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And now someone has triggered me and said that my intrusive fears 100% did happen... im so triggered... I want to honestly cease to exist... I want everything to end... Im so triggered...

Since two days ago, I’ve had this new theme spiraling in my head. I have two cats and I recently just had a fear of getting r*bies (I’m scared to type it). It’s stupid, I know. I haven’t been scratched, bitten or anything of that sort, but I’m terrified that I could get it or that I have it, even though nothing happened. My cats are indoor, and we they are two years old, we are going to get them their shots soon (they had been up to date when we got them, but it’s been about a year). There’s no animals or anything and we don’t let them outside but there’s still that ‘what if.’ I don’t want to touch my cats and I’ve been monitoring myself every second I can. I wash my hands a lot more and I have such extreme anxiety and sensations that I can’t sleep at night (which worsens my anxiety because that’s a symptom of it.) please if anyone can help me or has gone through this, how can I calm down from this?😖😖

I experience a few different sup-types… I would say introspectively the most noticeable is Somatic OCD followed by Harm and Contamination. I have been in therapy for 11/12 years… pretty consistently. I heard about this app through some ads, and some friends and family started suggesting I try it. This is my first time using it. I previously did not realize I had OCD. At some point when I was around 16 I thought OCD could be the thing I was experiencing. The understanding of OCD in my general circle of people was limited. When I introduced the possibility of having OCD to others, I was met with the idea that I could not have OCD because I had always been disorganized and “messy”. Otherwise, I was introduced to the concept of “Pure” OCD- which wasn’t entirely fitting for me. I didn’t know, until today, that Somatic OCD was the word for what I was experiencing… along with a few other subtypes that I learned about today. Within the past couple of years I’ve come to realize that I experience symptoms of OCD. I have also come to realize that there is a strong pattern of a variety of OCD subtypes on the paternal side of my family. On the maternal side there is (sparse, compared to paternal side) history of Hoarding Disorder- which I know the DSM now classifies as its own condition within the OCD spectrum. TW: This is the part where I discuss personal symptoms, memories, and behaviors with some detail. Today while filling out the questions for this app— it really ‘sunk-in’ for me that I have been experiencing Somatic OCD for as long as I remember. I can’t say I can pin-point where it started… but I can say one of my earliest, seemingly-random, memories is being 5 years old- In Kindergarten Music Class. We were watching a movie and I suddenly became aware of my breathing. I felt like I wasn’t breathing, but I was getting oxygen… because I wasn’t feeling out of breath. I was very anxious as a child so I cannot recall if in this moment breathing awareness caused anxiety. I do remember thinking (with the vocabulary I had at the time) that it was maybe a cool thing? To breathe without breathing- is this something everyone can do? I’ve always experienced Magical Thinking as well. I also remember being anxious, as a young child, after I learned that we expel CO2 when we breathe out. I was very anxious to breathe in “stale-air” thinking it could harm me. This interacted with Harm symptoms where I obsessively worried about intentionally suffocating myself although I didn’t desire to. As I think back, I remember some of my earliest memories are of me trying to “even-out” some of my body-feelings. If I was playing with a textured toy for a few seconds in one hand, I’d have to switch it to the other until the feeling was the same in both hands. Many times this lead to me counting seconds while holding things, and continuing the ritual until I was inevitably distracted or re-directed. Other early memories of mine include me thinking I could control the weather with my mind. I was very worried that I would accidentally summon a tornado by wishing for it with a passing thought. I would spend hours staring out the window thinking “I don’t, I don’t, I don’t…” hoping that if I accidentally made the wish it would be preceded by negating it. I’m sharing this to cope with the “sinking-in” of it all. I’m looking back at these experiences with a “neutral” lens in the sense that I’m trying to be mindful of feeling triggered, and allow myself to sit with feelings that come up and observe them without trying to push feelings and thoughts away. Obviously it’s a balancing act because I don’t want sitting with my feelings to turn into sitting “in” my feelings and ruminating. Typing things out is helpful for me- I understand my thoughts and feelings better when I hear or read them back. A lot of feelings have come up for me in a short time since downloading this app and filling out the survey. I feel sad for my current, moreover my former and child-self. I feel bummed in general that our understanding of mental-health is/has been limited— I feel bummed that OCD is sneaky like that… Nearly 12 years of therapy, and the reality of experiencing OCD was just so normal to me that I didn’t notice it enough to share. I feel bummed that I didn’t previously have the vocabulary or the skills to be honest and speak about what I was experiencing with consistent detail. I feel sad for my parents and their parents and siblings who experienced similar things. It’s hard sometimes to allow myself to identify “feelings” (emotions) without thinking I’m over-processing it. Like I said, fine line. I do struggle to identify and sit *with* the feelings so it is something I inevitably have to do. So yeah. It’s just kind of wild to think this has been going in for SO LONG. I feel a relieved, having processed it a bit. So I’ll close out and re-direct myself now as this has been a long reflection moment.

No I'm not asking for reassurance (though to be honest maybe I am) I'm trying to understand if what I'm doing are compulsions and if they are I will try to keep them at bay. 1. I repeatedly say words like "Stop!" "No!" And "I'd never do X and so" answering my thoughts so they stop 2. I ruminate and review every interaction I have going over my actions and the reason I did them and to be honest my mind just goes up trying to convince me what I did was bad and everyone just hates me 3. I count up to 4 and repeat. 4. I have tics. I jolt. Spasm put my arms up in a defensive position and even push the air when the stress gets to a breaking point. As well I hug myself I feel comfort in that. 5. I avoid triggers specially if I feel the impending doom from them. Funnily enough sometimes I do stare at the trigger just to make sure nothing bad is going to happen.

Hi everyone, I am 23 and my ex boyfriend is 24. I was broken up with at the beginning of September after a 4 year relationship with someone I adopted a dog with and lived with. We were each other’s first everything and I thought this was the person I was going to marry. I was completely blindsided and the reasoning I got was “I’ve been thinking about this for awhile. I am not emotionally mature enough to handle the stress of my life and also be in a relationship supporting you. I don’t communicate my feelings or needs well. I hold in my stress and it leads to me building resentment towards you and taking it out on you, which isn’t fair.” It’s important to know that since June, I’ve been dealing with Harm OCD and Relationship OCD that I got back into therapy to treat. I was doing my best to be self reliant but I definitely was scared and asked my boyfriend to be home more and spend more quality time with me while I work through this period of anxiety. I made sure to let him know that even though I was dealing with something scary, I wanted him to open up and let me support him with his stress too because it’s just as important as mine. He always told me “don’t worry about me, I’m good. Let’s get you right.” Even when I told him I was scared he’d run because of my anxiety, he told me he wasn’t going anywhere and to focus on myself. Apparently, he lied. I have since moved out of our apartment and back in with my parents. And I am keeping our dog. Since we’ve had to un-intertwine our lives these last few weeks, I wasn’t able to go no contact with him. Because of this, it led to me initiating several conversations asking questions about why this was happening, when he started feeling this way, why he didn’t give us a chance to work through problems, etc. I believe my OCD was having a hard time with the unknown and uncertainty because I was (and still am) in shock that this is my reality. I had this insatiable need to understand why and how this was happening and his vague non-answers only made me more confused and upset. Because I asked so many questions and wanted to understand this, he got pushed farther and farther away. Now he just wants nothing to do with me. He has started being mean and has emotionally shut down. He went from “I need to work on myself and then go from there. Maybe in the future this will work out…” to “I think we should both move on. I don’t know how much clearer I can make it.” I genuinely don’t recognize him anymore. I am trying not to blame myself and my OCD for pushing conversations and asking questions, but what did he expect? That he’d just end our relationship, blindside me, and I’d walk away without any desire to understand why? If anyone has experienced heart break after a long term relationship, and if part of the reason for the break up was due to needing support with mental health, how did you not blame yourself? I know his inability to support me though a hard time reflects on him, not me. But I am still really struggling to be okay. I feel like if I hadn’t fallen into this period of anxiety and OCD, none of this would have happened. Please leave advice on how to move forward, how to survive no contact, and how to not blame myself and my mental health for the downfall of my relationship. Thank you

Hi everyone. Please read this and help me if you can. I’ve posted on here a lot. I’ve been going through therapy and (I’m the girl with the dog, btw) and I got diagnosed with Harm OCD three months ago. It’s getting really fucking bad even with therapy and I don’t know what to do, or maybe it’s not that anymore? My brain feels confused all the time and I can’t tell what my intent is anymore. My main compulsion with my dog was checking. Get a horrible thought, check to make sure that I wanted her here still. The thought of her dying always upset me terribly, so I knew that they were just intrusive thoughts. No intent, no plan. I used those as my checking mechanism for so long. Then, the last few days, I think of her dying and I get a feeling like I like it. Like I want her to be gone. If I hide knives and everything, my brain throws me a thought of something else. All day, I have this horrible feeling like I actually want to do it, a jittery, nervous, on edge feeling. Like I have more anxiety from not doing it than doing it. And am just holding myself back. If I say to myself “you have no plan” I get my brain racing like it’s making one or I’m making one, and If I say to myself “there’s no intent” it gives me a feeling of purposely doing that to her. If I tell myself “you love her and you want her alive” it gives me this wave of doubt through my chest that I actually don’t. This goes on ALL day and night. Everything becomes a thought or feeling of hurting her. I sit with her and sometimes get these impulses of “just do it it’s easy”. Almost unbearable and I’ve felt so close to acting on it. I don’t think I care about her anymore. I literally feel like I don’t. She was the most important thing; my value, my whole world. I never wanted her to die. That’s another thing - if I say the word die, I feel like I’m fantasizing about it. It’s a feeling I can’t explain. I hate this. I’m so sure I will act on these thoughts. Aren’t people with harm ocd afraid of acting? Not feeling like they want to and will (but don’t want to because I know in my heart I don’t possibly want her gone).

I can’t tell what’s right and wrong anymore. It’s like my moral compass/rationality is completely broken. I could just shut my feelings down whenever. It might sound like a good thing but it also means I wouldn’t feel any remorse or guilt or negative emotions if I were to do something immoral (hypothetically speaking). In contrast, sometimes my feelings get so deep in the way that my rationality cannot win no matter what. My brain does that out of nowhere and I hate it because it ends up triggering my OCD theme and I have to start back up to be able to cope again. It’s like I’ve developed this intense intolerance towards any sort of stress whatsoever, even the good type of stress that helps you grow. My brain just shuts down and mentally I become a kid again and I can’t listen to logic no matter what.

So something that kinda pops up with my anxiety is about a year or so ago i ate an edible gummy after not doing anything for a while and i tripped out really bad… for example i thought i was gonna overdose and die, and that i was already dead.. that is the most fear i have felt in my entire life, and even though its over and has been over i have this constant fear in my mind “what if your still high and this is all a dream” or “your gonna wake up and it will still be that night” i never wanna feel that way again. i can’t even go around the smell of weed with out freaking out. i can’t take pills, or vitamin gummies because “what if it will make me high” when it comes to sleeping i wanna try this dr teals sleep blend but i struggle so much with it because of my mind saying “it will make you feel high”.. even when i feel tired i feel scared cause it reminds me of feeling high.. its just i feel so stuck with the same reaccrujng thought “this could be the time you wake up and it was all just a dream” “you could wake up from coma and this was all imagined” i don’t know what else to do, its my own mind no one can help me and that sucks i don’t know how to win the battle when it’s such a deep rooted fear. i feel like im pushing my family away. i feel so numb.

It’s been about two years since really struggling with OCD. I’ve made a lot of progress I would say. Before I couldn’t even leave the house due to my fears. Now I don’t think about those worries as often. Even if I do, I’m able to go on about my day. But tomorrow my cousin asked if I could help with a kids birthday party tomorrow. I thought this would be something that could help me even more by facing those fears head on. My biggest fear actually. This one has been the one that has stuck around the longest. Something that I still struggle with at times. I agreed to help her, but now I’m scared. All these worries are coming back to me, and causing this anxiety that isn’t going away. Even with distractions. I know everyone will say that this is the perfect time to face this fear knowing I’m still scared of it. I just don’t want this to be something that sets me back AGAIN. I don’t want to start from the beginning. But I guess that’s what ERP is all about. A little motivation I guess is all I’m looking for.

This started happening to me in 2022 and it's gotten okay but it's still bothering me a lot. I to do erp when I get the thoughts but it really just feels like confirmation. Here's the thing the idea ALONE that I could be anything other than straight even if it is as tiny as .001% makes me feel awful because I know that the idea of being with another woman is just not for me. But the thoughts and goinals keep coming and I'm at a loss. It's just know that being with my man feels right but these thoughts are starting to affect that. I just feel so lost.

What do you do when you have a thought and you’re not sure if it’s intrusive or not? I just had one that was so strange and bad, and I can’t believe I just had it, but I’m almost afraid it’s not intrusive and there really is something wrong with me. I hate this.

Hi everyone! I am a 22 year old AFAB nonbinary person from California, and I wanted to come on here and ask about people’s experiences with OCD surrounding taking testosterone and being trans/LGBTQIA/nonbinary. I am not talking about doubting identity but more so doubting whether taking testosterone is the “right” choice or whether the changes you might get are what you “truly” want. I would really love to hear from folks who also identify as nonbinary as I feel that nonbinary folks have a unique experience with taking hormones due to not being a binary trans person. I would definitely love to hear from anyone who identifies as trans or nonbinary, but I think that my experience with hormones is different since I know I don’t want to look or sound or feel like a full masculine person or man. For me, this means I am on a lower than normal dose of T right now, and I also don’t believe I plan on taking it longer than a few months or at least until I get my desired results. I want to be very androgynous, and I keep getting a bunch of intrusive thoughts about waking up and having all these drastic changes to my body and self to the point that I won’t recognize myself anymore. I know this is irrational and definitely attacking the fact that this is a huge decision to make to go on hormones, but I just feel like I haven’t seen this representation yet in both the trans and OCD communities. Again, please feel free to share any type of experience you have whether you are a nonbinary or binary trans person!

I keep feeling bad that I didn’t find my partner that cute at first. I didn’t think he was unattractive but when I first met him it was at work and him and this other guy were new. I thought the other guy was more attractive at the time. I even vocalized it to a friend. NOW my boyfriend is my whole world and I think he’s the most handsome man ever. Even more handsome than the guy I originally thought was cute. I don’t have a problem with his appearance or anything. I just feel guilty over not finding him more attractive than the other guy. It feels wrong and of course my thoughts are saying I should tell him this but I know it’ll just hurt his feelings.

Hello, so I have been thinking about getting medication for ocd. But I am not diagnosed by my doctor they tested me and said I had it but never followed up. I want to get an official diagnosis where should I get it that won’t be to expensive because I am a college student.

My health concern OCD has been getting A LOT worse in the last days. I'm always panicking about having some serious illness, and I have yet again come to the point where I can't understand if I feel actually unwell or if it's just my mind. I'm under a lot of stress these days, I have some big changes coming up, and I know this is my way of coping, but it's tiring

i feel so alone and this overwhelming sadness upon me. im in college and don’t talk to any people, there’s a guy that was becoming my friend in the beginning but we kinda stopped talking and i think it’s my fault because i also have social anxiety.to add on i feel extreme anxiety in class because my brain just keeps repeating thoughts and it’s so exhausting every day plus the other stresses in my life.one thing is my head , the pain is so bad and i have no idea of what to do, i keep researching stuff and its making my health anxiety so bad i can’t stop crying because my head hurts so much.i wish i had some friends in my college so i could be a little happier

I’ve been spiraling for days I can barely sleep. I worked so hard to get into grad school and now i’m gonna fail because I can’t focus on anything else. The fact that my real events range from years ago and recently make me feel like I’ve always been a bad person. I keep trying to understand my intentions I feel like I don’t know who I am anymore. I’m looking into starting therapy and medication soon but I need some advice on some healthy coping skills in the meantime.

I feel like there has to be someone out there that relates in someway that the past few months since my OCD got extremely bad again. I had it when I was 17 but it didn’t last long it completely faded and I totally forgot about it even happening. But it started up again back in March and I noticed that I’ve been kind of creating these thoughts to see reactions and similarities to people that are actually the p word. It’s like I’m constantly trying to prove myself wrong. Feel like I’m constantly trying to prove myself that I’m just a p in denial. I feel like no matter how many times I try to sit with uncertainty or try to reassure myself. This is not who I am. A part of me truly believes that that is just who I am and I have been lying to myself and others, and it makes me extremely, depressed and frustrated. hoping someone else can understand where I’m coming from in someway. I just find myself constantly convincing myself that I’m just a p in denial and I even come up with reasons why in my head can OCD make you truly believe something? Making you feel like you just have completely changed.

Does anyone know how to deal with guilt for something you did as a kid that you feel is disgusting and worry that it could have hurt someone you loved.

does anyone else has adrenaline rushes when triggered?