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No! It is me!!!! I don’t love him anymore!!! This is fake right!! 😭💔 no no no no no!! I’m in denial!?!!

Hey guys and gals!! I hope everyone is good and well and ✨ thriving! I always wondered if there was such a place to vent, share stories of my struggles and success with ocd, and hopefully help someone in the meantime, and maybe I’ve found it. It’s been. A while, since the grips of OCD came knocking at my door. Living symptom-free for two years has been a godsend. A much needed relief. Now don’t get me wrong, I had the intrusive thoughts, but I knew what to do with them. I could apply the things I learned from therapy to them, And they would pass as fast as they came. I “ignored the house guest” as I call it. It worked and I felt great. Now, I don’t know about you but when my life is full of chaos and stress that’s when I thrive the most. I don’t have time to hyper focus on the thoughts, sensations, and impulses it all just fades into the background. But once the dust settles, things become less chaotic stressors are removed, and I’m alone with just me and my thoughts it comes back with a vengeance. Every. Fucking. Time. (Anyone else?) So here I am in the middle of my “storm”. It’s been about a week now, and I can think of the triggers (It took a good Psychological thriller book, and the Jeffrey Dahmer series on Netflix 🙄) The once “ignored houseguest”, is sick of being ignored and is making her presence known.… what a bitch! I can’t pretend that in the moments of sheer panic when OCD really gets to me I don’t go down the rabbit hole of research, “what if’s”, doubt, and reassurance seeking. But, what I also do is remind myself to be extra kind and patient to myself, I remind myself that these themes seem very typical of previous OCD Ruminations I have once encountered. I remind myself that feelings aren’t fact, and it’s OK to acknowledge the thought is there but ignore it, hence the “ignored houseguest”. It’s OK to feel the anxiety and the uncertainty and live a productive meaningful life. Also it’s OK to “relapse” Because every time it happens I come out stronger than before, I have more knowledge to give others than I did before. It makes me better of a listener when someone comes to me with the same issues.. I will literally have this internal dialogue where I’m listening to my worries and thoughts, as if a friend is listening to one of their girlfriends vent about a bad relationship. I then will self dialogue the friend giving the rational advice it needs to hear. It works! Any who, it’s been quite the week, and dare I say I feel some relief. The storm may finally be passing 😬. I hope everyone is doing good, and is living their best life, and their “ignored houseguest” Is shutting up and sitting on the couch without saying a word! 🤪 And if not, and she’s making herself known, It’s OK, you’re ok, You are strong and powerful, a fighter, and OCD warrior. Tell that bitch to have a seat. You will get through this just like you did plenty of times before! WE WILL GET THROUGH THIS TOGETHER! Please just remember to be extra kind, compassionate, and above all patient to yourself in these times. you are totally worth it 💁🏻‍♀️

I feel sick and my heart aches... Lately I have been not getting intrusive thoughts, I'm willing to say "they are just thoughts". I'm willing to not obsess over them, now I am SCARED if I don't have ROCD at all and I'm just in denial, I feel calm with my thoughts, but now I feel like I don't love my partner after all. My intimacy that was once there is now disappearing. My love for him feels like it's disappearing.. I know the thing that love is a choice but I'm starting to feel like I don't actually love him at all.. I'm scared. I genuinely want to spend time with him more and get to know him more. Now when I say "I love you" I pause in the middle of my sentence because I feel like I'm faking it. Same with making gestures, I feel like hugging, kissing, and holding his hand once felt genuine, now I'm afraid that it isn't genuine at all and I'm just forcing myself to love him. I'm so confused. Just a week ago I had such intense intrusive thoughts now I feel like I numbed from it. I just told my partner that "I feel like my feelings and love for you are drifting away" I feel bad, I feel fake, I don't want to break up with him... I want to spend my future and time with him. People say "love flows" but I feel like my feelings and love for him, the emotions I feel with him will never come back. It hurts.. I feel like I may not have ROCD after all. So I may be going.

So I am co-maid of honor for my friends wedding and the other MOH is (was?) also my friend (we’ll call her Sadie). As MOHs, Sadie and I had to plan our friends bachelorette party. During the months we needed to plan/prep, my mental health was in a really bad spot, the worst it’s been in years. I still hadn’t been diagnosed with OCD yet and was in horrible shape emotionally. I told Sadie that I was struggling but I probably would not be much help for bachelorette planning, but would do what I could. I felt so guilty about not doing my share, but I had to take care of myself because I felt totally out of control, having daily panic attacks and crying. Sadie told me she understood and it was no problem, we met maybe twice for planning and the rest was ordering decorations and stuff, which I split with her. I thanked her and apologized repeatedly for running the show throughout the months leading up to the bachelorette. During the bachelorette, Sadie was in a horrible mood (long story) and it resulted in the bride getting mad at her. As the other MOH and seeing my two friends arguing, I checked in on them. At that point, Sadie (who was over tired and very drunk) started pointing fingers at me and saying that I was making her feel like a bad friend because I wasn’t getting into the details of my mental health situation with her (which is completely unrelated to the bride’s conversation with Sadie- it really came out of left field). She said that she was worried and wanted to help but I was unresponsive to messages (which isn’t true). She made me feel guilty for not trusting her with my deepest and darkest struggles, meanwhile I had just found out earlier in the day she had lied to me about something minor and unrelated… so why would I trust her with such personal and stigmatized information? I explained that I didn’t get into the details of my struggles with anyone besides my therapist and my mom, but she kept hounding me about how I was making her feel bad. Of course one of my OCD themes is worrying that I’m letting people down… anyone who knows me knows that’s a big concern of mine. Naturally, this made me cry. I found out after the fact that Sadie also told the bride (before I joined the conversation) that I never thanked Sadie for planning the bachelorette and that certain activities fell through because of me. Sadie (kind of?) apologized to me and the bride for her behavior, telling me that the mental health convo should have happened at a different time/place, but things have been weird ever since. I feel like she owes me a serious apology for weaponizing my mental health, because if she truly cared she wouldn’t have done what she did to me or would have pulled me aside later and apologized profusely. It’s been over a month and she has put in no effort to communicating with me and vice versa. I think she thinks I am in the wrong, although I’m not sure what I did and the bride doesn’t know either. Anger comes at me randomly about this, because I thought of Sadie as a good friend and I feel like she used my situation as a weapon. Even if she was hurting too for me not opening up, there are so many other ways she could have told me. In any situation though, I still do not owe her details about my mental health challenges. Right? My friends say that Sadie crossed a line by demanding to know details about what’s going on with my OCD. I just want to stop being angry with her and effected by this situation. Any advice?

Good afternoon, So I’m new to NOCD and grateful. I’m a new mama struggling with severe postpartum OCD, and I recently got a new phone. Yay self care! However? I continue to struggle with intrusive thoughts and am trying to limit the “doom scrolling” as we know it feeds the OCD. Long story short, I had to set up obviously all my logins and passwords and for the last two days I’ve had these horrible intrusive thoughts of what if I Google something that feeds the I struggle thoughts. I struggle with fear of harm/fear of losing control and horrible sexual thoughts as the result of a troubling documentary I watched early postpartum. Does anyone experience this? It seems OCD evolves into new themes even as I’m making progress. Yuck. Thank u got everyone’s kindness, support and honesty. God bless

My ex boyfriend and I broke up about 1,5 year ago now. Later on when we already broke up I found out he had cheated on me in the relationship. It hurt and I got mad but I was over it for a long time. When I heard this I cut off all contact. But still when I see him or see things about him I get triggers, like anxiety and fear. I have an amazing boyfriend now since a month he’s sweet and so much better for me. But it makes me scared that my ex triggers me sometimes when I see him. Does this mean something?

Anyone a dr or scientist or something? Today in my bio lab I dissected a pig and then when we were done I had to clean the surface with 70% ethanol spray. I forgot to put gloves on to clean with the ethanol and I was supposed to. When I realized, I washed my hands with warm water, but not for 15 min. My skin doesn’t burn or anything but I’m so scared that it absorbed through my skin and that I’m going to die. I am having a panic attack and crying.

I am 14 years old girl. I have soocd and tocd. My soocd is not that bad anymore. It is still there but I can accept the thoughts. This might be triggering for somebody but I have realized that I am not fully straight and that its ok. I feel attracted masculine girls and boys. I dont If this ocd is just messing with my head but now I just feel like this and I can't help it. My tocd was so mild when the whole ocd rumba strated. But now its worse. I feel masculine and I hate it. When I look at the mirror I feel like that the girl on the mirror looks like transboy. I am obsessed with my body parts like my broad shoulders. I hate hate hate them. I take pictures of them because i wanna see how they look in certain positions. I have measured them also a lot. I feel like that i am denial and I want to boy, I just haven't had that right and good feeling yet. I have always liked girly stuff. But now i dont even use makeup, because I feel like I use it for hiding my real self. Do I have tocd because that soocd mess made me think about what If I dont have ocd at all. I am not diagnosed with ocd but i have seen psychiatrist and she gave me medicine ( escitalopram 10 mg) but I feel like its not working. I know its not. I am also strarting therapy but its not yet. I just feel so embaressed and scared about these thoughts so its so hard to tell the whole truth about everything. I just wanna be somebody else. That its my vent for today.

Hi! I’ve been struggling with HOCD for a couple of years now, but recently I started working with an OCD therapist. Anyway, one of my biggest triggers are guys in underwear, or shirtless, or in swimsuit, etc. It’s really hard for me to do this exposures as my tberapist asked me to watch pictures of male models, for example. I’ve been doing this for a couple of months but I still get triggered everytime, I don’t know how to get better at exposures, I wanted to know if someone is struggling with the same and maybe have some tips to share. Thanks!

People say love is a choice but how can it be!?. .. I constantly wanna choose to with him but it’s like my mind is made up that I wanna break up… constantly thinking our problems can’t be solved when they can if we make effort. But I know somewhere deep down I love him. I have some moments of knowing even if they are tiny… I constantly obsess believing I don’t so when I am around him I hear I wanna break up even though it’s not me. Then there are times I say I wanna break up bc I believe I could feel better again and things between my partner and I can go back to normal… but it doesn’t seem that way… it’s like my brain is ready to move on from the relationship when I honestly don’t want to move on without him. I just want the good times and good moments back with him again. I don’t wanna end my relationship. 😭😭💔💔

I just feel so alone… no one who would talk… like I have no one… I was looking at some hentai to watch and I saw that the girl was drawn to look young but was an office worker who was supposedly and adult … i was scared because I didn’t know her age but I said screw it and decided to watch it but two things just kept happening… 1. HOCD kept saying I was m/ o'ing to the guy in the video when I was m/ o'ing to the girl… 2. POCD keeps telling me that I was m/o'ing to an underage character because I didn't know the characters age… it's making me feel like I'm not anxious about this…

I'm at an all time low today after something that had happened. I've been doing so well with recovery and getting out of my comfort zone and doing what I want to do. Now it feels like I'm back at squared one. I'm so scared for my life and my morality. During class today, when it ended, I packed my things while getting ready to leave. While zipping up my backpack, my elbow touched a woman's butt as she tried to pass through to leave. She noticed it, I noticed it, and it was so awkward that I couldn't say anything and tried my best to not get messed up from it. She left before I even got a chance to get up, and as soon as I left for the stairs, the thoughts came in. Hard. Thoughts saying I wanted that to happen, thoughts saying I liked it, thoughts saying that I planned it. Twice my heart sank because of it, then I went to reassuring. It feels like all of my progress has plummeted. What if I meant to do that? What if she thinks I'm horrible? What if I get reported or charged with something or if my life is ruined? This is what I'm worried about throughout the entire day. I don't even know if I want to go to my class tomorrow... I wasn't even focused on this woman now that I think about it. There's another older woman in my class that I find cute and sometimes I look at her. Sometimes we talk, sometimes not. But it's cool when we do. I just want to be able to move past this with confidence but it feels like I just screwed up my entire life with this one thing that lasted for like 2 seconds.

I love my boyfriend so much! Sometimes though I get irritated with everything and anything he does. He won’t do anything bad, just make a joke, or laugh, and I get anxious, which I think is because I’m internally checking how I feel about him (completely unaware I’m even doing it), and then I get irritated. And it’s like I’m always irritated by anything he does. I feel it’s because my mind is rescreening how I feel and checking my emotions and whether “I love him enough” and that anxiety makes me anxious. Is this normal? Anyone else know what I’m talking about or have tips to help me?

I still don't feel right. My OCD has morphed into obsessing about emotions. And I know I've been through this (with words, time, distance, seeing thoughts, inner voice) It's just so stupid. I once was freaking out about words. And how do we "imagine" stuff in our heads. Now it's about emotions. Like what are emotions and how do we have them and like how do we even know they are good or bad? Didn't we just make up the concept of good and bad? What if I forget the meanings and do bad things? What's the point? What's the purpose? And that makes me depressed and hopeless which makes the anxiety worse because then I'm worried about self harm. Im supposed to say "there is no answer to this" but it still won't go away And I know they fade. But it is taking so long to fade. And I've already upped my Zoloft in the last 6 months and I'm taking it correctly. It doesn't make sense.

I know others will be able to relate to this: How do you deal with wanting to come to this app or another OCD resource when your OCD is out of control? I’ll give a little backstory on how this is affecting me specifically, but you can skip to the question at the bottom if it’s too much. My worst OCD episodes are during big transitions or after big events like Christmas, weddings, etc. though I have a “normal” amount of OCD tendencies outside of these episodes as well. I moved into a new place a little less than a week ago so the transition is making my OCD really bad. It’s my first home and my first time living alone and I’m completely overjoyed and thrilled, but OCD takes away from it. Right now my OCD is themed around fear of real events, internet privacy, radiation from technology, and feeling like the world may end because of any combination of these things. Add on fear of microplastic, man made viruses, etc, and my mind is a nightmare. My mom said something about wishing she could pay only cash for things and go off the grid, but that the Bible says we’ll have a cashless society in the end and that it’s too late. She said it RIGHT when we were pulling up to my brand new house for the first time, and I am super triggered by what she said when I am at home now. My family (especially my mom and her parents) regularly talk about the end of times in relation to global news, but in a very negative, gloomy way that makes my fear and OCD go absolutely nuts, I’ve had to leave the room before just to calm down. I am a Christian so I am overestimating the threat of these “signs of the times” fears which brings me a wave of dread. Christians are instructed to not fear signs of the times, so fearing these arbitrary things that I am *perceiving* as signs of the times brings religious OCD angst. The stupid thing is I have no way to know whether the end will come soon or beyond my lifetime, so there’s no way to reassure myself 100% if these are actually signs of the end or just life. Time is irrelevant to God and I can’t find a balance between listening to what the Bible says will happen, and fearing everything and living as if this is the end. A ritual of mine is to look back over the globe’s history at all the scary things that have happened and I tell myself that those weren’t end times, so this isn’t necessarily either. My entire obsession is unhealthy, obviously. Right now it’s taunting me that I feel so much fear and I “shouldn’t”. The QUESTION at hand though is that I feel like I want to seek support on this app, on Reddit, or by listening to Mark DeJesus’s OCD podcast to help my OCD fears calm down. Last night I was so anxious that I listened to the podcast to help me calm down so I could sleep. I know I have made progress because I recognize my obsessive thoughts, but starving the compulsion is the challenging part, especially when a compulsion is theoretically something that should “help”. How to I continue to get support and learn about my illness without making it worse by reassuring myself?

I’ve had overpowering thoughts today. So I started my sertraline tablets hoping it would help. But now I feel worse. The thoughts feel so real but I don’t want them to be real.

Hi there guys, What is the therapy like? Are the therapists nice? I have in my head they’re going to be so judgmental and not actually understand what I’m going through. That it’s me and me alone. (I recognise this is OCD trying to pull a fast one!) Also, do you make sessions when you want? Or are you signed into a contract? I’ve heard it’s two sessions a week for the first month but what if I just want one session a week or after a month don’t feel the need for many more? Is it down to the patients discretion?

A few days ago i attempted. Im going inpatient in some days in a pretty good hospital hospital and has doctors and teams specialized in ocd. The intrusive thought that led me to attempt su!c3d3 was the million articles i read online. I say weird techniques like "recording ur intrusive thoights and hearing them half an our every day" and many more. These techniques are STUCKED to my head. I believe tjat if i dont do them I'LL NEVER GET BETTER. I cant trust any psychiatrist because of all the bullshit i read online. (Btw it was from accurate sites from "experts in ocd".) A few weeks ago before i read those, i did cbt and learned to ignore and not answer ocd thoughts and things were so much better. I have destroyed everything. Im ready to commit another attempt, if i cant trust my psychiatrists in the hospital Im doomed. I cant go there and be like " oh what you say is contradictory to what i read so i dont believe you". I feel my life is over. I dont want to live with this mind anymore.

My aunt passed away recently. I was very close with her and it was unexpected, relative to her general health just earlier this year. My heart feels broken and I can feel my OCD coming back which causes more stress. I can't tell if I'm avoiding the pain because it's a normal part of grief or if it's my OCD. I feel the urge to grieve "correctly" and be there for everyone else but then will burn out and need to isolate and ignore everyone because I'm afraid if I engage too much or not enough or not the "right way" when I feel depleted, that I will mess up myself or upset them or ruin the relationship. The pressure from OCD is so strong yet I'm still attempting to do my ERP though everything feels really horrible and out of whack, space like, because of the grief. Then I spiral, questioning that, as well, and if it's the grief or maybe the OCD is "finally making me insane". We have been clearing out my aunt's house and it's been a positive experience with my family, but it's been increasingly hard to see her items changed or adjusted or cleared. Some of this seems normal but I know the strength for which I feel it at times is OCD because I find myself close to panic each day we are done because essentially it's like 7 or 8 hours of exposures. Now I find intrusive suicidal thoughts coming back, depression (which seems normal for grief but exacerbates the OCD sometimes) and other intrusive thoughts involving my aunt or my cats and life and death. I feel like I'm going to fall apart and my body aches from carrying the stress. Anyway I'm just feeling horrible now that the intrusive thoughts are coming back more and everything is so out of whack, I don't understand the point of anything so doing ERP for this feels impossible or daunting or like such a minor thing to accomplish when I have so much else to do and already overloaded emotionally and mentally. Thank you for listening I just had to share.

when you’re upset at an argument or issue with someone, is it considered the bad kind of reassurance if i keep asking people if they think i did the right thing? something happened last week and im constantly going it over and over in my brain and need people to tell me that i did the right thing. the fact he blocked me makes me anxious and scared that one day he’ll unblock at text so, should i stop asking for reassurance around this situation? it does feel really really good when someone tells me they did the wrong thing (when they did something messed up)