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just had my first session yesterday,, it was kind of funny and surprising to hear how many aspects of my everyday life are actually ocd rituals or ocd symptoms,, i feel like i have such a super long way to go xP ꉂ૮(°□°'˶)ა

After a sort of “relationship” break up I had many days and nights freaking out about hurting this person’s feelings and them hurting mine and being regretful ect. then i was just remembering any and every little thing that made me a bad person and then pocd related stuff started poking my brain until one night like a week later i had a full blown meltdown thinking I was a p and its never been the same since. I’ve been down so many spirals since and initially i had no clue about pocd but i found out about it after researching p and p thoughts for hours. Worst weeks of my life, i don’t think it gave me a chance to even fully process the “breakup”. Then, he came back in contact with me after a while and I wanted to stay and fix everything with him and at least be his friend and find comfort with him but I couldn’t because I was then dealing with the horrific thoughts and couldn’t bare the thought of him knowing (also lowky we were doomed from the start anyways) I felt like id confess everything to him and his view on me would just be so horrific. And i felt like such a freak who had to stay away from relationships or friendships who needs to stay isolated. Also he is quite a bit older than me and theres this other reason im also left wondering if HE is a weirdo, but then im thinking im just projecting because im scared and think IM a fking weirdo. The fact I feel i can never go back to him without this being associated with him in my mind is heartbreaking for me. sometimes i feel bitter towards him because he kinda triggered it but ik its not his fault, we were just two lonely people who found comfort in each other :/ it kinda hurts knowing rn i could still be dealing with regular teen yearning and despair instead of straight horror and despair. I miss when just having social anxiety and no friends in college was my biggest issue im leaving out lots of details but the two situations are so interconnected and caused such a huge part in my (what i hope is really) ocd id just feel so sad if ill have to get over him or hate him at some point I dont want to, i want to believe he was really genuine and im the one who messed up what was between us. Because initially i was just a lonely girl in a really bad place looking for attention and he was my reason i wanted to change and get better. I want to go back to him but without any memory of this </3 but hes the one who kinda triggered it and i could never tell him my thoughts or experiences that caused this ☹️ i dont want to think he was just another creep and actually liked me because if he is then i wouldve gone through so much suffering in my own brain for nothing. walking around feeling like a horrific monster and possibly gaining a lifetime chronic mental disorder just for it to turn out i was just another naive young girl to him. I cant 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 I LITERALLY CANT everything hurts please

Hi all! Im new to the app as my therapist recommended this during my one appointment. I was in a relationship from July 2024 up until end of June 2025. During the break up, I would reach out every month and beg him to make it work. He ended things because I constantly nitpicked and would argue. I don’t know why I was like that because he was not a terrible boyfriend and I did trust him. Sometimes I felt he would give me mixed signals throughout the break up which I would take as hope but then when I would keep trying he would eventually get frustrated and tell me he doesn’t want to get back together. For whatever reason, since he broke up with me I still have hope. I still am fully in love with him and have not lost any feelings. We did see eachother this year in February, where he told me after the movies he didn’t feel strong enough but he didn’t not feel nothing. He then told me that he didn’t want to keep hanging out or talking for the slight chance his feelings would change. He then proceeded to tell me I begged him to hangout and it didn’t work in my favor he doesn’t want to be with me. April came he ended up calling me end of April. Things hit the fan shortly because he was telling me we can hang and see where things go while openly pursuing other women. He met someone else end of April and has been talking and seeing her since. Even though he is seeing someone new and serious with someone else, I still have hope and I thought that would be my closure but it’s not. I constantly find ways to check his social media, I still have hope for us when I probably shouldn’t. I’ve also been blocked on all social media from him since May. It’s like I don’t know what more it’ll take to accept that it’s done, to stop checking up on him, and ruminating on everything and blaming myself.

so for a few years i’ve suspected inattentive adhd in myself, so last year i started seeing a therapist. after we had discussed my symptoms i visited a psychiatrist, who allowed me to start taking meds (methylphenidate) for it a few months ago, which basically equals a diagnosis in my country’s health system, i think. but recently i’ve started doubting it. and i don’t know if it’s regular ocd doubt or impostor syndrome or genuine realisation, but i’m worried that i actually don’t have adhd and that i’m just pretending and have lied to myself and others. it feels like i’ve exaggerated my symptoms a bit and that i don’t deserve to be on meds because i’m not struggling enough. i don’t know if being on meds made me forget what it’s like to be without them in school environments, but whatever it is, i’m doubting, checking memories, worrying and seeking reassurance on the r/adhd thread to try and find out what’s going on. if i go back in my memories, ask my parents and look through old physical notes from daycare, i find the following symptoms: very forgetful, hyperfixations, poorly organised, easily distracted and frequently zones out, senstive, impulsive (at times), very talkative, procrastinating and the basic stuff like that. i KNOW i technically reach the diagnostic criteria for adhd, i mean, right now i’ve been trying to study for the last 3 hours and barely moved, and i’ve gotten NOTHING done because i’ve been procrastinating and getting distracted by reading on the previously mentioned reddit thread and the dread is starting to kick in. now that night approaches i get my typical night owl energy boost and i suddenly feel like i could hyperfocus with the help of a little caffeine, almost. but still, it feels like my traits arent THAT bad or damaging my life enough to be treated. it just feels like excuses, somehow, like everyone does this. i’m scared of being dumb and stupid and an example of that, i that i feel ashamed and responsible when i read about the declining literacy and math skills in the west for example, thinking somehow that’s my fault and i’m just sitting here blaming my stupidity on a disorder i don’t even have. even though i’m very literate and actually do know a lot of stuff. but nope, still my fault. (kinda going off track here sorry) the annoying thing is that i’m trying to reassure myself and actually find information at the same time; i want to feel certain, but i also genuinely want to know if my symptoms ARE symptoms or just normal stuff. that’s why it’s tricky to navigate this. it’s probably mostly ocd because now my memories are getting fuzzy from trying to remember, and the whole ”doubt and check again”-cycle is a clear sign of that. and yeah, i should address it by ”maybe, maybe not”. but this DOES MATTER a lot to me, since it would be a huge part of my identity and it’s something i take meds for. while i know i’m not PURPOSEFULLY faking it, i’m painfully aware that i could just be a misdiagnosed, insecure teenager looking for an explanation for feeling crap. AGHHHH IDK WHAT TO DO ANYMORE

Hi everyone. I’m 25 and I’m looking for some advice because I’m starting to wonder if what I’ve experienced for years could be OCD. I don’t want to diagnose myself, which is why I’m getting a professional evaluation, but I would really appreciate hearing from people who have experienced something similar. Last night honestly felt like my breaking point. My thoughts were making me so nervous that I was shaking, felt extremely nauseous, and ended up throwing up three times and having diarrhea. I was supposed to be studying for a nursing test, but I couldn’t concentrate because my thoughts and anxiety were making me physically sick. I felt completely overwhelmed and exhausted. Looking back, I think I may have first noticed some OCD-like patterns when I was around 8 or 9 years old. At night, I would constantly worry about something bad happening to my family. Sometimes, if I forgot to pray or do what I felt I needed to do for them, I would become scared that something bad would happen. I never wanted anything bad to happen—I was actually trying to prevent it. As I got older, I’ve noticed different fears and behaviors. For example, sometimes I’ll take a water bottle with me to the bathroom, and afterward I’ll suddenly worry that someone may have tampered with it. Even though I have no evidence that anyone touched it or did anything to it, I can become so uncomfortable that I throw the bottle away instead of drinking it. I’ve also had different intrusive thoughts over the years. In 2024, I had a very disturbing sexual intrusive thought involving my younger brother even though nothing happened between us and I absolutely did not want the thought. It eventually went away and no longer bothers me. More recently, I’ve been having a new episode where the thoughts feel much more persistent. It started around September 1. I’m in nursing school and I’m in my last few classes before graduating. On my way to clinical one morning, I was listening to a song I’ve heard many times before and suddenly became emotional and cried because I realized how far I’ve come in nursing school. Later that day, I started having an unwanted harm-related thought involving a patient. That made me start thinking, “How am I going to be a good nurse?” and questioning why I was even having these thoughts. Then, during clinical, I witnessed a 40-year-old woman code. She was young and had children, and it really affected me. After that, my thoughts shifted toward my mom. I started thinking about what I would do if something happened to her and how I would function without her. Then I started getting horrible intrusive thoughts like “do something to your mom.” I do not want to hurt my mom. I love my mom, and these thoughts scare and upset me. I have no desire or intention to hurt her or anyone else. What makes everything worse is that I start analyzing the thoughts. I ask myself why I thought it, what it means, whether I secretly feel something, whether I’m becoming a different person, etc. Sometimes I feel like I need reassurance that the thoughts don’t mean something about me. The more I focus on them, the more noticeable they seem to become. I’m still functioning. I’m going to clinical, doing my schoolwork, studying, seeing people, laughing and doing normal things. I’m not isolating myself. From the outside I probably seem completely normal. Internally, though, I’m exhausted from constantly fighting with my thoughts. I’ve noticed that lack of sleep, caffeine, stress, and possibly my menstrual cycle can affect how intense my anxiety/intrusive thoughts feel. I’m not sure how much hormones actually play a role. I’ve also been seeing disturbing things online recently, including pop-ups about an upsetting criminal case involving a mother and children. I don’t seek this stuff out, but seeing it seems to make me anxious and can get the thoughts going. I’m seeing a psychiatric provider because I want a proper evaluation. I don’t want to walk in and tell them that I definitely have OCD. I want them to evaluate me independently and tell me whether this sounds like OCD, anxiety, something related to stress, or something else. I’m also really nervous about medication. I was prescribed fluoxetine previously but never took it because I was afraid it could make my thoughts worse, affect my memory/concentration, cause suicidal thoughts, make me lose control, or make me dependent on it. I’m finishing nursing school, so I’m especially worried about anything affecting my ability to study and function clinically. I’m open to discussing medication, but I really want to learn about ERP/therapy and all my options first. Has anyone experienced different OCD themes over time, such as fears about something bad happening to family, contamination/tampering fears, and then intrusive harm thoughts? Did you also find yourself analyzing the thoughts and trying to figure out what they mean about you? I’d really appreciate hearing from people who have experienced something similar. I especially want to know what helped you stop getting stuck in the thoughts and compulsions and feel like yourself again.

It is my first time making a post I don’t know if anyone’s going to read this, but I’ll just rant. When I was a kid and even as a young adult now I’m struggling with a lot of health issues .. at first, when I was sick, I never used to correlate my sickness with God, I would just think I ate something bad or I made a bad decision and it ended up with me feeling sick. I have emetophobia, which means I have an extreme fear of vomit. I’ll be honest I couldn’t even type the word vomit until I did some exposure therapy, but even with the therapy I didn’t fully do my homework and saying the is the only thing I’ve graduated from. I still am extremely scared. When other people do it around me I run away or I cover my ears., if somebody does it at home, I won’t use the bathroom or shower at home, I’ll delete the persons phone number because I don’t want to see their name and I’ll wear a mask at home and to sleep and try to stay outside of home. Now back to religious OCD, any time I was sick I would usually sleep on my mom’s bed when I was younger, when I was sick, my mama will always have a tendency to say “you should’ve prayed more” “ see you shouldn’t waste your time doing [insert hobby that makes me happy]” So imagine kind of like conditioning, every time I was sick I would hear something like this. So I sooner or later linked being sick to God punishing me. Even now as an adult, I still think like this . I’ve gone to. I guess you would call them priests and explain my situation and they will tell me that I shouldn’t think like this, but it’s hard when it’s already been engraved into the stone. I have so many hobbies, and I love to meet people, regardless of their gender, but whenever I have male friends and I get sick I have a tendency of cutting them off because I’m scared that I’m being punished and I must’ve done something wrong for being friends with males. But now I can’t even enjoy my hobby because I keep thinking I’m wasting time and how I should be just praying and doing something that God likes , but I know God says you can have hobbies and enjoy life but I was taught otherwise and it’s hard to ignore the tiny voice in my head.. even if I got help, it would be so hard to truly get rid of this thought process. I’m so sad because I feel like I can’t even enjoy life or anything that I like because I feel like I’m doing something wrong . Sometimes, when I think about being a kid, I miss how innocent I was and how I didn’t think like this, and that my brain wasn’t tainted yet from other people’s opinions . As much as I love my religion, and I do still believe in God, I hate the people who twist religion and use it to manipulate people . Is unfair and not right. Why do people always have to teach religion by always instilling fear? I wish I could see religion as something happy but I only see it as a military boot camp and my brain always is thinking of hell and how I’m always doing something wrong that God will hate me. I’m too lazy to look back and see if I made any mistakes so if I made any grammatical mistakes just ignore that

So I struggle with false memory/real event and cheating ocd. Basically I’m convinced I cheated on my fiance :(. I struggled horribly with pornography when we first got together because I was introduced to it at a young age. Basically I’d go on twitter to watch explicit videos/content etc. my fiance and I had a discussion about it a while later and talked about how porn is poison and just me basically telling him about how I struggled with it. Now, this is when my OCD gets worse, basically I had an app called character, AI, which is basically where you can go on there and you can talk to AI Chatbot or create stories with them and the AI chat what is kind of like ChatGPT it pretty much can create a story with whatever you want. So I was playing that game even before my fiancé and I met so I still played it when we got together, any character I had a hyper fixation on. I would create a story with at the time because I had put my account under my name. It would automatically use my name and I was just never able to change it to a different name, but I was not role-playing as myself even though it had my name. Pretty much there were times where I would be on FaceTime with my fiancé and I would be playing this game and he would ask what I was doing and I remembered I would get super embarrassed and so I lied about it a few times because I didn’t know how to explain it to him months later I told him about it and everything and he was not upset and everything and I just told him I was really embarrassed, and I didn’t know if he was gonna think it was cheating or not but we talked about it and discussed it and I eventually deleted the app because it just became weird to me. This is where my OCD kicks in basically, my OCD told me that if I was able to lie about that, that I lied about other things. My OCD also told me that I was not playing the game and then I was actually texting real men and I started panicking because I was like “oh my gosh, what if I was?” And these past few days have been horrible with my OCD because of this thought, as well as back to my Twitter thing I’m also having intrusive thoughts that are telling me that I cheated on my fiance on twitter and that I flirted with someone, bought someone’s content and/or sent nudes. I permanently deleted my twitter because I wanted all forms of explicit content out of my life and I genuinely don’t know what to do, everytime these reoccurring thoughts come up I feel sick and feel like I’m going to have a panic attack. I’m worrying that I don’t have ocd and that I actually did do something and these feelings I have are just guilt, even though I can’t remember things, I’ll get flashes or images of me doing the things I fear most and I wonder if they happened or not I genuinely feel crazy.

Having a small spiral that started early this morning. My Relationship OCD was triggered when I woke up at around 3AM randomly and saw that my boyfriend was awake as well due to a soar throat. He was scrolling on his phone and drinking some tea that he made earlier, which wasn’t at all unusual. I was totally fine up until I rolled over to face him and he instinctively and quickly hid his phone slightly. I saw this happen, but didn’t bring it up at all, but that’s when my anxiety started to seriously rise. So I looked to see what he was looking at without him realizing, (which I now feel very guilty over) and it didn’t look like anything to worry about, he was typing something out and clearly texting someone I think, but the conversation and images that I saw, either I couldn’t fully make out, or were just potentially about mechanical jargon, which is not unusual. The pictures didn’t seem odd, just confusing to me. Nonetheless though, my anxiety rose A LOT just because he tried to hide his phone for a moment. “Well why is he hiding his phone if he has nothing to hide?” “Did he switch tabs before I saw what I saw? Maybe that’s what he was trying to hide?” I feel awful…I hate that my OCD is latching onto this horrible fear so much lately. I’ve been taking 20MG of Fluoxetine over the past week to try and help with the thoughts, but i’ve yet to see results. Any advice for how to go about this? I don’t want to bring this up with my boyfriend due to how many times similar conversations like this have happened, and I’m just fueling the OCD if I do that. I’m scared that this will hurt our relationship long term.

21+ only OCD is making me scared about person who had an onlyfans and posted explicit things trying to convince me they're a horrible person, it's also making me doubt my memories of them having an onlyfans when I know they did. I tried to disprove OCD messing with me and make sure the person wasn't evil but instead got triggered hy unrelated instagram and twitter accounts that I reported to be safe because one of the twitter accounts had an anime banner that rubbed me the wrong way, during all of this, I was basically having a full blown panic attack and I saw an account on onlyfans with the same name that said unavailable but wasn't sure if was the same person, I also saw awful "leaked" websites and reported those because it's violating and also because of a reddit post that I thought could be related because the person had the same first name saying that they regretted posting NSFW stuff of themselves, and it turned out that the twitter account I clicked on thinking it was unrelated but didn't have anything bad on it, was related to the person and their other account had a worrying drawn banner of a character's eyes and part of their face that seemed to elude to explicit things so I reported everything I could. I also checked their linktree to see if it was their onlyfans that said unavailable or if I needed to report that too but it led to another linktree and OCD twisted my intentions. The twitter account that I reported at first and I don't think was related to them despite it being the same name also said they were 20 in their bio so OCD's messing with me about that despite me only seeing their account last year. OCD making me scared of triggers when itching even though I know for a fact that I closed my phone and put it down to do so. OCD messing with me about the compulsion again and I keep telling it to stop. I'm so scared I naively trusted the wrong person and that they turned out to be a bad person and I didn't know and I know that I'm most likely wrong about all of this but the 1% chance I'm not is eating away at me and I just don't know what to do, I don't want to have unknowingly done something awful but trusted them because they had an onlyfans and so would've had to verify their age obviously and send in their ID but not just that, it's like the possibility of them drawing horrible things after I stopped using twitter (or even seeing their accounts which was way before and I may have even blocked them for their following idk) means that I'm a bad person even though I never knew these things and they happened after the fact. OCD making me scared I gave benefit of the doubt to people who followed horrific people when I know I didn't but it keeps making me doubt myself and I'm sure I blocked someone that I followed when I saw they followed someone awful but OCD's making me doubt it and I think I kept checking if they unfollowed them after I DM'd them about the person being awful maybe but idk and OCD keeps making me scared I gave awful people benefit of the doubt.

21+ only OCD is making me scared about person who had an onlyfans and posted explicit things trying to convince me they're a horrible person, it's also making me doubt my memories of them having an onlyfans when I know they did. I tried to disprove OCD messing with me and make sure the person wasn't evil but instead got triggered hy unrelated instagram and twitter accounts that I reported to be safe because one of the twitter accounts had an anime banner that rubbed me the wrong way, during all of this, I was basically having a full blown panic attack and I saw an account on onlyfans with the same name that said unavailable but wasn't sure if was the same person, I also saw awful "leaked" websites and reported those because it's violating and also because of a reddit post that I thought could be related because the person had the same first name saying that they regretted posting NSFW stuff of themselves, and it turned out that the twitter account I clicked on thinking it was unrelated but didn't have anything bad on it, was related to the person and their other account had a worrying drawn banner of a character's eyes and part of their face that seemed to elude to explicit things so I reported everything I could. I also checked their linktree to see if it was their onlyfans that said unavailable or if I needed to report that too but it led to another linktree and OCD twisted my intentions. The twitter account that I reported at first and I don't think was related to them despite it being the same name also said they were 20 in their bio so OCD's messing with me about that despite me only seeing their account last year. OCD making me scared of triggers when itching even though I know for a fact that I closed my phone and put it down to do so. OCD messing with me about the compulsion again and I keep telling it to stop. I'm so scared I naively trusted the wrong person and that they turned out to be a bad person and I didn't know and I know that I'm most likely wrong about all of this but the 1% chance I'm not is eating away at me and I just don't know what to do, I don't want to have unknowingly done something awful but trusted them because they had an onlyfans and so would've had to verify their age obviously and send in their ID but not just that, it's like the possibility of them drawing horrible things after I stopped using twitter (or even seeing their accounts which was way before and I may have even blocked them for their following idk) means that I'm a bad person even though I never knew these things and they happened after the fact. OCD making me scared I gave benefit of the doubt to people who followed horrific people when I know I didn't but it keeps making me doubt myself and I'm sure I blocked someone that I followed when I saw they followed someone awful but OCD's making me doubt it and I think I kept checking if they unfollowed them after I DM'd them about the person being awful maybe but idk and OCD keeps making me scared I gave awful people benefit of the doubt.

my bf is on vacation with his friend. its 23:22 and he didnt Text me for hours and it makes me so exteemly nervous. my mind instantly goes to hes cheating, hes getting drunk and doing whatever stuff to other women im legit panicing. i dont want reassurance but Tips in how to not crash out generally ajdkskkoyösnem

So I’m in a relationship currently, my longest one yet coming up to two years. I’m so in love but unfortunately he said he struggles to deal with me as a person. This is because of my relationship ocd and how it affects me he’s agreed to give me another chance to show I can change, but I struggle massively please can anyone give me advice ? I don’t want to loose him as I don’t know where that would take me mentally. My current issues are as followed: * “Are you annoyed with me?” * “Are we okay?” * “Do you still love me?” * “Why did you reply like that?” * “Are you talking to someone else?” * “Are you sure you don’t want to leave?” I can’t stop sometimes even though I know there isn’t anything wrong and it’s happened twice now where he wants to leave and this time I know it’s on egg shells , please help me anyone

hi everyone, i really need help. i think i’ve developed contamination ocd with my new apartment and cat. what started off as little rituals to feel fresh in my new place has seemed to devolve into compulsions and intrusive thoughts. i also got a new cat after my roommate’s childhood dog passed (we had her for a few months before she passed) and i really love her but i think i’m getting so frustrated that i don’t feel like she’s clean enough. it came to a head yesterday, when i saw a really big bug and had an absolute meltdown about it. i have a horrible phobia around insects and i could not think straight with how terrified and unsafe and unclean it felt. today i saw something crawling on my cat’s fur and while i tried to catch it i couldn’t. it didn’t look like a flea, we don’t have another animals, already gave her a bath after she she was adopted from her shelter, and has flea medication, so idk what it was but now i’m locked in my bathroom trying not to tear my hair out with my things in the washer at 1:30am debating on leaving my apartment and going home. i hate feeling like this and i feel so guilty for even thinking that maybe her best option is going back to the shelter because i adore her so much already but i’m also standing in my bathroom trying not to deep clean my entire apartment at 1:30am because of how it feels like she’s not clean even thought i deep clean once a week and clean regularly daily. please help i feel so lost right now

I’d love some erp ideas! I suffer with magical thinking ocd, mental contamination, harm ocd, pocd, health ocd. All of it!! Mental contamination is the worst one so far. They all like to take turns at being the star of the show but mental contamination is the worst one by far. I can’t buy shit because the fucker is contaminated somehow. I also deal with memory ocd which I try to remember something I did that I might not have done in the first place and trying to organize everything I’ve done,or the amount of times I was embarrassed, was wrong or ashamed of. Maybe I deal with some guilt ocd even if it’s not bad, just silly as hell. I try to remember shit that didn’t happen or try to organize shit in my head. It’s just never helpful. I end up ruminating and doing compulsions. I start getting confused about everything because my brain is so wrapped up in trying to help myself ease the anxiety and so it has no room for other important tasks. I dissociate a lot. I do have trauma so that is definitely one of the underlying reasons for certain. I get ocd while typing too. I get a bad image or thought and for it to not be or become true, or if I don’t want it to happen I gotta delete what I wrote and start fresh or I’m doomed. It happens no matter what I’m doing. When I’m doing a coping skill like reading, drawing, coloring, sitting with my journal, etc. it always goes after things I enjoy and gives me thoughts I don’t want to think of. It causes intense suffering. OCD literally holds a stick and just pokes me for fun. I start dealing with health ocd bc when my ocd gets bad, I get mentally ill and forget, repeat things that don’t need to be repeated bc it’s just feeding the ocd, I think there is something terribly wrong with me. I think I’m mentally sick and physically sick and just don’t know it yet. NOOCD doesn’t take my insurance. It’s bullshit. I’m not picky with a counselor to talk about life and sadness or whatever but when it comes to my OCD, they need to care, understand to the root, have it, or studied it all for years. If I had one wish that would come true, it would be to cure my ocd. I’d take that wish over winning a billion dollars. That says I’m suffering. It’s not a joke. People laugh or find us dumb but they don’t know how it feels to fist fight with your head. It’s not fun. I have a counselor outside of this. But, ocd isn’t one of her studies. Trauma is which can help ocd because ocd I learned so our body’s way of trying to find some control, while just losing it because we’re not trying to find control in the way we’re supposed to so we unintentionally/subconsciously find different ways without even realizing it. I think it’s a survival technique that isn’t helpful to us obviously. Although ocd can be stemmed from trauma, it’s also a separate mental illness so I need to find the right tools for me. I’d appreciate it if anyone can maybe comment some erp skills that have been effective although difficult at first to get down, I’d be forever grateful. Anything helps.

Hi all, I've been suffering from OCD for a couple of years now (3 years to be exact). I've been in and out of therapy since I was 15. I had therapy with NOCD back in 2023 for POCD and once again for about a month during the summer. I had to stop therapy due to my work schedule. However, recently I've been obsessing about a new theme which has been really bothering me since June of 2026 (for nearly 4 months now). So essentially, I'm a 23 year old straight man (I turn 24 on Sunday), and I've been bothered by the fact of having these serious false attractions (or what I believe it is false attraction) and groinal/false arousal (I hope it’s false) towards 16/17 year old t33ns. A question that pops up in my head is: Can POCD attach your real desires to children? I seem to get impulses of attraction which cause me to go in panic mode. Does anyone else have this? This is disturbing to even type but it somehow feels like I messed up my brain. It feels like I fell into this “conscious realisation” that I SOMEHOW find teenagers who are 16/17 years old “more attractive” than those my age. Not sure if this matters but I also became hyper-sexualized since 10/11 years old, when I began watching p0rn and consumed lots of content. I still watch p0rn today but not as much but I feel like it makes things worse. I did something really dumb over the summer .. and this is where my OCD comes in - In recent weeks, it's really latched onto this and other things and made me feel like a monster, pervert etc. I've been finding it really hard not to give into compulsions like ruminating, looking at t33ns online, testing for groinal response or researching the morality of being attracted to a teenager (out of pure compulsion). The worst feeling is when I feel a groinal .. like a false groinal arousal by a 16/17 year old - I mean, what am I supposed to do then? It's like somehow .. and some way .. it is really difficult for me to control how I feel??? Like in the heat of the moment it feels like “I desire it”, but immediately afterwards a wave of anxiety hits and I feel really disgusted with myself .. In addition, my OCD has been making me question whether I'm also attracted to younger teenagers (e.g. around 13/14 years of age). I used to be certain that this was not the case, but I've been thinking about this so much that in recent days I've began doubting myself - even though deep down I'm pretty sure I'm not attracted to kids, I feel so much anxiety when I think about this and part of me isn't sure anymore. I've also been experiencing more groinal responses which have made things worse. So yeah, I really want this BS to end. I want to go back to what I was like las year, when I wasn't worrying about any of this and was much happier. I'm really worried that if I go back into therapy once my schedule clears up, they might think that I really am a sicko monster. What do you guys think? Yeah .. thanks for reading my post ..

I think very frequently about my love life, mostly reflection on where I’m currently at and how I feel about potential partners in my life. Sometimes, things are quiet and there’s not many prospects, while sometimes, things are loud and there are multiple prospects. Right now, I’m in a period where there are people in my life I’d like to go out with, but I just have absolutely no mental energy to do so. I have no desire to pursue any of these prospects because I keep overthinking everything that could happen, like “what if we get together” or “what if I miss out on my true partner” or “what if this ends like my last relationship.” All of these horrible thoughts are from my OCD, no doubt about it, and I’ve just been so preoccupied on finding my person for SO long that I find it impossible to live my life without that search. It feels like it’s eating me alive from the inside out. It’s almost like I can’t be happy. When I have nobody to get involved with, I wish I had a girlfriend. When I might be getting involved with someone, I’m scared to commit. Doubt doubt doubt. I just want to be content with where I’m at, and I wish there was a way I could be completely 100% assured that the right woman would come into my life someday. I’ve raised this concern to people in my life before, but the response has always been “you’re only 22, you shouldn’t be thinking about finding a serious partner right now” or “the right person will come along when you stop looking.” That doesn’t help me calm my nerves 🥲 anybody else felt this way before?

It destroys everything, and no matter how hard I try, I’m scared I’ll never be able to live a normal life. Other people, normal people, don’t have the same worries that I do. OCD will latch onto anything so you never run out of things to obsess about and fear over. I feel like I can’t get a break because the obsessions are constantly overlapping. I constantly think about the past and what a horrible person I was 24/7. Then, I’m busy with school, so I think I have something else to focus on, but since school is heavily immersed in the digital world, then I obsess over computer viruses and digital contamination. Then I run multiple antivirus scans that never ease this fear. I get home from school and I’m now upset that a roommate keeps leaving her stuff out and not cleaning her dishes, then because of moral scrupulosity, I feel like I am the worst and most evil person to exist because I got annoyed with someone (even without their knowledge) and then it ties back into real-event because then that means I haven’t changed as a person and that my past is who I’ll always be. I feel like I’m constantly in overdrive and that my brain will give up on me in the future. It never stops running. I wish the “I’m so OCD” people knew what it was truly like.

Hey everyone, please forgive me for what is going to be a long post, but I feel the more detail the better in this case. To give some background, I am a 25-year old single man living with his family. A few months after high school graduation in 2019, I received a scholarship to a film school in SoCal, where I lived at the time. I planned to start my first semester in January 2020, but the world was sadly met with the pandemic. Due to living in California with extreme lockdowns, I kept putting off starting until things opened up. I didn't want to do classes that required in person technical work with cameras and lighting amidst so many restrictions. Cut to 2021, and I was ready to start classes, but I bailed. I was scared. I was so paranoid about the drive on the freeway, parking, and not fitting in. I eventually found a retail job that summer which I stayed employed at until my family moved to the Pacific Northwest in January 2023. It was a terribly rough adjustment, and in the fall I went back to Cali and lived with my grandmother for several months, starting film classes at a community college. I had fun, but had a tough time putting my voice out and collaborating. I felt foreign amidst people who shared my ultimate passion. I moved back to the PNW in early summer of 2024 and got a retail job where I was a supervisor. I worked here for a year and then got hired as assistant manager at a new store opening. I was having a terrible mental health crisis at the time, and I got demoted. I quit the job and have been unemployed for four months. I am 60-70 pounds overweight, depressed and sleeping until 10am. My best friends have careers they are passionate about. I have amazing parents who are supportive of my mental health journey, as this has been an ongoing struggle since I was in the 5th grade. I realize this is a very long post, but I don't know where I belong. I want to work and sustain myself, yet I don't even have an associates degree. I can barely communicate with strangers without feeling like I am on fire. I realize retail isn't for me and I am a very introverted person. Has anyone gone through something similar, but eventually found what works? I have debated a career counselor. I hesitate to find work because of my OCD and anxiety. I want a career that challenges me, but allows me space for my mental health. My mental health has caused crisis at many jobs. Anyhow, if you made it this far, thank you so much for reading. Just needed to get this off my chest. Love you all and stay strong. :)

Been having a huge spiral lately over my relationship and if my partner is faithful or not. My relationship is absolutely incredible, and he gives me no reason to doubt him, and yet I still have doubts that one day he’ll cheat on me or that because of my issues he’ll grow tired of me. I tell him about my spirals more often than I’d like…the guilt is absolutely overwhelming whenever I have doubts or question what he’s doing on his phone, or look at who he follows. Then I tell him of my actions later to get that guilt off my chest, I have past trauma in regards to infidelity and cheating, and I think that’s one of the reasons as to why my brain latches onto this fear so strongly. It’s my biggest fear besides him dying…I just don’t know how to cope and deal with this anxiety on a daily basis. The guilt especially is eating me alive…the fear he’ll just leave because it seems I don’t trust him, and maybe I don’t…I don’t know anymore…he trusts me completely and that just makes me feel even worse. I feel like I trust him completely, yet I feed into these thoughts and try to seek reassurance constantly. Sorry for the long ramble…I just needed to vent this one out. I’m open to any advice! 💜

This is my first post here. I've replied to a lot of messages but haven't sent any myself. I appreciate anyone who reads or responds to it. It's gonna be a bit long❤️ Well my theme is existential ocd. Before this theme, I did deal with things like health and safety themes but didn't even know that it was ocd because it was much milder. My fear is about a sort of eternal suffering. I feel soooo alone in it because I haven't seen anyone with a similar theme. Most people fear death and non existence. For me that would be the best outcome. Everything would end including the suffering and it also feels natural. My fear shows itself in two main ways: - quantum immortality (the quantum torment scenario) - death being an illusion and we keep being conscious of our body and feelings after death (this includes being burried alive and being there forever, feeling the decomposition of the body) And trust me I have researched enough. I couldn't make sure that it won't happen. But the problem is that it feels wrong to accept its possibility because EVERYONE sees death as THE certain thing. I feel alone because I haven't seen someone accepting this possibility and still living normally. Idk if it's possible or not. If we were in a society in which the fear of eternal suffering in the ways I described was as common as fear of death, I could deal with it much easier. Something interesting is that if someone said "don't worry we will all die for sure", it wouldn't give me any reassurance. It would actually trigger me because I'd feel unheard. That they don't even understand what my fear is and now I have to argue to prove that my worry might be a possibility and I'm not worried about a totally impossible thing.😅 Does anyone relate or has anyone gone through similar stuff? The thought is very scary by itself but I also feel isolated in having the thought itself and the dread that comes with it. It's like I've found a dark secret and it's my responsibility to solve it because others are too careless. (Probably not true. I'm just saying how it feels) Thank you for putting the time to read this❤️