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How does one move on from having intrusive thoughts and feelings?

I’m 16 years old am I’ve been struggling with ocd my entire life. It started off with compulsive hand washing and touching things until it felt right. I remember being only a few years old with compulsions. When I was 13 the pure ocd kicked in HARD. It was hard for me to do basic everyday things even writing. I went to the doctor and she signed a note for school giving me some extra time to finish tests although I only used it for one semester and haven’t really touched it in 2 years. I talked about my ocd and she immediately shut me down, she said “why are we even talking about this?” Verbatim. It really broke me because I felt like no matter what I would be judged for my compulsions. I know people with ocd tend to get severely judged the rare times we open up about these sorts of things. She referred my family to a child psychologist who misdiagnosed my older sister with anorexia. She doesn’t do anything. I have no trust in this woman and I don’t know any other way to get formally diagnosed to maybe get therapy or medication. I’m too scared to open about any of it to my family. My family knows I have ocd, but not how debilitating it can get.

I have never been diagnosed with OCD, but I experience a handful of the same, intrusive thoughts regarding who I am and what I offer to the world, and things with my boyfriend. I have been seeking therapy through the university I go to which has been helpful, but my therapist is treating me with only anxiety in mind, which is why I think it’s effects are not longer. During the summer, I cannot use my universities counseling resources, and have been doing digging through this app to help me consider my options for when I need therapy. However, I am still under my parents health insurance. My parents know that I go to counseling, but they do not know that I believe I have OCD symptoms. It is also difficult because I believe that my parents were a huge influence on these symptoms. If anyone has any advice as to how I should go about this with my parents if I were to use this app as a resource for therapy.

I don't understand how to calm down long enough to explain my OCD to those around me, and I don't even feel comfortable enough to open up to those around me. But, I miss my parents/nieces so much but my parents won't let me around my nieces because my bf (I live with) and I have had arguments recently and my mom told me my niece (9) told her therapist about my argument with my ex bf 5 years ago, and my mom said it was traumatic for my niece (I kicked my bf out of my house because he was a compulsive liar and I caught him in another lie). I feel like my parents truly believe I am a terrible person and they aren't willing to make time for me to actually get to know me. I feel uncomfortable like I can't be myself around them and it leads me to feeling like I have no family. My nieces are my favorite people in the world and I love them a lot but it feels like my mom is using my own trauma against me by saying she doesn't want me to traumatize my nieces with my mental illness. My nieces are the only people that treat me like a human being and love me unconditionally. I just feel like somewhere between 18 and leaving for college, and now 23 still in college and living on my own, my parents and I have drifted so much and it feels like they are relieved to see less of me. I don't have anyone that I feel like I can open up to, except for my bf but my ROCD loves to ruin that too (and my bf's parents keep calling him and telling him to leave me because I am a sociopath). I was supposed to go to my nieces' dance recital today but I have been so anxious the past few days because I'm worried everyone will be able to tell I have POCD intrusive thoughts and it feels so wrong to sit in a theatre and watch little girls dance. My brain keeps making it out to be so creepy. On top of that, I started new medication for my PTSD nightmares, and it made me drowsy and oversleep today and I feel horrible. I told my mom I couldn't make it today and I am left sitting with this guilt because she always tells me I let my nieces down and I am so scared I will legitimately have nobody. They almost moved to another state last year and they didn't even consider me when making that decision because they said I never come around anyway but I don't come around because they don't understand my condition and they don't take the time to understand my condition so they just treat me like I'm not worth the energy or empathy and being in their company makes me feel worse but I would do anything in this world to have them love me again. I just feel so consumed by the anxiety and I know if I open up to my parents they are just going to tell me to pray about it and I am no where near ready to even think about religion again and it just feels like when it comes to my family, it triggers every single theme and I end up feeling hopeless and depressed and I don't know how to get better. I keep going back to being a kid and my parents both loving me before I started getting more depressed/anxious because of my brain. I also feel like my family doesn't know how to act around each other unless we are bonding over our trauma together. We don't know how to converse about anything other than that. I feel like I don't have parents anymore and I feel like I am begging strangers to love me and let me into their lives/hearts but they make it seem like they can't be around me too much because I've caused them too much pain and I don't know how to deal with that guilt of hurting them. And I know both of my parents probably have some OCD too and I worry if I open up to them then I will ruin both of their lives even more. I just don't know what to do I just want to feel like I have a mom or dad. Or anyone.

I had a few gay experiences when I was a kid and that would be when I was with my male cousins ​​and a few kids in the neighborhood at least 5-7 times a year... after going through these, I would have a lot of embarrassment and boredom. and I was always ashamed of it. I couldn't talk to girls much until 3rd high school, either we would be friends or I couldn't communicate with them while talking, I was bad and I didn't have a good relationship with my mother, but I was nice to other women to be respectful. my mother used to embarrass me too, I fought with my mother a lot when I was a kid, then passed in high school, of course, this tragic life of mine affected my relationship with women and my god complex towards my father always made me think that my father knew best and he was wrong affected me deeply over time... my very terrible experiences Now, was I trans, was that the reason I loved female main characters and watched teen dramas when I was a kid, or was I gay? It affected me because I was so ashamed of women and because I had a sexual relationship too late. I don't know if it's me I wonder if the thought of dying comforts me in these situations

Hi y’all sorry if this is an annoying post, but I’m super new to this and I’ve fallen down a research rabbit hole and I just need a second opinion. I’m not officially diagnosed, but as soon as school is over I’m going to my therapist and talk to her about it as I go to school in a different state than where I’m from. I’ve had anxiety my entire life, literally since I could remember and I’ve always really had bad rumination, but since I’ve turned 20 this year I’ve seem to have an onset of some kind where my anxiety has gotten worse and even more obsessional. Now looking back over my entire life I’ve probably have always had OCD or at least some OCD tendencies. So I’m going to share a list compiled of my experiences that I think show at bare minimum OCD tendencies and get a second opinion so hopefully I can have some more direction. Thank you all so much and I hope y’all have a great day. -I’ve experienced really disturbing intrusive thoughts ever since I was a child -I had a really bad religious OCD when I was a kid that caused me to having praying compulsions, when I watched those “this celebrity is a devil worshipper” conspiracy YouTube videos on early unregulated YouTube -most of my anxiety is based on ruminating about my past and experiencing a deep level of shame -i genuinely that feeling shame, anxiety, or that generally having poor mental health is a universal punishment for being a bad person -shame spirals -currently obsessively researching the difference between false memories and repressed memories. Which is causing a real or fake memory research down spiral -currently obsessively researching about OCD wondering if I really have it or not -I heavily relate to the moral or scrupulosity OCD -that time in high school I convinced myself I had a parasite because I ate undercooked bacon so for like a solid two or three weeks I always checked my temperature first thing in the morning and then multiple times a day and no matter how many times I checked my temperature it still didn’t feel like it was “right” or correct -I had a health obsession this time with autism and the constant research and self testing and I felt like I had to do them over and over again to obtain relief -I’m a hoarder -that one time when I was kid I convinced myself I gave my teacher an allergic reaction because I gave him gold fish THE DAY PRIOR

Hi. I’m just really scared and I want to ask questions. I have been ocd and have been really suffering since December. The intrusive thoughts come like I want them now and it’s more of a “ well oh yeah you want to do that, and it’s gonna happen” and I start panicking and can’t focus and it scares the shit out of me. Is that ocd? Or is there something wrong with my brain and I’m actually some psychopath you see in a movie? I’m terrified. Im scared to be around my family, I’m scared to be around everyone. But I’m scared to be alone as well because I’m alone with the thoughts. What if these aren’t intrusive thoughts and I’m actually some terrible person who’s gonna hurt someone or is actually some psychopath who’s crazy? I hate this so much because I use to be so happy and not have any of these intrusive thoughts or worried that I was going to to hurt someone and now I’m so scared all the time. Can someone please answer some of these questions? I just want to make sure that this is ocd and I’m not a terrible person.

‼️‼️TRIGGER WARNING: contains SH and thoughts about suicide ‼️‼️ Hey! i just joined this app( like 5 minutes ago) after an ad popped up on my instagram, and i thought this app was intriguing. I’ve been dealing with OCD for as long as i could remember, so this app should be a great space for me to let out all my frustrations related to this disorder. so, here is my OCD story as well as some guilt that i felt. Just for reference i am a female high school student living in the US. I was diagnosed with OCD when i was around 7 or 8 years old. it was genetic, my dad had suffered from the disorder and so had my dads dad. i remember early therapy and my early compulsions. some of my more notable ones were touching objects with strictly two hands, having a “lucky” number 5 (i had to do most of my day to day tasks 5 times) and having to walk certain way when walking on brick to tile. it became pretty severe, i remember feeling really anxious most of the my elementary school life. and while kids never made fun of my compulsions in Elementary school, my teachers did, which didn’t help my young impressionable brain at all. my parents were very gracious with my OCD, they gave me the help i needed, like a therapist. with years of therapy and counseling, all my physical and life impacting compulsions went away. after i has overcame that i saw myself “free” of OCD. in my brain, OCD was only physical. that mindset didn’t help me at all in middle school, where i started getting more mental compulsions. these thoughts were less of “you need to do this or else” like before, but more of “you are in love with your math teacher, and you know it. you are so inappropriate and disgusting.” these thoughts are what made me feel like a horrible being, and i wish i had talked to someone who understood the disorder. when i came to high-school, they became more and more violent and grotesque. they slowly turned from me being inappropriate or offensive to thoughts of me hurting myself. they flared up during stressful periods of my life, and died down during calmer ones. after one particularly hard part of my sophomore year, i caved into my compulsions and started self harming. i won’t get into the details here (it’s graphic and this isn’t the place to lay out all that i did). simultaneously, i got thoughts that i could and would kill myself, even though i didn’t want to die. these thoughts and actions consumed my entire life, and even though they were OCD thoughts, i couldn’t grapple the fact that they were. now, as i end my high school experience, i look back and notice all the times i wasn’t informed about my compulsions. not understanding it was OCD only led to more guilt and shame. that was my story! i don’t really know why i decided to type it all out, i just wanted to let someone in this world know it. hope you all have a wonderful day!!

does anybody ever get a stream of intrusive thoughts and then you try to just ignore them and then you just start spiraling. then you feel like you’re going crazy, and all the sudden you’re convinced that your going to loose control and go crazy. i don’t know if that made any sense but it’s a super scary feeling and i don’t know how to work myself out of those moments, all i want to do is just disappear or check myself into a mental hospital😭

i skipped and avoided final exam last year and failed because of ocd now this year ive been okay until this month because final exam are 2 week away i have same thaugh of last year should i do skip and run again ? is it worth suffering exams that i already know im failing it ? which is more painful ocd or my family blaming me again for skipping "please dont tell me to face my fears and take exams because its not easy its impossible especially final exams policy where u can't leave class for 3hours straight i can't hold on that long I'll probably have heart attack during all that time"

okay my story little long sorry for writing all this but i wanna take it out from my chest so im in last year in highschool in my country we have final exams wich is very strict 2 teacher no talking no phone pre selected seat for students so in past year i was final year too i got very scared to take finals exams so i skipped them my family blamed me for that its same situation that im stuck in this time final exams are 2 weeks away im scared I can't skip them again im very scared i cant sleep at night I can't tell anyone what im feeling right now because i told my famiky last year no one believes me so when im in class with strict teacher i feel like im trapped no exit to run I can't exit like bathroom to catch a breath i feel like im going to piss on my self and embarrass my self wich is scarring shit outta of me in mid term exams i didn't had this feeling because i can just hand over the exams even if its empty paper but in finals i can't exit before half time wich is 1h30min its tmtoo much time i feel like dying i cant breathe when in mid term exams when teacher ask me to seat in front table i feel this feeling and what is weird when i run and exit exam i feel okay I can't study I won't pass exam i can't skip them either my family will kill me if i do every night i keep getting negative thaugh and prediction future I can't focus on anything else i tried deep breath self therapy i didn't get better i tried 2 psychology doctor i didn't get better either im thinking of ending my life every night i need help i don't even know how express my feeling

Cam harm ocd come out as statements in your head? I’m really scared rn and I feel like my head is going to explode. I having these terrible intrusive thoughts about my mom and family and am afraid to go home but I need to go home today from my boyfriends house. The intrusive thoughts are afraid of hurting her. It’s like they are like “ what if you want to hurt her” or “you want to hurt her” and I love my mom and I would never ever want to hurt anyone and I’m very very scared. We had a frustrating conversation with each other last week that I think is making my ocd latch on to it and be scared that I’m a terrible person who’s a psychopath. Am I a psychopath? What’s happen with my brain? I’m so terrified. Please someone tell me if this is something crazy or if this is ocd please? I’m very very scared.

My boyfriend and I have been having more frequent conflicts. He’s processing things from a few months ago that he’s still working through with forgiving me. The thing is with him if I get overstimulated and snap or ask to go to another room to calm down he starts breaking down. I always apologize and explain why what happened happened. It takes us a while to get into the conversation of “What can we do now moving forward?” Because once he’s in that state he can’t leave or control it so he brings up every mistake I’ve made and tells me to take accountability for it. He’ll then goes on to say how I don’t know him and that he’s changed himself completely for me and that I only know a shell of a person in him. He’ll say how he can never feel loved by me because he doesn’t understand how someone that loved him would treat him that way, and etc. This is extremely triggering and emotionally draining for me. I love him so much and it sucks because I have no genuine idea of why I snap or why I forget so many things. I don’t mean to hurt him but it seems like that’s all I ever do. He even said that the entire year we’ve been together (one anniversary was yesterday) was him in pain and not ever feeling loved by me. He always begs me to go back to how I was right when we started dating. I try to explain that I’m in flight or fight more 24/7 now due to financial instability and other mental health issues that I deal with. I was at a better mindset when we got together so of course he’s never seen me frustrated or whatever. The thing is I want to go back to her too. I want to be myself again. We got into an argument and he said “you always blame me and do things to me because you just want to hurt me” and then started banging his head into the wall. This set off my nervous system and I got scared thinking he was at his limit with me and was about to breakup with me, so I start mentioning a break up. This is our biggest conflict yet because I don’t know how to explain that my nervous system was set off in a way that completely shattered me. We’ve talked that situation out and have been trying to rework through everything else. I love him so much but he mentioned this girl named lolo a lot and one time after an argument he said “You know, lolo never judges me. She never makes me feel like I’m doing anything wrong. She lets me be who I am and understands me” this caused my rocd and bpd to skyrocket into the belief that he’s going to end up leaving me for her even though after talking about it he said he’s never thought she was pretty and was scared that I thought she was pretty because I told him that I was scared he thought she was Anyways, i side eyed him on his phone and saw that he responded to her Instagram story post. This triggered me and I’ve since been crying and smoking cigarettes in discreet setting while he masturbates Please let me know if anyone has ANY kind of advice or just tell me I’m not crazy or what to do with handling all of this

So, for about a year ago now, I started having pretty bad Relationship OCD, doubting lots of things with my girlfriend and her looks, personality, hair, etc. We’ve been dating for about 3 years, so our relationship definitely isn’t new. But I’m just so fed up with having all these intrusive thoughts about her face or mannerisms or whatever it is, trying to let the thought be what it is, and move on. It’s come and gone in waves, but it’s gotten worse again since coming home from college for the summer. I desperately don’t want a repeat of last summer, and I’ve been doing a lot of praying that God would take control instead of me. I just feel so confused, since this has been going on for so long and I’m planning on proposing sometime soon… 😖 Anyone have ERP tips?

I’ve been getting a lot of anxiety and ruminating a lot about getting older and “wasting my youth”. I’m turning 21 in July and going into my final year of university in the fall. I’ve been doing a lot better with my ocd in the past few months and even got discharged from therapy with nocd! However I think this may be becoming obsessive and I don’t want to fall back into compulsive patterns so if anyone has any advice I’d really appreciate it. My biggest concern is that I’m wasting what are supposed to be the best years of my life and the time when I will be the prettiest. Due to my ocd and battling a chronic illness, my self confidence regarding my looks has been pretty low however it is a lot better now. I can’t help but obsess over the fact I’ve “wasted” the last few years with ocd (despite the fact that I never let ocd limit me from having fun). I’m scared of getting ugly and having wasted the time when I’m the prettiest hating the way I looked. I feel sad and anxious when I spend a day doing nothing, especially weekends, because I feel like I wasted it and should be out drinking or spending time with my friends. I keep checking people’s ages and seeing what they are doing to reassure myself that I won’t lose get old and boring. I think this anxiety is due to the fact that the “best years of my life” (aka university) are coming to an end soon and I feel like I didn’t enjoy them as much as I could’ve had I not been dealing with ocd. I know this sounds ridiculous given that getting older and graduating is inevitable but I really don’t want this to become a new obsession.

Anyone else feel like they hit someone with their car this morning on their way to work and have to go back and check 8 times before they made it to work? Or is it just me? Asking for a friend 😐

Hi everyone, I just have a quick question. Can intrusive thoughts latch onto actual people. I notice when I don’t engage in my usual themed obsessions I get new on (with the same theme) but different people. It’s out of the blue too, and that’s why I think I react so much. How can I respond to these thoughts?

I tried to get better but still have intrusive thoughts, which feel real. But I'm not more anxious than before but get a little panicked. My brain feels like "normal". Idk what to do

Once when i was very high and had a disturbing graphic intrusive image, and then while being high feeling as if i were really a p***. Once when i was travelling with my mum on the station i saw a little girl stretching and i got triggered badly because I noticed the "curves" of a literal c*, then in church i was surrounded by triggers, but i had to stay there because it was an important moment for my mother. then after i exited from church i noticed ij my left another trigger from far away and i had to check if i had seen right, because my eyes saw an inaproppriate part, and i kept looking in that direction instead of looking away. then when i hang out with my friends i saw a trigger and obsessed about the chance that i might have looked at it inaproppriately at the lower part, asking myself why i kept staring in that direction, and i had to check but that translates that I was actively searching for the triggering lower part of the body to see if it was noticeable? Absolutely sickening. And then when i saw what I was looking for I got triggered and felt like it was a proof that i was a p***. and today i saw a very triggering reel where a little girl was skating, and I kept staring at the video shocked of what my eyes were seeing. These all feel like unquestionable proofs that I could be a ****. I wish I could erase what my eyes saw. I wish I didn't have this problem. Staring ocd and pocd is a destructive pair. I will sit in distress, trying not to think about this. But I really want to punish myself for these things and wish i could just lock myself in my room. But have duties to do and i can't let my mum worry again. It's too much. Nothing can change my actions, the fact itself that I stared at an inaproppriate part of the body of a literal c* and all the things that come with it is unforgivable and abonimable. Regardless of the fact that it is ocd's fault, which I'm starting to believe that it isn't and that it's just me being in denial. Why did I stare? Was I attracted? I want none of this. I wish I could be normal and have normal problems. There is no break to ocd, every day there is a new trigger. I want to sleep forever without dreams.

I was exiting from highschool with my friend and these 2 girls passed in front of us. I felt like I saw their lower area with my peripheral vision. The thing is that they looked a bit younger than me even though I didn't see their faces, but I reassured myself thinking that I didn't do that voluntarily and that just because I saw a b*tt doesn't mean that I was attracted, I just felt that way because in my mind that part of the body is something innapropriate and immoral so it automatically assumes that I had malicious perverted intentions. This was the day after I went to the psychiatrist (who is not an ocd specialist but still understands it a bit) where I talked about these similar triggering events that keep happening to me: the staring ocd. Abt how I feel like I'm always staring at k*** lower parts even when I'm not doing that, and of how, when I check to see if I saw what I saw correctly or if I was just mistaken, I end up doing the very thing I don't want to do. I asked him if it was real attraction or if it was my brain convincing me that I'm a **** because in my mind "b**t = inappropriate and immoral part", so it automatically assumes that I had bad intentions. He answered that it was the latter, but I don't know. For example if my teacher were to lean and I would happen to saw her lower area it wouldn't mean that I'm actually attracted just because I noticed something obvious in front of me. But things change a lot when it involves pocd stuff, with staring ocd compulsions where you choose actively to check those lower areas. And the pondering question is: did I do that because I was attracted or it something explainable on ocd terms? My psychiatrist often triggers me with his remarks and I misunderstand him a lot because he is not clear with his answers. Something he said that triggered me a lot in our previous appointments was that "people can feel attraction even looking at inappropriate part of k**s, but that doesn't make them bad as long as they don't partake in action". Since he said that I'm afraid that I could have been attracted by what I saw, and that I kept staring not because of an ocd compulsion but because I was attracted... and if this were to be true I can't leave with myself. But the hypothesis that I could have been attracted seems very real and logical. This is the same psychiatrist who diagnosed me with ocd, but after I told him that I thought I had it, I don't how much that is valid. When I returned from school I saw this little girl that was at least 100 meters away, but since it was trigger my senses alerted. Even though it was so far away that it wasn't visible I felt like I looked at her b*tt when I actually didn't. And then there was also this other k** and I felt like I stared in its lower area. I kept staring in that direction for some reason instead of looking away like I usually do. Involuntarily staring at triggers lower parts trigger me a lot, but I feel much more disgusting if the trigger is wearing "tight" pants, because I feel like my eyes saw something illegal, so maybe I was checking to make sure that it wasn't the case, and I was right. But still why did I choose to stare in that direction? The staring itself is wrong. I'm sick. This triggered me a lot and I went to sleep to drown these feelings for the entire day. And then many other triggers started to pile up as I was navigating through youtube and instagram. https://youtu.be/SK1FCz4fgS0 under this video there were thirsty comments about this female character and I was thinking how much ethical or right it was to say this kind of stuff. I too noticed what they did, but I don't know if I was attracted or not by what I saw. I don't know how to determine that. I don't know what is attraction in that sense. It is wrong because it's unwanted se&ualization, but as it happens in many videos where girls appear and have "noticeable" private parts people in the comments leave thirsty comments pointing out the "obvious" or writing "what colors was her shirt" and stuff like that and my thought in this matter was "you shouldn't do that, if I were to notice it I'd feel bad because it isn't an inappropriate thing to do, but I guess it is kind of okay as long as the person they're thirsting over is a grown up adult" Then I had a terrible thought: "what if that character was a ***?" People would think same perverted way, but they wouldn't express it in the comments because they know they'd get in trouble. If the inaproppriate part is noticeable then you'll notice it and you would be automatically se&ualizing a minor, and a part from that if you were to feel attraction would that make you a ****? But why would you notice it in the first place? Why would you look in that area in the first place? That is an alarming act itself, to look at ***s. I feel like when I encounter **** I'm not seeing them in their entirety, as a whole, as I do when I see adult people who do not trigger me, but that I'm automatically focusing on the lower part because I'm so obsessed and concerned if I'm staring inaproppriately and se&ualizing so my brain sends distressing signs and has to check to shut down the uncertainty of seeing something right or wrong, but then as I do that I end up in a loop of distress. This thing is fucking me over, and I feel these are enough proofs that I'm a ****. I'm distressed and confused and I feel abonimable. https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cq1sCD8IPV5/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y= I also saw this triggering reel and I'm afraid that what I felt suddenly was attraction and that feeling scared me a lot. It felt like a definitive proof that I'm a ****. I'm a monster for having such abonimable thoughts, and all the things I did are untolerable and unforgivable, I don't deserve understanding and compassion, I'm too far gone. It's over.