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This isn't an overly urgent matter or anything just curious what you guys think. So a compulsion is anything you do to reduce ur anxiety in response to obsessions. But is there anything you can do to ease ur anxiety or make it more manageable at the time while you do ur erp? Or I can't do anything to make myself feel more comfortable at risk of it becoming compulsive? Just curious about ur experiences

My OCD pulled out something very distressing that has driven me to the point of a near nervous breakdown and I am not sure if it is real or not. Details of the “memory” have changed considerably since it first popped into my brain. Point is it feels very real, and has that familiarity like an actual memory, it’s however pretty inconsistent with details, some seeming more familiar than others, but I can’t nail down anything very conclusive. It’s just stressing me out, I’ve been told to embrace that uncertainty but I can’t, it just keeps coming back like a stack of bricks falling on me like it’s something I actually did at one point.

Gonna vent to you about my childhood love and OCD because I got no one to tell them this 🥲 There is this guy that used to be my childhood love, I used to love him so much because of how gentle and caring he was towards me and both of our families noticed that and they were always saying that we’re going to marry each other in the future. We eventually grew up while being separated from each other because of life, but we still meet each other in some gatherings from time to time, and whenever I see him I don’t even say hi to him and immediately go somewhere to hide from him because I’m so shy to see him and I’m afraid others might say something about us getting together and it really embarrassing me, so I kept ignoring him for a while, however, he also started ignoring me and doesn’t say hi to me when he see me, and he changed so much I can’t recognise him anymore, he’s now a great example of toxic masculinity, he’s no longer gentle or caring towards me anymore and it breaks my heart, and now it seems like he doesn’t stand me, he once shouted at me for talking too loud with the others, and he doesn’t seem to care about my existence in general, through all these years we were distant from each other I was thinking about him, only him, and I thought he also was like me, only thinking about me, but he wasn’t, and I feel stupid and shameful for trusting and loving someone who doesn’t even care about me, now I’m trying so hard to stop loving him, I’m trying to convince myself we’re not meant to be together, and it’s all childhood dreams that were created by our families and got stuck in my head, but due to my OCD, I keep getting opposite thoughts such as: we’re meant to be together, he’s mine, no one will love him more than me, I’m the best match for him, even if he doesn’t treat me well I still want him, what if he will love me at the end? Etc. I’m afraid that I’m getting attached and obsessed over him and his validation and I HATE IT, I just want to forget about him and move on because I don’t want to get hurt once he’s taken or married, I’m afraid it will affect me badly, and I realize loving him is no good, he’s totter not my type but I feel forced into loving him, I’m writing all this because I saw him to in a wedding and I immediately tried to caught his attention and I wanted him to notice me maybe he would change his mind about me and eventually love me back, and now once I remembered what I did and thought about I’m truly disgusted of myself 🤢 how desperate and pathetic I was, I don’t even know if it was my own thoughts or OCD I really need help about this situation, what can I do to stop being obsessed about him? How to make my OCD let go of him and stop it from making me false attraction, and what if it was real feelings from the start but I’m blaming it on OCD? I’m stuck, stuck in this for almost 6 years

Getting better wasn’t anythinggg like i thoight it would be and people kept telling me that OVERRR AND OVERRRR and i didn’t wanna hear it. What i hated hearing most is that i was never gonna be 100% sure about any of my thoughts and that made me wanna give up trying to get better. But like it’s not like that all. No human can be 100% about anything. Let me put it this way. When you wake up and get out of bed u might not think about how the roof is gonna fall on ur head the moment u stand up, even tho it’s a possibility, u j don’t care for it or worry about it. That’s how u feel when ur brain starts healing from this toxic thought process. I was in the worst place imaginable with my mental health last year, i was very suicidal and had constant intrusive thoughts to the point i couldn’t focus on anything as they were non stop all day, every day and LOUD and i had a breakdown and i completely fell apart. I saw no future, none not in the slightest. I was ready to give everything up and then people noticed when i was finally at my breaking point, when i couldn’t breathe any longer, people noticed and they helped me, with unconditional love and no one shamed me or hated me like i thought they would. My family got me on medication and it took baby steps but i’m the happiest i’ve been since i’ve had this disorder and i really do enjoy my life now. i get thoughts here and there but they don’t bother me and i j take them along for the ride, don’t be scared about the thoights, be scared about not recovering. Lots of love, to anyone who is struggling, you do not deserve the pain u are going through, u didn’t choose this and i am so sorry u have to be strong but u can survive. The best thing I did for my recovery was talk to the people I loved about my condition. They know u best, your ocd doesn’t know you at all.

My journey so far My OCD or obsessive compulsive disorder is a diagnoses that 1 in 200 people suffer with. It may feel like you are in a tsunami and your feet are just barely touching the ground you are trying to regain control and failing miserably the strategy I am about to teach you will be your drain to lower the water so that you may stand. It’s called ERP it stands for exposure response prevention it stinks it really stinks but it really helps too. ERP is simple once you have your fears down think of something that scares you, not being loved,public speaking, or even losing control. For my demonstration I will be using the common fear of spiders let’s say you are deathly afraid of spiders you would first write a story “I was put in a box filled with spiders they started crawling over me and I couldn’t breath” you would record that and listen to it until your anxiety went down by half then you would do something else like look at a picture of a spider! If you are ready to amp it up then you might even go to the zoo and see a tarantula! You should do ERP 15 minutes a day every day and then consult your therapist and drop it down maybe 15 minutes a day every two days or every three days! Still it’s important that it doesn’t feel like you have to do it every day exactly than your OCD will feed into it so switch it up! Some things that really helped me were by exercises like controlled breathing, deep breaths and 54321. I will list three helpful strategies: 1 deep breathing in out in and out 2 spaghetti toes this is where you thence your entire body up make your legs as straight as birds and squeeze everything tightly then release 3 54321 this relaxes the mind the idea of 54321 is to list 5 things you see, 4 things you can feel, 3 things you can hear, 2 things you can smell, and 1 thing you can taste (it can be your spit)! The things that really turns my life around were NOCD and Rogers both are OCD programs and they are amazing! I would like to say a spiral thanks to my family and especially my mom to be honest I wouldn’t be here with out her. This is the letter that I wrote to the NOCD community after I finished therapy: I was diagnosed with OCD summer of fourth grade I don’t remember my reaction to the news but I did give a presentation on my OCD to my entire class which was NERVE-RACKING!!! I had several therapists before NOCD one who worked with anxiety not OCD and some others that I might have been too silly for! And once I went to a program called rogers which was where I first learned about ERP I even chewed up goldfish and swished my mouth with water and made gagging sounds as I spat it out in the trash can! They asked me if I had any other fears other than the one I had listed and I felt pressured to say one so I made one up! I said that I was afraid of being locked in the bathroom alone in the dark and let’s just say I learned my lesson by devolving a new fear of being locked in the bathroom in the dark, oops! Then we found NOCD and things just improved so so SO much and they keep improving thanks to the people at NOCD so thank you (for everything and so much more). I will warn you that OCD never goes away completely but you can learn to live with it like I have. At rogers I found more than my emotional freedom I found a community if was surrounded by kids my age who had OCD too I will never be able to describe what that wonderful feeling was. A year or so later I found out that my close friend had OCD too I was shell shocked from then until the end of the class all I wanted to do was to talk to him eventually I worked up the courage and told him “I don’t know if you know this but I have OCD too” he then replied “yeah it gets really hard sometimes” I told him “yeah”. That was the end of our conversation I wish I had talked to him more but I missed it. I have found out some of my other friend and even my frenemy had OCD too who would have thought!

I was making so much progress with my OCD, but now I feel like im back at square one with a new OCD obsession 🤦🏾‍♀️ Its so uncomfortable to talk about because i feel like since most the people I know don’t understand OCD and how it works they will look at me weird and crazy. I was on twitter a few days ago and seen a tweet saying that there was some “horse video” going around and I immediately had a past memory of when I was in high school !!!! TRIGGER WARNING!!!! I was in bed at night mas/urbating as a teenager would occasionally do, and was on instagram watching p/rn, and unexpectedly & involuntarily came across a very odd video of a women and a horse doing yk what, and I KNOW that it wasn’t something I continued watching or enjoyed obviously, but my OCD is convincing me that I did because I was in an aroused state at that time before seeing the video & also because I can’t fully remember that moment or what happened because it was so long ago. I KNOW in my heart that is not in my character to EVER watch or enjoy anything like that so this is really bothering me because I keep questioning if im a weird person or if I enjoyed it… Its so frustrating because everytime I remember because of the continuous thought, I get a gronial response and I feel like I can’t be comfortable around my boyfriend or my dogs because the thought keeps popping up. I HATE OCD it literally has made me lose myself and question who I am as a person 😪😪😪 I really wish I didn’t get on twitter a few days ago because I was finally feeling like my OCD was gone… I just wish I could get rid of this its a constant bully and the gronial response makes it even worse because I feel like now whenever I actually want to participate in a romantic act I will remember this or atleast my OCD is telling me that.

So I realized recently that I’m really addicted to toxicity. My current bf is literally perfect and I feel awful because I’m craving instability and missing my single life when I would get loads of attention all the time. I feel like a part of me is missing because I’m missing the highs and lows of chasing a feeling and nothing else fills that void and I’m afraid I’ll resent my bf subconsciously if this continues. I love my boyfriend and this is the longest relationship I’ve been in but I feel like I’m fighting so many demons trying to keep this relationship. The relationship feels boring to me in comparison but I don’t wanna lose my boyfriend I’m really struggling and even tho I have ROCD I feel like this is something else. Please help.

Journal On October 12th I went to the doctor thinking that I had a UTI and it turns out that yes I did have a kidney infection. I started a round of antibiotics. The pain in my back slowly eased and even though it still hurt occasionally I was OK. The day before yesterday I started having intense pain in my back again so yesterday( even though my general practitioner was closed) I messaged an acquaintance who is a nurse practitioner and asked if her clinic was open. I went in thinking that I had maybe a kidney stone or that the kidney infection had come back. My urine test was clear, but I was so painful on that side the NP felt it was important I go for more testing, and she thought that she should send me to the ER. I ended up in the ER for several hours and they did a CT with contrast and blood work. It showed there was absolutely nothing wrong in my abdomen except for the fact that I had two or three small cysts on my kidney (which they believed were not diagnostically important). There was some blood in my urine, but nothing to be concerned about. So they think that I was having back spasms. I feel completely ridiculous and today my anxiety is so bad that I want to crawl out of my skin. Being at the hospital is one of the worst things in the world to me. I feel institutionalized. Trapped! I just couldn’t wait to get home. All I want to do today is sit and cry. I don’t know why. I need to look at this as a victory like there was nothing wrong with me, but I feel as if I wasted people’s time; I made myself look like a hypochondriac. Which I am not. I do sometimes catastrophize my health, but I never go to the ER, and I wouldn’t have gone if the NP had not suggested it, and she really thought that I had some kind of infection that the former antibiotic was masking. If she sent me home, I would be septic in fact that’s exactly what she said to me. Today, because of all of this and because of my OCD I feel like I’m just on the verge of completely losing it. I’m currently not on any medication for anxiety specifically. I just take my Luvox. anti-anxiety medicine is just not for me. There’s too much addiction in my family. I feel lost and confused and scared. I’m basically just a bundle of random emotion today and again sitting here expecting the worst to happen…. the crazy to officially come over me then I really will be institutionalized. I really will be in the hospital. I know all of that is ridiculous. I’m trying not to ruminate. I’m trying to just get things done But…..

What is your recovery anthem?

Today I (21) was playing a game and someone approached me. I could tell by how they talked that they were younger. I was just being nice with them/having a convo but I felt like just by talking with them I'm somehow a predator. They told me they were 14 and I panicked and compulsively said I was 18 so it would look less weird to other players. I thought they'd assume I was a creep if I said my real age, but in hindsight that's even more creepy that I lied and I immediately regretted it. I didnt have any weird convos or anything with them, i just showed them around the game a bit and then they left, so im probably never going to see to this person again. But now I just feel creepy for lying like some kind of predator. What if I lied to lure them in or something like that? POCD is the worst, I can't win with this disorder.

My HOCD is so intense today. Started remembering things in my past that OCD tries to use as evidence to prove it’s real. I just finished crying and repeatedly saying I don’t want to be gay. I know it’s a compulsion but nothing helps right now when I freak out. I feel so afraid of what I might become. I’m tired of this. I’m tired of questioning everything. Every time I step outside my house I always mentally review every conversation I have with every man and I deepen my voice or try to appear more masculine because I’m so afraid of giving off the wrong impression. I’m so scared to even be on social media in the fear that I might appear gay to someone. I just feel I cannot breathe without worrying or questioning myself. I don’t want to be gay ever, I want a wife and children and It feels like no matter what I watch on TV, or play any type of game, there’s always something that triggers me. Sorry for the rant, It’s a bad day. If anyone can just let me know i’m not alone, that would be nice

I never tried the therapy offered on this app Anyone have any reviews/ know the price for Fidelis insurance?

I’m an insomniac who struggles to function without sleep. I adhere to a strict routine that involves showering and doing my makeup (which being chronically tired hinders) and if something happens to interfere with or interrupts aforementioned routine I panic. I have panic attacks, I get upset or irritated, which upsets me more..and I just fall to pieces. Is this a problem for anyone else? (I literally cannot emphasize with words the distress it causes) and I feel I have to hide it because I’m afraid no one will understand.

I was recently diagnosed with OCD a little over a month ago, but I've had the symptoms as long as I can remember. Currently struggling with really bad health anxiety, and I'm absolutely convinced I have cancer. I've had a host of odd symptoms, I've seen every specialist in the book and nothing regarding cancer has come up. But I've had a hoarse voice for about a month now, and ended up scheduling ENT appointment. It's so hard to focus at work because I'm so sure I'm going to die. But I've been so sure every other time. I just don't know if my symptoms are real or not. I physically can see and feel differences but nothing comes up. Does anyone else struggle with this? I'm still waiting for my first ERP appointment.

The biggest compulsion of mine is reassurance-seeking. Sometimes I have the urge to ask really strange questions to my friends/co-workers etc. I get really annoyed sometimes at how creative my mind can be to come up with questions that doesn’t sound strange, in order to get reassurances. Currently I’m dealing with false memory OCD x relationship OCD so I’ll feel the urge to ask questions to friends to make sure I’ve not cheated before, E.g. hey have we ever gotten physically intimate before? What were we doing in April when we met? Did we really didn’t do anything inappropriate? which by itself sounds very odd to people. So my mind will try to come up with really creative stories to make my question sound as natural as possible so that I can get my reassurance/answer. (Ha. Nice try OCD) However, I know this is OCD and I know that I absolutely do not want to ask these questions (OCD is bullying me into asking) And it is the strangeness of these questions that is a motivation for me to not perform these compulsions. Because I don’t want to ruin my friendships or cause people to think I’m strange. But I have to admit, it’s not exactly the easiest to stop performing these compulsions. Has anyone experienced something similar?

I don’t even know if this is OCD but it feels like it’s latching onto it. And for contest I’ve been vegan for four and a half years. After I go to the gym sometimes I go to the supermarket next to it to get myself a treat, and today I went in planning to get a specific brand of protein bar, vegan obviously. But they didn’t have the one I wanted so I was looking at other things and being indecisive (classic OCD). Eventually I picked a protein chocolate cookie that I thought looked good. When I got back home and opened it to eat, I don’t know why but I looked at the description of it on the front and had some sort of intuition to check the ingredients, and noticed it wasn’t vegan. It was the brand MyProtein which also has a separate range called MyVegan, but the packaging difference is really obvious and I don’t know how I didn’t realise in the shop. Now my brain is telling me I meant to buy it and I wanted to eat something non vegan. But this is so not true because I haven’t wanted to eat anything not vegan since going vegan and I’ve only ever almost eaten non vegan things when other people have got them for me. I didn’t actually eat any of this cookie but I feel so guilty. My boyfriend is vegan too and because of the guilty I feel simultaneously like I need to tell him about this but also like I need to keep it secret.

I keep seeing these TikToks about relationships and talking about signs he’s uninterested in you and that you’re an opinion or that you’re a casual girlfriend and it’s really making me question my relationship and I don’t want to. I’m happy with him and even though yes I do think there are things we can change and things I don’t like, unfortunately that’s an adult relationship and we’ve gotta find our way around the issues right? So like this is my first proper relationship, so idk what’s normal and what’s not but also I believe there is no normal and not it’s my relationship and what fits for us might not for other people, right? So for example, we both have very conflicting work schedules. I usually work evenings and he works days. On weekends I’m fully not available and he’s usually with family. During the week he works 7-5, so I can only see him in the evening time after he’s cleaned up from work (he’s an electrician and doesn’t like me seeing him all dirty and sweaty), so most of our meetings are in my car 10 o’clock at night. I’m currently saving to go away travelling so I can’t book time off and spend loads of money, he’s saving to deal with hobbies and life shit, so both have money issues. All of this I believe is normal adult life but TikTok and people keep saying “excuses” and it’s stressing me out. It’s like they think it’s a lack of effort on his part but I don’t see it that way. He’s dealing with a lot of mental health problems at the moment and he’s opened up to me about it all and it’s really difficult for him to find time for himself let alone other people sometimes, which he said makes him feel shit because he wants to make time for me he just doesn’t want to half ass it. I understand this fully but people make me feel like I shouldn’t. Also, my family is a difficult one. My dad has severe cleaning OCD to the point our house looks like an IKEA show home and I told the guy I’m seeing this, he now worries about mess and being in this space and even though he doesn’t say it I can tell. He’s also nervous to meet my family properly (I’m his first relationship as well) and I notice that getting him tk my house as he also doesn’t drive is a nightmare, he also worries about having me at his because our families and houses are polar opposites, so he doesn’t want me to feel uncomfortable. We’ve talked about it a lot but it’s like I feel I’m not allowed to understand why he doesn’t want to do certain things yet. So really like it’s hard for me to believe me and him are okay and that he likes me. I saw a TikTok today saying “signs your relationship won’t last” and it was like “he doesn’t make effort” or “he says he’s busy” and it just made me stress. Also, we aren’t “official” yet we are, it’s confusing but we’ve talked about it and it makes sense for us. We are exclusive, we are each others, we know that and we’re basically together we both know we’re together but the label rn for him he has told me that he doesn’t want to disappoint me when he can’t do certain relationship things, he’s told me it all and got very upset when opening up to me. He’s told me that he wants to do all the relationships things with me but feels absolutely terrible s out not being able to. So we both know we’re together, just we’re taking our time and we’re doing it in our own pace. But society has stressed me out and now I’m worried about what people say is normal and what isn’t. I’m happy with him, I love him a lot and I’ve never felt this way for anyone. I just want it to be ours not everyone else’s

“I think I do like saying things “I don’t wanna be bi I wanna be straight” and then I was on quora and someone said something about telling yourself you wanna be or become straight just sounds like you already know you aren’t . So now I’m stuck again “ The guy said this and now im scared my mind tells me like im attracted for sure but just in denial

I’m struggling so bad with derealization & im so scared im in psychosis or schizophrenic. I’ve been really sick with a head cold and all my symptoms are just making everything worse and making me more scared. 🥺

I am a happily married 26 year old. I love my husband and our two year old child. I have struggled with intrusive thoughts in the past. Pure “O” OCD and also POCD. A couple months ago I got triggered by something that made me think of an ex boyfriend from 2016. and it made me think what if I have feelings for him or what if I want to talk to him, etc and it's spiraled from there. Now I feel like I have to be with him or talk to him for the anxiety and thoughts to go away. And then yesterday I thought about him again and I was like well if I was with him would it be that bad? And it didn't make me anxious and now I'm anxious because it didn't make me anxious. Which has to mean I want to be with him? I don't want to be with him tho but what if that’s the case? And what if my ocd isn’t real. I feel like I’m drowning in my thoughts and I have created a situation that feels so intense and real