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Why do intrusive thoughts feel so real? I sometimes fear it isn't OCD and I actually do feel/think those things and it causes me immense distress.

Lately my ocd has shown back up big time. I’m coming close to the end of my pregnancy and my hormones typically really affect it. Currently living in the existential/ harm themes and fear of developing psychosis and going to hurt my loved ones! Questioning if things are real too which then makes me even more anxious because I think I’m slipping into psychosis! Anyone else experience this? Just not the headspace I want to be in before birth

I’m going through what is hopefully just a really bad hypochondria episode where I’ve convinced myself I have schizophrenia. It’s been about 8 months and I’ve been through a range of crazy symptoms but the most prevalent symptom is getting crazy delusional thoughts like “what if my wife is a demon and trying to get to me” “what if nobody is real and these are all monsters/demons out to get me” etc etc. the thoughts are absolutely terrifying and they make me look at people differently, and i have to question myself whether I truly believe the thoughts or not, they feel so real, when they come on I almost catch myself genuinely feeling paranoid that they are 100% real and having a panic attack, but then the tiny bit of me that’s still rational brings me back to reality. And from then on I have to question myself all day “do I really believe this?” “Well you technically can’t disprove those things” “if it’s not real, then why does it FEEL real?” “This really is schizophrenia” “ what if it’s not schizophrenia but ACTUALLY real?” “who do I go to for help?” “What if I can’t trust anyone” and the scariest of them all…”why would a see a doctor if this is all real” etc, it’s literally hell. I can never give a satisfying “No, I don’t believe this” to these thoughts. I can go days and weeks and be able to confidently shrug them off and tell how ridiculous they are only for them to come back with a vengeance the next day. I could really use some reassurance even though I know it’s bad. I have never been like this before until I started obsessing over schizophrenia. I’ve been like this for 8 months now.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

Anyone out there who fears legal punishment due to real event false memory that actually sought help? How do you look for help if you feel you don’t deserve it? I think I’m going to make an appointment but this is what’s stopping me.

i don’t know if this could be my ocd playing into it but recently my dad just turned 60 and for the past 3 days i’ve been thinking about how my parents aren’t gonna be around forever and it’s making really anxious and sad, i keep questioning how long i’ll have left with him and looking up if 60 is an old age. Has anyone else gone through this ?

Anyone else kind of shoot themselves in the foot by imagining your false memory in such precise detail? Adding certain details, reactions scenery, real trivial details …etc. It’s like I know I’ve done this to myself but it now feels so unbelievably real. I think mine is also possibly mixed with real event which doesn’t help.

I'm already going through so much. I just wish I could get it into my head that these memories of bad things are actually memories of intrusive thoughts I had that day, and not of real actions, because a person with OCD would never do what they most repudiate and abhor and which goes against their principles, and at that time I was already dealing with OCD, I was already avoiding small things for fear of causing harm. I didn't check everything like I do today because I didn't know how the rituals worked, but I always tried to be vigilant so as not to harm anyone, because the intrusive thoughts were intense and I was afraid they would come true. Apart from the fact that my little cousin has never changed with me, he loves me so much, he's affectionate, there's never been a sign that I've hurt him. He remembers little things from back then, he would remember something bad, right? But then it comes into my mind that he was asleep/sleepy and so might not remember. All the bad possibilities run through my mind and sometimes I get distressed, because I love him so much and it horrifies me to imagine that I might have done something bad to him. I don't have the strength to deal with all my problems and these OCD issues, I just want to come to a conclusion and get on with my life, because as well as the OCD I have other problems, such as my finances. Jesus, I feel like I'm going mad sometimes. I've talked about it here before, I know it's wrong to seek confirmation, but I need to get it off my chest, I'm already in physical pain from other problems, so having all these things on my mind makes it worse. I just wanted someone to help me, I'm desperate.

so i haven’t been dealing with false memories or real event odc for a whole now but i literally just woke up from a terrible triggering nightmare at first i was ok and relieved when i woke up but now doubt is setting in and the part is in the dream i think the person is made up. but i have doubts i think i got this dream because i was thinking about kissing my partner right before i fell asleep and yesterday i was looking for a video of my little cousin and i had an intrusive “what if” but i was able to brush it off. so it may be that all i know is that i keep getting flashbacks and i hate it it’s disgusting and i hope its not true. and i don’t think i could accept it if that is the truth its just so wrong

I clearly remember the day it started. I was in sixth grade in 1967 and like the flick of a switch I felt off one day. I kept thinking I had died the night before but was still moving around. It was so weird but it continued from then on, the intrusive thoughts, the constant moving around and racing thoughts about what has to be done that day. I’ll walk into a room to do something but end up doing several other things before getting to that. I’m 67 and retired but every day I struggle with unwanted thoughts (never about harming anyone or myself but about bad things that could happen. I think the worst in any situation. I’m so tired but know no other life. Glad to know I’m not alone.

I was a disgusting disgusting child. I don’t think I deserve to have this life knowing how horrible I am.. I can’t get my real event out of my head