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Like I am so used to expecting the worst and this will help

i was at a rehearsal yesterday and i got super afraid of hurting someone for no reason. i wish i could tell someone, but i don’t know how to get them to understand that i don’t want to and i truly won’t? it’s really scary and i can’t really isolate because i’m around other people. instead i just start feeling terribly icky, if you know what mean. like my own skin shouldn’t be touching me. i feel horrible for thinking about any of it.

I’m 17F and have always had a huge problem biting my nails, ever since I was young from my anxiety and OCD. Ive been becoming very insecure of how my nails look and It’s extremely difficult not to chew my nails though I know it’s unhygienic and in healthy. Is there any advice on how to stop this?

For as long as I can remember I’ve always counted the syllables of the words said by myself and others - even just thoughts in my head. For example, is someone says “hell-o-how-are-you?” I use my teeth on either side of my mouth and tap twice on one side, then the other, then back again etc to see if the amount of syllables in the sentence is even. If it isn’t, I would respond with an odd number of syllables such as “good-thank-you”. This habit is so engrained into my life I have no idea how anyone else’s mind works and I am constantly fighting myself to stop it but it’s impossible. I will even admit that I am doing it right now writing this 😭 . Does anyone else have a similar problem? I am still in education and feel like it’s affecting the way I listen to my teachers etc.

Going through a tough time. In December, I lost communication with the girl i’m in love with. I made poor decisions and I’ve been beating myself up over them for a long time. Today I saw she found someone new and my heart is hurting so bad. I don’t have a friend to talk to so i’m posting here. I’m just extremely hurting and I feel this is gonna be so heavy on me and i’m not going to be able to move on. I miss her so much and I just have such a heavy chest

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.

Interview of some sort I’m doing an art project and I am going to need you to answer a few questions: 1. What’s your imaginary world ? 2. What’s the difference between imaginary and your reality world ? 3. Are you unsatisfied with your reality ? 4. How do you cope with your reality?

I have had an unhealthy obsession with my private instructor for French horn for about two years. I know that I don’t love him romantically but my thoughts will tell me that no one could ever love someone this much without it being romantic. I have never told him how I feel because that would be super weird and I know he does not like talking about personal stuff with his students. I am pretty sure he has an idea of how I feel but I am scared that he thinks that I have a crush on him. I think the biggest problem with this obsession is that everything he does, whether it is directed towards me or not, whether it is something big or insignificant, it affects my emotional well being even though I do not want it to. I hate that he has so much control over me. If he laughs at a joke that I am not a part of my brain tells me that he hates me and he does not find me funny and never will. If he talks to someone I know he hates then I want to protect him by telling that person to go away or else I will hurt them. If he says something and his tone is even slightly different from usual then I think he hates me and he is just lying to me when he compliments me to make me feel better because he pities me. If he cancels a lesson because of something he can not reschedule I assume he is coming up with an excuse to avoid me because I am a bad person and he does not want to be around someone like me. If I do not see him on a day I expect to see him on then I will totally fall apart and will obsess even more over him until I see him next. This has happened with other platonic relationships in the past, but they have never been this extreme or lasted more than a few months. Soon I will leave to go to college and I am afraid that if I do not get to stay on my schedule of seeing him Tuesdays and Wednesdays then I will attempt like I have before. It is just so draining and I wish I knew why my brain chose him and why I can not stop thinking these things.

I have this classmate, we are going to call him L. L From the moment one was strange, starting to say that he liked gore and things like that, guess what, that activated my H-OCD again, it made me very bad. I talked to him, I told him not to talk about things like thst whit me. He didn't listen and now I'm trying to get away from him. People, if you are around people of this style, stay away, you are not exaggerating, if it hurts you it hurts you and that's it, you deserve to feel good This guy is really disgusting and strange, he scares me and makes me extremely obsessive

I was thinking about random stuff and then started thinking about what it would be like to raise a baby. After thinking that I had a random wave of arousal? I know it wasn’t from thinking of babies but I’m still worried it was. How do you know if it was or not? I wasn’t even thinking of babies specifically just what it would be like having one. It was random arousal and scared me.

Even when I fall asleep feeling really good I will wake up in guilt and scared I have harm ocd and it’s like I’m scared I did something in my sleep so I feel better when everyone in my family is asleep I also lock my door at night and it’s always still locked when I wake up which helps a little but I’m not sure what to do all this stems from an article I seen about a guy who dreamt of fighting flamingos and ended up killing his family and this scared me sooo much

I just keep on having this feeling that « deep down I know I don’t genuinely love him » and I hate it because I want to love him and I want to stay with him I’m happy in this relationship and it has been three years

how do you accept uncertainty I find it impossible and so distressing? It’s ruining my life😔

Can somebody relate to these terrifying and reality-shattering doubts? Today I went through a very bad ocd episode after reading a triggering comment. It felt like we don't actually have innate morals, that there is nothing separating me from being a monster. I started spiraling into disturbing questions and I got scared a lot. "If you try to like it maybe you could like it". I was so scared how easily I could see myself becoming a **** who's attracted to that horrible stuff. I was too terrified about the fact that maybe I could start being attracted to that stuff in my head, and that scenario happened TOO easily. I'm not attracted by that stuff, it makes me throw up and cry, but in my head it felt so terrifyingly easy to become a deplorable monster like all those abusers in the world, this parallel reality felt so real and easy. Like all the **** on Hollywood must have become like that because they were exposed to it and they learned to like that perversion right? They're all in it. I got triggered very badly about that scenario, that if I got exposed to it I could start to like it. That my brain could adapt itself to liking it. I don't know how to explain it, I don't even know if you guys can relate to this terrible feeling. It felt in my head like there is a very thin wall separating me from being like a ****, that there is very fragile wall for me, that if I were to be exposed to that stuff that I could actually enjoy that horrible stuff. It's a reality that terrifies me, and in my head this scenario happened too easily, like I'm destined to it or I'm in denial, like "it's a matter of time", and once I try to check if I like it I could actually like it. Like I always avoid little girls, and everytime I notice them I always get triggered and feel distress, but I tried to accept the distress and move on, thinking that it was ocd making feel like I was falsely-attracted, and that I was actually only triggered and nothing else - I never went beyond that - but what if I put it in my mind to accept that I actually liked what I saw? How easy would it be to realise that maybe I was actually attracted and in denial? Or maybe if I crossed the veil of OCD I could discover a horrible truth that I never wanted to know? It's the distress that's making me feel sane, but if I went beyond that? If I tried to experiment the liking would I actually become what I fear the most? Just like that, easily? I'll never cross that veil, because I DON'T WANT TO KNOW. But the fact that maybe under it lies an uncomfortable truth will always keep me in uncertainty and unclear about my identity. Of course I would never look up that stuff, I would kill myself, but my head conjured me that I could like it, that it's like something sleeping that it's just waiting to be woke up. I can't tolerate it at all. Those horrible people in Hollywood, they discovered that they liked it after being exposed to it, what if I'm just like them? I could go live all my life just like now, without knowing, but what if in their same scenarion I would have been one of those person that could have like it just like them? I also suddenly got remembered again about that traumatic memory of that person sending an illegal gif out of nowhere, and it was accompanied by this disturbing thought "maybe you could like it". I also had another triggering episode, I was on instagram and a trigger appeared, and I start checking it repeatedly. I was afraid that because I noticed the trigger I was attracted by it so I was trying to find an answer. I need answers, not reassurance, I need to know if you guys experience this too.

do you guys often confuse being triggered with actually being attracted. I struggle with this a lot.

My problem sounds kinda silly in comparison to others here, but I must say it plagues my daily life so so much that I just need to share it. It would be great if I could get a few advice here. I was diagnosed with OCD a few years back, although the symptoms started quite a few more years back. It’s nothing too serious, but it takes me almost an hour to use the toilet (not bathing). What takes so much time? Cleaning myself and washing my hands mostly. I repeat a set of…what the doctor termed as ‘rituals’ I perceive as ‘necessary’ to wash my hands properly. If I do not complete them, the back of my mind screams “You’re still unclean!”. Even if I manage to avoid my compulsions for one day, on the next, it doesn’t become any easier. A brutal cycle of obsessions and compulsions that needs to be broken every day, but I can’t. I can speed up my ‘rituals’, but not avoid them entirely. This means the time I need in the toilet is still around 45 minutes to an hour. On my worst days, it has even gone for two and a half hours at a time. Although I can continue like this at home, but soon I need to move to college. I know college and dorm life won’t be any kinder to me with this disability of mine. Neither will I be given so much time inside shared washrooms, nor can I avoid the vicious bullying that may come with it. The latter is mostly my assumption, but even normal students face ragging in college; it’s a fact. I would be really glad if anyone with similar conditions who has spent life in dorms alongside peers could share their experiences. How to manage the demon of OCD and how can I survive dorm life? I’m already scared of rumours of ragging I heard from my seniors, but this disability of mine makes life so much worse. I’m really afraid of what the future holds for me.

Does anyone ever have really good days where you think all these thoughts were just silly and then suddenly everything hits you and you can't escape? Do you also question whether it's really OCD or not?

I think the reason I have been triggered is because of stress I am SO STRESSED I work 50+ hour work weeks have so many bills and it just feels like things keep happening to make life work like today my tire popped! I can’t afford it so I am stressing out about that I just signed up to start college asap (this month) and I don’t know where I am gonna have time for myself I barely have time to eat and sleep let alone shower but somehow my thoughts make time in my head to be the way they are and I am gonna be honest it pisses me off! What about y’all? Are y’all pissed off? Tell me about it in the comments:)

Lately I've been having this feeling where I don't feel real. Like I know I am and it's probably just anxiety but I feel like I'm just hearing myself talk and do things but feel like it's not me/ feel out of it. I don't know if that makes any sense but it's just freaking me out and making me feel crazy

Am I the only one that, when gets disgusted at horrible intrusive thoughts or images feels like I'm faking it or isn't disgusted enough? When I see those intrusive images in my head I feel shaken and like about to cry, like when you see something from the uncanny valley. But then I feel like I'm faking being disgusted at it, and I'm so afraid that I might be secretely liking it. Something like that just happened now and I was triggered so much by it.