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Anyone else’s OCD come in waves? That’s the only way I can describe it. I’m doing good in therapy for a few weeks, and then all of a sudden it gets really bad, with no apparent trigger?

hello, i have been very paranoid about being pregnant. I’ve taken 4 pregnancy tests, all came out negative and have gotten my period twice since the last time i’ve had sex, i’m so very paranoid and I have no idea why. even if i take tests, get my period or even when people reassure me that I am not. I’m not sure if it is my mind playing tricks on me to get stuck on this but it is very hard to continue with my daily routine without the fear of being pregnant. I have no idea how to overcome this fear.

I have health concern ocd and my current obsession is rabies. I just opened my window to get some air and now I'm convinced there's a bat in my room that's gonna give me rabies... I checked my room and didn't find one but now I can't stop thinking about it and I can't fall asleep. I think I would be able to see it if it was in my room but...

Lately I've been having a bit of paranoia due to one of my events. I do art commissions for money. Late last year I took a kind of big commission. It was something I hadn't tried before and wasn't super comfortable doing but I took it anyway because I wanted the money. While working on it I got less and less confident and ended up getting too anxious to work on it and kept putting it off. Because of my avoidance I didn't realize the commissioner was trying to contact me about an update until I finally worked up the courage to check my socials until early this year. I apologized genuienly and refunded them immediately. I then took a break from taking them because I had a habit of taking more than I could chew. There was another commission I forgot to do, nothing big, and I refunded that one too and apologized as well. I started taking them again, this time making sure to limit myself to a manageable amount and not take payments until I've actively started working on it. It's been great, I haven't had any trouble finishing them and any I thought I couldn't I didn't take. But now I've been having an OCD theme lately where I'm worried people are calling me a scammer behind my back or spreading that I am one. I haven't been able to find proof of this but I also wouldn't be able to if someone just posted it to their followers and not publicly. This has been really making me want to quit doing art for money even though it's nice to have the extra income and I genuienly dont want to scam people, I just have bad avoidance problems I'm trying to work on. I dont know what to do, I can't stop thinking about it and it's making me anxious to advertise. I want to compulsively delete my accounts and change my name so I'm unrecognizable. But I don't want to not take accountability, I want to be honest and open and prove I'm different like I've been able to so far. I still get commissions, but i feel like its not as many as i used to. Or maybe I'm just paranoid. I don't know what to do, I know it's my own fault but I dont want this to follow me forever.

Lately my ocd is latching onto my children. In my opinion, for me, this is the most painful and most debilitating theme of ocd. My daughter asked me to help her wash and rinse the shampoo from her hair while she was in the shower because she has thick hair and sometimes she has trouble shampooing and rinsing it all out. A normal, common task for me. At some point I caught a glimpse of her private area and my ocd immediately tried to make me believe I looked intentionally. I know I didn’t and I know I do not think of her or any child in that way but now my ocd has me questioning myself. I was just doing what I always do so I don’t remember at what point I saw it. Was I reaching for and looking down for the shampoo when I saw it or was I reaching up to her hair and saw it as I looked up? Did I look due to just normal human tendency to look where we know we’re not supposed to and if that’s the case does that make me horrible? I’m driving myself insane trying to prove I do NOT feel or think that way about her. I don’t want to live if this is how my brain works. Ocd is evil and this is the hardest kind of intrusive thought to get past. 😩

I am in a rumination loop. Nothing is satisfying my thoughts. It’s just a constant, you are lying to yourself, you are gay etc etc. My brain keeps putting pictures of me and a woman in the future and I don’t want that. Then my brain goes well ‘What if you do or are lying to yourself and in denial?’ Sometimes the false attraction is weird because deep down I know it’s not true but when I am in a spiral I don’t know what is real or fake, the ‘attraction’ that my brain thinks is real is this distress in my chest it’s not enjoyable. But as I write this my brain goes ‘Well you are just saying that because you are in denial and you do actually like it.’

I don't know what to say....I have ADHD diagnosed by one of the top pschs in the country on that. But I see see some posts on here and I am like "I relate to that" I literally don't want another mental alignment... My problem...I know what I should be doing.... But just don't do that thing. It's so weird. I have had this issue forever Is that recognizable to anyone here?

Does anyone ever get compulsions when it comes to texting? I will receive a message from someone and if I don’t want to respond right away I won’t open it, but if it’s been too long before I open it I just can’t until they text me again. Or if I text someone I have to reopen the message multiple times every few seconds in case they responded and I didn’t notice, or in case they read it, or to make sure I said what I meant to say and it can’t be perceived differently. This usually leads to me having a crazy amount of unopened messages, and a crazy amount of anxiety. Texting has become an unreliable source of communication for me so I usually call or don’t talk to anyone unless they’re in person

I have some questions as to how to distinguish avoidance vs. self-care. I am struggleing a lot with things like rumination and obsessing over certain topics. But at the same time I know that full-out avoidance of triggering topics/material is also bad for OCD. So how do you draw the line between the too? Like not compulsively engaging with certain things but also not to avoid them?

I’m a 31-year-old woman born into a Muslim family. I don't know if my childhood was good or bad because it was strange. When I was born, my parents left me with my mother's sister, but my mother sent money and gifts. However, I never felt the warmth of a mother or father. Even my aunt was not present; she left me with the housemaid. This affected me significantly, and when I speak, my language is weak. Don't ask me why I didn't improve myself during those 16 years; I was utterly lost. I sought motherly affection from every woman I met in school. I don't know if this is the reason for my homosexuality. Suddenly, without warning, my aunt returned me to my family when I was 16. She would contact me, asking if I prayed, even though she never taught me how. When I turned 20, I searched online for how to pray because even my parents never taught me. From then on, I started suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) related to cleanliness and repeatedly performing prayers. By the time I was 27, I stopped praying because there was a voice in my head that wouldn't stop. Even after I stopped, the OCD continued, and the voice persisted. I don't know if the OCD is due to my childhood lifestyle.

Hi!! I've been doing pretty good lately but the thoughts haven't stopped the anxiety is less now. But tired of hearing the thoughts. I'm a confident straight woman and all ai want to be with is a man. I've been single for years and i have been wanting a boyfriend. The thoughts are making me feel like I'm just lying to myself and it's annoying and frustrating.

Do anyone who is actually gay mind talking to me and mind if I ask a few questions as idk if this is ocd or not

Around 2 months ago my so-ocd/hocd started after meeting up with a girl I had been messaging and when we met up I realised I wasn’t attracted to her at all. When we were hanging out and we were about to kiss, I felt disgust and didn’t want to kiss her and so just hugged her instead. Once I got home afterwards it then sent me into the spiral of thinking what if I’m gay and that’s why I didn’t want to kiss her. And this went on for a few weeks until I did research and discovered hocd and it matched completely all of my symptoms. Some days are really overwhelming and others aren’t as overwhelming because at some points when the hocd isn’t on my mind, I act exactly how I would’ve done prior to this, but then it creeps into my mind and I find myself constantly analysing people and situations and past experiences, which is extremely overwhelming and stressful. From my research I have discovered that exposure response therapy is the best way to stop this. However, I would like to know if there’s a way to either do this by myself or to not have to pay for a therapist etc because that would mean I would have to reveal this to my family, which would be embarrassing, misunderstood and I’m pretty sure they would just mistake it for me being gay in denial, which would just make the situation worse and just overall I would like to overcome this without having to go through that if necessary. I am currently messaging a girl who I find attractive and I am sexually attracted to but obviously this is affecting my thought process and I don’t want it to affect my future relationships. So if anyone could help with how to overcome this with the conditions and through exposure response which is suggested, then I would really appreciate it.

Any advice for intrusive sexually harming thoughts? I feel like a monster

Does anyone else experience false attraction and if you do can you explain what it feels like to you?

So I’ve recently discovered my ocd, my brother had been diagnosed when he was younger and struggles to a lot more noticeable degree. My parents have tried to their knowledge to help him with his obsessions before he had started therapy. I’ve always been there for my brother when he’s really dwelling on a trigger. Over time I had learned more and more about ocd and started to discover things about myself I never understood. I have struggled with mental health since I can remember and always brushed it off as chronic paranoia. But I started notice a lot of similarities between mine and my brothers triggers and after researching, realized I too suffer ocd obsessions and compulsions. My huge concern right now is even though my triggers and obsessions are different than his, I feel doubt about whether it not I am valid to speak on it. I feel guilty because I have watched him suffer false memory ocd and I don’t experience that so to me it seems ultimately worse. I had opened up to him recently about things I’ve been struggling with since I was little and he confirmed all of it as ocd thoughts and obsessions. I feel like suddenly all these unanswered questions about what’s wrong with me suddenly makes sense, but I’m so behind in discovering this that I’m afraid of being honest about it, and it being perceived by others as me trying to combat with my brothers experiences. I can talk to a therapist and it’ll feel like I’m being seen, but in my personal life, even with my boyfriend I have the chronic fear that people think I’m lying

My ex got his new gf pregnant after 3 weeks of being with her, I was with him exclusively for a year and he wouldn’t ask me to be his gf. I feel absolutely horrific and worthless, why does she get this man who takes her out on dates and makes it all happy, why does he act like an arse hole to me on nights out every time and I end up crying. Why is she better than me? The thing is, there’s a 50/50 chance it’s not his, I don’t know if he knows but she was sleeping with her ex and him when they were dating, however my brain doesn’t think of that shit situation, it doesn’t think about the drama that’s gonna happen for the fact there’s cheating involved, I just always think of the fact that I got left for another girl who is prettier than me and more sexual than me (she does onlyfans)and more out there (she has a very unique style) so all in all she’s better. I’m nice, and kind and all that stuff, but I always get the bad karma, when people I loved end up in a relationship I’m always the one left to see it happen and to end up feeling like I’m not worthy of feeling love, or feeling like I have someone there who wants to be there for me. I’m sick of being abandoned

Since I was little I had a passion for mathematics. I'm currently 14 doing university-level math and have practically decided for math to be my future career path. Quite oddly, it seems like OCD started attacking this interest, as I'm really unsure if I even enjoy it anymore or not and I'm really scared because if not math, I'm not sure what I'd want to do. Is this OCD or a sign I should move onto something else?

Today I was driving into work and a little gray squirrel ran out in front of me. I couldn't do anything except tense up and hope that he somehow avoid getting hit. My hopes went unfulfilled and it seriously hurt me. I wanted to cry. And I still do a little. I don't want to have harm come to any little critters, but I also wish that my emotions weren't so messed up to feel so empathetic about the squirrel. I would give anything to go back in time to before all my emotions and my ocd decided to go haywire.

Every time I talk to my bf I feel worse, but when I’m not talking to him I feel fine. I don’t know what to do. I keep obsessing over everything he says and the way he sounds, and the way he acts. I feel like I don’t like him anymore. It’s all so confusing. I’m so scared of hurting him. Looking back I’m pretty sure that I was experiencing ROCD or relationship anxiety, but now I’m worried that it’s morphed into real feelings. I’m so scared. I’m so worried. I cry almost every day. I’m so tired of it all