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I don’t even know if I love my own boyfriend anymore because of my OCD, I want it all to stop…

I am currently in mainland Europe instead of the UK, as my girlfriend’s (who lives here) father just passed away. So I cannot do the usual NOCD sessions while I am here. She has been my main source of support during this awful disease. But now she is obviously facing her own very difficult time. I feel terrible seeking support - sometimes reassurance from her. I have been doing ERP 3x a day to make an effort to keep my OCD at bay. This is making me extremely depressed and I don’t know how to keep going. I am so worried I am being too much for her. The theme of my ocd is ROCD but can vary and has varied in the past. I love her more than anything and it’s killing me that I’m so dependent on her especially in this difficult time.

No matter what I do my emetaphobia is not getting better I think it’s gotten worse I’ve been struggling with it since I was 11 I’m 19 now:( I’m scared of being away from home and getting sick and it also ties into fomo fear of missing out I don’t know why I feel like if I get sick I will also miss out and be absolutely miserable. I’m just so scared of feeling nauseous I need help .

I was wondering if anyone had any tips on getting over someone when they’re your limerent object? I’ve been in love with my best friend for nearly 5 years now and he’s rejected me multiple times. I just don’t know what to do to get over him at this point, it feels like I’ve tried everything.

It might seem weird that I’m posting a picture of a squirt bottle, but it connects to my grandma, who died suddenly in her sleep yesterday. I struggled with emotional contamination for years, before I knew what it was, and it revolved around my grandma. Emotional contamination was my biggest theme, and it took me over a year to work through. It latched on to everything over my grandma-I couldn’t use the bathroom after her without scrubbing (which is the worst when you really, really have to pee but you have to clean first), I didn’t like having her text messages linger on my phone (what if they contaminated anything I did on my phone?), etc etc. So I worked through this with consistent ERP. I became ok with looking at her pictures and not knowing if I was going to turn into her, I stopped caring that she sat in my car, and that my car could have been contaminated, I became ok with using the same public restroom stall that she did—I worked through my fears that her energy would ruin me. Over time, I noticed progress from my ERP. I sent my grandma a picture of my cats on my bed—before, I would have worried her seeing my bed in a photo would make it dirty. OCD is so bizarre, but I know this community gets it. I texted her more often and could hug her. She moved out of state last year with my mom. On one of her trips out here, she gave me this squirt bottle so she wouldn’t have to pack it. The old me would have IMMEDIATELY thrown it away. But, the me who went through the most difficult ERP, decided to use it. I actually needed one. I didn’t care that my hair might be “dirty,” or my bathroom, or that her energy might go into the same bathroom where I take a shower. I’ve been using it almost daily and it’s just part of my morning routine. And now, sadly, my grandma is dead. And looking at this bottle just makes me reflect over how OCD got so tangled up in my family before I untangled it. I try to find a balance of not putting too much meaning or symbolism on things (so I don’t dip into magical thinking). I know one day this thing will break or I’ll get rid of it, and that’s ok. While I navigate grief and uncertainty and all the lovely emotions that come with death, I find some peace in knowing I was able to have a better relationship with my grandma after ERP. I’m glad she didn’t die when I was avoiding her. So, that’s my story. I’m flying out of state tomorrow morning to see my family, and I don’t know what OCD will latch on to when I go to the house she passed a way in. But it’s a quiet unknown. And this is giving me space to grieve, and feel angry and sad and all the things in between. ERP sucks, having a death in the family sucks, but somehow there’s some peace in there too.

I went to a church and i started to have panic attacks and since than i cant just move away from this depressive feeling, i just feel down, my mind is really negative and i try to use the tools what i learned but it doesnt works, i feel like im just using them to avoid how i feel, and feeling this doesnt help but it gives me more stress and i feel more hopeless and poweless about recovery. Everything i do feels wrong and im tired of it. Im juat tired of accepting it, accept everything and i still feel worse and worse, it doesnt want to ease, im stressing out more. Idk since ive been told that im just avoiding feeling bad and everything i do is a compulsion or avoidance i just cant do anything when i feel a certain way cause i spin about me doing anything is a compulsion and its tiring. And the panic attacks were just a sign that my body had enough of this stress, but a really negative discomfort or malaise is came after it and i cant just move away from it. Now every emotion is so strong, its stressing me out. And again i cant do anything cause i feel like im just doing a compulsion

I want to be happy and not be miserable and I feel like I try to help others be happy but I can’t get myself to be happy 😢

I have a friend who im close with (we are both girls) and we're both in a relationship with boys. I've always had ROCD intrusive thoughts that made me feel as if I don't love my boyfriend but this time it's different. It started when my friend opened up abt her sex life or something to me and I for some reason started feeling really upset and uncomfortable. I didn't know why it honestly felt like jealousy and I wanted to hear her out but also I didn't want to continue listening. I then started having intrusive images of HER and HER BOYFRIEND doing stuff (how creepy I know) and it just made me so upset. I started feeling like it meant I was jealous that IM not in a relationship with her. I start getting groinal responses every time I see her pfp online and I got so panicked I read the lesbian masterdoc which made me MORE confused bc some of the stuff on it I related to. I don't even know if this is ocd or not bc low-key I do think she is extremely attractive and obviously imagining myself in a relationship with her makes me cringe so bad, but also imagining her in any other relationship also makes me feel jealousy? Idk I saw a TikTok with a lesbian girl explaining how to tell if you have romantic or platonic feelings for your female friend. She said to imagine her standing at the altar at her wedding and how it makes you feel. It felt awful like i felt soo uncomfortable at the thought of seeing her get married to her current bf. Then I imagined for myself if I was the one getting married to her, and it felt easier and better to imagine. Surely that means something?? I also felt rlly tall and manly in that marriage imaginations which is weird. I feel weird. I'm now worried I'll never get over her and that I will never love my boyfriend the same again. I'm worried I am a lesbian even though I truly do love him and i remember so vividly what it felt like to fall in love with him (it was awesome). I've been with him for 3 and a half years anf im losing sight of where I stand with him because I have dealt with horrific TOCD for the last year and now I think (hope) HOCD. I just need this to GO AWAY!!!

I want to end It all, I feel so alone in my head, like no one understands at all.I just want to end it…

i've seen there are actual posts on here that straight-up talk about actual actions associated with "p", while i absolutely need help with this, i cannot and will not tolerate seeing such posts and nor should anyone else. this is disgusting.

how do you guys get over the anxiety of what people with no ocd would think of the stuff/thoughts we did/think. that’s my biggest thing right now is being afraid people wouldn’t talk to me ever again if they knew my thoughts and compulsions i had done.

Ive been in treatment for OCD off and on for 2 or 3 years now. Ive been finding myself in a “flare up” after moving and changing jobs. My biggest thorn/theme has been harm, specifically suicide. Just from having gone through this before, I know the line between what’s ocd and what’s truly being suicidal can be blurry. I’ve had people tell me that the intrusive thoughts of death can be OCD or it can be depression. Forever I’ve operated with the belief it’s OCD with sprinkles of depression (who wouldn’t be dealing with this) I guess my worry is that if this is what being suicidal is, I need help, bad. I can tell myself it’s OCD all day, but being it’s the doubting disorder, I ask “what if I’m lying and want to die?” I want this certainty that I’m not truly suicidal and it’s just these unwanted thought. Is it even possible to have that certainty? How can do tell the difference between the two?

if I stop trying to suppress or review horrible intrusive images, am I not just telling my brain that is okay to have those thoughts? Can my brain start to perceive horrible things as normal? Maybe I'm reaching.

What should you do when you're *about* to have a terrible intrusive image? Should you just let it happen? Something that I often do probably as a compulsion is to try to suppress the horrible intrusive image from fully forming itself, and when I do that I notice that I always scrunch my eyes and contort my face. Do we have to allow the intrusive image to just happen? Even though it causes us distress?

I recently developed a rumination surrounding my own thinking. Its a bit confusing but I was using Dr Greenbergs method on rumination and to not engage in trying to solve something, and this includes not thinking or thinking what be it. Yet, I began to ruminate that if I dont direct my thoughts to the rumination then do I just dont think? And when I think am I engaging in a compulsion to prove that thought wrong? Its been bad these past hours and if anyone knows please let me know. He mentions bad distraction but am I doing bad distraction when I think aloud to try to prove this fear wrong?

I keep having the most extreme, disgusting thoughts. I’m scared that if I keep thinking it I’ll end up liking it. My mind is telling me that I like it even though it has always disgusted me.

it’s so embarrassing doing compulsions in front of people. like i literally NEED to do them or i can’t function. one of my compulsions is praying so sometimes it seems like i be talking to myself. anyone else relate to this?

Hi there! I'm new to the NOCD community. Up until very recently, I thought I just had anxiety but hearing some of my friends talk about their OCD and realizing I related to a lot of things has made me really confused (I always thought OCD was limited to contamination OCD). The way my anxiety/OCD presents is largely through comparisons to other people and this is enhanced in relationships. I'm not sure why but if my partner/friend is doing X or Y that day I have to do that too and if I can't or don't I feel like shit about myself and I ruminate constantly about it. Another example would be if my partner/friend has X number of friends I have to have that exact number of friends (that have the same "characteristics" too). I've always been really ashamed of this because I know it's stupid and I feel like a jealous/envious/bad person so I've never really talked about it. I had a 3 year relationship and this constant comparing and trying to do the exact same things my partner was doing made me so miserable and depressed. I never wanted to talk about it to anyone because I felt like it was stupid. Another way my OCD/anxiety presents is I get obsessed over the process of things rather than the results. Like when I study first exams I have to revise X topics a day (and do so in a very specific way, not leaving any details out) and if I can't I ruminate/make myself feel bad. Or if I'm building a chair from IKEA for example I have to follow the exact instructions and if I don't but it still works I will always feel like there's something wrong with the chair. I'm really lost right now and I guess I would really appreciate any insight/resources that would help with this. I've been in therapy for anxiety but never really gotten diagnosed with OCD so I'm just confused like is that not something that your therapist should tell you??

Hi everyone. I am new to Nocd. My story: The first time I got intense intrusive thougts of religious ocd is when I was 11 years old. They were very intense. I was ashamed of those thoughts and didn't know what to do with them. I literally didnot tell anyone and suffered alone. It made it hard for me to pray. Over the years it took many forms. I didn't know it was OCD. My mental health deteriorated with waves of depression because of OCD as I got threatened from my OCD thoughts of death of me and my closed ones. They were scary. I also imagined things and felt like seeing things out of fear. These phases of depression brought me down everytime I stood up somehow. Soon I was struck with existential and identity crisis, questioning the meaning of life and existence, nothing seemed valuable and worth it. I questioned my academics and everything. Definetly my grades and health everything deteriorated. It showed in my physical health too. I started having mental fog and questioning reality, my self along with a lot of changes in my life. After class ten, there were suddenly a lot of changes when my mental health was already not okay making it hard for me to adapt. I saw everything blurry and removed. I couldn't connect to anyone. I associated fear to all the things, plus my home. And because I already had so much threatenings of death, I couldn't even recognise the reality. I felt far removed from my reality like I went somewhere far away, a lot of time has passed and there's not much time for me and I struggled with memory too. After 12th, I joined University. One year later, I met a boy with whom I instantly felt sparks. Note: I never dated anyone before and feeling a spark like that with somebody which made me take the step is a lot. I wanted to commit to him but then my ROCD kicked in. I didn't even know about it but I did some mistakes because of it I feel like because ROCD was so intense it made me feel like an emergency to leave the relationship. He had OCD too as he said. He have it in terms of 'perfectionism'. Also he was very sensitive, enraged kind of person, I got to know later on. Had a lot of emotional outbursts making me more question the relationship to leave. We became like an anxious-avoidant couple. I regret many things like what I have avoided if I knew its ROCD and worked on it and so many. He 'abused me. He started abusing me. Idk I started feeling like I made him that kind of a person because he actually compared me with his former gf, with whom he used to even secretly talk. I couldn't get out of the abusive relationship sooner but recently which added extra trauma. Well, here am I 'single' but I feel a lot of guilt and also I need to make my mental health better because this experience made me realise how my bottled up things made an explosion. Thankyou! to whoever reads this! Oh yeah I also deal with a Lott of decision making difficulties, indecisiveness and regret over small things and doings. And also because of my life going like this and getting ruined where there was so many expectations from me, I regret a lot I guess. I think of many possibilities how my life would have gone and always put infront of me possibilities and choices. So I am currently dealing with my thoughts and uncertainty about my future after a Lott of trauma. Oh my god..there is so much

How do I sit with uncertainty?? Like I understand that I should just let the thoughts be there and not do a compulsion, but HOW? I would appreciate any tips