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Does anyone feel like their mental health challenges have become their identity? And if you have and overcame it, what was it that really helped you? Lately I’ve felt that that’s what I’ve been feeling since I was diagnosed with OCD and depression 2 and 1/2 years ago. And I think that was part of my processing phase, so I won’t say I was wrong for that. And that phase for sure can vary between people. But I’m just wondering if it’s time for me to step out of that thinking now 🤷🏻‍♀️

Ok, I have a question. How do you do ERP? It seems like that’s the most recommended way to deal with OCD, I have an idea of what it entails but it kinda scares me. I can’t afford an OCD therapist so this is something I’d have to do on my own, I just don’t know how.

Social media & OCD: My first intense episode was back in the fall of 2021. I posted a book that had a huge impact on me on my IG stories and tagged the author. My intention was to simply share because I enjoy to and then out of no where I saw that the author saw my tagged post in her DM. And, I began to overthink why she didn’t repost my post but was reposting others tagged post. I rationalized. I told myself this will past. But, I found it so crazy I was overthinking it. Then, realized the thought wasn’t leaving and I feared I would obsess about it forever. I was so scared. I felt like I lost my identity. I got treatment and started to feel better. Until recently, it’s happening again. I shared another book and tagged the author. The author saw it and thanked me with a sweet message. It was nice she responded. But! Then I noticed she was reposting other peoples tagged post of her book and I began to overthink why not mine. I come up with these stories in my mind similar to what happened in my first episode. Another thing that’s happening is that I signed up to work with a coach because I felt she could really help me. Once I signed with her, I started to think will she follow me back on IG? And I’m like why am I thinking this!? It doesn’t matter. It shouldn’t bother me. None of the above should either but my mind keeps thinking of it and it truly makes me feel like sh*t. Like something is wrong with me. Can anyone relate? I feel like I’m the only one that struggles with these kinds of thoughts. Thoughts that seem so silly and stupid to me. I really thought I was working passed my first episode but can’t believe it’s happening again. Social media is triggering me. And I’ve even muted these people so I don’t see them and get more triggered. I also am lowering my time spent on social media. I feel like OCD is ruining my experiences and the things that are having a big impact on me and my potential relationships. And of course I doubt If its OCD. It sucks. I’m looking for a therapist to get help. I dont want my thoughts to dictate my actions and experiences. Just needed to let it out and expose it all. Thank you for reading ✨🙌🏼🙏🏼💛

I was on my way to the train station and someone stopped me because they needed help looking for something. I didn't want to say no because I didn't want to come off as rude to that person. They needed help lifting a cart up the stairs so I helped them. But they also didn't have any money to get past the fee to ride the Subway. I paid but she kept talking to get my attention. This time I got really stuck on what to do because something told me I wasn't supposed to open the door that is push only. But I did it anyway because I didn't want to seem rude or like a bad person for rejecting a Samaritan in need. This one event has given me the most anxiety and it's still messing with me to the point where I'm tearing up. I feel like I just committed a crime by helping that person. I feel like I did something terrible. I wouldn't normally do that myself if I were alone but at the same time that person needed my help and I just wanted to do something good and helpful for someone for a change. I just can't get over it. I can't calm down. I can't shake it off and just move on like most other people would. I'm just left with heavy anxiety and overthinking. I guess what I'm supposed to do is not get anyone to tell me that this is not a bad thing or that I'm fine, but instead to just sit there and let it bother me. This feels terrible. I feel like a criminal.

Hi all ❤️‍🩹 I’m “kind of” new to this and would greatly appreciate any insight. (Back story) After a panic attack in 2017 I started to experience very random and negative intrusive thoughts towards my significant other. These thoughts affected my every day life for a while, but I was able to keep them under control for the most part. Some of these thoughts consisted of: “What if I don’t actually love my partner?” “Why is my brain telling me I have to leave my partner?” “Am I attracted to my partner?” “I think there is someone out there better for me..” And many many more! Mind you, I was/ still am in a very loving relationship with a wonderful man. After months of these thoughts they didn’t mean so much to me and I was able to return back to my “normal” life with the thoughts only occurring once in a while. Anyway, that was just a bit of background of when I first started to notice symptoms of OCD. Recently, I believe I developed a new theme of OCD; Harm OCD. After accidentally (truthfully accidentally!) eating a THC edible I was thrown into a terrible state of panic, anxiety and paranoia. I was experiencing terrible intrusive thoughts while in the height of the high & now those thoughts have apparently, come to stay. I was on FaceTime with my mom a few days after the incident (at this point I still didn’t feel like myself and was certainly experiencing derealization). A random thought popped into my head, “What if I want to hurt my mom?“ “do I want to hurt my mom?” This thought made me spiral. For the past few days I keep getting these thoughts. When I am around her I am so tense and anxious because I can not even fathom ever hurting the person that means the most to me. These thoughts are quite literally torturing me. I now worry about if I accidentally will harm her because my mind is telling me to, or my mind will cause me to write out a plan to hurt her ( I read that this is what “real” killers would do). Mind you, I have never even hurt and fly and these harm thoughts completely came out of nowhere for me. Truthfully, I believe these are the worst possible thoughts that could have popped into my mind because I love and adore my mom dearly.

Does anyone whos been through trauma and ocd or just ocd alone feel like they’ve changed like not the same happy go lucky person you use to be. Maybe have a outlook on life that isn’t has positive as it once was? My parents told my wife that I’ve changed but I’ve been through a lot and it’s only been 2 years like I expect people to be as positive as they once were to some extent. Idk maybe just me.

Can anyone help me with this? It doesn't really matter in what kind of relationship I am, friends family, partners, its all the same, except that with partners it's worse. It's over analysing everything that happens. It's when I send my partner a heart and he doesn't send it back. But when we're together I know he's like the most affectionate person I know. I'm just constantly doubting whether he still likes me or not. It's like with everything that happens my OCD tries to find something that makes me doubt his feelings for me. It's terrifying because I don't want to lose him but I know that if I keep doubting like this and if he notices that I'll push him away. I keep a lot of this to myself and I only share it with my family and they say the same thing. That I have to start trusting in him and that I have to let it go. But its so scary, I'm not gonna obsessively text him, or constantly ask for reassurance, because this is a me problem and not his. But I need some help, how do you guys do this? How do you ignore the doubts? How do you find the difference between a gut feeling that something it actually wrong and an OCD feeling that's just there to make you think that something is wrong?

Hi I have a problem with getting really bad thoughts that I am just the ugliest most disgusting person ever and these thoughts give me extreme anxiety and I usally cope with them with either caking makeup on or going on a spending spree so that I can look more like the girls in my classes. I go on Amazon try to find the best products to take my eye bags away, and I order it all. Then I get terrible anxiety that I spent to much money and that I will soon have no money. It’s just an endless cycle and it’s so exhausting I don’t know how to change the cycle. The intrusive thoughts about myself are too much to handle.

I hate myself with a passion. I don’t know if it’s OCD or if I should really be worried but I feel like I deserve to give up and that I need to punish myself by not receiving care or love from family and friends and that I don’t deserve food or like I said to even live. I feel so dark and scared. I don’t know what I’m going to do. My therapist says it’s rumination but I think it’s more than that. She also said that I don’t need to figure it out either but I feel like I have to otherwise I’m never gonna know if I should hate myself or not but I feel like I do.

Let notice it: often, we are not even angry/frustrated annoyed by the toughs, but by out reaction to the toughts. Sometimes, accepting our emotions is harder that accepting the toughts. Most of the time, being able to say "hey; this let me feel really bad, but it's okay to feel my emotions, so it's okay if I'm anxious, annoyed, frustrated, angry" now is already a solution!!!

I think I've cracked the code to where my OCD comes from: It all began with early exposure to pornography. For so long I've beaten myself up for making mistakes with that kind of content, but I also forget I was only a 13 year old child when it began with no outside guidance to correct my perspective in such a position. Can anyone relate? How do you forgive yourself 100% for this? How do you go on? I want to start a dialogue for something like this. Something that helps people learn sex education the right away instead of all of the toxic ways our culture seems to show.

Brokw up with my boyfriend so he doesnt have to deal withh my rjocd or rocd anymore

My ocd has always been active in my life, constant worry and obsessing and checking compulsions and I mean about literally everything. Before I didn’t know it was ocd I just thought to myself that I’m Just a super worrier lol I thought it was normal to just worry and expect the worse. My brain literally expects the worse and I’m so negative, hardly positive about situations I always feel something is going to go wrong and I feel like I have to check certain things to make sure I didn’t mess up or cause harm and if I think positive that the bad thing will happen. I didn’t know I had ocd until I had sexual orientation doubts even tho knew I was straight and comfortable with that, I completely felt the horrible feeling after one thought… what if I was gay. I remember the time and place when I had that thought and my life changed after that, for two years I struggled with trying to figure what was going on, constant anxiety doubt and unwanted feelings. Starting to believe I was gay even tho I told myself if I was gay I’d be gay but I’m not, just didn’t even make sense to my brain, literally nothing did. I’m not the manliest man either so anything that I did that was considered Feminine killed me. I was so tangled in this that when my friends joked about gay stuff I felt like I was dying. Even if someone said “your gay” as a joke I think to myself “oh see, they see it and your just in denial” it got so bad I broke down a few times and consider ending it but I got the hope to keep going and found out about ocd and I didn’t get help right then I just lived with the uncertainty and I did my absolute best to just trust myself and I don’t remember when exactly but I felt better I got a grip on myself and gay stuff didn’t bother me none I even laugh at it now because it was so silly but it almost killed me. Unfortunately Ocd just doesn’t go away and I’m now dealing with a heavy set of ocd. And knowing you have ocd, that will become a doubt, so even tho I have some tools on how to tackle this, ocd will find a way to fight hard. Im here now to get the help I’ve always needed because when Ocd came back I had a feeling it was Ocd but the doubt will make you give in and try to fight with your thoughts. Trying to gain certainty will make you less certain. My ocd topic this time revolves around harm. And ocd will attack you where it gonna hurt the most, you will doubt everything. Thanks to NOCD I’m able to finally get the right help I need to really put my foot down on ocd.

How can I get rid of my severe pure o and magical thinking without going to any professionals?

I've had to delete all of my social media apps because I couldn't go to sleep each night without checking my stories and accounts several times to make sure i hadn't posted or said anything inappropriate. I feel relief that it's not something I have to check or worry about anymore. But i feel like it's made me more lonely and disconnected from my peers, and I feel like people might forget me. I have kept apps without story options to keep in touch with close friends and family. But the amount of interaction with people has gotten so much smaller.

I have OCD where my thoughts mostly revolve around loss of control. Like I'm worried ill lose my mind. Lately the thoughts are more loss of cognitive function where I'll eventually develop dementia. I actually feel like my memory isn't as good as it once was or my recall isn't as sharp anymore. I cant figure out if this is really happening, OCD is playing with my mind, or my mind is literally so exhausted from all this worrying that it really is experiencing some brain fog. Anyone else have any experience this this type of thing?

I’m really worried. This past month instead of feeling scared and doing my endless compulsions I’ve just felt completely numb to my long-distance boyfriend. It’s like I don’t care about him or like I’m not attracted to him at all anymore. A month ago he said it was okay if we stopped doing intimate things over the phone because it makes me so anxious and now I haven’t wanted to at all. It’s not that I don’t love him or want to do stuff, it’s just that I spend all of it testing my attraction to him and it takes out any pleasure. Also sometimes in the past when I’d look at him I’d “force” myself to feel attraction but it’s not that I’m not attracted to him, I just don’t get aroused just looking at him. Well I can sometimes if he’s doing things for me I actually like that but not a lot because of my intrusive. Now it’s been a month where I look at him and don’t feel anything and I’m so scared. I also don’t feel desperate to do my compulsions to make sure I still love him. In fact, I’m exhausted from them and want nothing to do with the anxiety so I feel like I’m just talking to a friend but that still terrifies me because I still very very badly want to be romantically and sexually attracted to him. But I know that the more I chase it the more anxiety it’ll bring so instead I just let myself be numb to him and it’s scary because I don’t want to be numb. I’m also noticing every single guy and wanting that attention but I don’t want anything romantic or sexual, I just struggle with male validation and I want to be seen and heard because I feel so alone right now. I feel so guilty for feeling that way but most of all the reason I feel so far away from my boyfriend is because I feel like my thoughts make me so worthless of him. I feel like I don’t deserve him and that my thoughts aren’t his problem and he should be with someone who can be happy with him without being afraid. I feel like all I do is hurt him and I feel so scared and worried that I’m not sexually attracted to him or that I’m forcing it because I don’t get instantly aroused looking at him and because I have anxiety around sex that makes it hard for me to enjoy it. I feel guilty that I can’t enjoy our happy moments or be present in our relationship and it makes me so numb to him and that’s what causes me so much pain that I feel shut off. Because I want to love him and be with him, I want to be confident in my attraction to him and I want to see him and just have that feeling of rightness. I’m also getting ready to go to college and I’m becoming more independent and it makes me feel guilty too like im moving on without him but I don’t want to. Is this part of rocd and soocd as well? This horrible numbness ?

Has anyone had relationship doubts but subconsciously? And you only had them when you thought about your partner but you weren’t like ruminating on it. Is that even ocd or just doubting? It’s not, like, active anxiety. Just this feeling of it being off and not totally what I want. Like i have this fantasy idea of what i want. But then I get sad and scared that I feel that way. And I convince myself I have to break up with him even though I don’t want to. But again, it’s not like this active questioning or anxiety. Just kinda subconsciously there and not hitting me in the face. Just lightly telling me to end it.

Anyone ever developed OCD of having other mental disorders?

For those with ROCD- let me tell you my story. It was August 2021 and we were having a movie night at my apartment with some friends. Once the movie ended, my boyfriend and I said goodnight and he went back to his apartment. Then, randomly as I was getting ready for bed, I had the thought “I don’t love him anymore” and I went into an intense panic attack. My mind was spiraling and it was terrifying. I knew I loved him, but that thought caught me so off-guard because I had never had thoughts like that before. My thoughts were like: “well, if I love him then why did I think that?“ and I was just so lost. I texted my boyfriend to come down and help me calm down and eventually I felt okay again. I was fine for like a week and then I had a second panic attack about “if you really love him, why are you still having doubts and thinking this way?”. This pattern kept up for about three months. I was so miserable and being a college student, it was hard to focus in class and I felt trapped when I was in my room alone because my thoughts wouldn’t give me a break. There were even a few times I felt like breaking up with him because I was so in my head. It was getting to the point where I was having depressive thoughts like “it’s never going to get better” and “what’s the point if i’m going to be sad all the time”. That’s when I knew I needed help. Finally, I made an appointment with a psychiatrist and she told me I have OCD. It was a relief to hear, but I already kinda figured that’s what it was since intrusive thoughts defined what I was experiencing perfectly. She put me on Zoloft and it has definitely helped me. I haven’t had a panic attack in months and I definitely still have days where I have intrusive thoughts, but they aren’t nearly as bad. However, my current thoughts are: “What if I lose feelings for him in the future?”, “Why do I still feeling anxiety if I should be okay now?”. I’ve even had dreams of me cheating on him and I wake up terrified and confused. It’s hard, but I keep going because I know how I truly feel about him and I know I love him. I thank god he was supportive and stayed with me during my low point. I truly couldn’t have done it without him. I hope this helped y’all and please let me know if you can relate. I know it’s so hard, but just hang in there. You’re strong and it will get better. You know how you feel about them and the truth is if you truly didn’t love them anymore, you wouldn’t be feeling all of this fear and anxiety. It would be more of a natural acceptance. Don’t let the uncertainty control you. One day at a time.