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Can false memory make you have a theme that you did something bad and when you try to remember if you did you search for it and then something seems familiar and you think you might have done something sexual with someone years ago but you never thought about it till now??? I am so confused 😞 I feel like I would remember this very clearly.

So I’ve been in a pretty rough spiral/ocd spike for about a month now. I used to have this theme of being severely mentally ill or schizophrenic or psychotic and it went away for like 6 months and now it’s back full force. I have never hallucinated but I have this intense fear of what if I do. So with this theme I have these delusional thoughts that are just bizarre and I know how delusional they are but they feel so real and scary like I believe them. My body reacts by my stomach feeling uneasy and I’ll get a chill and just feel like I’m gonna be sick. Sometimes it doesn’t even have to be a thought per say.. it can just be a weird sensation or feeling and then I’ll become extremely anxious and borderline feel like I could panic. I can usually talk myself down from a full blown panic attack and but it’s just so distressing and I’m wondering if anyone else goes through this? I think it stems from a core fear of losing my family, ending up institutionalized away from my family and my family being devastated and judging me bc I “went crazy” please if anyone else can relate I’d appreciate any advice.

I’ve always had a feeling of having OCD but I’ve never been sure. I’m a teenager, and I’m hoping people on this app can help me try to figure out if I have OCD or I’m just crazy. Starting off with these terrible thoughts I have all the time. Someone can come home late and I immediately think they got into a car wreck, and check my phone for recent car crashes and other thing etc. etc. number 2, I always have intrusive thoughts, terrible ones ever since I was a kid I can’t control. I immediately feel like thinking these will lead god to hate me, and that he made an imperfection on me. And every time I try to hide these thoughts away, like right now they’re coming out I just can’t stop thinking of them and it’s so hard to do anything. Just thoughts like, “you hate your mom” or, “you hate god” and stuff that scares me like spiders. It’s hard to do anything with these thoughts. I’m also a major perfectionist, if anything is out of order I freak out. Yes, my room is messy. But I feel a sense of incompleteness and anxiety if I don’t empty the dishwasher, or don’t clean dirty dishes around the sink. These are recent and I feel like God will punish me for committing the sin of laziness. I also have a thing with the number 5, when I touch something it needs to be 5 times and if it’s not 5 times I freak out. I’m also terrified of getting sick, every time my friend is sick I freak out and don’t get near them the entire day, constantly washing my hands. Writing this is triggering a lot of my terrible thoughts and I don’t want to continue writing. Please let me know your thoughts, mental illness runs in my family but my mom is constantly telling me there’s nothing wrong with me. Maybe she’s right.

My OCD seems to take things way too literally and make reason out of everything. I’ll see something that sort of relates to the topic of my OCD and think it’s a sign that applies to me and think “well if it’s not true why did I see that then”. Lately I’ve been struggling with the fact that “everything happens for a reason”. I am a Christian and cherish my relationship with God very much. Because everything happens for a reason, does this mean that every time I see something related to my OCD God wants me to have these thoughts? I suffer with false memory OCD. Are these signs God telling me I actually did do something bad in my past or is this just OCD playing tricks on me. I’m just really confused because I know God does create coincidence. So am I seeing these things because I did something bad? Ugh OCD is so hard. I just feel like my brain is in a big scramble and I just can’t seem to make sense out of reality. My thoughts feel so real

i’m struggling so much with things that have happened in my past, especially in my childhood, things that i’ve done, the guilt and shame is too much and i’ve told my mum and she just thinks it was normal childhood things and part of growing up but i can’t let any of it go, my mind feels so messy, and some of the memories are blurry and it’s making me feel horrible and i’m so distressed i just want this to be over and im worried to talk to a therapist because of what they might say or think, can anyone relate?

I can’t even tell if my intrusive thoughts are real or not. Sometimes I feel like I want the thoughts or am just in denial and some of the actions I’ve done in my past, I can’t forgive myself for. I have Real Event OCD and I can’t forgive myself for my mistakes. I hate myself so much. I hate feeling like such a bad person all the time. My themes have also continuously switched and it feels like I have a new theme every few months. I’m so done with this and I don’t know what to do.

TW !!!!! i’m so scared right now and i just want someone to relate because i feel like an awful awful person, this is an event hat happned when i was 5 or 6 i don’t really know how old i was but i was a young child and with another child who was 2 or 3 years younger than me i can’t really remember the age gap but that’s what terrified me because im scared i did COCSA. ( child on child sexual assault) i feel awful and i have this recurring thought “what if i took advantage of him” and it wont stop. i remember i said to him do you want to see what sex is like and i said but keep your clothes on and he said okay and i want doing it for sexual pleasure because i dont think i really understood or knew what it was but i kept my clothes on and he took all his clothes off when i didn’t want him to (including his underwear)and he got on top of me and was moving and i remember feeling really uncomfortable so i stopped it and i know this might be tmi but i just need to know if i abused him or not because i cant stand the thought, im really struggling and i don’t think there was any evil intent behind what happened but i keep having the recurring thought “what if i took advantage of him” i don’t know what to do i feel like i should turn myself in to the police i feel dreadful

i have recently had really bad confession ocd. i have an amazing happy healthy relationship, and i’m slowly destroying it. now, it’s come as far as me confessing thoughts that i probably shouldn’t be having to him. i feel so much guilt and anxiety if i don’t tell him, but telling him is just ruining our relationship and hurting him. i don’t mean these thoughts, i love him and want only him. i also confess at least 5+ times a day. I struggle with not even knowing if some things im confessing that i’ve done in the past are real or fake. it’s like i don’t know if what i did was real or not. im trying my best to stop confessing, but it’s hard because how am i supposed to know if it’s something he really needs to know or not? i don’t wanna lose him by telling him stupid stuff i should have kept to myself. he’s my dream person. it’s hard to act normal around him when i’m having the urge to confess. that leads me to not hold it in when he asks if i’m okay, because then if i say yes i’m lying so then i have to confess. we are very open about things, but it just has gone too far on my end. if anyone has any tips on how to overcome this please share.

I did something 5-6 years ago when I was barely an adult, and I know it was stupid, but I know I can never take it back, and I hate myself everyday for it. I feel like I can’t move forward in life because I can’t forgive myself and honestly sometimes don’t even want people to see I exist. I haven’t done that same thing in years but I still see myself as a horrible person. How do I move forward. I’ve been in therapy since I was 19 and also have extreme extreme checking ocd and it hasn’t helped but this rumination has been a big problem lately.

I'm trying so hard to make progress with my ocd, and I have an awesome therapist who is helping me make more progress than I have in a long time, but life keeps giving me big helpings of stress, worry, frustration, and emotional turmoil. Today's helping is, my father took a fall today and is in the hospital with a fractured hip. My parents are older and their health is facing challenges, as it does for older people. I am not prepared to deal with this. My parents live 2 hours away from my, and my ocd has made it impossible for me to get to see them this past year. I know my time with my parents is limited, and my ocd mind f's are keeping me for making the most of the time I have with them. I can't begin to explain how much I want to curse the stars or whatever it is that has this pile of misery it keeps dumping on me. I'm really sick of life tormenting me.

So after ruminating on a memory for hours everyday for the last two months i stopped since I was getting quite confused. I was driving when I suddenly had this familiar feeling and then I had like a flashback and I recalled what ACTUALLY happened and this feels true but I’m unsure if I should trust it.

I’m going to rant while trying to be as concise as possible. I stopped taking my lexapro a few months ago because I truly felt like I had the coping mechanisms I needed, and I was tired of the vertigo I’d get if I forgot to take my meds for even a day. I got thru withdrawal symptoms and was doing SO well for over a month. Then I was triggered by an event relating to my past- I had a 10 year friendship end terribly in 2022. My OCD was telling me it all all my fault and that I was projecting all of my insecurities on the friendship- I know objectively that both of us were hurt, and both played a role in the friendship. I let the OCD win and compulsively apologized to my ex best friend, taking ALL of the blame for the friendship. I also said i wanted to reconcile, which is not true. She hurt me so bad, and I’ve never had as much peace as I have without her in my life. I only said that in a moment of not seeing the situation for what is truly was. She, however, was fine with me taking all the blame and said I clearly had “more clarity.” This has sent me into a spiral for the past MONTH where all I can think about is this. I feel like I’ve been sucked right back into the past. I’m also graduating in a month and I’m super busy with work right now. Everything has completely piled up and I’m so fucking exhausted. If anyone has compulsively taken all the blame in a situation where both parties are at fault, I’d love to hear your stories to know I’m not alone in this :( I scheduled a psychiatry appointment to get back on meds (not lexapro- I want to try something else because lexapro made me feel so numb). It just feels like no matter what coping mechanisms I do, nothing helps. I’ve tried just letting the thoughts sit without engaging; they persist. I exercise every single day, but all I can think about is this situation. I have regret for A. Reaching out in the first place, B. Taking all of the blame and C. Disrupting her peace by letting a compulsion drive me to reach out. I know that I hurt her as well and I’m disappointed that I let this reopen wounds for both of us. While it would be ideal for us to end on good terms, it’s not possible, and it was impulsive of me to reach out thinking that would be achievable. In her reply she stated that reconciliation was not possible. Throughout my friendship with her I felt as though my feelings were never validated. If I was upset, it was my fault for “misunderstanding her.” If I didn’t communicate being upset, it was my fault for not communicating. Now, I’m upset with myself that I gave power to her after having finally been free from that friendship and all of the pain that it caused me.

tw for mention of SA I've been really thinking back on something that happened to me as a child, and if it was the direct cause of my OCD. I'm not sure if OCD has any direct causes, but I think I know what triggered mine. As a child, at around 5, I was SA and I feel like it's what started it. I started getting my first intrusive thoughts soon after this happened and they mainly related to fears of it happening again or me doing it to other people. It kept progressing until where I am now. I feel really guilty because I don't know if I'd still have OCD today if it never happened. I know I was a child but I wish I could have fought back more and I wish I stopped it before it could happen I just feel so bad about everything and I feel like all my problems right now could have been prevented

Is it reassurance if I tell myself “if it happened the way you think it did then you would have remembered it without a doubt” the first part of my memory is real and when I first thought of it there was a feeling of shame attached. Now I’m been wondering if more happened or if i’m choosing to forget the horrible parts but I feel like if more happened then there would be shame attached to that too therefore i’d remember it.

Is NOCD super expensive? I told my dad I really need some help and he offered to help me find online therapy. I have looked at betterhelp a little bit nervous they can’t help me, has anyone used them? Any other recommendations. I have no diagnosis of anything and never been to a therapist so I don’t even know if this is actually OCD that I’m dealing with. I’m dealing with intrusive thoughts and images, ruminating a lot on the past and worried I was a really bad person in my teens without realizing. I don’t know where to go to find help, my father is paying so I don’t want his money to be wasted and I have no idea what to do.

i really need someone to help and just to clarify this happned when i was under the age of 7

I recently discovered that I have maladaptive daydreaming disorder which is common for people who have OCD. I was diagnosed with Pure OCD six years ago but I felt that there was something different about my condition. My compulsions were daydreams and fantasizing about changing past events. I would do this on a loop and this behavior could last for hours. Has anyone else discovered this about themselves?

My husband thinks he knows so much about OCD, like he’s an expert or something. I really struggle with confessing things with OCD, but any time I go to talk to my husband about something that actually happened and is not just a false memory, he doesn’t let me talk to him about it, but I just need him to know what happened. Of course, I know that I am probably blowing the thing that happened out of proportion, but how do I navigate this? He won’t let me talk to him about anything related to OCD really because he thinks I’m constantly “confessing” things to him.

I have a list of people I’ve “raped” or atleast think I’ve raped and it includes children back from when I was a childcare teacher and it’s killing me, i have these memories of these things happening and these flashbacks of maybe me hurting someone and I can’t tell what’s real and what my brain is making up. It physically hurts me to think I might’ve done these things and I can’t live with myself

Hi everyone,this is my first time here(Female),I was kind of skeptical at the beginning,this post will probably be long and I apologize for it,I’ll try to cut the chase as much as I can, So since I was 9 I had OCD,my first intrusive thought was about harming my self and it was extremely traumatizing for a child of that age,not to mention I went trough some other kind of traumas like the fact that I was sexually molested as a kid various times by the same person and really never talked about until i became an adult I kinda got a bit over it,of course with out realizing that it would become one of triggers with ocd and one of my biggest fears of becoming one (Pedo) along with Harm OCD,I started struggling with POCD 6 years ago,it has been a struggle like no other,I have a niece who I would avoid left and right,I also have nephew and I would also avoid him but for some reason it was mainly my niece for some reason,my toughts would get the best of me for days that turn into months and months into years that I would eventually do something totally inappropriate to harm her,at some point that toughts went away and I would feel great being around her and my other nephews,last year I started going trough some other kind of stuff in my life which made fall into deep drinking and smoking weed,this year i unfortunately had a very bad episode as an a couple of months now,where I was in a very dark place with my self and I was totally intoxicated from both substances,that night my niece spend the night at my house,I was super scared because my toughts triggered at 100 + times! It was the craziest trip ever in my life! I didn’t even wanted to enter my room knowing she was there and that I could totally do something inappropriate to her or that could harm her and more because my toughts wouldn’t stop triggering me telling me”do it! You know you want to do a compulsion on her,eventually your gonna do it one day” All kind of nasty scary intrusive thoughts crossed my mind,at one point I could tell the difference of an event that I would consider a hallucination,and I got into bed totally freaked out about it because at that point my mind cannot tell the difference of if I did or not acted on the thought,I can’t really recall much of that night I only somewhat remember getting up from bed(if it was even real) and getting close to her,that’s where my mind turn blank,I don’t know if it was because I went to shock,either my memory suppressed or in reality nothing happened,I totally blacked out and only remember bit to pieces and one of those was when she worked up totally freaked out! Asking for my sister and I told her she wasent here and she just went back to bed,that made me freaked out even more thinking “did I do something to her and can’t recall that moment cause I’m blacking out ?!” And then my next thought was”omg I did do something to her!” All that night I remember going to bed with an extreme anxiety,Hangxiety and extreme paranoia,I was in sweat and all night just thinking “she’s gonna say I did something to her,if I did something to her she’s totally going to say it!” Next morning she woke up just fine like nothing when I’m the one suffering in guilt and disgusted of my self and extreme fear to the point I been wanting to harm my own self because I can’t bare with the idea that I did something to her! I had to vent to a couple of family member and a few of my friends,everyone keeps telling me that out of logic if I “would’ve acted on the tought” she would’ve felt something or woke up but I’m not convinced at all by that,what if she was deep asleep and didn’t feel anything,what if I did do something and I just don’t want to accept it!? My worst fear has become my nightmare alive! Please help ! Has anyone experience this of any kind,I don’t judge I just want to be helped