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guys i don’t know what’s going on but my brain is trying to convince me i’m suicidal and it’s so scary it woke me up from my sleep and i have a great life so i don’t know what’s it wrong like what should i do omg

My brain is screaming inside my head that I'm trans. What if I am? Idk how I feel like. Idk who I am

😓 Okay, so here’s one of the biggest things I’m working on in ERP: driving. I’m 19. I have had my temps before, and I’ve let them expire because I keep putting off getting my license. And the frustrating part is… I WANT TO DRIVE. I really do. I want the independence and freedom that comes with it. My brain obviously has other plans. 😂 When I’m in a car, I’m always buckled in, sitting properly, etc. But I’m absolutely horrified of getting into a crash. It’s not just the fear of dying. My OCD gives me extremely graphic mental images of what could happen in a crash people being severely injured, bodies being badly hurt, things going through windshields, my own body being injured, etc. My brain goes straight to the absolute worst-case scenario. So naturally, I’ve been avoiding driving. Which as a college student who would love to leave the house… not so fun. 😒 I want to drive before my spring semester so I can take myself to class and stuff!😭I’m honestly terrified, but I also know I don’t want fear making this decision for me anymore!! If anyone else has dealt with a driving fear or a fear of catastrophic accidents through OCD, I’d really love to hear about your experience. ❤️

What was the lowest point of your H OCD, mental intrusive thoughts, depression, DPDR and other mental disorders ? Pls explain im in the worst place right now. (I don’t know if i will experience any psychosis later or not im down)

Today has been the worst spiral I’ve had for weeks. There is this constant memory in my head that I can’t shake because I’m terrified. Basically 2 years ago on Halloween of 2024 an old guy friend messaged me on Snapchat. I remember I was in the shower and went on my phone to check something, I saw his chat and I clicked on it and I do not remember at all what he said. I do remember replying to it and then about 5 ish minutes later I unadded him and another guy because I didn’t want my fiancé (bf at the time) to think I was cheating or anything, I think if I can remember that’s why I removed them because I didn’t want all these guys on my snap from highschool or anything that I used to talk to to be on there, my anxiety was really bad around October, so I think I removed them out of respect for my relationship (me saying I think is even making the spiral worse.) That’s all I remember. But I’ve been spiraling over this thought for almost 2 years because the memory keeps getting fuzzier and fuzzier. Basically I’m terrified because I keep having the occurring thought about “what if I cheated and removed him to hide the evidence.” I’m so scared. After I removed him I remembered I felt good because I felt like a loyal girlfriend, but now I think that’s what happened because I’ve been thinking on it for days to the point where the memory is even more fuzzier. But I’m scared my brain is telling me that “I felt good because I deleted evidence of cheating.” Etc. I think if I can remember I removed those guys out of respect for my fiancé (bf at the time) and I didn’t want/feel the need to have any guy friends or talk to them because I had my man. I’m scared about what if I’m making this up and I actually did something unloyal. What if I felt good afterwards because I hid cheating evidence? I dont know what to believe and my memory of the whole event is so fuzzy.OCD has been the worst thing I’ve ever dealt with. I feel like I can’t trust myself, the reason why this is bothering me so bad is because a long time ago when my fiance and I first started dating, I struggled with explicit content. I would watch it, and (embarrassing part) I’d play this game called character ai and I’d create like explicit/spicy stories on there etc. For awhile, I hid the character ai game from my fiancé (bf at the time) because I think it was out of embarrassment. And later on I told him and told him that i was nervous to tell him because I didn’t know what he’d think about it. Now onto the ocd part, my ocd is telling me that “if you hid that, then you definitely cheated and hid that too, thats why you removed the guy and deleted him and a few other guys too. You definitely sent a nude, you definitely flirted.” And so on and so on. It never stops ever and i dont know how to deal with this anymore. Has anyone else’s ocd ever gotten this bad? Mine also gets terrible at work whenever i interact with male customers. It tells me I flirt, cheat and I also get these bad intrusive thoughts. Worst thing ever.

I’ve been dating my boyfriend for almost two years now. He’s my first serious longterm relationship. Before I always struggled with keeping relationships and broke them up quite quickly (mostly after one week to 9 months). I always thoughts about not feeling it, having doubts and having the urge to leave or suddenly got thoughts about me being gay when I’m not. I always gave in to this urge and sometimes regretted it. I blamed it on my age but looking back I had signs of ROCD and SOOCD. I met my boyfriend on hinge and was imminently into him. We talked for like 4 months before making it official. Sadly we’re long distance but we see each other pretty often. Before him I had some bad experience with two other guys who cheated on me and broke my trust. Since I already have low self esteem since my childhood it made it even worse. I came from a household where both of my parents cheated on each other. My boyfriend had one long term gf before me and I was imminently obsessed with her. I was convinced that he still loved her. She broke up when she was traveling alone in another country over the phone to find herself. She did not gave him any reasons so it’s quite understandable that it hurt him. She came back in august 2024 (still in our talking stage) and they meet up for a last talk and for him to get his stuff back. I was so worried that something will happen but he promised that nothing happened. I still look at her social media to this day. My boyfriend reassurances me that he mostly did like her as a friend and their relationship felt more like a friendship to him and was sad that he lost her as a friend. He does not miss her as a girlfriend because most of the time they just fought. In the beginning of our relationship I stalked his location, social media, friends and got mad when he didn’t text me back quickly. My whole mood depended on it. During his exam phase he was quite busy and couldnt text that much. Another thing what bothered me were other attractive women. I always scanned the area to look for women that matched his type and got mad at him. During our talking stage he went on a cruise trip alone (booked before we met) and meet a girl there which he hung out with in a bigger group. They were the same age and hung out as friends. She texted him a year later on ig to give him an update on a contest she told him about on the trip. I found it weird since she had his number but he showed me the chat. This girl had zero respect for herself or other people. She texted him quite often and tried flirting with him. My boyfriend sadly isn’t the smartest and texted her back in a friendly way. He told her he had a girlfriend after the second time she asked (which i found weird). She was lowkey mad and told him if it doesnt work out he can always talk to her. He didn’t understand. I told him to ask for her intentions and she asked if I found out and said she never wanted to make me feel hurt and she always texts to her guy friends like that. He blocked her after and deleted their messages. He sometimes makes jokes without thinking and some of them were meh. But he always apologized. Another thing that threw me off was when we’re dating he out of curiosity looked on hinge what kind of people where living in my city (when he visited me). When I caught him he explained and said he was just curious and was sorry that he hurt me and deleted the app. (We both still had it during the time because of our first messages lol I still had it too). All this things kinda hurt but he always worked on it and did better. He said that he doesn’t want to lose me and will so anything to keep me. And he keeping his word. In march this year I went to my exam phase and he did too. I was mad again for him being busy. Something in me flipped. Mid march on our holiday in Norway I got strong break up urges/thoughts and immense doubts. They always changed from do I love him, Am I gay?, His looks, His personality, my past relationships, am I still in love with my ex, his past mistakes, hating him and so on. They changed quite quickly. I’m in a spiral since and my head hurts so much. I wake up and have these thoughts all day. I don’t feel lovely dovey anymore or have the butterflies. What bothers me that he did make some mistakes and I forgave him and he did better. But now all I can see are these mistakes and not the good things in him. It’s like my brain is scaning for advice to break up. I don’t want to really. I always found it easier to hate someone instead of forgiving them. I was always a negative person. Now I’m asking for some advice from other people. Are these actual concerns or is my ROCD making everything worse.

I was just free from real event ocd for like a week, but then one morning unknown anxiety showed up at my door. I thought it was just another ocd flare from real event ocd, but I felt like this time was different. This anxiety showed up with thousands of intrusive thoughts, and then the question came, “am I really recovering?”. I tried utilizing accepting that the possibility of not recovering could be true, but that gave my OCD an excuse to use that as leverage. It fired back with “so how do you know if you’re really free if you’re uncertain about full recovery? Doesn’t full recovery mean being free?” That scares me because that thought contradicts my decision to feel free by choosing uncertainty. This feels like a loop. I need help man

i seem to be having a really bad physical flare up. i have been for months. i dont know how to feel better. my symptoms include; sensitive skin, sick body aches, joint pain and aches, calves ache, bad headaches, chills, hot flashes, exhaustion, muscle fatigue, memory problems, reeling feeling, brain zaps, my heart beats loudly and strong, sick aches in my stomach, and classic anxiety symptoms. i went to the doctor over a month ago and got blood work done but everything is clean. ik this is the second post i have made about this but i need some relief. i am having a bad flare up day. this has been going on since like april. i dont do much with my life because i cant really. im assuming this is linked with anxiety/ocd/depression, but i just need some relief. i am tired. any advice will help, thank you

Im feeling like im needing some support right now before i go down a spiraling path. I got some blood work done recently to figure somethings out. My hair hasn’t really been growing and I thought it might be a hormone problem. When I had my follow up with my provider it turns out some of my hormones were really out of whack. They could indicate PCOS or potentially a tumor on my adrenal gland. I’ve thought about it on and off ever since and although more blood work is being done I can’t help but fixate on how this could ruin my life. Like what if I have fertility issues? What if I have to get a big scary surgery, something goes wrong and I never wake up? What if I have the metabolic issues that come from PCOS and I’m more likely to have a heart attack or diabetes and die from one of those? I end up googling a lot over and over again, even if I already know the answer, because I want to feel safe, but the answers never make me feel safer. I also can’t tell if how I’m thinking about it is just how anyone else would think about it or if I’m having OCD thoughts. Again any support or gentle advice or comments would be greatly appreciated and help me out a lot.

I have been suffocated with my anxiety and OCD the past few months. My brain never goes quiet, and I mean never unless I am asleep. I dread the day for how loud my brain is and I just want to heal and be happy but I genuinely do not know how. I don’t know if anyone has tips or what not but I just need someone. I got put on Buspar for anxiety?

I’m a recent high school graduate and I’m starting college soon. I’m hoping to find tips and support for managing adhd and ocd while being a student. Especially since I’m a CHRONIC PROCRASTINATOR 😭 who also happens to be an extreme perfectionist (to a fault ngl) and this combination can make it impossible to get work done on time and to the standards that I expect myself to reach. This becomes really stressful as unfinished projects pile up and my grades drop (and once an assignment is super late I get too embarrassed to ask for help because I think it’ll make my teachers hate me 😔). This usually leads me to do nothing about the assignments and failing them which makes me feel like a failure since I usually have such good ideas for them… and obviously this leads to compulsions like seeking reassurance from friends, family, and teachers, and I start compulsively checking grades, picking at my face, among other things. So does anyone have any tips?

So ive been suffering with hocd/soocd for about 5 years now, and within the last year (2026) it had become so bad and unmanageable. So before this I never actually believed like deep down that I was into women like I just knew it wasnt true. However, recently Ive started to have this feeling that deep down I actually am and just can't accept it (cause of internalised homophobia) and like scared that deep down i am a girl whos into girls. Even though I dont want to be and like I have no problem with those who are or even being one myself but these feelings disrupt the life I want for myself (bf, husband, having a relationship with men). Anyways today I was feeling just so numb and im scrolling on social media and I see this girl and i notice her body (i didnt wanna be with her in any way) and instead if getting panicked like I usually do it felt like this curiosity and relief and like genuine questioning and then I started panicking about am I genuinely questioning is this not ocd anymore, have I beat the ocd and now im just questioning for real. But can this be hocd/so-ocd? Can it make me feel like its genuine and curiosity? Or have I actually been suppressing something within me like I fear was?

Last night I kept waking up on and off. Because my mom was worried for me, me and my boyfriend are on a break. I kept waking up in the middle of the night on the verge of tears and panic and started messaging him before going back to sleep and waking up again later. This time, it said he posted on his story 2 hours ago when by this time I text 4 hours ago. Since then I've been horrifyed that he's angry at me. I continue to miss him, but my mind keeps saying "do you really miss him, or are you just bored?" "You're only with him because no one else listens to you about your interests." "Maybe you'd replace him." It makes me go back and analyze how I've treated him in the past. I was frequently annoyed, irritable, and a bit jealous of him due to insecurity reasons. And no matter what, Ive always been a somewhat emotionally numb person. I believe I lack empathy, and in general I seem cold. I'm so scared. I'm scared I'm just using him. I don't know what to do.

Recently the only safe places for me have been my room and the car anywhere else stresses me out. My OCD has really spiked in the past year or two once I saw a TikTok about a virus. My OCD stems from my fear of getting sick, I have had that since around age 5. But recently it is really really severe I talk with a therapist now but shes newer in the OCD field and I have been way too terrified to start exposure therapy. I can't go in stores, restaurants, other peoples homes, literally anywhere. It is taking over my life and I am just watching my life fly by but im too scared to do anything about it, even just speaking about being ill makes me tense and scared that its going to manifest it happening. I am really stuck and desperate for something to help this is affecting not just me but my whole family I can't even pet my dog anymore unless im about to shower because of the fear that shes going to contaminate me. I know I cant live like this forever but I don't know where to start or how to do it correctly so I don't freak myself out even more. I apologize for how all over the place and long this is but I really don't talk about this much except for with my therapist and mom.

Hey everyone! I’m a bit new here and I’m not fully sure if I have OCD or not. But every post I read I feel like I relate a lot to. I have really bad anxiety and when I was 18 went through extensive testing to get diagnosed with ADHD I don’t take medications for either of them anymore but I do struggle a lot with both. I can’t seem to tell what is my anxiety and what is not. Examples of what I have noticed: I get super paranoid if someone around me is sick and I bleach and disinfect everything around me and around them if possible out of fear of getting sick. If I have a bump or any minor change in how I feel I go through rabbit holes on google and tend to think I have a crazy illness and even get to the point of needing to cut the area off if it “feels wrong”. I obsess over my teeth needing to be white and if they are too yellow or streaky I spend hours brushing my teeth and using whitening gels and strips to fix it. I also have always thought that secretly I am an evil person and I try to do things to prove that I am not but in the end it’s just my mind saying I am faking it and no one truly knows how bad of a person I am. I spend at least 10 hours a week cleaning and making sure nothing is too dusty or dirty in fear of bugs or a surprise guest coming over. I constantly doubt myself in everything I do and I even doubt the things the people around me do in fear that they are just trying to manipulate me. I constantly fear I may cheat on my partner and I tend to replay events in my head over and over again worrying if it has ruined the way a person perceives me. Honestly it’s exhausting and it’s never ending. I’m not sure if I have OCD but this is just some of the things I have noticed. I just wanted to vent somewhere even if it’s to a void. Thank you for reading this if you did :)

How can you be afraid of effort? Not bored by it, not annoyed by it. Afraid of it. That’s the part that doesn’t add up on paper. You want to change. You want to get better. You know this is the path, you know obstacles come with it, you know you’re dealing with anxiety, limited time, limited energy. You’re ambitious, and you try to stay honest about what’s realistic. So how does all of that add up to being afraid of the one thing that would actually get you there? Maybe it’s this. Five or six years of not much moving. Failure after failure, or what feels like failure, and you can’t even tell which kind it was: not enough effort, not enough ability, not enough time given to it, or it just wasn’t the right fit. Not knowing which one it was is exhausting on its own. It’s worn you down past frustration into something closer to hopelessness. And hopelessness doesn’t fight you. It just makes you too tired to keep fighting. Distractions aren’t the real explanation, they’re the easy one. Everyone has a phone. Everyone has something they’re hooked on. That’s not unique to you. What’s harder to sit with is this: the thing you want most, every day, every minute, is to feel like you’re actually making progress. Not performing it. Making it. And you have what you’d need. The tools, the knowledge, people have handed you exactly what to do. You still forget to use it, or you use it once and don’t come back. First try, second, third, even the fourth or fifth. You quit. Not because the method failed you. Because somewhere in there you decided you were the failure. Maybe that’s true. Maybe it’s not. You genuinely don’t know. But here’s what you do know: action is the only thing that has ever moved you forward, not thinking about moving forward. And you’re not incapable of action, you do things, you clean, you eat, you sleep, you see people, you walk. So the problem isn’t that you can’t act. It’s that you can’t sustain acting on the thing that actually matters. Two weeks into a workout, a study method, real studying, the business, and then a show pulls you in, or something you already know you shouldn’t be doing pulls you in, and it’s gone. You’ve never once made it to three weeks. You stop, and somewhere along the way you lost track of what effort even means. You’re not sure you ever had a clear answer. Part of the weight is volume. You’re not short on ideas, you’re buried in them. Years of collecting knowledge, tools, potential you can see clearly in your head, and none of it converts, because you’re trying to hold all of it at once, which means none of it moves. And every day you don’t act, you’re also replaying every day before it that you didn’t act. It compounds. So how are you supposed to be kind to yourself in the middle of that? If you were actually doing the ERP the way it’s meant to be done, the honest move might be to sit with “maybe I am pathetic, maybe I’m not” without needing to resolve it either way. You can do that. Until you can’t. Because part of you genuinely wants out, wants to be proud of the work, the relationships, the body, the effort itself. And another part of you wants to stay exactly where you are. Because it’s familiar. Because the self-pity, the rumination, even this, talking it through again, watching another video, reading another framework, gives you something that feels like relief. It tells you it’s not fully your fault. That’s not nothing. That’s peace of mind, technically. It’s also why you don’t leave. You know what the discomfort costs. Physically, mentally, socially, and you have a rough sense of what it costs later, even without being able to see the future. Five or six years of data on yourself is not nothing either. And that’s part of what makes this so disorienting: resisting the discomfort has become its own discomfort. So you convert it into something more manageable, you turn it into pity, into searching for the next video, the next resource, the next person who might finally hand you the real answer. Some part of you is still waiting for the moment that fixes this from the outside. It hasn’t come. It isn’t coming. So what are you actually waiting for. Why is it so hard to do the next thing in front of you instead of the hundred things in your head. Why does failing once mean stopping instead of adjusting. Why does discomfort get treated like a stop sign instead of a toll you pay to get through. You already know, somewhere in you, that effort, the unglamorous, repeated, often boring kind, is the only thing that has ever built anything real in anyone’s life. So the real question isn’t how you can dislike effort. It’s why you keep choosing the comfort of the hole over the discomfort of climbing out of it, when you already know which one you actually want.

I feel like I’ll be okay all day, without any significant struggles or intrusive thoughts. I try to distract a lot of my negative thinking by doing something repetitive and that I am used to, but it feels like I need to be doing something to not think all of the time But at night when I am still and not doing anything but lying down, I find it very hard to quiet my head. I think about my future, and where I might inevitably end up. I always go to the worst outcome. I don’t want to think this way and I want to be able to push away these thoughts more easily. Does anyone know of any methods to help slow down my thoughts? Or at least make it easier for me to not focus on them?

I want to ask for a bit of advice and see if others have struggled with this specifically too. My basic obsession is with time, death, and finitude vs. eternity. The idea of the heat death of the universe to me is really scary and a compulsion I have done in the past is researching for hours about alternative scientific theories, philosophy about time and meaning, and physicists’ speculations for how life could escape the death of the universe if it happens. The reason my mind latches onto it I think is because it feels like the worst possible thing, the end of everything, and there is so much uncertainty about these scientific questions of the far far future. I feel difficulty going about my life because my mind redirects everything to this question. Any advice would be appreciated

Over the course of a couple of weeks I began seeing videos about OCD that popped up on my feed. Watching these videos I began to realize it sounds incredibly similar to my anxiety. Perhaps I have OCD? I highly doubted it so I did quite a bit of research, did some online quizzes, and ultimately decided to ask my psychiatrist if I could to screened. ( My prior diagnoses being late diagnosed ADHD inattentive, GAD, and recurrent depressive disorder ) She asked me to state obsessions and compulsions I have, which I had difficult time answering. I simply blurted out the first ones that came to mind. I only had 30 mins with her so I tried rehearsing what I wanted to state over and over, just to fold. When I mentioned this she told me that I probably just have anxiety and began stating typical OCD traits ( washing hands and closing doors repeatable ). To which I respond, "yes? those are OCD traits?". She then stated that I might have OCD patterns due to be parentified from a young age but that doesn't necessarily mean I actually have OCD. She then stated that OCD is actually quite rare and a lot of people think they have it ( Her saying this confused me, I'm not trying to get diagnosed for fun LOL). TBH I do agree to a certain extent, I might not have it, but I wish instead of directly challenging me she would have given me the space to state what I'm experiencing then arrange another call to properly figure out what's up. On another note, diagnoses are so difficult, I feel like I have to know just as much if not more than my psychiatrist...

I don’t understand why people can’t just be honest up front and why people lie about serious things. As someone with OCD, Im pretty sure I’m living my worst nightmare rn. I just need advice right now