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I just read a whole article on not ruminating and I'm totally lost. I asked my husband to read it and explain it to me and he's just as lost as I am.

hi everyone. i know this is ocd, so i’m not wanting any reassurance or anything like that, i just don’t know how to stop these thoughts and am looking for advice. i used to have harm ocd but haven’t in awhile. this morning i was praying and i said a prayer for my little brother who starts high school today and then in the middle of my prayer an intrusive thought came in about something horrible happening to the school and kids at school. and it was intruding in my prayer, acting as if i was praying for that to happen. it caused me so much distress. i know i would never want that to happen and i know that this is ocd, but i don’t know how to stop the thoughts. i just want to be able to say my morning prayer in peace without feeling like a bad person who is requesting bad things. anyone have any advice?

How are you?

So recently I had a baby, about 5 days ago had a membrane sweep doctor did ask if I wanted one but I had no knowledge on it and what it could do to my baby also had no idea it was a form of induction for baby. I had cancelled my original induction so I don’t know why she would ask me if I wanted one. It did work I believe and am now regretting having it done I am a big person of faith and God and feel like I set my own baby’s birthdate. I feel like I intervened in baby’s timing. I’m horrible I don’t know if it’s my OCD tricking me because I feel like it’s worse that her birthdate landed on August 4th and my dad who passed away 3 years ago Birthday whos was February 4th. I’m not sure if I’m entering a psychosis I’m very scared. My baby needs me.

Ever since I got together with my BF it has felt unreal to me that we are together. I know that we are but it doesn’t feel real. I’m 20 & so is he. I have always had relationships with men & had crushes on men. Him and I have been talking for 3 years & together for 1. We met in person last year. A few months ago about 5-6 I’ve been having a lot of questioning my sexuality thoughts, thinking I’m bi/les , or questioning if there is something wrong with me maybe it’s just him, or what if he’s just not the one or I’m not into him and it makes me feel/ think I could be bi/les. I care about him & I love him and this is all scary to me and I cannot figure it out: Quick background info: When I was way younger I remember exploring sexually with girls and I liked it it felt good but I’ve never necessarily had a crush on a girl, see myself dating one , or marrying one. But whenever I watch les p!0rn I get turned on by it and I imagine doing stuff with a girl just seeing it turns me on. I feel like right now I would wanna do sexual things with a girl because it would feel good. I keep thinking thinking what if I actually do want to be with a girl romantically & I keep imagining myself romantically / married or if I could marry a girl but I just can’t. I’m FREAKED out. I feel lost, I feel scared, I feel conflicted, I feel that I need to figure this out & solve it. How do I know if this is OCD or an actual thing that isn’t OCD. How do I differentiate? I keep thinking maybe I’m asexual. He’s my first ever serious relationship that could potentially lead to marriage and I’m also scared about how do I know he’s the right one? What if he’s not the right one? What if I’m lesbian? Then what? I’m SO SCARED I never experienced this before it’s so new to me and I keep thinking about how weird and different it is to have a man and do everything with them. Whenever I’m with him I constantly question if its all real / normal and it all just feels weird and idk why! He is an amazing guy!

Something uncomfortable just happened, I was watching a video and at one point there was a person who looked like my ex, at first the thought didn't bother me but then I started to get the feeling that I was being unfaithful just because I thought the person looked like her and then I started replaying the same part of the video countless times in an attempt to make sure everything was okay and that thought didn't mean anything. I don't even think this compulsion makes sense, but I don't know, nothing in OCD makes sense. I feel so bad that I didn't have the strength to resist this compulsion 😓

Let my family down again. Choice not to go on short trip due to my high anxiety of not sleeping away from home. I am crying and feeling ashamed. I really need a good therapist on here to help with sleep anxiety and other ocd thoughts that run through my head like a midnight freight train. 50 year old retired fire captain who is crying into a pillow not sure what to make of his brain anymore.

School starts in a week and my ocd is at its worst. I have insufferable intrusive thoughts all the time and I can’t deal with it and whenever it gets too much I just go in my room and isolate. But how am I going to do that when I’m gonna be forced to go to school everyday soon? How am I gonna cope with it??????? Im so scared and I just want my brain to shut off. All I think about now besides from the disgusting intrusive thoughts is giving up. I am too much of a anxious person to take my own life but I pray god everyday that he will take it for me. I used to be a happy person and enjoy living and now all I think about is dying so I don’t have to deal with these intrusive thoughts anymore. I used to love living. Why did this have to happen to me I didn’t do anything wrong I’ve always taken pride in making other people happy and now I have to suffer what did I do to deserve this. I just want it to be over. The worst part is that my intrusive thoughts lately have been about family and now I don’t even have any support systems because my support systems have become my triggers. I can’t deal with this alone.

My OCD and Depression are teaming up on me heavily. They’re very focused on my family and me leaving right now because of harmful thoughts and the rumination is planting relationship doubts with my wife and kids. Anyone else going through this? Any advice?

My family literally is always against me and doesn’t understand my ocd at all. They are all so stubborn and don’t make an effort to even empathize with me and always make me the bad guy. I’m just so tired of no one being on my side and my family saying all these derogatory things to me. Even if I make a small mistake, it is the end of the world for them and they all gang up and won’t speak to me properly for days as a result. 😔

Anyone taking medication that is not Abilify or Prozac and if so how many milligrams are you taking how effective was it for your OCD?

Anyone know anything about confession OCD that can tell me about it in a nutshell? I’ve always felt the need to tell everyone whatever is going on in my head and I feel guilty if I don’t. I would always tell on myself as a kid but not for the things I did wrong but instead for all the bad things in my head. Now I obsess over everything from my past and experience with other partners and have horrible guilt if I don’t tell my boyfriend absolutely everything that has ever happened or just things my mind gets stuck on. Only when he knows everything I can think of do I relax. Is this what confession OCD is? If not- does anyone else get the compulsion to get the truth out?

hey everyone, i just downloaded this app today and i wanted to talk about somethings i don’t hear about a lot, incase anyone else goes through the same. i have quite an intense fear of embarrassing myself and saying things wrong. every time i know that i’m coming up to a situation where i might have to tell someone my name, i repeat my name over and over in my head until it feels ‘right’ which also leads to certain tics like coughing and a physical sensation in my throat. other times, when i’m thinking in my head about normal things, i have to repeat this in my head more than once. i can’t stop thinking until it feels right.

Last week when i talked to my therapist, he brought up questions to make sure I was harm ocd towards myself instead of really wanting to harm myself. Since hearing his questions, erp has been really scary for me, so I messaged my therapist to see if i was doing it right. He answered to err on the caution, that if i actually felt like i would harm myself then i should stop, but if i felt like it was an ocd fear then I should continue. I think I’m in a low period in life so I’m struggling to figure out what I’m feeling😭 like every time before doing erp, i feel like next time’s the time that I would hurt myself, and it makes me so scared. With what the therapist said, i honestly don’t know what to do 😭 Now I just can't stop feeling anxious 😭

Do they help? Do you all benefit from them? How do they work? I’m starting NOCD therapy and am thinking of trying out some support groups.

Sometimes I have thoughts that I would normally assume to be ocd, not sound like ocd. I start to think/feel that it's God telling me to do these things?? I then end up feeling guilty for not immediately implementing these things into my life. I hate that so much of what used to feel like ocd seems unclear. I don't feel like a good person. I know a lot of sermons aren't made with ocd in mind, but I feel like I'm not listening to God if I don't listen to thoughts I would've thought were ocd before

Is it POCD if I don’t think about sexual things every time/not very often? For example, I’ll just see something that triggers it or even an image in my head and I feel down there reacting, even when I don’t have the thoughts I react. I don’t feel much anxiety because I’ve gotten much better, but I’m still worried. Which makes me scared, am I really a bad person in denial? I’ve also had “down there” be more active than usual, when not even thinking about my obsession which just makes me uncomfortable because I worry that if I feel like that now without any reason, why do I feel like that around certain people? Is it really attraction? Am I in denial? I keep wondering if I’m thinking about stuff I shouldn’t when I can’t even tell and that’s why I’m just so anxious, I really want therapy but I can’t really afford to. Am I self diagnosing just to feel better about being a pedo or is it really ocd? How can I go from hating kids to having such reactions and thoughts.. I’ve always had a lot of issues with overthinking and the average ocd symptom’s but I’m still really concerned

Hey everyone. Hope you're all having a good night so far! I have been really struggling with a couple of specific themes lately, including the two that I posted as the title. I got a new kitten the other day and she's adorable! But the Harm OCD thoughts about her make me feel so disgusted with myself. I am so scared and I don't want people to know about this because I'm scared that they will shame me for getting a pet even though I "wasn't ready." The Harm OCD invaded my dreams last night, but not about my cat. So that was also pretty spooky. I also have been battling with a lot of my classic intrusive thoughts that I have to try and fight through by doing mental rituals to even the thoughts out. I feel like I'm faking this for attention even though I know it's real. I have been carrying a lot of guilt, and now people in my life who used to want to spend time with me are avoiding me now and it's bringing up a lot of obsessive thoughts that were based around past rejection from family and friends. I am so obsessed with certain events in my life that I just can't let go of. This ruminating is killing me. Sorry for the long and scattered post, my brain is just going so fast and I can barely keep up. I appreciate this community so much.

i keep thinking that I’m using tocd as an excuse to avoid the truth that I might be a boy. I never thought that I felt this way at least not when I was younger and I thought I was normal and like any other girl. But now I keep remembering so much stuff from my childhood and it feels true and it was just something I didn’t know about until I guess I’ve gained the knowledge to understand how I felt? I’m not really sure I’m always confused and I feel like my head is going to explode, but I don’t feel like a girl anymore and I don’t feel connected to my body in the way I once was. Everything that I held as a value seems to be turning into something so morally against my character or something. I used to constantly feel like though that I was still finding myself or something as in like what I wanted to do career wise and how I wanted to dress like my aesthetic but I never felt like I was in the wrong body or that I wanted to be a boy. I of course had moments where the typical girl thing would be that boys lives are so much easier but I never wanted to be a boy or was envious of their gender. I love or I guess loved being a girl and didn’t want to change that. I’m not sexually attracted to women I really don’t want to be with a woman and I don’t want to be that masculine figure in a relationship or in any other area and life but I can’t help but think that this is my true self but I just don’t want to be a boy I loved being a girl and wearing makeup and dressing up and doing girl things but now all of a sudden it’s like I want to do every manly thing in existence idk but I know those things I don’t enjoy. I don’t know I’m so confused and can’t help but feel like I’m using ocd as an excuse and lying to myself and then when I remind myself it is ocd it just feels wrong idk maybe this is who I am and to be honest I just want to cry but even then I can’t tell if that’s real or not and that I’m crying because I still want to be a girl or just crying to cry idk

I struggle with suicidal and harm ocd, which have been unbearable and came back into my life. The whole month of July has been living in a nightmare, I'm starting to feel very discouraged I started erp but I feel like I'm getting worse. These intrusive thoughts are very scary and the urges feel even worse. I can't stop ruminating at all that's my only compulsion, and I'm worried of losing control and going crazy as well. I want to be happy but I'm focusing on these thoughts 24/7 because of how real they feel. 🥺