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Hi friends, I had my first session with my NOCD therapist on Thursdays. I was wondering what I can expect from treatment and how to best prepare emotionally.

I own my business (social media/business strategy and web design) and have not been able to market myself for the better part of 6 months because of the OCD relapse. I go back and forth between the thought of forcing myself to make more sales because, well, money, and taking a break entirely. Every day is such a roller coaster and I’m so worried that I won’t be able to show up for my clients or if I do launch a group program or something, I just won’t be able to keep up. But at the same time, my savings are starting to dwindle and I will need income soon… Anyone else deal with this? Curious of your experience.

I once told her about my fear of being a p3do. For some reason she seemed really accepting but honestly did nothing more than say „well, you need to discuss that with your therapist“. That was all she said to me and then moved on. One month later (maybe even less) she wanted to seat my little sister on me (im sorry My English sucks idk how else to say it) in the car bc she couldn’t seat her on her proper seat bc there wasn’t enough space to open the door etc. But like I simply moved her to the seat next to me cuz 1) I thought I was supposed to seat her there so it would then be easier to seat her in her actual seat 2) of course I was scared And then my mother started to get mad at me saying „you’re still not rid of this?😡 talk to your therapist“ And like just now sth like this happened again too. It’s currently snowing and me and my father were walking around looking at houses only a few meters away from the car when my mother came with my little sister. And like before that she had given me her jacket and beanie and so now she wanted me to give them to her so she could dress my sister up. And like I was a bit overwhelmed and so I completely missed the point of my mother wanting me to dress her and when I had understood I just didn’t really want to do so. And also my father, who is INSANELY lazy was just walking around and bc now I kind of hate him for doing so bc in the end my mother always screams at me abt how nothing is done in the house etc. And so I told him to help her dress up. But then my mother said „why don’t you do it?😡“ and I can’t remember what I had answered to that sadly but then she said „no, you’re just disgusted by her! I just saw you holding her things with two fingers“ and like I didn’t. I held her things with my entire hand. And now I just feel horrible. It feels like she hates and blames me for this.

3 hours awake and I already hate my life again. It was a bit stressful now and every time I am in a hurry I feel that my intrusive thoughts become stronger or more intense. My thoughts are maily blasphemous or sexual and I really cant get over the thought that I might have sinned. Sometimes I also feel jealous and envious when I see especially other christians who dont seem to have any problems. I cant even think that God loves me because I am a terrible person.

I feel like everyone here for the most part knows that they’re straight (or gay just example) and that they don’t like the thoughts. I feel like I’m the only one who doesn’t even know if they’re straight now or if I’m even attracted to men anymore and feel like the more I have the thoughts the more it actually feels like that’s why I want deep down: everything feels so morphed and twisted I’m doubting if I even liked men in the past and trying to envision myself w a man doesn’t even feel right any more :( neither does envisioning with a woman but at this point it feels like just denial and I should just accept it

Sometimes i'm afraid that I will always feel like a monster. I just always kind of think of life pre-ocd. I used to want to be a mom and love my family and children but now I just feel like I sexualize almost everything and that I will always just be on the cusp of almost sane. I stupidly read a story about a predator and then of course I had intrusive thoughts but I know I can't avoid these stories or situations but I hate the thoughts and feelings that come from it and I want to try to get better but I feel guilt for trying ro move foward but I honestly feel shame and I don't know what to do at this point because it feels like im morphong into someone who is just ok with harming someone and want to just be ok with everything no matter how depraved or wrong.

I am feeling like I am not attracted to my spouse at all and like I need to break it off before we have kids (we’re thinking about it in the next 2 years). I’m worried I’ll keep feeling ROCD relapses when we have kids and that would be hell to deal with both that and raising kids. I’m wondering whether I would actually feel relationship uncertainty and anxiety as much with someone I’m more naturally attracted to. If you’ve had similar break up urges, how do you know what you truly want and make values based decisions? How do you ride the wave during a particularly bad doubt storm, where you feel none of the positive emotions you felt before? Has anyone had ROCD with kids and can give advice or share experiences?

PREFACE: I’m a 23-year-old author with OCD and emetophobia. I wrote a narrative about what it felt like to be at my worst. My NOCD therapist urged me to post it. I hope this makes other people feel less alone in their experiences. ROCK BOTTOM: I imagine hitting rock bottom as a kind of free fall, like a skydiver jumping out of their plane, but there’s no parachute. And then the ground comes, but once I hit it, I just keep going deeper. I crash through layers of earth and sediment and skeletal remains that have all built up and broken down again, and again, and again over billions of years. I destroy everything in my path and, in the process, destroy myself the farther I go. Rock bottom feels like a constant, nagging pit of fear in your stomach. It is the disquiet of “what if’s” and dreading the sound of silence. Thoughts become louder when there’s nothing to fill the silence. Rock bottom feels like having the TV on while I stare at my phone as my knee jiggles up and down, desperate for the repetitive movements and the hum of noises and flashing screens to drown out the worry that creeps in insidiously, like cancer or dementia. Anxiety is an eater. It lives to consume. It reaches for the things you hold dearest and pries them from your clenched fists. As you struggle to hold on tightly to all that you love, anxiety nibbles away at your fingernails, then cracks the bones of your fingers and bites down hard. When there’s nothing left of your fists but the bloody stumps where your fingers used to be, you look at your palms and see that they are empty. You’ve lost everything you held on for. And there is no escape from the darkness that eats at your insides. Your stomach gnaws away at itself. It feels like skipping meals to avoid the possibility of vomiting. It feels like lying awake and staring at your phone because sleep feels like a lack of vigilance and a lack of vigilance is dangerous. Keep yourself alert; stay on top of it all. Scale the mountain before it has the chance to crumble before you. Rock bottom is disappointment on all sides of you: disappointment in yourself, disappointment from the people who love you and wished for better. It is contempt and meeting the expectations from the people who only ever saw you as one thing and always knew you’d amount to nothing. The freaky OCD girl. The label sticks in your mind over a decade later. Rock bottom is the absence of life. It is the slow draining of little bits of your life. It is living half-alive. And then you’re a zombie, passive and numb to everything except the anxiety that is still eating away at your insides. Your heart is beating but you’re not alive. Not really. And everything fades to dark.

Earlier today I was in my last class for the day and usually as I stand up from my chair, I look at it to see if I wasn’t seated on a cat (bear with me), this time, I forgot to do it right away so it took me a second to realise and look at my chair which had no cats on it, this of course wasn’t enough for my brain which told me the cat I was sitting on for the past 2 hours had jumped of the chair as soon as I stood up and I missed it, I went in front of the classroom and looked every corner to see if a hurt cat was there but everyone was just packing their stuff up blocking sole of the view and I had a bus coming in 5 minutes, I tried to rationalize the fact I would have felt or heard it if I sat on a cat or my friends next to me would have seen it or any other classmate once it would have jumped of my seat, not to mention the amount of checking around my butt for two hours I probably do in this kind of situation to see if I’m not seated directly on the chair but I forgot if I had done it this class or not. But to no avail, I couldn’t really convince myself there was no cat to begin with, I forced myself to walk to the bus stop but I felt guilty and I compelled to go back and check if I could find a hurt cat, especially since I could just take the next bus in 20 minutes anyways but I ended up taking the bus without going back to check, queue me being even more guilty and now I can’t this out of my head. Then again, if I did hurt a cat seating on it, I wouldn’t have had the needs to pay for a vet nor would it had let me pet it to comfort it so it doesn’t really matter if I had stayed I think, so I don’t know, I feel super bad right now...

My OCD has been awful all month. Now I’m just in my office sobbing while my husband pretends not to hear me. He’s cleaning the house. I should have done it this week, but I felt sick because of my health concerns ocd and mostly stayed in bed. He’s cleaning very loudly and passive aggressively making lots of loud comments about how dirty everything is and I know he’s going to want to have a talk about how I can’t pull my weight later and now miserable he is in our marriage. Meanwhile, I should be working for my job - I’m contracted and I want to be hired full time. But I can’t. I’m just stuck. I can’t function as a good employee or wife or the person I want to be. I don’t think I ever will be able to. I just don’t know what to do. I’m in ERP and there’s progress, but definitely not enough to make me a good wife or daughter or anything. My siblings are highly successful and functioning. And then there’s me. Just making everybody embarrassed and miserable. I want the earth to swallow me up. I’m so embarrassed to exist right now.

I cannot deal with this anymore. I had a week of feeling good and some clarity. I got diagnosed officially with ocd on Monday and even though I was diagnosed, I still am doubting that this is what it is. I cannot deal with the ups and downs. I am fully convinced I’m going to leave my partner. I want to bath my head against a wall. Someone please help 😢 I don’t even wanna go see my partner

Hey, this is my first time posting, I’m new here and idk how it works exactly. And I’m not american/english so I’ll do my best to describe what I feel in another foreign language. I developped ocd a few years ago without realising that it was a mental issue. However, this year on january intrusive thoughts of harming my pathner appeared and these thoughts got stuck even nowadays. This does not concern only my partner but also everyone surronding me… And I don’t even recognise me… If I was sure about one thing before hocd hit me it was about the fact that I respect live and that I wouldn’t kill anyone and now I’m afraid that I can pursue with these thoughts… and idk if I’m still afraid or not. I think that I’ll snap, or maybe that I have another medical condition, I’m not sure. Sentences like “do it now” or images appears. I know that I have to sit with uncertainty but I really think that I’m going to snap… Before I even thought that the battle was over and “boom”, ocd makes his own comeback. I reckon that I’m more affraid since in my old high-school, a kid killed one of the teachers that I appreaciated the most with a knive… It was like if my thoughts were begging to be true and I hear all the news (without searching purposely) concerning murders and I just panick thinking I’m going to ruin my life and being in jail. And as long I’m writing this I keep asking to myself “you want to ruin your life” or “do it, anyways you aren’t happy anyway” I ‘m afraid of going outside or staying inside at home. I can’t sleep well. Idk what else to do. Everywhere I go I think suddenly “Nothing stops me to go to the nearest shop and buy a knive”. And idk if it’s normal but in my head everything pass so fast, when I imagine myself doing that I see the persone in front of me dying within seconds or with no pain at all. Sometimes, when I go at college or any other place and I still affraid I could do something to someone even if I know that I didn’t grab a knive and put it in my purse . And idk if I’m affraid or I want to revenge. I feel like sht. I saw firstly in january a psychanalist that told me I wanted to revenge secretely. Then I saw a large number of psychologists but I feel that even if I have improved, I didn’t practice at all ERP or TCC. I’ve tried on my own but idk how it works exactly. I also think in taking medicine but I know that I want to take these so as to prevent me from doing something…. I really don’t know how this app works, I hope that here I’ll find some help (even if I’m not from the US). This post is extremely long, I’m sorry, but at least I explained myself a little bit (even if there are some details that I have missed).

My brain is constantly questioning my partner because of height. It is making me so unsure inside. It is all I think about. Erp has not been working. It is ruining my life. I am having so many negative thoughts I don’t know how to overcome this. My thoughts start spiraling I don’t even realize if it is ocd or not.

Last night I went to a staff Christmas party and they all started brining up the guy I’ve been seeing, they all know him outside of me so it was funny to them. They were talking about him to me and I was just answering back I didn’t bring him up. At first I thought it was funny, but hours into them all making jokes and messaging him about stuff I didn’t say it started to annoy me and worry me that he’s gonna hate it and ditch me because I know what he’s like he hates being the centre of a conversation and it stresses him out. I then noticed when one of them showed me his messages that he had his location turned off for me and only me, during the day I didn’t care about his location that’s for him to decide, but then seeing it turned off only for me started to make me think and I got a bit worried. I was messaging him this entire time telling him to ignore them and that I was sorry they brought it up not me, they were stiring the pot massively. I then jokes about his location “on for Ashley but not me ugh emotional attack” because I won’t lie even though I don’t stalk you the fact it’s turned off just for me feel suss. He apologised and turned it back on (not what I brought it up for) and now I’m sat here scared to death he thinks I’m some psycho loony who stalks him, no that’s not why I was annoyed I’m annoyed because you isolated me out of everyone, like I was his mate Noah who gets on his nerves and he rants about all the time because he’s annoyed about him using his location, so my brain feels a bit shit and I will bring it all up to him hit another day. Anyway, my brain is not telling me I look fucking stupid and everyone is taking the piss out of me and I overreacted even though I was really overwhelmed because they wouldn’t stop talking about it and I’m so stressed out. He’s telling me it’s all fine even though it just doesn’t feel all fine and his reactions and responses feel a bit like he’s annoyed and idk if I’m reading into the texts too much or if it’s actually happening

most of my ocd has been under control for years now w medication, however, i still struggle with physical compulsions every day and in the past six months it’s become clear that these compulsions (some of which i’ve had for 5+ years) have been slowly physically damaging my body over time and it’s all coming to a head. i’ve destroyed my right jaw joint by compulsively cracking and popping it since early high school. my wrists and hands feel arthritic and i even have to wear braces sometimes to just prevent myself from cracking them. my body is constantly aching and i feel so defeated. i already have medical issues i deal with so having this on top of it is so draining. it’s really hard to accept that i’ve done this to myself. it just makes me want to cry cause i feel so disappointed by myself. it’s like, if i was able to overcome so many aspects of my ocd through medication, why couldn’t i just stop myself from doing these physical compulsions all the time? it’s like i failed and it’s all my fault that my body feels this way now so i don’t deserve to feel bad when my jaw is so sore i can’t speak or my wrists ache so much that i can’t do work or when my head hurts bc i’m rolling my eyes into the back of my head so much. it’s so hard to accept that this damage and pain is the result of my own actions and compulsions. i wish i knew where to turn or how to stop but i feel so stuck in this cycle. it’s either my bones are aching or i feel such immense distress and discomfort in my body that i have to carry out these compulsions that ultimately leads to more pain and damage. i guess this is mostly a vent post but if anyone else experiences this i’d love to hear from you

I am in the best relationship of my life, seriously. I was in an abusive relationship for years and I told myself I would never find “ the one “ and I met my best friend several months later. We have everything in common, we finish each others sentences, he spoils me and treats me like an absolute princess and he’s so trustworthy and probably the best thing to ever happen to me, I can’t believe how lucky I got. One day in July about four months into the relationship I decided to skip the placebo week in my birth control pill pack and oh no, did that do some damage. I woke up the next morning with a panic attack, my brain was telling me to leave my boyfriend and asking do you really like him, telling me “ you don’t even know him you met him online “ and just the most horrible things, it hurt me because I just wanted to enjoy the relationship, enjoy how amazing it is and how great I feel, but these thoughts are holding me back. Over time, as my hormones have regulated ( I stopped the birth control ) I have seen some forward progress. It just bothers me so much that my ocd was under control for so many years, and some little hormones triggered it and it attacked the best thing to ever happen to me. I’m looking forward to therapy and getting these thoughts controlled so I can enjoy and kiss on my sweet perfect boyfriend :) Trigger thought examples : are you really attracted enough to him as you should be? Can you really see yourself with him forever ? Are you compatible enough together ? This couple is happy, are we as happy as they are? How will I know if I TRULY love him enough to spend my life with him? I should note that we have discussed engagement, and it excites me!! I love him to death! Thinking about the proposing gives me anxiety and ocd as well, so does the idea of planning a wedding, I give myself a thousand “ what ifs “ when I just want to enjoy my relationship the way I have been,so I would love to get that under control too. Side note: I only see him on weekends, I’m in college. I ONLY have these worries when I am apart from him, when I am with him I am the happiest girl in the world, not a single worry or doubt in my mind, I want him to propose right then and there lol! It’s only when there is distance that my mind wonders

I'm working in baby steps on exposure therapy, but things don't seem to be getting any easier. I still get extreme anxiety when people get in my personal space. It's not getting any better even when I try to get out around people more and be in more social settings. Am I just not understanding things correctly? Do the disturbing thoughts never actually go away? Do you just learn to somehow "live" with them? If that's the case, I don't want to live. Learning to accept that I'll be tortured everyday isn't any kind of a life. So the bottom line is, do these obsessive thoughts and worries actually ever "go away" through therapy?

Does anyone ever have this feel of like dread and panic rush through your body and it makes it feel like you are realising that fear you ahve at the time is true. for me so ocd I havent even been worrying about it lately but I’m sitting at the table having dinner and all of a sudden I have a panic feeling that rushing though my body and thoughts that say this is you realising your gay. I don’t know if that makes any sense but can anyone relate? And now I can’t eat

what is everyone’s favorite song, genre, or artist and why? mine is bad bunny because of so so so many reasons but to keep it short 1. his pride in being puerto rican, as a dominican girl its refreshing to see a Caribbean latino not only get so big, but do so while fully embracing his culture. many of us caribbean hispanics dim our accents and cultures to be accepted so its nice, 2. his openness toward bending gender norms, 3. obviously his music, he is genuinely good. the amount of references in his songs are amazing, 4. hes a cutie

I have lost literally every person that ever came into my life except one. I always blamed it on ocd. I am not so sure now. Maybe it's just me. A few months ago I met a new friend. She was in need, nobody stopped to help her and I did. We've been in touch ever since than. We saw each other every few days. We talked on the phone and texted quite a lot. She said I was her angel from heaven and that she would never forget my helping her when she desperately needed help. She always told me that she likes people who are straight with her. When the cold short days came, I as usual close my self in the apartment and don't have the will to go out. I go when I need to. I suffer from Major Depressive disorder, I think. Every autumn and winter I am so bummed a the time. Sad, lonely,... When the warm and hot days return I feel like I was reborn. That is me. I don't know her well enough to tell her that. But I did tell her, that at home I sometimes leave my phone in the study, turn the volume off to have some piece and quiet. I like being uninterrupted by the outside world sometimes. I told her I would call her back as soon as I check my phone. I have had some health issues for the past 3 weeks. In this time I saw her only once. I still have a cold, but I went to her home a week 3 just for 5 min to give her a gift for her cats and to meet and give a gift to her new baby puppy. Everything seemed to be OK. She seemed happy to see me. And now... she doesn't answer my texts. I tried to call her today. No answer. I am literally observing loosing another friend due to my personality, my character and my ocd. I don't want to be without any friend. But I can't be the way people expect me to be. When they call, if I don't jump, the hell gets loose. If they text me and I take time to answer, they feel offended and hurt. When she says I should do this and that, and I just don't have the will or energy to go somewhere, do something, she is offended. She is very active. A beautiful person inside. She does a lot for the community. I just don't have the energy to be like her. Now I feel like crap. I don't like myself. I don't like the way that I am. I love going out on warm days. Even in winter if something attracts me. But not all the time, not every day. So, I have been crying some today, I have been angry at myself for being the way that I am. I feel down because my experience and intuition are recognizing the old pattern of people ditching me like a piece of trash. Well, they say, if the majority reacts in the same way, then it has to be me and not them. There must be something wrong with me so that they get bored with me. Animals love me and I them. I just am not interesting enough for people. I am a listener when it comes to socializing. I am all ears for them. I am their shoulder to cry on. I don't talk about myself, because I see they are not interested. So I am kind of a therapist for their everyday frustrations, problems,... And if I need some time for myself, to calm my ocd down or to get beeter when having a cold like I have had in the last 2 weeks, I am a gonner. They ignore me until there is no communication left at all. God I must have been a terrible person in previous lives. People always complain about the lack of kindness, emphaty, friendship in the world. I give all of that out in tons and I get cast away. I am over forty and I don't understand this world. I think I was some kind of a mistake. I think someone else was supposed to get into this body of mine and not me. Somehow God overlooked the mistake. I feel so sad and empty and lonely right now. I just wanted to vent. Any reply would be welcome. You can tell me what is wrong with me and how being a friend should be like. I am obviously from another planet. I am so sad even my ocd feels sorry for me right now and is quiet. I hope people love you and you have lots of friends. I hope you all are feeling better than this. Sorry if I spoiled your mood. It wasn't my intention. Sorry.