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Things I ACTUALLY did when I was younger (between 8-10 I think) loads of time. Which sounds like literal proof. Literally. When I got reminded of it I had anxiety and started to feel sick. I’m really scared.

*warning, long post ahead! Hi there! I’m new here on a friend’s recommendation and I was diagnosed with Pure-O OCD several years ago. My last relationship ended five years ago (probably because of problems with ROCD, in all honesty) and in the wake of it and ever since one of my absolute strongest obsessions is about feeling like I’m “destined” to pursue the wrong people. I have no problem finding people to have crushes on, but I’ve been rejected by every person I’ve expressed interest in over several years. I spend an enormous amount of time thinking about this and all I end up achieving is feeling like I’m broken, undesirable, and like I’m being played for a fool. I obsess constantly over if and when I’ll find someone to date and I also obsess over people I’ve had crushes on and if I’ll meet them again/if things would be different if I had done things differently/what I could have done differently and reinforce the obsession with fantasies. I don’t know why I seem to be barking up all the wrong trees and it’s exceedingly distressing to me because apart from this obsession, I do very well socially and have a lot of friends, travel often, am physically active, have a cool career, and I think I’m a fairly attractive woman. I feel frustrated and sickened by my own obsession and I run myself ragged imagining what I could be doing wrong or catastrophizing that I’ve missed the boat to be in a happy relationship. I think I’m pretty lucid when I’m obsessing and I can recognize the behavior within myself but being mindful doesn’t do “enough” to mitigate the obsession. I wonder a lot if I’m being punished for something or if there is a “joke” being played on me to see how many times I can make a huge embarrassment out of myself. I also know there is a lot of magical thinking OCD happening here because I will also punish myself for having the obsession in the first place: I convince myself very easily that I’ll be “materially” closer to having a partner if I don’t worry about it, which is a lot of the advice you hear when feeling lonely and broken in love is at the forefront. But then I do worry and obsess about it and then it feels to me like I’m drifting farther and farther away from the chance at having a partner because I’m wanting it too much. This obsession has had me in a chokehold for years and I don’t know what I can do to make it less distressing to me. I hate how exhausted I make myself feel about this and I wish I could just relax and not worry about it. I know this is pretty high-context and this has been a very long post but I wanted to see if anyone could corroborate my experience or point me in any direction regarding how to tease this apart in my head. Thank you so much if you’ve taken the time to read to the end!! I’m excited to be part of this community and please let me know if anyone can help me make sense of this at all or if anyone has ever felt the same.

I hit 4 months since beginning my journey with recovery! I didn’t even notice the day tbh til I was sitting here and a thought had came to me and freaked me out a bit I got sad and as most of us do I believed the thought was true and had meaning but I let it be there and continued what I was doing and it passed and I’m just reflecting like wow I can see and grasped mentally how much I’ve grown since entering recovery. I’m nervous because my harm ocd began in April last year and I’m nervous as the Month approaches like omg what if it starts again? What if it comes back? What if all the work and time I put in to myself and recovery is for nothing? I don’t want to go back! But I’m trying to ignore it because I’ve been able to go in recovery thank god and there just thoughts I have ocd and flair ups and moments will happen. Does it suck ABSOLUTLY! But I’m trying to ignore it best I can. Can anyone else relate?

I feel awful, even though before it didn't bother me I now feel like I cheated. I tried to be on good terms with my ex and my current gf had no problems with me talking to my ex. However there was one or two times in the first month or so of my relationship that I vented to my ex because my gf was constantly ditching or ignoring or flaking on me. It wasn't in a way that I was romantically interested in my ex or anything like that (AT ALL), but I was just very upset those nights and I've known my ex since I was a kid and was good friends with her for years, so it was just easy to vent to her. I've since addressed relationship issues directly with my gf, and even cut contact with my ex because it just seemed unnecessary to try and stay friends and even though my gf didn't care we talked, I wanted to be more respectful of our relationship. But now I'm worried because I read online this could be considered emotional cheating. I know this may be reassurance seeking, but is this something I need to confess to my gf? Is this cheating or am I overthinking? I recognize it isn't right behavior at the least now, and I know better now but I'm so upset, I don't want to tell my gf that I ever complained to ANYONE, I'm afraid I'll hurt her and don't deserve her :(

I physically cannot tell It’s distressing me a lot. I’m trying to find anything that could mean I actually have ocd and I can’t.

How do I know if I have real event OCD? I can’t seem to move on from something, and my brain keeps saying “if you hadn’t done this, you would be enjoying life so much more right now” but I am not obligated to mentally review what happened in the past. Is this real event OCD or is it just pure regret?

This is just kind of a rant but any encouragement would be so much appreciated, thank you ❤️ I’ve been with my boyfriend for 3 years. He is incredible, kind, funny, smart, hardworking, so so loving-just an extremely good person. In 2021 I developed or at least recognized my OCD. I’ve been diagnosed with OCD, anxiety and depression, definitely quite the list. Each of these conditions mingle with each other and make life very difficult at times. At the beginning it centered around me being a bad person but slowly grew to be relationship OCD. I have fears that I don’t really love him, I’m not actually attracted to him, I’m going to cheat on him, he doesn’t make me happy or that he would be better without me and is a better person than me. Lately I have this fear that one day not to far away he will prepose to me and I won’t be excited. Or that he will feel more for me then I do for him, or that I will have to fake my excitement. I have this vision of myself feeling nothing when he asks me and having to fake it. It’s just such a sickening thought to imagine not feeling the intense joy I always knew I would feel if he proposed to me. It’s so strange because before I had bad OCD I used to dream of that day, I would ask if he thought he might prepose to me one day and if his answer wasn’t certain enough I would feel very sad. It’s terrible because I’ll get depressed and feel nothing positive for any aspect of the world-including my relationship, but OCD will take that and twist it into me not feeling anything positive for him. Which will in turn make me feel more depressed. You ever just want to hide and pause the world for a little while so you can catch your breath? It feels like the weeks go by so slowly but still suddenly I’m nearly grown up.

On TikTok, I get called ugly so damn much, and people are just fucking rude and I'm not sure what they expect to gain from it, bc yes, it sucks, but I don't really care. Yes I post goofy videos of me doing voiceovers of cringey songs, I'm having fun, and showing my confidence, ppl really wasting a second typing out "💀" which, I don't even know why, like, if ur having a bad day, sorry but it's not my problem. It does piss me off, but I'm keeping my head high, Kinda sucks cos my friend hardly ever gets hate comments and I get them every day. :/

What are some of the things that you all want to do or achieve? I want to personally be able to learn more skills and be productive with whatever I can. It’s a huge thing if I’ll be able to do it wholly. I’ve started baby steps with it and it’s made me feel a teeny bit but importantly positive. So I’m just really happy about that no matter what’s happening 🤪

Hello my name is Hanna and this is my first post on this app. My friends, family , and boyfriend know I struggle with OCD. They are supportive and try to help me in anyway they can, but they don't understand it like an OCD suffer would. I am making this post to help anyone who is dealing with the same thing or someone who can help me. I have been having cheating OCD where I feel like I cheated on my boyfriend. For example; The OCD intrusive thought that has been on my mind for the past week is that i kissed someone. I went to the bar with my friends, but i didn't drink because I knew it would make my OCD worse. Anyway my friend and I were outside and asking people if they had a lighter for a cigarette. This guy was walking into the bar and started talking to us in a friendly way. I found him attractive ( which probably triggered my OCD). But then my friend and I went back inside of the bar to find our others friends to leave. I was holding my friends hand and walking through the bar crowd to leave when I made eye contact with the guy from outside. My OCD immediately made me think I kissed the guy. I love my boyfriend and I would never do that, but I cannot get this thought out of my head. Then this turns into false memory and I keep trying to replay the night in my head. It makes me feel like I kissed him even though I know I didn't. It is causing me extreme guilt, and I even feel guilty talking to my boyfriend. Every-time I try to tell myself it's just OCD my brain makes me think i'm blaming this on OCD and I actually did it. I even had my friend retell the events of that night, and she told some of the events out of order and I knew the correct order of the events. How can I know what events happened, but I can't trust myself. Anytime I try and forget this and get over it my brain will not let me. I need help. It's so frustrating and debilitating that I can't even trust myself.

Has anyone struggled with creating rigid boundaries in order to create “safety” within the theme of your intrusive thoughts?? I struggle with rocd, harm ocd and real event ocd. i overanalyze my partners actions and morals. i have intrusive thoughts if things are consensual, if they respect me, if i’ve ever messed up consent and vice versa. the thoughts plague me and i’m sure you can imagine this theme freaking sucks. especially since we love each other a lot. it’s taken such a huge toll on our relationship and i’m wondering if i’ve created so many boundaries and very intricate ones at that to where it could almost for sure have someone forget or mess up at first. that’s what my partner voiced to me recently since we’ve been dealing with this for a long time. and i’ve created a lot more boundaries than they have. i just struggle thinking if it’s ocd related or if my intrusive thoughts are real. just like everybody here. but yeah has anyone struggled with this symptom of ocd? is this a trap my ocd is creating just for my intrusive thoughts to be “proven right”?

So I was eating dinner and drinking soda. After I was done drinking it I pulled the soda cap off (the thing on the soda cans you pull up to open the can) and I realized there was a tiny piece of metal that fell into the can. I went to go a drink another sip but then realized that the tiny piece of tin was still in their. I immediately spit out the drink. But now I’m so scared I accidentally swallowed that tiny piece. I keep replaying what happened in my head to see what happened but I can’t remember and now I’m scared it’s gonna poison me and I’m gonna not wake up tomorrow 😭 I’m just having time dealing with the uncertainty rn

So yesterday, I don’t know who plays genshin, but basically I was playing with a friend yesterday and she switched to a child character. Once I saw she did and was playing with that character my anxiety immediately rose and I started feeling extremely triggered. Then my thoughts started to lean towards what if you actually want to actively have sex with the character and this is where it gets tricky, I don’t know if I actively started to have sexual thoughts about the child or if it was just ocd. My brain is telling me that it was me that I actively thought it but I don’t want that to be true. I know we can’t control our thoughts so maybe that’s what it was, that I was triggered by the what of thoughts and my brain starting sending me sexual thoughts. Anyways I can’t be sure what happened and it’s really freaking me out.

Is it normal that everything gets worse when something that cause you anxiety is coming. My school is starting on few days and my thoughts are so much worse.

What i understand about the things i heared in therapy and from people who "recovered" from ocd, ocd is the rummination you make to avoid the danger that youre conviced it will happen. So the thoughts itself arent ocd, the rummination and overthinking you do after that is ocd. So in this case, lets take harm ocd, and a real life exemple, you get an illness, or get over a heartbrake, and you get feelings and thoughts of you want to die or worse kill yourself.(sorry i say it like this) and then you get anxious cause you thought about this. So as i understood it, this is not ocd, cause you get anxious because your logic activates and it gives you a sign that thats not a good thing to do. The ocd comes when you start to think "oh my God, why did i thought that, do i really want to do it?" So that means that i have to accept that i will have thoughts like "i want to die" when life isnt good? Cause thats a normal response, everyone thinks that when struggles? I dont know but this is the hardest for me to accept that i will have these thoughts which are genuine at the time cause you suffer, but then if youre lucky you realize its not right to do it... Like i dont want to have these thoughts at all, it can be dangerous cause in that hard time you dont view it as just a thought, its your reality cause things isnt good for you that time... it can be dangerous, and the other thing, i dont want to believe that everyone thinks this when they suffer from a life problem... If someone can say something about this i would appreciate it!

Anyone else hypersexual as a child and now suffering with excruciating guilt about past experiences?? I feel like i deserve to be ruthlessly bullied over what I did. I’d do anything to take it all back, and i cannot forgive myself for possibly causing any harm

What should I do if I don’t think my thoughts are intrusive? Does that mean they’re real? (Sorry I’m posting so much I’ve had a really crappy day and I’m overwhelmed)

I am currently struggling with somatic OCD. It started yesterday and continued to build up more and more this morning. I want to be proactive and not just run away from it in fear and let it get any bigger. Basically I am super aware of my blinking, breathing, and swallowing (I do kindly ask that no one gives any other forms that somatic OCD can take. I heard about these and then instantly latched onto them :/) I did make an imaginal script saying the following. I will never stop thinking about blinking I will never stop thinking about breathing I will never stop thinking about swallowing I will never have piece of mind and the thoughts and sensations will consume me. it will destroy the relationship with my son and wife and I will have a miserable miserable life. I recorded myself saying this and started listening to it on repeat for 15 min at a time. I also have been telling myself whenever the thoughts come up to not fuse with them and do my best to not engage with them. However I do find myself thinking...what if I start thinking about it when I go here or go there, etc. Which creates anxiety and makes me fearful that I will not get rid of this. When I hyper focus on these three things it makes it hard to breathe, swallow, and even see because it makes me dizzy. I have had TONS of themes in the past but I have to be honest this one scares me quite a bit because these are things that I 100% need to do each day in order to function as a human being so its like each time I do any of them even naturally my brain connects it and creates anxiety. ****So I am wondering if the script I wrote is the best way to combat this? and additionally are there other things that I could do in order to conquer this? I know seeking reassurance is not a good thing but I would love to hear how others have overcome this and got free from it....without being triggering if possible :) Thanks so much for everyone on this platform. I cant even tell you how much I appreciate you all and have learned in the short couple of weeks I have been on here.

Having constant intrusive thoughts is exhausting. They have made me question my relationship, my sexual orientation, if i am a good person, and so much more. It’s weird how they are all connected in a way too. A lot of these thoughts that I have feel so real, and i’m just now learning how to tell the difference between what is true and what is an intrusive thought. but at this point i cannot tell. they all feel real but still make me so uncomfortable. i’m scared i actually feel a certain way, whether that be i don’t actually love my boyfriend, i am actually bisexual or a lesbian, or that i am actually a horrible person and have done horrible things. it’s hard to not believe these things when they are constantly nagging at you. im scared im not with the right person. im scared that im not attracted to him enough, im scared we don’t have enough in common and im scared we don’t think the same way. im scared im supposed to be with someone else and that i am hurting him by lying. and im terrified i am lying about my sexual orientation and using him to deny my true thoughts. im scared i am actually bisexual or lesbian. i think i can accept being bisexual more than being a full blown lesbian, but it’s still scary. im not sure if i am actually bisexual or if i just have intrusive thoughts. and i don’t know what to do from there if i am. if i am bisexual that means to me i have to be with a woman? even though i don’t want to and i’ve never seen myself with a woman. i keep replaying memories with girls and if i showed any signs. and then i get scared that because i was aroused by “specific” porn that it means i am lesbian. all of these things make me feel like a horrible person for treating my boyfriend this way, lying to myself, and for being so confused. it’s exhausting. i don’t even know where to start to get help. im scared that i have had OCD my whole life, and if i have, i’m scared a lot of my feelings and thoughts weren’t even real. im scared when i liked a boy, it was actually my OCD. im scared that when i’ve been attracted to something, it was just my OCD. i don’t know what to do

Does anybody feel like they have to try and force their real sexuality? I am straight but my so-ocd makes me believe I am bi or lesbian. For a few days I keep forcing the fact I'm straight and forcing my feelings to other people to make them believe I am straight and not bi or lesbian. I have a big worry at the moment about people thinking I am bi or lesbian as I feel if they believe I am then that means I am and I also don't want to live and have people think of me differently then I am. I think this has come from telling my parents my worries and about my ocd. Is this normal? Has anyone else with so-ocd felt like this? And done this? I hope someone can help