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My hands are so damaged from washing them , any tips from anyone I wash them so much because they don’t feel clean enough or I don’t want certain germs from something I’ve touched They have gone dry and sore with cuts and are bleeding

Everyday i have unwanted thoughts and images in my head of me harming my loved ones in horrible ways, also urges too. i’m not like that at all, i don’t want to be like that at all and i also have an extreme fear of becoming a bad person and harming the people i love, or snapping out of anger and harming people. These thoughts scare me a lot and im really sad that i have these thoughts at all and its taking a toll on my mental health. whenever i see something like a gun or a knife or something like that i get anxious and scared at the thought that i could hurt someone with those things and i get thought about me in a position where i hurt someone. the last thing i want is to hurt anyone. i just wanna make people happy and i wanna treat others with kindness. i don’t want to do any of that i don’t wanna be a bad person. i hate these thoughts in my head and im so anxious at the thought that im gonna commit them. can someone help me and give me some advice on what to do?

Hi everyone, my anxiety level is at an all time high today so I am questioning everything. I was invited to a bonfire tonight with friends from school but I’m feeling so anxious, I’m talking myself out of going. It’s mostly because of one my friends will be there…we hung out last night and he always ends up treating me like shit. I need the companionship so I hang out with the same few guys and they don’t appreciate me as a friend. They know my issues and tease me about them, exclude me from stuff, and when we do hang out, I end up feeling worse by the time they leave. The bonfire is with a different group and I really should go to start hanging out with other people but since the one guy will be there, I feel stuck. I start obsessing about all the things he could say and do in front of others and it makes me want to stay in bed. Thanks for letting me vent.

i’m a teenager and i have always struggled a lot with my mental health. i just had a huge panic attack and threw up. my parents don’t seem to understand even when they tell me they do. i’ve been diagnosed with adhd, occ, and anxiety. my dad has adhd and says he knows how i feel but he doesn’t. i can’t handle so much going on in my brain and no matter who i talk to ill be judged or ignored. i constantly feel anxious and most of the time just want to sleep. i don’t wanna die but i kinda wanna be gone. which is bad to say and i don’t know if i mean it and i don’t like that i think that way but i do. i don’t think i would ever actually do anything bad to hurt myself but i can’t help thinking about it. i hate that i have these thoughts. please help.

I’m not sure if this is part of ocd I constantly get thoughts of people I had a thing with in the past but I’m in a relationship that I’m happy in I have rocd and when me and my bf are bad is when it’s worse I’ll be going over what I had in the past And also feel like I oversexualise them I just feel like a bad person and terrible girlfriend

I’m new to this app so this is a little weird for me but in really need help. I somewhat recently developed (like 6 months ago it started to get really noticeable) psychogenic itching and it’s horribly bad. I’m at college rn and have a lot of home life stresses on top that (grandpa passes, parents splitting) so I understand why the itching is getting so severe but I do also think as I become more aware of my ocd and learn about it that it is also contributing to worsening triggers/traits/symptoms of ocd as a whole. I’m okay with that as it means I’m learning about myself but god the itching is unbearable. I’m super sensitive to temperature (when I’m getting physically warmer mainly) I’m very aware of how my body feels and that is a huge trigger for this. Anyways, my ENTIRE body (literally everything but my feet) get insanely itchy within seconds of realizing I’m getting warmer, I get nervous about it happening, I think about it when I wasn’t before, I get flushed from something, or even just having to transition from one place to another. I keep randomly missing classes, not going to eat, if I get frustrated with homework I have to take a break, chores, I can’t even work out because the heat of doing so causes it. I need to know how to get rid of this it’s killing me. I know I’m not supposed to itch and when I don’t it just gets stronger and stronger until it’s so uncomfortable I have no choice, then when I start to itch it gets even worse. I can’t mentally fight this and make it stop because it’s SO bad. Please tell me I’m not the only one dealing with this issue and PLEASE tell me someone knows a way to stop it that isn’t just exposure response therapy (that is totally an option but I personally can’t do anything with that till I’m home from college for the year). The more it happens the more I worry about everyday and the worse it gets. It was like maybe once when I did physical activity at first and only on my head then my head when doing homework and then the full body very rarely and now it’s everything multiple times a day. It just happened from me moving a box off my desk in the dorm. This is scary please tell me someone knows what do. (Sorry for such a long rant).

Really struggling with the feeling that I might actually be in denial and that I’m just lying to myself and my partner and I’m just using ROCD as an excuse. I’m really triggered by the concept of attachment vs love especially considering I fit more into the attachment category rather than love (what I enjoy the most is not making him happy but how he makes me feel: supported, loved, attractive, comfortable, safe, my inner child comes out in like a child with him). I don’t fit into the: I want you to be happy. I don’t want him to be sad but just like I don’t wish anyone to be sad. I’m not excited when he is excited or happy when he is happy I just feel neutral.

Hello, my name is Addison and I would love to share my story to see if anybody has been going through the same thing as me because sometimes I feel as if I am alone and nobody understands what is happening. I have known most of my life that I have had anxiety but it wasn’t until last year when I started noticing that I have been repeating things in my head over and over again. I later found out that it was OCD. I especially noticed it when I had any work to do or anything to do outside of my house I always zone out or close my eyes and just repeat everything over and over in my head. I also picture it in my mind so I can better understand what I am telling myself. I stress myself out so much because of it and for some reason my mind does not allow me to accept what I am thinking. So then I tried getting a planner which doesn’t really work for me. Sometimes I would be doing work and I would catch myself zoning out and writing things on my paper over and over and over again. I have tried a lot of stuff to help but it’s still mentally exhausting and by the end of the day my brain is so wore out just from repeating every little thing in my head. If anybody is going through the same thing as me and has any tips please share, I would love to learn how I myself could help myself out even a little bit! 😊

so today i had to give my manager my notice that i will be leaving the job because my second job is moving me to assistant manager starting so soon. i feel terrible that i let them all down and now that everyone hates me, that i hurt them, and that they’re going to look bad at me and im a fuck up. i just feel like my OCD is making it bigger and i can’t stop ruminating on this and when i think more and more about it it cause me anxiety. is this normal and does anyone else feel this way.

Hello guys👋. I am a newbie here. Hope you are all doing well in the journey with OCD. Currently, I am studying biology stream (Chemistry, Physics & Biology). although I am curious sometimes the complexity of some subjects makes my mind blank. sometimes I am also unable to concentrate for long hours. And stressing too much on little details. I am an Investigative and Artistic type of person. I also value Creativity and independence. Many times I question myself, am I on the right track? I would like to know, What are your college majors or careers? How do these affect the quality of your life?

i tried to share this yesterday but ended up panicking that it would make things worse and deleting it. so i’m a childcare worker and work with kids around 4-12. i was out on the playground the other day and saw one of the students in a different class and had a thought that she had a big butt. i was immediately disgusted and i don’t know why i had that thought but ever since then the intrusive thoughts have been escalating. every time i think about it i feel the urge to confess and had thoughts that i should quit my job because my brain tells me i’m hiding something. i know i’m a safe adult for these kids logically, but because of this thought i had my brain keeps reminding me i need to stay anxious and guilty, because i’m not blameless. i wish i could forget about it so i can move forward, so i can’t. it happened again about the same day, but i felt compelled to look. i don’t know if i’m just externalizing my body image issues, but it seems strange that i would be comparing my adult body to a child’s. i can’t find resolution and i can’t stop spiraling about it. idk what to do

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.

So I am new to this app but I was wondering if anyone had any tips and tricks to deal with skin picking. I tend to pick at my eyebrows and I have before and it got bad and then I had it under control but now I feel I can’t control it. What should I do?

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?