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So I’ve never been diagnosed with ocd or adhd due to not getting checked out but I honestly think I have adhd I mean I have intrusive thoughts here and there and anxiety but the symptoms of adhd are there idk someone explain please

Good morning everyone I wanted to post because I’m having a huge setback. I was doing really well and I’ve been in OCD therapy for about a year now, but I’ve been having a big relapse and I’m having all these guilty feelings of not knowing how to explain urges that I had back when I was having really bad Intrusive thoughts towards my husband and now it’s like I still can’t seem to get over the fact that I could’ve or would have hurt him if I didn’t remove myself from the situation. I just feel like a horrible person and that I can never truly be content with myself cause I can’t understand my emotions at the time and I have fear of it happening again in the future.

I am in a contemplative mood this evening, and thought to reflect on my thoughts and feelings here for a while. Mmmm… the mind! Is it not fascinating? It can be so many different things all at once. Look at it from one angle, and you have peaceful rolling curves, like clouds. Completely neutral feelings, with maybe some noise ferrying back and forth a while, hardly mattering, but interesting… Look at it from another angle, and you see the burning white hot fury of ten thousand stars. Sharp, jagged thoughts, splintering out in bold and piercing javelins of hate. Adjust the angle slightly and you see passion and empathy instead… At a third angle I look at my mind and see a pale blue glacier rising out of the fog as a horrifying monument to sadness. Puts ice in your veins, doesn't it? Makes you feel nothing is worth trying, so might as well lay on the floor moaning. Ah, but I adjust the lens a bit and it is elevating me; it is a call to action; a clarification of my values; of what to do; and I go forward once the ice heals me sufficiently. Ah, and at this fourth angle there is… oh, fascinating! Fear. Yes, a great fear. A mortal terror. It's shaped like all of the worst things that could happen to me. Posturing at me like a many-eyed monster, every pupil filled with the promise that the worst will pass. And then another angle, I see a wounded animal. A starving creature who just wants to be fed. To feel okay. To not be in pain anymore. And then at another perspective, it is not really in pain at all, but only afraid that it might one day be. And then I look again and it is the neutral, cloud-like shapes again. Calm, and contemplative, and here right now in this moment. The only one that exists. So some soft shapes, and some sharp ones, some bold lines, and some blurry lines. Concave and convex. Kind of all at the same time at every different angle. Minds have a fascinating geometry, don't they? It never ceases to intrigue me how I can have so many different types of thought and feeling and emotion all the same time, many of them being even contradictory with each other! Do you ever visualize your mind like this? Not literally picturing your brain, but figuratively speaking; what does your mind look like? What colour is it? What is it shaped like? Does it resemble anything? Does it change form if you look at it for a long while? My own path with OCD demonstrates many different shapes. It's all very fascinating to me. thoughts can be lovely or terrifying. Or they can be lovely and terrifying at the same time. Or I can be terrified of how lovely they are, or in love with how terrifying they are. Sometimes all at the same time. And that's an example on just one axis. Those intrusive thoughts are shaped in such fascinating ways. It's so interesting how OCD can make the mundane and the ordinary suddenly feel strange and mysterious and overwhelmingly frightening! Sometimes I try to make the scarier shapes go away. Try to mold them. Try to change them! But I have found over time that I do not have to do that for them. Thoughts are just thoughts. I don't actually have to make anything more or less of them than what they already are. They come in and say hi, and I give them the space that they need, and then they eventually move on their way to wherever other shape they want to be. I mean, as an example, my mind was a ball of barbed wire when I started typing this message because I have been trying to cut back on screen time and in recognizing intrusive thoughts forming around that fact I decided to type this message out as an exposure. And that did things to me. Ah, but now it's changed shape again. Basically, if I stop running away from these frightful shapes of the mind, and just sit down and let them be; it always seems to turn out that they weren't really chasing me at all, and are actually just running in the same direction as me. Oh, they're frightening, don't get me wrong, but they eventually dissipate into different shapes and such, and they part ways with me as I sit with the discomfort. All of their own accord. The thing that matters is that I didn't have to run for that to happen. You ever been running? It's hard! I'll just chill out and let the thoughts run themselves around, if it's the same to you! And so such is the reflection and teh exposure. Ah, a typo there. Many fascinating shapes… well, I'm going to go now. Do have a pleasant time now! Good vibes to you all. ^-^

Hi guys, Last night I was playing a video game and it got pretty intense. I ended up winning the game but got anxiety. Then I had some thought about “What if the anxiety lasted forever?” And I forgot the exact if I do this or don’t do this, then it will last forever statement I told myself. So I have had the worst anxiety since then. So of course I am telling myself my OCD has became true. I am trying to practice ERP but it is hard. I feel like I can’t do this.

The day before last night easy off was sprayed on the surface on a stove and inside the oven. I put food i was eating in the next room so that it doesn't get contaminated. I was told the smell also entered the room but I wrapped up the crackers I ate as much as I could. Looking back on it, I don't see how it could've gotten in crackers, because they were closed pretty tightly by twisting the paper inside. Last night I ate a few of those crackers because someone else did and they seemed to be fine. I ate them and the first thing I noticed was being sleepy but that was from not really sleeping a whole lot of hours and I only took a 3 hour or so nap. Today I'm noticing this sensation in my throat and I don't know if it's OCD or not. I also noticed that I've been having very light burps. I keep researching this again and again and I keep getting results that say the food could have been contaminated (although it didn't taste or smell any different) and that I need to call poison control center immediately. Is this OCD or should I actually call this number? I've had this happen before thinking I ingested paint chip and that I was going to die if I didn't wake up from sleep that following night. It's the same for these but I don't know if it's real or not. The person that are the crackers were fine but I keep getting these sensations and feelings that something is wrong

I’m dealing with something really specific related to my OCD, and I’m hoping someone here has gone through something similar. My main trigger is trash day. I constantly worry something important was thrown away so when trash day happens, my anxiety spikes very bad. I’ve been working with my therapist and actually did an exposure today that left me already feeling raw. The problem is that I moved my mother in with me about a year ago due to her declining health, but she constantly questions me about everything I do…. especially when I step outside or move around the house. She doesn’t understand my OCD, and every time she says things like, “Where are you going?” or “What are you doing outside?” it sends my anxiety through the roof. Even tonight she texted me to “remind” me that tomorrow is trash day, which completely derailed my whole evening. I know she doesn’t fully get why this is so triggering, but the constant questioning makes the exposure work so much harder. It feels like I’m always being watched or judged, and I end up spiraling. I’m 33 years old, and I’ve lived independently since I was 18…. so being questioned like this makes me feel suffocated. I don’t need a parent, but I feel like I’m being treated like a child. On bad days, the anxiety gets so high that it feels dangerous, and I hate that something so small can hit me so deeply. My husband has been really supportive lately, and I’m thinking about asking him to talk to my mom because I honestly can’t keep handling this on my own. Has anyone else experienced family members unintentionally making your OCD worse by constantly questioning or commenting on your behavior? How did you deal with it? Did you ever have to set boundaries or have someone else intervene on your behalf? Any advice, similar stories, or even just reassurance would really help right now.

18+ please I've been following the genocide in Gaza for the past 3-ish years now and thought it was important to see the horrific things that my government and governments across the world fund and approve of. I've seen a lot of disturbing things, including dead bodies, because again I thought it was important to be aware of the crimes committed by my government, I never went out of my way to view these things of course, I just followed accounts that would post about Israel's crimes but I unfollowed them because they were triggering me a lot more recently, I feel awful for this but I couldn't stop panicking and having basically every OCD symptom everytime I saw something disturbing and some of the images were of malnourished kids in nothing but diapers that made me incredibly uncomfortable. I realise this is in an effort to document Israel's crimes against humanity but I really really hated seeing these images and the intrusive thoughts and groinal responses they caused and I was reminded of this when someone retweeted a fundraiser onto my feed and the person posted an image that made me incredibly uncomfortable of presumably their malnourished kid just wearing a diaper so I didn't retweet it but then that made me feel just as bad for ignoring a family in need so I went back to the post and didn't look at the image but retweeted it but now again, I'm panicking and don't know what to do, I want to help these people but I feel disgusting for retweeting the image even though I think it's my OCD that's making it weird but I just want it to stop

Today, I was asked to hang out by my friends. I’d usually say yes even if I did not have the energy. But today, I said no after a busy weekend! I usually people please because I have a little voice in my head that says “if I don’t continuously hang out, they will stop being friends with me.” It’s one of my biggest OCD themes since I was a kid. I am friends with a lot of people who gain their energy from being around others. I am not one of them and have limited “spoons” that I am trying to protect for once! I am very proud of myself. My brain wandered for a bit but then I have come out of it feeling my growth! Yay!! 🎉

I was going share a soda with my fam member. I do not usually drink soda but i decided to say yes today. I randomly got a thought while waiting for her to bring a can that said "this kinda reminds me as if you were to withhold doing the deed (inappropriate) and you finally said yes and shes all excited" I was about to say no to the thought bc it gave me anxiety. I felt a deep pit in my stomach that felt very uncomfortable but felt no pleasure, no arousal, no happiness, but it confused me bc it felt weird bc no panic and i was trying to figure out what it meant. Then i said "wait no. I do like this thought. I want to keep thinking this in the future and would miss it if it leaves." And it felt like i meant it but when i said that answer it ALSO felt wrong and i felt confused and nervous. Then ocd said "you sexualized her. You want to keep doing that in the future. You literally just admitted it. You also admitted you are attracted to her." And i immediately started to spiral bad and regretted saying that. Why did i say that?! Like 6 hours i was doing all sorts of compulsions and crying and having panic attacks and trembling. And then all night I was awake and couldnt sleep. I felt so guilty, like why did I agree with that thought for a few seconds? It wasnt an intrusive thought when **I** said "no wait i do like it?" But it still felt wrong and confusing and i was nervous bc I still felt the pit in my stomach! Did I sexualize her??? And do i want to think of her in thay way? Am i attracted to her??? Im so scared its all I can think about and I cant eat, sleep, or think about anything else!

I have done some pretty weird and messed up things throughout my life. Some just because I grew up I guess a little weird and traumatized and some were compulsions for OCD or to relieve anxiety or stress. All of these i consider mistakes. I have a new boyfriend and a part of me gets reminded of often of these weird things I’ve done and I feel like I need to confess them to him or that means I’m hiding a really bad part of myself. Some of these things I consider disturbing. I have confessed them to people before and they don’t look at me different, but I don’t want to feel like I have to confess, but I don’t know how to feel like I shouldn’t have to.

Hello, I am currently taking 50mg of Zoloft daily and have been for the last 2 weeks. I will be upping to a much higher dose in the future but am wondering if anyone prescribed this has noticed improvements with ocd symptoms, im trying to have hope but I’ve heard bad story’s with Zoloft and have been obsessing over if it will harm me more than good.

I'm stuck right now because I saw a video of this streamers talking abt cheetas mating. I immediately saw the image of a conceptual intercourse and it felt automatically attractive. I do not want to have s&x with a cheetah. I've never seen the private area of a cheetah. I've ruminated during that episode and tried to imagine the private area of an adult cheetah or lioness and for some reason it felt automatically arousing. This is not like POCD, in those case i knew those sensations were egodystonic and not real. This one felt real in a genuine sense, but short. Like it felt in an abstract sense, in the isolated decontextualised mind, that a cheetah or a lioness was attractive, and so would be the private area automatically, that's what i experienced in a brief moment. I'm afraid that i might have had such feelings when i was young in the past, because it didn't feel out of nowhere. It felt concerningly within me. Help.

I know that the only solution to OCD is to stop the loop by stopping the compulsion. However I have pur O OCD and I want with all my soul, all my being, all my will, to stop doing what is keeping up the loop. But I have no idea of what compulsion is keeping this going ? All I know is that once I remember "I will die one day. And everyone will die one day" it is over, my mind is going to torture me every single second with thoughts about it and that I am going to have horrible anxiety every single second to the point of literal torture for a whole entire year with no break.

Hi to everyone, I want to share with you my actual situation. I'm 26 and I've been diagnosed OCD 2 years ago. Now I'm doing therapy once a week and I'm starting ERP but I'm still struggling. It seems to me that I'm not reaching anything in life... I'm an aspiring tattoer, but I'm extremely afraid to apply as an apprentice in a shop; I mean that I worry about what could happen and so the anxiety increases till nervous breakdown. I also have many intrusive thoughts about another tattoo I would like to do and for this reason I'm avoiding it. Theese fears makes me question about my identity till crisis. I still live with my mother and I work only 3 days per week: I'm really ashamed of it. I feel so isolated and blocked.. Depression is another issue and my mom doesn't tolerate it; so she repeats to me that I have to find another job to feel better. I don't like my self and I hate how I'm living... I hope I don't disturb anyone. I'm not seeking reassurences; I'd just like to read your opinion.

I can't anymore! The anxiety is so bad my hands are trembling and I felt like throwing up. I feel like i admitted something. I felt like I agreed! Me and my fam member were gonna share a soda. I dont normally drink soda, so my fam member was excited and happy. I got a random thought that said that this thought is like when people withhold doing the deed with their partners and that she was acting like an excited bf and that i was basically acting like that with her but in terms of sharing soda. I felt anxiety in my gut but it felt confusing. I was about to say no like normal but then I voluntarily said "yknow what? I like it. Im going to think this in the future and ima miss the thoughts" idk why I said that but i think i meant it but something made me feel uneasy and like my stomach was still hurting from anxiety... but I rmemeber i was questioning the anxiety in my gut bc I thought that it was pleasure. I was confused about it and said that. But I felt like I said something wrong. And literally moments later I regretted having said that and started to spiral especially when ocd said I sexualized them and wanted to keep sexualizing her. I have been spiraling for 6 hours nonstop! And im trembling rn and I was crying. I had a panic attack. Is this still ocd?! Did I sexualize her???

Sometimes I feel incredibly sad and lonely. That I can never speak about the things I’m struggling with. I’m scared to be judged. Scared that people won’t believe in me and tell me what I’ve gone through isn’t that serious or important. I can’t just “suck it up and move on”, that’s not who I am and never going to be me. I just what there was someone that I really could be 100% honest with. Even my closest friends will never be close enough, I’ll always be hiding a part of myself. I am never fully me, and I’m not sure that I want to be, just don’t know how much longer I can put on a mask before I begin to let it all spill out. OCD has ruined me. My entire life, could’ve been so different if I didn’t feel so sick in the head. My relationships. My achievements. Everything. I’m tired of it all. I want to be normal but I’m not. I’m just upset.

Adults only I have a very bad porn addiction and I relapsed to ai generated content of celebrities and I've been looking up so many things about the legality of it and there are posts saying it's both legal and illegal and I can't forgive myself for having this go this far. When I was a teenager sexual photoshopped pictures and gifs exist and I watched a lot of those thinking it was okay but I don't think it was okay now. I think I've really messed up and I feel like an absolute disgusting monster. I've even seen this be done in wrestling games and for some dumb reason it didn't bother me The laws are so confusing I just don't know what to believe but the point is I feel so much shame and distraught over this awful addiction. Apparently deepfakes are legal under the first amendment as long as they aren't spread for misinformation. I just don't know but I also no longer want sex in my life I know there's a stretch but all it's ever done is make my life worse and worse A lot of people say it's legal to keep to yourself but illegal and very back to distribute but I've never ever tried to create this stuff using real people, I've only tried once using a fictional character who is middle aged Then I read there was a law only criminalizing uploading, creating, and sharing ai generated celebrity content but not exactly the viewing

Hey everyone I’m looking for advice/ support from anyone else who may be going through or experienced something similar. This may be a long post so thank you to whoever actually reads it all x So recently (a few months ago) I started looking into OCD as I learnt what it really was, and a lot of it resonated with me. An example is when I was younger I struggled a lot with obsessing over god and became extremely religious at the age of 7 leading to extreme praying every night and feeling this immense weight of being a good person and I needed to pray to make sure I was. I don’t struggle with this anymore but as I have looked more into OCD there is so many things I experience that I have thought are normal or just my anxiety or ADHD. I regularly cancel out my horrific intrusive thoughts with ‘good’ thoughts to make sure I’m not a terrible person and I want to do or think those things. I have an extreme obsession with being a good and morally right person, so much so that I have had to quit my job (I am still in school) as I was so terrified that if I went I would say or do something and people would view me as a bad person. The same thing happened at school, I barely ever went and if I did it was usually after a panic attack. This was also caused by feeling like if I went something bad would happen to my family at home and I would be responsible because I wasn’t there. Every night I have to ruminate and step through every thing I may have said or done that could make me a bad person and it usually ends it lots of ‘what ifs’ or ‘maybe i did something terrible and i just forgot’. I have tried opening up to my mum (i am only 16) and i had a therapist who specialised in OCD for a few sessions but it was online and i hated it. It is so clear to me that my mum doesn’t think I have it. Every behaviour that i say could be OCD she always says it could just be ADHD which just sends me into a further spiral of ‘i am a bad person because im lying and i dont really have OCD’ so now I can’t talk to anyone about it over this constant thought that i am lying. Even when I was 7 at a psychologist they said I had OCD tendencies but she brushed it off as my anxiety. She tells me she doesn’t know enough about it to understand why I think I have it but she’s not doing anything to learn more. I have sent her numerous articles and things I resonate with but she never reads them. Even with the OCD therapist we did a assessment/ form thing where I filled out how much I related to the OCD symptoms and my mum did one how much she thought I related to them. I scored super high on it for OCD symptoms and she literally said she didn’t think I related to more than one or two. That led me to learn about pure O ocd as a lot of my compulsions are in my head or not seen. Some examples are repeating certain numbers or phrases to cancel out intrusive thoughts in my head, avoidance of events where I could do something wrong or bad, struggling making even the smallest decisions over fear it wont be the ‘right’ one, constant worry over if im not ‘perfect’ (perfect grades, morals, behaviours)that im not adhering to the invisible moral code that determines if im good, frantically googling for hours what my intrusive thoughts mean and if they are thoughts a bad person has, signs I am a bad person, am I a psychopath etc. Another thing that has been happening recently thats more visible is i absolutely HAVE to speak out if one of my family members says something that I see as mean or morally incorrect and its like this guilty by association thing and it makes me spiral as I feel that it is my responsibility to make sure that they are good people too (i know it sounds crazy). It has led to a big argument with my mum where she yelled at me for being too “self-righteous” and thinking im “better than everyone because i have morals and that everyone else who is worse than me” and that she is sick of my lectures about her being “too mean” or a “bad person”. Honestly i didnt even know how to react to that. I felt so guilty because I know I do that I know I know but I know the guilt will consume me either way. It is honestly consuming me and I just wish for a day where I’m not policing every thought and behaviour of mine. Sorry for that very long rant but hoping that someone can give their thoughts if they have gone through the same thing or have any advice for what to do ❤️❤️❤️

Was anyone's OCD triggered by a specific event? I keep replaying this one moment where I just suddenly stopped in my tracks at a comment. The day before this happened, I had a difficult conversation with my boyfriend -- it was on my mind, maybe I was already stressed which set off a 9-month long flare up? Before this, I was on top of the world with the best couple years of my life.

Hey y’all, I’m gearing up for the OCD Super Bowl for me aka thanksgiving and Christmas lol. I have a TON of ocd thoughts surrounding food especially when that food is cooked by other people. Combine that with the fact that the holidays line up with cold and flu season and it makes the perfect recipe for an OCD disaster for me. I really wish my brain wasn’t like this because I want to enjoy the holidays and spending time with family but all I want to do is lay in my bed in the dark. What is your guys’ “OCD Super Bowl”?