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Has anyone had a success story with beating relationship OCD? Please share. Feeling a tad hopeless.

I’ve identified as a lesbian for about 2 years and now I am rethinking everything. I do not know why. And in my time identifying as a lesbian, I’ve felt the happiest, most liberated, and most free I’ve ever felt. I’ve learned the history, I’ve learned to accept myself. I’ve felt so much joy and happiness toward it. My fear is that I’ll go back to therapy and discover that I really am attracted to men. I haven’t had any trauma regarding them. I just don’t want to be attracted to them. I’ve never really shown interest in them In my life. But now I have terrible SO OCD that keeps me up at night, has me waking up with anxiety, gives me multiple panic attacks a day, and has me rethinking everything I’ve grown to love and know about myself. I have nothing against anyone else’s identity, I just don’t want to be anything other than a lesbian.

I can't do I really wanna be poly? Why why why why I don't understand. I just want me and my boyfriend it was always the two of us. I don't wanna share my boyfriend with other girls. I don't wanna be with other dudes. It doesn't stop! It keeps saying things in my head. Ik in my heart I will never EVER be poly. I'm happy just the two of us. But my head, my stupid twisted head just wanna make me question that. I had not one not two but 4 ANXIETY ATTACKS just because I was scared of manifesting my boyfriend to be poly or these poly thoughts in general. I even confessed my boyfriend about being poly just to see his answer and he said "that's not us babe" and I was so happy! But now it's questioning me. It keeps questioning me. Making me picture another girl. It keeps forcing me to be poly but I don't wanna be. I can't I don't even know what I want. Why do I feel bad for a girl WHO'S NOT EVEN REAL. Like first of all he's mine :,3 second of all me and my boyfriend BOTH said we are not sharing each other. I can't keep repeating the same words every day. I can't keep doing this. I really don't wanna share my boyfriend. I do NOT want a open relationship. No no. I don't like it. It's like I don't even know who I am. I should be happy that it's just the two of us. Is this ocd. Can ocd trick you like many many times to the point your like feeling crazy. I tried sitting with my thoughts. It ain't working because I'm scared of it coming true I feel like I have no choice. It does want me to know what I want. It's like making me view everything completely different. I can't even remember anything. I feel like shooting my head. Help me. please please help. Someone help. I can't do this. I can't even think of my boyfriend without thinking of another girl. this is so unfair. Why not the two of us. It has always been the two of us. It keeps making me rethink everything that me and my boyfriend had done together. Please help me please anybody please. I can't do this alone. I can't.

Hey everyone, My name is Sonia Sanabria. On this day marks 2 months & 7 days of OCD. & here is my story; I’ve recently moved in with my grandparents because of issues with my biological mother. Ever since I moved to the place & accepted I needed to start my whole life over, I got symptoms of OCD. I have to wait 2 more weeks for help & by then I’ll be starting school & I am so worried about how am I gonna act in school with OCD. if anybody has a say about anything please say anything. This is my first time ever dealing with such thing. Symptoms: Intrusive thoughts, anxiety attacks, compulsions to hurt a loved one or anyone in public ( I obviously do not follow through. ) , I could say the complete truth & my mind will make me think I just lied, major headaches that don’t go away with pills, can’t sleep at night, Anything I hear such as music, words, noises .. my head constantly repeats over & over, I wake up with anxiety & go to sleep with anxiety, false scenarios, I constantly do research about OCD, extreme depression! , thoughts that I’m never gonna get out of this, & for one most disturbing thought is to sexually assault someone. I get depersonalization & now currently suicidal OCD. I keep imagining myself dead & how will my loved ones grieve after it. & I am so scared because the feeling almost feels genuine. I even search to see if OCD controls your feelings too. I am far known that I need help, but unfortunately from the place I live in .. people constantly move job to job. So I have to wait 2 more weeks.. what does anybody have to say about this 🥲?

sometimes when things get bad, i feel like everything is wrong, everything i do, everything i feel is wrong. everything just feels off. and it feels like there’s no way to fix it. for example, “if i leave this thing in my purse, later i’ll see it and i’ll associate my purse with that negative feeling and event”, so i move it but that also feels wrong so i move it back, etc.. but nothing feels right. it’s overwhelming. or everything in my room is wrong and there’s nothing to do to fix it bc i’m so overwhelmed and confused with things in the wrong place and my emotions have associations with every item. i feel like their placement will impact my life in huge ways. there’s a blanket feeling over my life that feels traumatic, like i’m tainted and dirty with feeling avoidant and like nothing i do is right. in my opinions, feelings, thought, actions, choices. i see perfectionism ocd with this feeling but i feel like my symptoms are more feeling based, i’m not sure if i’m experiencing ocd or something else, or a mix. does anyone have an opinion or similar experience?

I feel like for years I’ve never really been ‘here’. I’m just the little character in my head that’s always arguing with my brain. I try to be in the moment and enjoy things but all I can think about is how my time will run out soon and this will all be a memory. I feel like I can only live in memories. Like if I go to the beach and it’s a great day, I just think ‘this will be a great memory later’. And then I try so so hard to ‘live in the moment’ and feel (I’ll close my eyes and think of all the sensations, I’ll stare at things like a pretty flower or the sunset, I’ll just try to do things that make me feel) but I still am kinda numb. I feel emotions really strongly but don’t feel like I’m here really?? My brain tells me I shouldn’t be caring ab things bc I don’t rlly feel all that present, but at the same time I feel things too hard?? I also need my disassociation sometimes to cope with things. For example, I think I have ADHD and I have this thing where I’m really sensitive to sensations (my clothes are really uncomfortable and I get compulsions to ‘fix’ them all the time) so I kinda zone out and it helps. It also helps if someone’s mad or me or I’m going thru smthn difficult to kinda just not be there or just think of the future when everything is going to be okay. But using that to deal w the negatives also affects the positives. But even when I try to stop it doesn’t work, no matter what I ruminate about how little time I have left. Even now, my thought process is that I have to fix this problem while I’m still young before I waste my youth not enjoying things fully, but I’ve never really known how it feels like to not be “floating”, so I don’t know when I’ll even get there. Thanks if you read this all.

:/ i swear. i spiral so bad. i think about one bad trait and it leads into any bad interaction i've had with anyone. and it makes me feel so bad. i can't stop replaying it and the guilt starts to eat my alive and i ruminate so much and it just makes me want to spill my guts to someone- repent or something, even if A. i already apologized B. i can't do anything about it now C. it might not even be that bad in the first place this kind of shit was REALLY bad last year but i started taking celexa and i ruminate less, but when i do spiral it's really hard to get ahold of myself. it feels like i'm just putting a blanket on it. like if i don't ruminate in guilt i'm a bad person- or until i "confess" or apologize, or get a second opinion. i really wish i could take control of this

I’ve got into an obsession with deliberately imagining intrusive thoughts and it’s become a big problem, to see if I hate the thought or get shudders from them. Sometime last year I imagined a ‘smothering’ intrusive thought about my mum on purpose and for some reason it felt like I knew how it felt to do that and it ‘felt good’ to do that now I’ve got that In my head that I ‘enjoy the feeling’ and sometimes that feeling comes back and feels extremely real like I would actually do that because I ‘like the feeling’ and now i keep testing myself by imagining the smothering thought about people I care about to see if that feeling will come back but even when I imagine the thought and my body goes tense and I pull a disgusted face because I don’t get anxiety then my head tells me that maybe I didn’t imagine the thought properly or imagine how it feels to ‘actually do that’ horrible thought so then I imagine the thought in more detail. Even like I was exercising and ruminating at the same time and I went to wipe my nose and it felt like when I wiped my nose my airways were blocked for half a second when I brushed my nose and then I started thinking what if that’s what it feels like to be smothered and then I started trying to put my hand over my nose to see how jt would feel and then deliberately imagining the smothering thought about my mum to test myself and see if I ‘like’ the feeling or making someone not be able to breathe and I don’t know why I keep trying to imagine the thought in different ways to see if that feeling would come back and trying to make it more realistic and feel more real or like in movies when you see people that died with their eyes open then I try and imagine that with the smothering thought and start pulling a disgusted face and I grab my face and like wave my hands about in dismay and like eww what is that and I’ve gotten use to imagining the thoughts and don’t even get anxiety and now I’m thinking is there something wrong with me? Why would I want to try and understand how it feels to do that horrible thing ? I’m worried that feeling is still there because sometimes it does come back and feels super real and like I would actually do that and ‘enjoy’ the feeling of doing that? But surely if I actually ‘enjoyed’ the feeling of doing that I wouldn’t be doubting and testing myself but it’s just because of that ‘feeling’ that feels super real in the moment that I ‘enjoy The feeling’ and ‘know how it feels to smother someone’ that makes me believe it and doubt everything

I continue to get distressing thoughts surrounding my love for my boyfriend and if we are going to work out and are meant to be together because he is of different religious beliefs, and I grew up hearing that doesn’t work in relationships. We have been together nearly two years. I know I love him, and he supports my beliefs and I support him, we have had conversations about it. but my brain goes through intense periods of hyper focusing on the anxiety surrounding it, making me feel like I am going to hurt him, or we are going to break up because of me and our differences. It’s very distressing and I ruminate a lot about him and try to calm myself down by thinking through the situation, a mental compulsion? I know worrying about your partner is normal but I feel like I hyper fixate on the compatability between us and me hurting him and I don’t know if it’s ROCD or if it means we aren’t compatible. It’s upsetting.

Does anyone get this thing with harm ocd where your heads convinced you that you like ‘acting on the thought’ or that you ‘want to’ to the point that your believing it and feel like that’s ‘you’ feeling that way and that you actually do like it and you know you don’t want that to be the case but it feels real to the point your believing it to be your own feeling? Since I kept getting this weird intrusive feeling (I think that’s what it is) that makes me feel like I ‘know how it feels to smother someone and it feels like I enjoy how it feels to do that’ it’s hard to explain but it feels like I like the feeling of doing that even though I have obviously never done that but through ‘test thouhts’ of deliberately imaging it on purpose it feels like I know how it feels to do that and like how it feels to do that and it’s been bothering me for so long now and I can’t shrug it off. I’m literally believing it and it feels that way too. The thoughts feel more intense around anything I perceive as ‘vulnerable’ as well which makes it even worse like I could see a young kid and no intrusive thoughts come but it instantly feels like I ‘like the feeling of doing that horrible thought and it would ‘feel good’ to smother them’ and then I get into this whole cycle or deliberately imagining the smothering thoughts to ‘test’ myself and I get shudders and my body tenses up but don’t feel like I ‘hate it’ still or that I’m ‘anxious enough’

How do you guys make your mornings less hard? The ocd and anxiety is so terrible in the mornings… how do i make my mornings better so it will make a better start of your day

Hi - I’m a Mom of 3 with Harm OCD. I’ve had OCD for a long time since I was a teen, prior to kids. It’s been harm/sexual orientation, etc. pretty much every theme at some point. My harm OCD got set off so badly by the Lindsay Clancy case back in January. It seemed to settle down for awhile and now is so bad again. I question if it’s even OCD at this point or if I’m actually an awful person wanting to do these things. I’m really struggling. The thoughts feel like urges and it’s all day long. I think of the case everyday wondering and trying to figure out if it was OCD that she had that turned into her losing control and feel sick to my stomach then panic that will be me. Any other Mom’s out there dealing with similar issues? Thank you.🤍

I would like your guy’s opinion. I’m a practicing Catholic as well as a gay woman. The Church teaching is that attraction is not sinful but acting on it is. I’m trying to live in chastity. Single, alone, no girlfriend. It’s killing me to be quite honest. I like everything about the Catholic Church; except the view on homosexuality. I don’t want to be any other type of Christian. I’m afraid if I practice homosexuality then I’ll go to Hell. Im afraid if I don’t then I’ll be miserable and mentally unwell. I’m afraid the teaching is wrong and harmful. I’m afraid I’m missing out on love. I feel trapped and confused. Any advice?

I feel like OCD ruins so much. My boyfriend broke up with me because of it. It got to a point where I made him do compulsions (ex: open and close the door a certain amount of times). I have OCD in combination with PTSD so I would get triggers often. He got to a point where he got up and left me while I was at work and cut contact completely. I don’t know how to feel and I feel like a failure. It’s been two months and my OCD has been nonstop telling me I was an abuser or narcissistic and that’s why he left. Everyone tells me I’m a broken record… but they don’t know that this is torture for me, too. I wish I could start over with my ex, but I can’t, and that bothers my OCD, too. Lack of control. I also seem to have memory issues in that relationship, I can’t remember what happened or not, and I’m not sure if that’s part of my OCD.

This is my first post on here. My ocd started in 2020 and it mainly revolved around Covid and contamination from that. It has now evolved from that into other aspects of life. It has flipped my world upside down since it’s started. I now struggle with intense anxiety about anything poop/bathroom related. I wipe excessively worried about leaving something behind, I plan my showers around going to the bathroom, I can’t have sex if I haven’t showered that day, I plan my days around going poop. I always worry there is something on me and it can consume my thoughts. Also all poop bothers me dog poop, bird poop ect. I don’t even like petting dogs anymore because of it. This ocd issue causes me to take forever to go to the bathroom because I excessively check. Idk if anyone can relate to this but I am struggling. I miss the old me and wish she could come back

I’m not entirely sure this is OCD. This seems to be a very solid and progressive app, so I will explain anyway. Maybe I have people here who can relate. I’ve recently had a severe allergic reaction, and to what, I can only assume is tree nuts. I ate pesto, which I’ve had fine before, and had throat-tightening anaphylaxis. I have never been too careful, but I’ve always known to stay away from peanuts/tree nuts due to prior experiences. When it happened, I was sure I was going to die, and I laid there for a second with so much fear, pumped with the EpiPen (and what a scary feeling that gives you!) and sensational trauma. Since, I have been having panic attacks after every single meal. I can barely eat, and all I think about is the contamination of foods, their sourcing/preparation, how much time I have to save myself, etc. An allergy test would save a lot of this worry, but I am about to go to college and can’t book an appointment beforehand. Even when it’s not, my throat feels like it’s closing during every bite, and afterwards, I have to distract myself so I don’t break down. I cannot live like this everyday with every meal, my overthinking is insatiable and makes every experience with food miserable. I hope I don’t sound crazy. Tips are much appreciated

My therapist has made comments abt thinking I have OCD but I’ve never been officially diagnosed with it but it seems fitting based on what I’ve read. I also fall into the category of seeming to have bipolar disorder or bpd, adhd, and so on. It is so hard to manage my issues if I don’t know what is really going on & the professionals don’t either. One day I am bipolar then suddenly they don’t think that. It’s just a never ending battle. Life is. Things go well for a day then suddenly the next week is hell. I feel like I seem dramatic and I fear talking about my feelings or emotions because I have this fear of seeming annoying or dramatic. I have this fear that I am not making any sense & I just don’t know how to help myself. I am overall struggling right now. My financial situation is a joke as long with my home situation. My home situation “could be solved” with my own place but who the hell can afford that? My “love life” that’s a whole other thing. I started hooking up with my best friend & it’s been abt a year now & we’ve had the conversation of how we shouldn’t be hooking up bc we don’t want to hurt each other. After the first conversation we made it a month before breaking it. Then this past time it was a week later when we were as showing all these other signals. Is it that we don’t want to ruin the friendship or that we are emotionally unavailable? we we lived together for a year & didn’t stick to that boundary and still cannot stick to it now that he’s moved out we had that conversation again just for him to come over & us continue doing what we “shouldn’t”… it’s so hard when your childhood trauma consumes you completely, preventing you from happiness. “Everything takes time” I get that but I want to be happy now, you never know how much time you have… The thought of someone loving me is just so unreal to me since I’ve been hurt so much in the past. I understand we say we shouldn’t risk our friendship but we’ve been doing it for a year straight & when we are apart things seem off for both of us. It almost seems like we are lost without each other, I know me for sure. Maybe that’s what happens when you spend a year living with someone. I just wish he knew how special he is and worthy. It’s not fair that his family broke him growing up or that my family broke me, we still deserve happiness.

How can you differ that you have ROCD or your actually losing feelings. I have like every symptom of ROCD but I feel like maybe my OCD is bullshit and I’m not meant to be with that person. Or is that something someone with ROCD would say…? ^^^

So the other day I was left home alone for a few days with my mum which hasn’t happened before but my sister went away for a few days and it was the worst I suddenly started having these horrible thoughts and it felt like for some reason I wanted to think of them and it was really horrible and it felt like I was actually about to act on it and my ocd gives me weird feelings/sensations that make me feel like I would like the feeling of doing that horrible thing or it would ‘feel good’ to do that horrible thing and I’ve been obsessed with it ever since now I’ve been miserable for days because now I’m thinking it almost happened and I keep thinking now the only reason it’s not happened is because I’m not alone with someone and I got this scary thing that felt like I wasn’t anxious over the tnohjts and would ‘do it anyways for no reason’ and it’s really scary and feels like I didn’t want or not want to do it and that it could happen. I’m unable to be happy now because it keeps coming back to my mind and even yesterday my head gave me that same feeling of ‘imagine you done it anyways right now’ and that accompanied with that feeling that feels like ‘I like the feeling of doing that horrible thing and I know how it feels to do that’ makes it worse and feel like I’m just ‘choosing’ not to do it 😞 now I’m literally believing that I’m capable and would do that and it’s horrible i don’t know what to do

So I don't have this issue any more but wanted to share my experience as I've come through the other side with this. When I was between 14 and 16 years old I had voices in my head. They would tell me to do the worst stuff you could possibly think of. They were usually louder when I was alone, trying to sleep or with the light off. I had a counselling and art therapy to help and they did nothing but get me mornings off of school. I had one main voice that I can compare to a villain in a Disney like film or jack ripper if I were to be extreme about it, then there was this weasely voice that I felt was a hype man for the other, whispering stuff in its ear or cheering it on. I never gave in once to their demands and every night for 2 years my mind was like a war zone. 4 hours sleep at most a night. I'd usually sleep at school because the noise drowned them out. Now I knew that these voices were my thoughts but I felt as if I couldn't control them. Felt as if I had been reincarnated at some times from a very evil person and they were trying to reclaim my life as theirs. One day at school I opened up to a friend about them and he directed me to another friend of ours, he wasn't a close one but he was nice. He told me to imagine a door and picture these voices on one side, and on the other side imagine the most powerful thing you can think of. It could be an army, god, nukes, anything. Once I had this pictured in my head he said open the door. Now, I didn't think much of it at that point but I didn't hear the voices that night, or any night after. They were just gone. I still don't fully understand it but a mental exercise from a 15yr old did better than the therapists I had for 2 years. I was free from them finally. But my fascination with the outcome turned into an obsession with mental health so 🤷‍♂️and I researched the hell out of how the mind works because to me it was magic and wanted to kind of debunk it and see if I could help others. A few months later I felt alone and asked for the voices to come back. They didn't. I pretended they did, but they didn't. Apparently voices are quite common and a few of my friends had them and I didn't know about it. I knew my first girlfriend did and that's kind of how we bonded. As amazing as she was I do not recommend forming a relationship on how unstable you both feel 🤣🤣 I was a kid and did kid things. Lesson learned. I also had a friend who tried burning down the school because his voices told him to. Wasn't successful but the drama class was a bit smokey for a while. I also recommend that you don't do what he did either. Fast forward 17 years and I get voices again. This time it sounds different and it's only one. I threatened this one by saying I got rid of voices before and can do it again. It went away for a few days and came back. I did get rid of them again but this time the solution was different. The voice had an emotion behind it and I felt I had to read into that emotion rather than the words used. I asked myself why I would feel that way/ that emotion and solved the issue. The voice is now gone within 2 weeks of it starting. Turns out I was in love with my friend and didn't want to accept it as if I were to get into a relationship with her at the time I'd only push her away as I didn't know how to get better then and felt my compulsions would push her away. That scared the hell out of me and my ocd was acting like some firewall trying to protect me from that "threat". To summarise : My first set of voices were triggered by me not feeling good enough and guilty for something quite innocent when I was much younger. Visualisation exercises got rid of the first. Arguing with them and having a screaming match in my head every night didn't work. The recent one was because of my fear of losing my best friend. I read into the emotion behind the voice rather than the actual things it was saying. I hope this helps someone as I don't see a lot on here about it.