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Hello, Everyone. I feel as though I’ve maxed my ability to control my OCD beyond the point I’ve reached and am now interested in trying some medications. Any recommendations? Thanks.

About a month and a half ago I broke up with my girlfriend of almost 3 years. I had relentless doubts/anxiety about whether or not it was the “right” relationship for me. I would always analyze my relationship with Google searches and ask family/friends their opinion of my relationship. The expression of all these doubts that I had, made it seem clear to others that I just hadn’t found “the one” or that it just wasn’t the “right relationship” yet. Over time I began to agree with these opinions. Assuming that if I was in the “right” relationship, I wouldn’t have these relentless doubts. I had repetitive thoughts that I needed to end the relationship or commit to marriage with her right now. These thoughts caused me a lot of anxiety and often times I was lost in my head instead of being in the present. It felt as if I was just swimming in constant anxiety/doubt month after month. I got to a point where I felt depressed and even irritable when it came to her/the relationship. One day I decided that it must just not be the “right relationship/person” if I’m having all of these doubts and that she deserved someone who could give her more reassurance about the future. I felt that I wasn’t being the boyfriend that I thought she deserved. So I broke up with her. I was relieved for a few weeks. I felt I had a clear mind now that I wasn’t thinking so much about it anymore. It seemed like I had made a good, but difficult, decision. Recently, that anxiety has come right back to me. And then I learned about ROCD. I’ve now been stuck in a constant loop of ruminating about whether ROCD is the reason I broke up with her. From what I’ve read and learned about, it seems that I need to become okay with being uncertain about the situation. I’m still new to this, so I’m looking forward to learning more from my therapy sessions. I don’t really know what I’m hoping to get out of posting this. It’s just difficult feeling like I can’t trust my own thoughts/feelings. The possibility that I broke up with her bc of ROCD makes me feel sick. But I don’t feel that I could attempt to get back with her unless I felt a little more certain about the relationship. I don’t want to be focused on finding clarity or certainty. However, I’m very new to all of this. I feel overwhelmed, defeated, confused, and paralyzed about everything.

I need help or someone to listen to

going through a breakup and my intrusive thoughts are having a field day. making me feel like everything is my fault when that wasn’t the case at all. im struggling so much.

I wish I hadn’t have deliberately imagined the the thoughts to test myself. It feels like I’ve confused myself and now there’s no answers. I think while testing myself with these thoughts to see how I would react, I was hoping I would have a strong negative reaction to them with bad anxiety, which did happen but somehow I’ve confused myself into thinking the anxiety made the thought feel like an urge and my body went into fight or flight mode and now I’m thinking that reaction was me liking the feeling of doing that horrible thing in my thought. Now every time I have an intrusive thought and I get anxiety, I no longer feel like it’s anxiety and instead think it’s me desperate to do that because I l understood what it feels like and now I want to do that. Before i deliberately imagined the thoughts and got myself in this mess I would just brush all thoughts off as intrusive and felt okay but now I’ve got myself in this tangled mess of no answers, and it’s more scary than ever because I’m mistaking my own feelings. I feel so sick to the core that I’ve started believing that I like the feeling of doing that and this has all happened because of experimenting with the thoughts in my mind. I’m worried what if I’ve understood something I shouldn’t have and now I want to carry those evil things out but I’m not bad at the same time or the main thing that worries me. When it feels like an urge it feels like that’s about to happen and I keep thinking what if I’m desperate to do that and I’m the future I give in and it’s horrible, how did my life become like this.out of all the intrusive thoughts I’ve ever had this is the worst thing, I was saying it out loud to my dad for the first time yesterday ‘I imagined doing that to test myself and now It feels like I like the feeling of doing that’ and it just sounded so strange like what am I even saying what am I voicing out, what the hell is going on, how did my life get like this, I definitely must be confusing my feelings, I mean is that a thing? Can you have false feelings or can you confuse your feelings and feel like you like imagining something. I know that I don’t want to do that I hate it it’s disgusting but my anxiety and feelings are making me feel like I like imaging doing that and when I get an urge with an intrusive thought it feels like I would like the feeling of doing that, how can I like the feeling of doing something I have never done and that I am crying everyday about and is making me feel so terrible, I’m so confused, I mean people on here say ‘ocd tries to convince me I like the thoughts’ but idk if mine is ocd or me, because it feels like my feelings are making me convinced or that, what if it’s true? I feel so terrible. This problem all started because of this horrible documentary I watched but the man who done the evil things was living a normal life he was married and had kids and suddenly killed them and then I started worrying because why was he living a normal life then did that. I use to think the normal things I do mean that I’m not bad but now I’m thinking what if living a normal life you can still be bad 😞😞😞😞

Does anyone else struggle with schizophrenia ocd?

Hi everyone. This is my second post here, I think there’s a part of me that is just desperately seeking reassurance for probably the millionth time. I have terrible health anxiety and OCD. I am always hyper focused on my health, mainly my heart, and have constant intrusive thoughts about my own death, that most of the time come with terrible images of my dead body or my family in mourning. I am recently starting to struggling with looking toward the future. I am supposed to be getting married in May of 2023, and am making myself sick with worry as my intrusive thoughts are telling me I am going to die sometime between now and then, and will not live to see my wedding. I am terrified day in and day out that any day is going to be my last, and my intrusive thoughts aren’t helping in the slightest. They, if anything, bring me a sense of confirmation. They feel so true and so real. I have convinced myself that I am sensing my own death before it happens. I have been checked by a dozen doctors and other than having mental health issues and a brain condition called Chiari malformation, they all tell me I am healthy! I am so scared. I am worried that I’m going to feel like this forever. Has anyone ever dealt with this and come out on the other side? I don’t know how to beat this, but I want to be able to live my life without the fear that at 24 years old, my life is about to come to an end. Thank you all in advance.

Today my OCD has latched onto one of my real events where I haven’t apologized since I very recently remembered this incident from probably about 13 years ago when I was about 8/9. The person involved and I have been on great terms our whole lives and I’m not sure if she even remembers, but I feel like my actions were wrong and I am desperate to apologize or check if she’s okay or if she remembers. Ever since this became an obsession, seeing a message from her or her IG story pop up has been scaring me and I’m so afraid of how to act the next time I see her. Should I reach out and apologize? I don’t want to bring up something now Ans affect her for something she wasn’t initially affected by, I feel like apologizing right now would be more for my sake than hers. But also is the right thing to do apologize when you realize you might have hurt someone? I don’t know the right thing to do and I don’t know if this is OCD, or genuinely the right/wrong thing to do.

I have horrible checking intrusive thoughts where if I don’t check something before leaving the room/apartment/building, I’m convinced the worst will happen. I believe the .1% is more likely than the 99.9%. I’m worried if I don’t check the stove there will be a gas leak or fire, if I don’t check the outlets there will be an electrical fire, if I don’t check the faucets there will be flooding. It’s like my brain doesn’t believe me. I check hundreds of times before leaving and still I don’t feel secure in everything being good and end up rechecking. I take pictures and it’s like I don’t believe the pictures. I’ll go to my girlfriends but have to Uber back just to check something that is most likely okay and it’s Eating up my life. It is ruining my life and I have no idea how I can be an adult or hold down a job with this. I’m terrified of causing some horrible thing cause I didn’t check. I feel hopeless

I’m not sure how many people will read this but I feel like I need to get it off my chest as I have kept a lot of this to myself for 10 years and feel that sharing it will help. I started off having intrusive thoughts when I was 13, one night I had a nightmare that someone in my family that I am extremely close to had done something sexual towards me (I won’t go into more detail), at the time I didn’t know what it was and thought I was going crazy and this sexual image that I had in my nightmare just went round in my head for about two years, I kept thinking what if this actually happened and I don’t remember or what if this is true? when I knew it wasn’t because I have such a loving relationship with the person in the images. I didn’t tell anyone apart from one friend, and unfortunately he took advantage of how low I was feeling and asked me for sexual photos saying that it would make me feel better sending them and that it would solve my problems. Following having confided in him, I have not spoken to anyone else about my OCD as I am scared about what they will do and that they won’t understand the thoughts I have and think I am crazy. I luckily managed to get over the phase of those first intrusive thoughts when I was about 16, but since then I have gone through several other themes which have made me doubt everything about myself. I unfortunately went through an emotionally abusive relationship with my first boyfriend, when I was 17, and during that relationship I had ROCD, doubting everything about whether I loved my boyfriend and whether I was attracted to him, however he also asked me to prove that I did love him and was very controlling which I think exacerbated everything. During this time, I also had existential OCD thoughts and realised perfectionism was also a part of this (I would tear out a whole page of notes because I got one word wrong or if my notes didn’t look right - something I didn’t realise was part of OCD). Since then I have intense intrusive thoughts about my sexual orientation (I am straight but I have doubted whether I could be bisexual or lesbian), then I most recently had transgender OCD doubting whether I am even a woman (even though I love being a woman), which even went to the extent of non-binary OCD and this led to derealisation, where I sat for weeks with that feeling. Now I am doubting whether I feel sexual attraction to anyone and whether I want to have sex or not, I’m not sure what you would call this theme? But it feels like it is endless and that there is no way out of this now and that it will just be ongoing. I feel like I don’t even know who I am as a person anymore and I find it so hard to go through this on my own. Because I have lived with intrusive thoughts for so long and for several years where I didn’t even know what they were I am wondering if things will ever get better. I would like to speak to a therapist but I am scared about those concerns that I have previously mentioned (mainly trust). I have tried ERP on my own and to try and detach thoughts from myself but I find it really hard and think I need help to really start improving! I don’t know what I aimed to do writing this, but it has helped me get this off my shoulders. I am nearly 23 now so still young but I want to having a fulfilling life 🙏🏼

It all started about 4 years ago-I would have vicious panic attacks relating the whereabouts of my father, it was recently after coming home from a summer camp when I found out my dad had been struggling with drug abuse pretty much my entire life. I myself being 14 at the time had been smoking pot daily by that time to subconsciously cope with the anxiety and depression I was facing. I remember the first day it happened I was smoking with my good friend we shared a wall in the same duplex. It was after school and my father was still on his way home from work or something. I remember my anxiety kicking in like I was having a panic attack but like; worse. I started crying in front of my friend really hard and saying “I don’t know what’s wrong I just don’t feel okay.”My friend (clearly super uncomfortable) just sat there and tried to comfort me while I called my Dad over and over again until he finally answered. When he did answer I felt such physical relief that it was alarming. I continued to freak out until he got home. When he pulled into the driveway my friend left. From that day on it just kept snowballing, I tried to play it off like it was just a random anxiety attack (caused by the weed or something) but no matter how hard I tried to force it down and distract myself I felt this sense of dread brewing in my at all times like something fucked was gonna happen. This led to me calling my dad excessively everyday all day checking on him making sure he was where he claimed to be etc. It got so bad I had to leave school forms while and stay at my grandparents because the checking was putting too much strain on me and my dads relationship. I went to a psychiatrist and he prescribed me medication for ocd. I continued to live at my grandmothers and tried to white knuckle through everything I was feeling. Eventually they faced me with the choice of going back to school or seeking help at an impatient program. To me impatient was the end. It was being strapped to a bed and wheeled in to a state hospital confined to one of those padded rooms with a strait jacket. Eventually I got things semi under control. I was unable to uphold good grades at my towns high school however-the district sent me to an alternative school. Being away from all my friends and the things that distracted me (+ the workload being a complete joke compared to what had been expected of me academically at my prior schools) I was able to jump my .6 gpa to a 2.32. Eventually my dad met a girl off tinder who is still his girlfriend now. He’s drinking and smoking pot occasionally but I guess he’s fine? I’m currently living with him and my sister working full time- I just graduated this past June. I plan to attend school next September. Overall compared to where I was a few years ago I am in a much better place. I still struggle most days with lots of anxiety and intrusive thoughts. I still fight the urge to unnecessarily call my dad on a regular basis. Yet I’m here. I’m alive and breathing. I’m glad I found this app I hope it can help me connect w some like minded people or something idk. I know this is very all over the place lol just needed to get it out I guess. <3

So I’ve been on Zoloft since ending of October and went on 100mg about 2 weeks ago. I really started feeling the affects and it has made me calmer but I still have a lot of intrusive thoughts and today my mood swings were off the charts which my ocd feeds off of and now my mind feels like it’s racing. It could be because I get on my period in a week but can this still happen while on medication or should I talk to my doctor about a new prescription? What’s the goal of medication if you could just share your story

Has anyone ever tried to deliberately play out a harm ocd thought in there mind to test yourself? In hope you would get really anxious and that would prove you would hate it? I deliberately imagined suffocating someone with a pillow and it’s ruined everything, I did get a really anxious feeling but now I feel like I know how it feels to suffocate someone and that I liked the feeling. I’ve been a mess ever since, thinking that I’ve understood how it feels to do that and now I’m desperate to feel the feeling of suffocating someone. I was crying very hard today because I imagined the thought again on purpose to test myself to make sure I don’t like it and I got this feeling in my chest but don’t know if it was anxiety and was worried it was excitement and made myself need to poo and then I searched up what emotions can make yourself need to poo from and it said anxiety or excitement, and because the feeling I get in my chest isn’t painful it’s just a feeling and I’m worried it’s excitement and that I like the thought, whenever i see an animal or a person I have this feeling like an urge of needing to do that horrible thing to them or I saw a cat sat outside today while I was sat in the car and it felt like would do that or want to do that and now I just don’t know what to do. I don’t want to do that but now I’m worried that I do or that I like the feeling of doing that I hate this problem I feel so exhausted I really don’t want there to be anything wrong with me but I’ve started believing that I’m genuinely bad and want to do these things I keep having melt downs crying and feel like it’s all doomed because maybe I’ve just got this inescapable urge of wanting to suffocate something because of imagining the thought and the thing that makes it worse is that in movies they make it out to seem like the serial killers get a relief from suffocating someone and now I’m worried that’s me, I wish someone would tell me that I don’t know how it feels to do that through the thought and that it’s all a lie

Ocd tends to creep up on me when I’m having a good time or when I’m at a party, ocd turns everything negative around me. What are some tips that can support me from feeling negatively while I’m having a good time.

ocd and bdd is not fun

I was officially diagnosed with OCD in February - I’m 20 years old and graduating college this year, so it was overwhelming yet relieving at the same time. I lost my Dad tragically when I was 14. I feel like this event exacerbated my symptoms - I couldn’t control losing him or what would happen after. Everything I thought I knew was shattered. I felt like it was my responsibility to pick up all the pieces. Sometimes I still feel that way. I took college classes in high school to get ahead. I broke up with a long-term boyfriend who was toxic. I moved across the country on my own for college for a fresh start. It was the best decision I’ve ever made. My social life soared, I excelled in my classes, and even started my own research as an undergraduate. I’ve always been a fast-track student, an over achiever in all aspects of my life. I’m an honors student, work in 4 research labs as an undergraduate RA, have a part-time job out of school, and pay all my own bills. I’m graduating from college a year early because of my efforts and just applied to graduate school for a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology. Last year I fell apart. 18-19 credit semesters ripped me away from my friends and family. My life was a revolving door between school, work, and the grocery store. Occasionally, I’d sneak in a hike. I developed an eating disorder and an unhealthy relationship with exercise. For the first time in my life, I thought about suicide. I knew I needed a change, and I knew I needed help. After all, I’m studying psychology - shouldn’t I have seen the signs? I got help. I started to heal. I figured out what the words ‘trust’ and ‘balance’ truly mean. I’m by no means perfect or anywhere close to where I want to be, but it’s a damn good start. I love to learn, and more importantly, I’m learning how to allow myself grow and change. Life is uncomfortable right now - there are many unknowns, and I find myself spiraling at times. Will I be accepted to graduate school, even though I’m young but have so much valid experience? Do I make the people in my life happy? Do I need to clean the kitchen when I get home? Did I remember to pay my electric bill this month? It feels like the weight of the world is so heavy at times. Everyday I’m learning and growing into the woman I know that I am meant to be. I know I am strong. I know I am worthy. I know my Dad would be proud of me if he were still alive. I’m learning how to love who I am and who I am meant to be. It’s by no means easy, but it is worth it. Life is beautiful and too short to obsess over things I cannot control. It’s easier said than done, but I am doing my best to find beauty in the process. Growth doesn’t happen when we are comfortable. It’s a matter of when - not if.

I’m on and off with my OCD. It feels all too real at times, and nonexistent at others. I’m heavily considering going medication as i feel it may be what I need to breakthrough this spell. What is your alls experiences with meds and what did you take? Please share all the good, bad and in-between!

My mother killed herself this week. I've been struggling a lot. But my boyfriend keeps asking me questions about our relationship that create arguments. I'm a peaceful person. I love people with all my heart. But he keeps creating arguments for whatever thing I do. He even wanted to break up with me because I confused him with another guy in a picture where everybody was wearing the same clothes, hair and mask. Right now, he texted me saying that he had to tell me something. Again. He always has something to tell me. And I always try to fix everything. I don't know what he's going to tell me. What else I've done badly. What else I've made to hurt him. On the same day my mother died, I sent him a voice message, because we are a distance relationship, saying that I'm sorry for hurting him for the misunderstanding about the picture, for everything he has complained about me. That I never wanted to hurt him. That it has never been my intention. I don't know what he will tell me now, I'm waiting for his message. Today it's my mother's funeral. Such a great for complaining about me again, isn't it?

We just talked about Jeffrey Dauhmer in my sociology class and all the crazy things he did. Now my mind keeps thinking/picturing everything and it’s making me sick. Then my harm ocd gets triggered and says I’m like him and tries to imagine me doing worse things..anyone else? Any tips? I start erp in two weeks.

I'm 26 and have had OCD symptoms since I was a small child. My grandfather is diagnosed OCD, and my parents were very concerned that I had OCD as a kid. I believe that I "grew out" of most of my noticeable compulsions/rituals as I grew up. (I probably just learned to cope a bit) but the intrusive thoughts are incredibly overwhelming sometimes, the intrusive thoughts seemed to just get worse as I grew up. I was misdiagnosed with Bipolar Disorder in 2010. In 2010, I was also diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Agoraphobia, but that diagnosis doesn't seem off-base, as anxiety has ruled my life for as long as I can remember. I thought about trying to get diagnosed properly, as I believe my Bipolar Disorder diagnosis was just childhood trauma (willing to expound on that later on) but I'm also worried that it might not help. What if it doesn't change anything? I've made it 26 years while coping (barely coping, sometimes) so I just wanted to ask, Has a diagnosis really changed your life? (Thanks in advance)