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I'm 32 and was diagnosed a few weeks ago. It's been really hard to accept how much of my life has been affected negatively by OCD and the paranoia and anxiety that comes from it. Just sad about it.

Hello all. I (20 y/o female) have an intrusive thought that popped up about four months ago and has not been able to leave my head ever since and it is ruining my life. I have a memory (?) of when I was about 7-9 years old (although I really have no idea and my brain has told me varying ages even going up a few years) when I was in the shower and turned around to see my dad popping his head in the curtain to (realistically) either check on me or try to scare me as a prank. He is the most wonderful father and has never done anything inappropriate aside from this “incident” but my brain cannot let this go and is trying to convince me that this was sexual. I have always been a “daddy’s girl” but some days I cannot even speak to him on the phone because this fear that I was somehow abused is so deep in my brain. I’ll have days where I can reasonably tell myself that even if this did happen, he did not see it as inappropriate because I am his little girl, but other days it will disgust me to no end. I’ve brought it up with him once when my thoughts were at their worst but he said he didn’t even remember it happening. My brain will randomly go “hey, think about this–you’re a victim” through out the day and it’s like my whole body will shut down, my face gets hot and my heart starts beating faster and I just feel like all of the joy has physically been sucked out of my body. It often leaves me in a depressive episode. I can’t even fathom going to therapy out of the fear of my therapist telling me that this really was concerning behavior on behalf of my dad and I don’t think I could handle that. A little while back I posted this on a subreddit and someone in the comments said “this doesn’t give me a good feeling…. But it could have been innocent if you say so” and I haven’t been able to forget this. It send me into a total tailspin, if someone from an outside perspective says it’s weird then it must be??? Ever since this thought has popped up I can’t act normally. I sometimes can’t even watch movies that have dads in them because it makes me think of it, any time I hear a sex joke my skin crawls and god forbid anyone make a “sweet home Alabama” joke around me. I’ve never seen anything online about people who have experienced this too which just makes my worry so much worse. I’ve experienced OCD symptoms since early childhood however never anything like this which makes me even more scared that it is real. I truly don’t know what to do with myself anymore, every day just feels like the precious minutes I have between the times this thought pops up.

Does anyone think we are Selfish for worrying so much about our problems. Or is this jus my ocd?

How do you know the difference between OCD thoughts and Intellectual conflicts that anybody could go through? especially if you're someone who loves philosophy and morality delimmas? and also as a young adult who experience a quarter life crisis and/or identity crisis and struggle with changing and growing up, How do you know if what hitting you OCD or something of those?

When my intrusive thoughts get bad and I try my hardest to push them out it feels like I’m physically straining my head, like it legitimately hurts really bad and I feel like I get dizzy and can’t think and I can’t stop focusing and then my ocd causes me to think that there’s something wrong with my brain and that I need surgery or to be lobotomized or something crazy like that, does this happen to anyone else?

I have had soocd for 5 years and it impacts me all day everyday every minute. I’ve read that some people only have it 1-2 times a month or for like two seconds a day and it scares me that I don’t have ocd. Because mine is legit constant and so scary

Why is my brain telling me that I wouldn’t mind being a p, that I could live with it and be fine with it, and I am really a p because my situation is too unique…. I didn’t agree with it but I allowed myself to think about this, and it just made me feel like I did agree to it. I’m worried that I’m lying to myself, I really don’t want to turn to into this person, my WHOLE LIFE i was attracted to older people and never ever felt this way until now (false attraction) it makes me so convinced and it puts me in a dark space. It’s hard to think right now.

So I’ll be watching callout videos and I’ll get these sorta intrusive thoughts and feelings as if I’m defending or sorta wishing the allegations weren’t real… why? I don’t know…. Is this an effect of ocd? I don’t actually agree with a single action these losers do and like this has to be a new intrusion cause before my reaction was pure hatred and frustration… Honestly I’m extremely uncomfortable with the way my brain views these callouts…. I don’t agree with my brain but it feels like my own thoughts….

+18 TRIGGER WARNING I’ve been trying not to post as much on here, but it’s been a rough time facing these thoughts on my own. I’ve been trying to force myself to move on and not take my thoughts so seriously but it’s hard not to sit with them. Basically, to try to cope, I’ve been watching expose videos on internet drama and those who have been “cancelled”. Sometimes, though, it can just get to be too overwhelming as I start comparing myself with the people in these videos and I just want to cry because I’m just so disgusted with myself. I’m starting to question what’s real or not, if I’ve hurt people in the past or not, and separating my thoughts from my actions. I don’t trust myself anymore. I can’t find happiness in anything. I just keep pushing my friends and family away because every little thing triggers me. Sleep is the only time that I can find peace. Because then, I know that I’m not hurting anyone—including myself.

So I started using tampons but I don’t know how to insert right yesterday I was wearing one and it felt super uncomfortable so I took it off like 2 hours later and today I did it again and but took it off by the like the 5 minutes or 10 max because I seen that if you wear it wrong you could get TSS and I took it off and now I’m worrying because I seen that you could get TSS from taking out dry tampons so from that I was so worried and stressing I always take Magnesuim glycinate at night 400mg and today thinking I was gonna take another one I don’t know why I took that one I took it again at 12 pm and last night I took it like at 10pm now I’m scared something is gonna happen to me or I’m gonna die or od of it which it’s possible and I’m feeling cramps from the Magnesuim but I’m also on my period which makes it 10x worst ugh I’m very stressed I don’t know what to even worry about because I know you could also get cramps for TSS and back pain and I’m getting it ugh guys idk what to do I’m so overwhelmed

How do I not allow my ocd to steal the joy out of all of my most joyful moments right now. I know I should pray more for God to help me see the good and peace these amazing situations bring, but I just can’t get this pit out of my stomach. I get angry easily and have a short temper, I hate it. My boyfriend has been so patient with me but although he says it’s okay and he understands it’s still something I don’t want him to be on the receiving end of… Please help. Any and all advice is appreciated, please be nice💕

So anxiety wise I had been doing so well. I wasn’t as bad as I had been in the past. My ocd stems from the fear of going crazy or developing schizophrenia. About 2 weeks ago I had something odd happen where I woke up and was getting ready for work and I had been seeing this zig zag thing in my eyes and then I couldn’t talk or type anything everything was jumbled. My boyfriend realized and I was able to tell him we need to go to the hospital. In the car on the way to the hospital I started feeling tingling in my right arm that spread to my fingertips. The whole time this has been happening I have a headache that I would score 2/10 nothing crazy. At the time I wasn’t sure if I had insurance or not but was under the impression I didn’t because I had just quit my part time job and was working PRN, I got stroke alerted at the hospital and they did a CTA and EKG and everything came back negative. The doctors told me they recommended an MRI to rule out a TIA but they didn’t think that it was one due to my age etc. due to the fact that I thought I didn’t have insurance I turned it down. The following day I was able to get my PCP to order me one and figured out my insurance situation and got the MRI done which also came back negative. My anxiety now is that what if I did have a TIA (mini stroke) and it’s just not showing on a scan because they self resolve so sometimes they don’t show up. What is worrying me is I’m not taking anything because they don’t think it was a TIA and they believe it was a complex migraine. I’m so anxious all the time hyper aware of every symptom I have. It’s been almost 2 weeks and I’m just so scared all the time.

Does anyone else feel like they have to video/have constant surveillance on what they're doing every second of every day so they can review it later if they need to? Ever since December, whenever I'm not in my room, I feel like I have to video everything to review later just so that I have proof for myself that I didn't do anything bad/touch something contaminated/miss a step in one of my routines. I almost never look at the videos again afterwards but I feel like I can't delete them so now I have thousands of videos on my phone of whenever I'm not in my room and I'm running out of space and concerned about what to do next :(

it got bad once again.. im so tired

I have had so many different types of unpleasant and unwanted thoughts and I believe the worst of them all started in 2019, I'm only 16 and I know a lot of people on here are adults, but I was around 10 or 11 when I started getting my first fears in my brain or like the worst of them, because even when I was around 5-8 and and maybe even beyond that I used to question if bad things were going ti happen to me because I saw bad things happening to other people on the TV. Anyways, 2019 I remember coming home from a place and it was fine when I was there but when I came home I had the thought of "what if I was still there" I shouldn't really bring it up because if I've feared it before I feel I'll trigger myself to fear it again 😭 but yeah, I'm not fully sure how long it lasted but I believe it was months and had the thought about different places I had been, basiy my mind was trying to make me think and feel these unpleasant thoughts, and even thinking of them as of right now isn't the best lol, but I just wanted to talk about all the different intrusive thoughts I have had are. After that one went, I believe I was okay, at the end of 2020, literally on the new year, I started spiralling so bad, I was 12 I believe, and I was putting on all my social media stories "happy new year" even like days after because I felt the need to keep doing it, or my brain would tell me "it's not 2021 if you don't do this" like blah blah blah, and it all started first because I was anxious and that "I had to" post "happy new year everywhere" unless it wasn't the new year, I basically went crazy with it, and it lasted a while, until the 21st because I was like yeah 21 is now a lucky number because of 2021, but I literally went to the extreme of messaging everybody it basically everywhere even days after, probably the worst one I've had but yeah 😭 After that I was fine for the whole year, 2021 was really good for me, and then maybe around the start of the next year I started a new obsession and anxiety literally based off of anxiety and I had no idea why it was sticking around, and I'm glad I know now. In 2022 some girl was rude to me or something and I probably cried 2 hours straight afterwards because of it and she wasn't aware, but teachers helped but yeah whatever, few days after or soon I was fine and didn't think about it much or at all, and then one day when I'm in the car coming home from somewhere aswell my brother starts talking to me about school and how somebody else said "they don't associate with me" like I honestly had no idea why they all turned 2 faced to me because I never did or said anything wrong but yeah 😭 but that brought up that other memory of what a different girl had said to me and I started worrying about that because I was like "oohhhh I just forgot about that" and then I'm not sure if it picked up slowly or fast, but regardless, that person's name was stuck in my mind and ruminating around my mind for months, I was anxious whenever I thought about it so it kept coming back, I genuinely think my brain got so tired and annoyed it just gave up in the end, but that's just proof that your mind can worrying about literally anything, like anything. After that was over, 2023, last year now I only had mild usual OCD unless I actually had an OCD that I never knew I had to do with relationships. I'll keep it brief because I know this has already been long, but I like my friend who was a boy and let's just say he didn't like me back, I would gaslight and convince myself that he did even when he was just being friendly, even tho sometimes I felt like his other friends wouldn't be doing certain things we do, but yeah, I used to worry about what he was doing with who and would get so jealous to the point where I was literally thinking or unaliving the other people who he would talk to or hang out with, and I had lost people who were my friends before because I got too jealous, I stopped talking to him tho because it was getting absolutely nowhere and he started acting weird and hanging out with people who don't like me because I wasn't speaking to the other people, so I basically just left, but I don't have to see him anymore anyways, we had good times tho, but yeah if someone has got this far and you know, tell me if you think or know that that's an OCD too, like relationship OCD or something. Now 2024, I would say it's kinda been everywhere, but the start of the year has been good and only recently it's been affecting me bad again, since June, after I had finished my exams, I thought to myself on the night of me finishing my exams "ahhh~ I don't have to worry about anything anymore" and it was like 3 and a half months break aswell, so I was like over the moon, and guess what, my brain starts to think and worry again. There has been so many topics this year but I'll express the main ones. It's basically been my brain to worry about anything I can, anything that is possible. So the first one that made me loose my mind and panic for days and also make me loose sleep was one about a person again, also a person that I have never associated myself with I had literally just seen them and thought that I didn't want to think about that and then I did basically and spiralled bad, anyways next one after that was about just being super or hyper aware like "think everytime to see a colour or a shape or focus on your breathing or blinking" stuff like that, stuff I couldn't avoid basically, they didn't get too bad but you get what I mean hopefully lol, and now this one that has been new, about numbers and rituals, they were more manageable and quick to "end" aswell, but the one I have of current is long because it's like worry that I keep doing more, like to be real, I simply do not care for any of the thoughts I have but I just feel I do, it's seriously just the anxiety tho, because earlier my mind cleared for a brief moment and I was looking and thinking about the situation with no judgement and being like, yup, kind of like thinking about it as it happened ages ago and that I wouldn't go back to it kind of feeling, but yeah I think it wants to stay maybe a little longer, but no panic attacks today, that's all I can say. Also anyone who has read the whole thing, my heart goes out to you, if you are panicking right now, I've been there, it sucks I know, but you will find peace eventually. If anyone relates or has anything similar to share that would be great to hear, and any advice too, even tho I'm fully aware of all techniques my brain isn't getting the hint 😭 But yes thank you for reading it all if you have gotten this far, here is a cookie ->🍪 Byyeeee I love youuu, remember you are capable of doing so much and I am here for you 🫶🏻🩷

I genuinely feel like this is the worst my ocd has ever been. I logically have no reason I’d want to harm myself. Great family, friends, job, low expenses at the moment. Not going through a loss. Feels like all day my brain is kicking the shit out of me telling me I need to kill myself or I should. Intrusive feelings and urges galore. Also so wrapped up in it that I’m unsure if it’s ocd or my own thoughts / I want them or not. Normally I’m the guy terrified to get on a plane because I’m afraid of death so this simultaneously makes no sense but also feels so real?? It feels like this is my fate now or something Any insight welcome

I’m spiralling this week. My mind feels like a catalogue flicking through chapters of my life and finding bits to pick on. I’m doubting lots of different actions or events over the years and worrying if these mean I’m a terrible person. I know this is ocd but the fact they actually happened is making it really really hard to deal with. Can’t wait for this episode to pass but already scared for the next flare up as this is happening more often. Any advice welcome 🙏

Hello everyone. So, basically every time I feel any kind of peace/pleasure (simple ones, like hmm today I’m enjoying a song, I felt good with my sleep, etc) my ocd tries to convince me something is wrong and then I get anxious because I was feeling good. It’s so messed up. Anyone been through this?

I’ve completed 11 sessions so far and I can honestly see progress. I’m not back to my “normal” self but I’m gaining parts of my life and my personality back. I never knew I had OCD. I always attributed things to anxiety. Being diagnosed let me know I’m not alone, I’m not crazy, and that there’s help for me. I have a long list of OCD subtypes. As you can imagine, the thoughts and images in my head were extremely distressing and I was concerned for my quality of life and my sanity. 11 sessions in and I’m able to watch shows and movies without being scared I’ll see a trigger, I can practice exposures and navigate through my obsessions better, and I’m finding joy in the little moments in life. I used to avoid so many things and people because I was scared I’d have intrusive thoughts. I still struggle with intrusive thoughts every single day. Some days and even weeks are bad and I struggle more than usual. I have mood swings, extreme irritability, and even sometimes experiencing depersonalization. Sometimes I just plain out feel uncomfortable and weird. But like my therapist said, progress is not linear. I’m learning to count my wins instead of always counting my losses. I’m learning to enjoy the little bits of life that are ok, and I feel proud when I get through hard moments. I’m excited for the future. I’m excited to see how much I progress. Sometimes I’m still scared but I know that’s my OCD trying to get me to quit because we both know this ERP therapy is helping. If you’re struggling, please seek help. It does get better. I wanted to quit after doing my first exposure. I’m so happy I didn’t. And on hard days when I want to give up, I know this is what I’m supposed to be doing to help myself.

Hey guys, I had a thought or something I was doing that had a negative impact on me. Now I have anxiety because I cannot remember what the heck it was! I was doing so good until now. Now I have anxiety and am scared!