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My boyfriend told me that he feels like he’s losing me, that I’ve changed, and that I don’t seem happy to see him anymore. I know that this should hurt me deeply, but when he said it, I didn’t feel anything. And now I’m terrified. Why didn’t I react? Why didn’t I feel instant sadness or guilt? It’s like I was emotionally blocked, like I didn’t care at all—and that thought is destroying me. What if this means I don’t love him? What if I’ve just been lying to myself and I don’t want to accept the truth? I feel so disconnected and numb. My brain keeps telling me: “If you really cared, you would feel something.” But instead, I feel nothing. And the fact that I feel nothing makes me panic even more. I don’t know what’s happening to me. I used to feel so much, and now it’s like I can’t access my emotions at all. I don’t want to lose him. I don’t want to feel like this forever. I just want to feel normal again

So earlier I posted this.. "I had socks on and I stood on something kind of hard, and I looked at what it was and I couldn't tell if it was like a tiny piece of poop (from cat) or chocolate or something. I took my socks off obviously but now I'm worried that 1) I should wash my feet and 2) I should change my trousers because they kind of trail on the floor a bit. I just don't know what to do." And I'm still really panicking. Because I've been in my bed – I napped. My trousers and my feet have been in my bed. And I just don't know what the "right" thing to do is. My brain is telling me I need to accept uncertainty. Fine. But then the logical side of my brain is telling me "YOU COULD HAVE POOP ON YOU. LIKE SERIOUSLY COME ON ANYONE WOULD WASH THEIR FEET". I have no idea what to do. I'm so stressed.

My boyfriend told me that he feels like he’s losing me, that I’ve changed, that I never seem happy to see him anymore, and that I haven’t told him I love him in a long time. Hearing this completely broke me. I feel numb, stuck, and unable to process my emotions. I don’t understand what’s happening to me. What if he’s right? What if I don’t love him anymore and I’m just in denial? I want to feel something when I’m with him, but I feel blocked. I feel like I can’t express love the way I used to, and now he’s noticing it too. That makes me feel even worse, because he doesn’t deserve this. He’s been trying to help me, but he told me that I’m not changing, and now I feel like I’m the problem. Even when I’m calm, I still feel disconnected. My brain doesn’t work the same anymore—I can’t think clearly, I can’t process my emotions like I used to. I thought that when my anxiety would go down, I would finally feel normal again, but even in moments of calm, I feel like I don’t know what’s real. I feel like a horrible person, like I’m emotionally unavailable and ruining everything. I don’t want to lose him. I don’t want to feel this way anymore. I just want to go back to how I used to feel, when love wasn’t something I questioned every second. im ruining my relationship

Prior to coming to college, I knew that I was having thoughts that other people weren’t having and that it controlled my actions or feelings of guilt in a way that I just couldn’t see in my friends but I ignored it. Since coming to college, my compulsions and stressful thoughts have gotten a lot harder to handle and my new friends have started pointing out that they think I have OCD. I’ll try to explain some of the reasons people have pointed out or I’ve noticed but at the end of the day I always question if I’m just doing these things for some sort of attention or something. I have this strong belief that when I’m walking on pavement, the amount of times that I start stepping on a tile with either my right or left foot have to match. And people always ask me if I’m just superstitious about stepping on the cracks but I don’t mind that as long as I make it match with my other foot. The problem is that whenever I’m unable to “make the tiles or cracks match” I feel like I’ve left some universal channel open and something extremely bad will happen to me in the next 24 hours (after that it resets). Sometimes it makes me look weird when I’m walking and it’s really embarrassing when people ask me about it and I can’t fully explain the concept to them. People generally just get confused and I feel like they just regret asking and think I’m weird. Once, when I was walking down the street with some of my friends, i ran out of tiles to make my steps even and totally FREAKED OUT. I got really anxious and I couldn’t stop bouncing my leg. One of the people I was with made me feel terrible about it when he said “wait that’s actually real?” So now my fears of faking OCD just because has become a bit more real to me since my friends don’t understand the full extent of how it makes me feel, even when they’re actively seeing me break down. Besides this, which is really the most inconvenient part of my potential OCD, there’s a multitude of other things I’ve noticed that show signs of it. Whenever I take a test, I have to be wearing at least 2 hairbands on my wrist and be wearing a sweater in order to do well. Numbers really matter a lot to me because they each have a different meaning and I’m scared of some of them. When I was little, and even now in other instances besides sleeping, I used to count how many times I rolled over before I fell asleep in fear that I would land on one of the bad numbers. For example, 1 would mean a serial killer was in my room, 3 would mean something would come out of the mirror, 4 would mean a doll came to life and was trying to murder me with a knife, etc. They all sound like stupid fears and are highly improbable but it used to feel very real to me. Now I still associate those numbers with the bad things but I’ve worked on trying to expose myself to certain numbers some nights and find some safe ones. Now the number 4 has changed in meaning and evolved into my worst fear, the zombie apocalypse. This all ties back to my tile crack issue because when I “leave the channel open” by making my steps uneven, the number I mess up at (ex: 4 tiles started on the right means I need to start the next four with my left) is the chaos that the channel will bring. Also, I constantly feel like a terrible person because I’m scared that I’m faking my sexuality even though I only like girls. I’ve been closeted for so long throughout high school that sometimes I feel like my current shame and fear of telling important people in my life (ie. parents, family friends, people who I feel are slightly homophobic) is a sign that I’m not like devoted enough to my sexuality – making me scared of calling myself a lesbian. I’ve also never been with a girl because I only recently came out at college and it fuels my rumination that I subconsciously must just be asexual or once again doing it for attention. I’ve tried dating guys to make my mom believe I wasn’t lesbian but kissing them or the thought of spending the rest of my life with a man always makes me literally cry. I go to Virginia Tech and the lack of an LGBTQ+ community here is making my coming out process and search for a true relationship extremely difficult and bleak. Whenever I see a girl I don’t find attractive (even though I see a bunch that I do) it scares me and makes me think I might not actually be lesbian even though I like girls. Idk what to even say about this it just sucks. There’s so much more that I can relate to based on the discussion board such as fears of accidentally having pdophelia and cheating on people I’m not even dating. But at this point I feel like I’ve already written an essay and I don’t even know where to start with the different types of OCD and where to seek a diagnosis. The hardest part about asking for help or guidance is the fact that I never attempted to get diagnosed, making it feel like I can’t even claim that I have it. Thanks for reading this, please write back if you can relate at all :)

I’m really scared that if I stop panicking about my thoughts, they will become real. Lately, I’ve been feeling irritated by my boyfriend, and sometimes I even think he annoys me or disgusts me. When these thoughts come, they feel so real, like I genuinely don’t want to be in this relationship anymore. And now I’m terrified that if I stop reacting with fear, it means I actually don’t want him, and I’ve just been in denial this whole time. What if the fact that I’m getting used to these thoughts means I’m actually accepting them as the truth? What if my fear was the only thing keeping me from realizing I don’t love him anymore? I’ve read about people saying that, with ROCD, thoughts lose their power over time, but I’m scared that in my case, that will just mean I’ll end up accepting something I don’t want to be true. On top of that, I had a situation where I noticed a guy at school, and my anxiety made me obsess over it. I remember seeing him last year and paying attention to how he dressed, which made me panic and think, ‘What if I like him?’ The thought wouldn’t leave my head, and I even thought about it at home, which made me feel guilty. Recently, I had to go to his classroom for a project with my teacher, and when I saw him, I felt like I got nervous or something. Now I’m terrified that I like him, and that it means I don’t love my boyfriend. I don’t even know his name, I don’t want to know, but my mind won’t stop obsessing over it. Meanwhile, my boyfriend told me he doesn’t feel loved by me anymore, and that breaks my heart. I feel so guilty because I’m constantly thinking that I don’t like my boyfriend, and now my brain is telling me I like someone else. What if I’m only with my boyfriend because I don’t want to hurt him? What if I’m in denial? I just want to feel normal again. my boyfriend is amazing he dosent deserve this

I want to have a crush on Pennywise cause I just think he looks good character wise but people say his true form is female but the Robert gray is also supposed to be Pennywise which is male. I don’t want to have a crush on a female character eww. So I need someone’s help on the it lore I’m ruminating on this character cause I have a fictional crush on Pennywise and no one understands me. And the IT creature is supposed to be female so doesn’t that sadly mean the clown is female? SOS please send help

There’s something that happens that keeps me stuck in a thought, it’s when I can see some part of myself agreeing with or relating to it in some way. That’s when the doubt creeps in. If I can understand *why* the thought is there, doesn’t that mean it’s not just random? Doesn’t that mean it actually reflects something about me? For example **(TMI/TW)**: I had the thought, *“I wonder what other people’s kinks are (including friends, family, even teenagers).”* And then I caught myself thinking, *“Well, I guess that could be interesting information… maybe I wouldn’t even stop someone from sharing it with me. Does that mean I actually want to know? Wait—does that make me perverted or incestuous for even having this curiosity?”* The same thing has happened with other thoughts, like wondering what someone’s privates might look like. I recognize that, on some level, that could be interesting—but does that mean the thought is truly mine? Maybe the answer is super obvious and I just can’t see through my OCD smoke. This was a bit embarrassing for me to write 🥲, but can anyone provide some insight?

I’m on my period and o think my ocd feels a little worse today… I feel anxious and like something bad is about to happen, like I can’t move or talk cause I’ll freak out or snap and do something. Also I had a gronial response about an SA topic and I feel horrible, I’ve noticed that I do have these gronials as if I’m actually into that but idk if it can happen that you have the gronial and think “oh I’m horny, not about this but I am” is that possible? Idk how to say it… also I think I just want reassurance but I’m also scared…

Does anyone else fear that when they beat their theme, just the thought of discussing it again will somehow cause a relapse? I fear that once I conquer my existential theme I’ll end up talking about it and then all the fear will come back.

I don’t understand why I don’t feel happy, why my mind keeps making me think so negatively about him. Nothing makes me feel joy anymore. I keep thinking that he’s stupid, that I don’t like him, and when he speaks kindly to me, I feel nothing. The worst part is that I feel completely numb, like I have no emotions at all. And that makes me think that maybe I really don’t like him, that I will eventually reach a point where I realize my worst fear is true. I keep fighting with him because of my attitude. I treat him badly, and I know it’s because of my thoughts. I can’t see the good in anything. Today, he told me that I would be better off without him because I always seem so sad. He moved to my city for university just to be with me, and instead of making his life better, I feel like I’m making it worse. The thoughts don’t stop, even when I’m with him. I see people posting about how they feel calm when they’re with their partners, but I don’t. I can’t look at him without having intrusive thoughts, and I can’t even kiss him. Today, he told me that he doesn’t feel loved by me anymore, that I treat him poorly. I am constantly afraid because I feel nothing when he says things to me, because I don’t feel like I care. When I look at pictures of us from when I was in a better place, I feel like I was a completely different person. I start thinking that I’ve “matured” and that’s why I don’t feel anything anymore—like maybe I only liked him because I was young and naïve. Everything he does and says irritates me, but he loves me. What if I’m only with him because I don’t want to hurt him? What if I’m just used to him? I feel scared all the time. I don’t understand what’s happening. He keeps trying to apply logic, but it doesn’t work on me. So many times, he has tried to make me feel better, to tell me that I still care about him and that I don’t need to feel love all the time. But my heart breaks when I see how attached he is to me while I feel like I don’t feel the same way. I feel like I’m hurting him, and I don’t know how to get out of this dark place . He keeps trying to apply logic, but it doesn’t work on me. So many times, he has tried to make me feel better, to tell me that I still care about him and that I don’t need to feel love all the time. But my heart breaks when I see how attached he is to me while I feel like I don’t feel the same way. I feel like I’m hurting him, and I don’t know how to get out of this dark place

I was doing fine today until I asked ChatGPT if i cheated and they said it could count as emotional cheating if you are engaging in intense daydreams and looking someone up on social media to feed a fantasy about them. My partner and I already spoke about me fantasizing about this person and he said it was totally fine since it happened in my head and he has had crushes and fantasies on coworkers too. However I feel absolutely devastated and wrecked with guilt and anxiety and panic right now. I genuinely feel like a horrible horrible horrible cheater. I don’t know what to do. I have therapy scheduled for later this week but I really really need some advice right now!!! I feel like it could count as cheating since it did happen during a few weeks where i felt a bit distant from my partner and I feel like the daydreaming was excessive. I am so so scared. Do I confess? Do I tell him I cheated? He already told me once that cheating is a physical interaction (and I literally have not interacted with this person outside of surface level responses in a group server that my partner is also a part of). Do I have a moral obligation to tell him I cheated? I need to know.

i feel si bad. me and my bf have almost 2 years and my thoughts about me not loving him affects me so so much. he told me rn he ia very attached to me and he loves me and i feel si bad that i dint feel happy and i constantly think “i dont feel the same” “what do i feel” “do i love him” “i dont love him” he shows me how much he loves me and im here feeling si guilty about what i dont feel and im si scared i dont want to not feel i wqnt to love him and be happy what if im in denial i feel so fake

I don’t know how to deal with the thoughts that come and barely gone. Usually, the brain often remembers and forgets things. People with OCD however struggle with trying to forget the intrusive thoughts because of the imbalance trying to convey what is real and if the thoughts in your head will come true. Just for the past few days, I was having fun and suddenly hit with a wave of obsessive thoughts and making me stuck with nowhere to go.

Does anyone else experience the thing where your intrusive thoughts are much much worse at night? Like when you wake up during the night and the thoughts all rush back in like a flood when you regain consciousness. It's so awful, and it sometimes keeps me from being able to sleep. I'm not sure why they're worse at night; maybe it's because it's quiet or dark, or because I'm more alone at night, or because I can't do anything to distract myself, or I don't know, maybe it's just a neurological thing, thoughts intensifying when your brain should be at rest. But the thoughts that come up at night are so so intense and make me just want to scream and cry and punch something. I don't know what to do. It feels so horrible.

I keep thinking that I don’t feel anything for my boyfriend. He recently told me, ‘Maria, it seems like this relationship is doing you more harm than good. I think if we broke up, you’d be better off,’ and I had no reaction. Now I keep thinking that I just don’t want to accept the truth and that I’m a fake who doesn’t know what I want from a relationship. This weekend, he stayed with me from Friday to Sunday (it was also our 1 year and 10 months anniversary). From one moment to the next, I felt horrible—I wanted to cry, I wanted to tell him how anxious I was. He kept reassuring me, saying things like, ‘You don’t have to feel love all the time. Just think logically: you’re with me, you called me to be with you, you still want to be with me, and these thoughts bother you. That means you love me and care about me.’ But I just couldn’t understand it. I couldn’t even kiss him properly. I could give him small pecks, but when he tried to kiss me deeply, I avoided it. I felt horrible because I used to be able to do it, and now it just feels blocked. I wanted to scream and pull my hair out because I don’t feel right, and my mind keeps telling me I don’t like him and that’s it. I’m terrified that this is the truth. I also get irritated with him easily, and that makes me think I don’t like him. When I think about our past, I feel like I was fake and just convinced myself that I liked him. But he tells me, ‘If you were pretending, you should be an actress,’ trying to make me realize that it’s impossible to fake something for this long. And still, I think, ‘Maybe I’m just a good person who doesn’t want to hurt him.’ But he tells me that’s not how it works. I cried uncontrollably, I couldn’t stop, and I still can’t stop looking for reassurance online. The tightness in my chest and the way this feels so real is killing me. I’m scared that I had high expectations for this relationship and now I can’t accept that I don’t like him. I feel like I don’t deserve someone as good as him. I don’t even know why it didn’t affect me when he said I’d be happier without him. And he’s upset because instead of listening to him, I keep searching for answers on Google and other apps. i know what i do wrong i know in not grateful enough and what i do wring but i feel controlled . i dont realise how good he is to me and all the things he accepted because i act so so badly and forgot to mention we saw each other rarely this month because he had his finals of the semester and now he has a break and went back to his parents house (HE MOVED TO MY CITY TO COLLAGE JUST FOR ME) and he came 3 hours with the train back here just to spent valentines day with me and i just made this worse instead of us being happy and celebrating and i feel ungrateful and omg i hate myself

Does anyone else struggle with this? I get a sense of dread and then I feel like the need to find the answer. For me it’s about like sexual reproduction or like some other taboo topic. Especially anything reproductive related to children or pets. I feel so awful after researching. I don’t know if the compulsion is to research or to ruminate about my intentions after researching. I have a hard time understanding why this happens I’m assuming it a question of morality? Like “what does this say about me if I wondered this and looked into it?” Does anyone relate to this?

I’ve been going through this rough patch for the last four months, and I can already feel an even worse one coming. I just feel scared. And on top of that, I’m going to stop therapy. After everything with my current therapist, I just don’t have the strength to keep trying anymore. I feel hopeless. My head hurts so much, and it’s hard to keep going when everything feels this bad. I just want to cry, hope this feeling passes, and maybe try again if it ever lets up. But right now, it feels like nothing will ever get better. I don’t feel like I can ask for help. I hate that it took me so long to realize this wasn’t the therapist for me. I was too scared of being dramatic, so I let it go on for far too long, and now I feel like I’ve just become a burden-like. I hate that I let it get to that point, especially when I was paying for this. I just want to give up. I feel broken down, and I don’t even want to be okay anymore.

Hello everybody! I know Valentine’s Day was yesterday but hear me out haha… Ever since my first boyfriend left me 3 years ago (along with the embarrassment of never having been able to get into another long term relationship…), Valentine’s Day has always been a stressful and depressing holiday for me. Being 23 and seeing many of the people I went to high school with getting married or even starting families makes me so unbelievably depressed. Don’t get me wrong! I’m so happy for these people, I just wish I could experience what they’re having too… My OCD loves to focus back onto my ex whom I haven’t spoken to or even seen in a little over 3 years (except recently when a childhood friend of mine posted a picture with him skiing). It frequently obsesses and conjures up very distressing and painful scenarios about him starting a family and getting married while I remain alone for the rest of my life. I still love him and always hoped I would’ve started a family with him. I know…it’s incredibly far-fetched and naïve thinking. I have gone on several dates and even got decently far in one relationship, but it only lasted for a few months due to some life changes. But nothing ever came close to my first relationship. In the spring of 2023, I had an incredibly bad crash out that left me an emotional and physical disaster. My health started to decline, I couldn’t keep up in university and had to drop out and move back in with my parents, and my mental health completely shattered after I found out my first boyfriend had moved on with someone else. So many things started to fall apart in my life that I contemplated taking my own life. I gave myself a year to fix everything, and if I failed, I planned to buy a gun and shoot myself in my car. While I managed to overcome most of my failings, there was still so much that was affected by my breakdown. I used to be pretty active (I was a runner and a weight lifter), and now I’m very sedentary. I find no joy in the things I used to love doing, I often feel tired and unmotivated. I do nothing all day, and I’m ashamed. Some days it’s even hard to want to bathe myself. All I do is sleep and engage in compulsive stimming (rocking back and forth in a chair and maladaptive daydreaming). I also have autism, so that plays a portion with the stimming. Rocking has always been a major problem for me, it overtakes my whole life; I spend hours engaging in this behavior and nothing has helped…. I finally got accepted into nursing school yet I feel no joy, it’s a private school so I’ll be shelling out a shit ton of money which scares me. I love being a nursing assistant, so this has nothing to do with not having passion. Helping people, even on here; reassuring people when I can, is the only joy I get nowadays. I know this is my calling, I’m just not happy in my life right now. I miss being active and being in university…I feel so isolated and lazy (lowkey a hermit) nowadays. And it scares me because I find myself not caring sometimes. I’ve never been so sedentary before…I’ve always been somewhat of a homebody but never to this extent. I don’t even like driving anymore or going outside. I feel so ashamed and unhappy…I don’t make a lot of money right now even though I live with my parents so it feels even more isolating. I just feel like a failure and I’m afraid I’ll never be able to get out of this rut. There’s so many things I want to do in my life yet I have no motivation and I’m too broke to go anywhere or sign up for anything…it’s genuinely frustrating. Anyways…thank you for hearing me out!! 🫶

I used to be such a rude person, and now it feels like it’s all coming back to me. I don’t really know how to explain it, but there was a time when I wanted so badly to be seen as a bad person. Because of that, I would say awful things to random people online, even telling them to kill themselves. I know now how harmful and disgusting that was, and I would never do it again, but I can’t stop overthinking the possibility that someone actually listened to me. Maybe they were already struggling, and maybe what I said pushed them over the edge. The worst part is that these were completely random people—I’ll never know if they’re okay or not. If I could go back and undo it, I promise I would. I know this is my karma for saying such horrible things, and I feel genuine regret. But regret feels meaningless if someone actually ended up taking their own life because of me. I get that I have to sit with the uncertainty, but my mind keeps fighting that, telling me, Why should you just accept the unknown when you might have been the reason someone took their own life? Maybe this feeling is exactly what I deserve for being so cruel in the past. I feel awful for all the people I hurt.

I have lots of tattoos that are meaningful to me. I've always been proud of, affirmed, and encouraged by my tattoos. Last year I got an extension on one of my favorite tattoos in the midst of a huge change I was going through, and my OCD immediately latched onto it because it was different from the original. Months later, after therapy and reflection, I decided to get half of the tattoo removed due to its placement. I kept the other half (it's a long vine) to remember that change is the only constant, and to commemorate the great experience I had with the artist. Now, though, I'm obsess about the tattoos I've had before this one. I constantly question their placement and my decision to get them, and I'm 24, so sometimes I question whether my brain's development has anything to do with my choices and current obsessions. I'm a mature 24, though, being in a PhD program and having experienced some real life shit. Anyways, anyone ever experienced this or have any insights? It's not easy. It's confusing. I can't tell who is me and valid and who is OCD.