting anxious or anxiety around compulsions, i don’t even know what my compulsions are technically. i don’t know if i don’t feel the anxiety anymore because i take medication for it or what. i just know i don’t feel anxious anymore. when i see people on here who i relate to, i can’t do the thing ive read again because otherwise i’ll feel like im just copying them? the post could be made today and ive been doing something for idk weeks beforehand and i’ll still feel like ive seen a post similar.

My brain constantly finds things I need to “confess”, to for example my partner. Things that are not relevant now, nor important in the present moment (it is for example something that I did 10 years ago). I get so stuck on these thoughts, and when I confess them there always pops another thought up that I obsess over and I feel the extreme urge to confess again and it gives me so much anxiety. Those confessions are all things I am ashamed of, or I judge myself on immensely. The anxiety stays till I confess it, then the anxiety calms down for a bit, only to flare up again with another thing I get stuck on. Is this a symptom of OCD? Is there anything that can be done about it?