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I feel so defeated by false memory ocd. The reality of it all hits me so hard , I just feel so hopeless.

feel really down like i'll never be able to live my life i feel i'm never truly happy i just have to get by i feel stuck ive had loads of therapy cbt nothing will ever really help me 😞

When I’m not obsessing over some thought I feel weird cause I’m always checking if the thought is there and so scared that I will obsess about the thought again. It’s so scary cause I have no idea. It’s like I’m obsessed over not being obsessed?( if that make sense ). Like my life is basically being obsessed over something and if I’m not obsessed for like couple of hours I feel the need to be obsessed, like wtf is wrong with me. Because when I’m obsessing over a thought it’s like 24/7 and the urge is so big. And when I’m not obsessing I feel the need to be obsessed. I don’t know what going on anymore, is it normal?

I’m not saying any of this to be rude or hateful in any way!! Basically, I like this guy and I really love him, but, everytime I look at this one photo of him, I keep noticing he looks unflattering and it makes me worry, because I’m scared what if he’s ugly? And why does that even matter? Why can’t I just love him in peace without having to check his photo to make sure he’s not ugly? Like that sounds really rude and disrespectful and it hurts even more to know that he’s self conscious and I would NEVER want to hurt him so I don’t tell him I check his photo to make sure he’s not ugly, I get anxious when I notice/feel that he is unattractive/unflattering, so I check till I feel certain that I don’t think he’s ugly, why do I even do this? Why does it matter? Why does my brain make it difficult to even look at a photo without worrying, can I be normal? I say “I think he’s cute/I love him” to his photo and my brain is like “nope cuz he’s unattractive” then I get worried and for what??? I ask myself why do I care and I genuinely don’t know

Ok Hi. This is my first experience ever with rOCD and I think my OCD is flaring up bad because of it. I’ve always been insecure since a young age because of things people have commented about my appearance. Like about my nose or saying I have a masculine jaw (I’m female btw). I know I’m a good looking girl and many people have told me that I’m pretty… but for some reason I just don’t believe them. I know I wouldn’t have a boyfriend rn if I was unattractive but still, I can’t help but feel like he’s lying to me when he said I’m pretty or sexy. I’ve always obsessed about my looks and I feel like I’m always craving reassurance and validation from others. It’s exhausting. I also really do like my boyfriend, I think I’m falling in love with him. But I just don’t know. I don’t know what it feels like. I’m overthinking everything about our relationship and I keep thinking about his exes ughhhh. Comparing myself and his past relationships with ours. I feel like he doesn’t really like me even though he’s done nothing to show me that he doesn’t. I’m just so in my head and I hate feeling like this. I feel like he thinks I’m ugly or unattractive. It sucks. I have this lingering feeling of being undesirable. I need help!!!

POCD has been the worst thing I've ever been through. I feel like I have always sort of experienced it but not to the degree I do now. I used to plan being a mother to a beautiful family. Now I don't know if I'll ever have children at the risk of having a girl. I used to have intrusive thoughts that would make me feel weird but I could just move on from them. That was until I had to babysit my niece and change her diaper. I want to throw up thinking about it. I got a horribly strong groinal response and I didn't know what to do. I didn't understand why it was happening. It bothered me all day that day and later on I did the disgusting deed of testing myself. I regret it everyday. It's a horrible compulsion and it haunts me. I tested if I was getting off to the thought of her. And of course there was stimulation because of the groinal response. But I hated doing it. I just felt like I had to be sure. After that and since then I haven't wanted to be around her. I stopped planning being a mother, I stopped watching cute baby videos like I used to enjoy because they trigger disgusting intrusive thoughts. After a while I stopped being intimate with my boyfriend and haven't done anything with for months because the thoughts take over and make me feel like I may enjoy the deed more if I was thinking of children. I worry that maybe I do enjoy these thoughts and I'm just denying it. I wish I could be sure. I feel so disgusting and ugly, I've never hated myself this much. It takes over most of my days. I wish I had never changed her diaper. Some times in moments of clarity I am so sure that I'm not a predator, but when I am vulnerable OCD sneaks back in and tells me I enjoy my thoughts and that I should think them. Sometimes it gets so overwhelming that I have to test. I wish I could stop. It ruins my entire week. I feel like a monster. I want to love my life again. I miss life before this. I feel so hopeless most of the time and I can't imagine a way out. I'm scared to start therapy because what if I found out I am a monster? I can't live like that. I won't. I want to cry and scream. Am I alone in this?

Anyone else struggle with prayer? I do it obsessively and I have to do it just right or I think something bad will happen to my loved ones. Ive struggled with it for about 25 yrs. It's makes it so hard for me to pray but if I don't then the fear something terrible is going to happen kicks in I just can't deal with this anymore...

I don't know what to do anymore. I'm going through so much laundry and my parents are mad at me, and my hands are so cracked theyre bleeding. It's actually becoming unbearable. my medications don't help, and therapy isn't helping. I don't know what else I can do or how I can live with this. everyday is hell and I don't know how to manage any of this. I keep getting panic attacks over these things. I'm in physical pain and I can't control it. people are telling me my hands look so disgusting and I need to stop washing/using sanitizer, but no matter how hard I try I can't. I'm lost and I don't know what to do.

so, a celebrity from a band i loved since i was 5 years old died today. naturally, it made me sad. i was crying over it and everything but, this celebrity recently got revealed as an abuser, and i heard he got caught talking to underage girls i feel bad for even being sad over the fact this guy died. my mom and sister also liked this band and we were all crying over it. i feel selfish for crying, feel bad for being sad, i feel so bad for the victims right now because they’re being blamed im just afraid that crying over this guys death makes me a bad person

When im in a relationship, the attention from my partner is never enough for my brain. I always seek attention from other men at clubs or bars. I don’t like kiss them or anything but I always expect to get compliments and it kind of ruins the feelings of genuinely enjoying the moment when I’m at a club or bar with friends. I know I have low self esteem, but what can I do to get rid of this feeling?

I’m at a loss.. me and my ex girlfriend of 5 years (subject of the real event) broke up a couple months ago. The problem is, we met at work when I was 19 and she was 17. We started flirting while I was 19 and she was 17 and then I turned 20 as we were going on dates while she was still 17. We started our relationship while she was 17.5 and I had just turned 20. There was a whole 6 month period while there was this age gap and now I feel as though if any new partner I have in the future finds out, they will be disgusted and leave/reject me. I don’t know what to do. I feel as though my future is ruined and that I will never find true love again due to this age gap thing. I’m 25 now and would not date anyone younger than 22 so I know im into the appropriate age range for my age, yet I’m so shameful and guilt ridden..

I want to love God with my heart, but I’m consumed by the fears of OCD. I’m so scared. I believe in Jesus, but my intrusive thoughts say I don’t.

Hey everyone ... I'd love some opinions on something. Recently I got to see a band I really love and meet them. It was really great, the concert was amazing and I had a good view, and the band was really sweet to me. I wanted to get a tattoo of the bands logo and the date I saw/met them for my birthday which is in a couple weeks. But while I was looking then up I saw that they had a controversy. And that 10+ years ago one of the members wrote a pretty racist parody song or something for another band he was in. I actually met this member and he was sooo nice, he even offered to hug me. So I don't know what to think, and I don't want to excuse it just because he was nice or just assumed he changed or whatever. But I might also be blowing it out of proportion ... ? Should I just avoid getting the tattoo or is this just moral ocd ?? I'm scared I'll regret it or people will think im racist for having it. Or that the band might do something controversial in the future and I won't be able to remove it. Idk what to do.

I don’t exactly know what this post will achieve, but I personally am getting tired of the lack of progress in new pharmacological treatments for OCD. As it is, the medications prescribed for OCD were all developed and intended for other conditions. SSRIs are still the primary medications used, and they’re really meant to treat depression and anxiety. They aren’t even always effective at doing that. Clomipramine is an antidepressant marketed for OCD, but it was partially labeled that way because there were already enough drugs available for depression at the time. Not to mention all its side effects. Anti-anxiety medications like benzodiazepines are addictive and only treat the anxiety in OCD, not the underlying obsessions, compulsive drives, and intrusive thoughts that really lead to the anxiety. There may be no perfect drug that can directly reduce obsessions, compulsions or intrusive thoughts. That would be a complicated process for one medication to handle. But it doesn’t seem like much focus has ever been placed on ameliorating OCD. And since it affects 1 to 2% of the world’s population, there’s clearly a demand for better treatment. So if not a medication, then other things need to be explored. TMS should already be FDA approved for OCD, so people can actually afford it. ERXP therapy also needs to be regulated better so it isn’t ridiculously expensive. Again, I’m not really sure what I hope to achieve here, but like we need to advocate as a community for our treatment. I don’t know if that means talking to individual doctors or trying to somehow reach out to universities or research facilities, but this is not satisfactory. And it doesn’t seem like much is going to change unless we advocate for ourselves. So like, please help me advocate in whatever way you feel you can.

something that really bugs me and gets in my head with my rocd is that for most of my relationship i’ve had this nagging anxiety and ocd about it. i can accept my thoughts for the most part, but have this underlying fear that this one could really mean something and that makes me feel guilty! i don’t want to loose her but my mind tells me i do because ive had these thoughts. it’s even coming up in my dreams now! i had a dream last night that i cheated and it made me panic all today and feel so bad and this thought came up again! any advice?

Whenever I’m in a room and someone leaves and I’m alone, even with my usual safety behaviors I have really strong imaginations and then close my eyes to try to stop them and then feels like thoughts are super real or its happening and pray to reverse it or say no I don’t want that to happen but then worried that the intrusive prayer will happen and like that I didn’t pray the “no I don’t want that to happen” last or like that if something happens that’s good or that I wanted after that it’s just because of the imagination of the bad thing happened. And will have really real imaginations in my head too so it makes it even more realistic and even though I can go back and check the safety behavior (filming) I feel like the video just didn’t get the thing happening or was cut out or that I wasn’t actually filming at that time. And it happens when I’m in a room alone and I know that it’s worse when I engage with the thoughts and that makes it then feel even more like it happened but because it happens when people leave the room I can label it as ocd. But because I was lying down and praying I’m worried it will or did happen then, even though I used to use this as safety behavior and it didn’t and isn’t now it works.

I'm genuinely terrified of what's going on in my brain right now and I don't think it will pass because I think I gave into my compulsions and I'm scared I'll do it again I don't know what to do...I would never intentionally do this but I'm having really bad anxiety over this I can't sleep because I feel like I'm gonna do somethings what if this is who I am now.....I hate this.

So I’ve had this app for about a year now and barely used it. But now I’ve decided to step up and get this out of my system. I’ve been struggling with OCD thoughts about fire and volcanoes and the things that are associated with them such as burns, heat, magma, lava, and pyroclastic flows. I’m not sure if anyone else has these irrational thoughts too but I should run through them. I often feared about things like fire and volcanoes since I’ve just randomly thought of how insanely destructive they are. I keep thinking about if fire is able to travel onto my hands into other things without me knowing it especially if I’m around it while cooking on a stove or walking by (close to) a BBQ fire. I always seem to wash my hands with cold water so that I relieve myself from thinking that I “touched” it and touching other things thinking that they will burn. It’s gotten bad to the point where I would end up doing nothing all day because I would keep thinking about those things and their possibilities. Like if lava could emerge from anywhere or if a fire could appear randomly if I touch something. Because of these thoughts, I ended up giving up on some things that I used to do like playing video games and avoiding certain videos and movies that have anything to do with fire and volcanoes. In terms of movies I try to not think of any such as the movie literally called Volcano from ‘97 and also Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom in which the island is destroyed by an active volcano (why are dinosaurs associated with volcanoes??!!) Games like Minecraft have the lava bucket, in which if you’re playing on a tablet or phone, you would have to touch the screen to place something down. So after seeing something like this (like on a thumbnail for a YouTube algorithm) I would go to the bathroom and wash my hands and even wash my eyes with cold water. So overall, I’ve been very stressed out thinking about these things, but I have been doing some meditation and talk therapy but yeah it’s been getting out of control to the point where I start spiraling about it. Apologies if I sound confusing saying all of this I was just venting out these irrational fears that kept lingering.

Can anyone give me any advise? I have been in therapy for a couple months and been taking medication and doing everything I can to get better. Today I literally am back to square one having harm intrusive thoughts that I want to hurt people and that I want to know what it’s like and everything. I’m trying SO HARD not to ruminate and just letting the thought be there. I hear therapists say “go by your values” I feel like idk what my values are anymore. I know what I want them to be but idk because I don’t know anything.

OCD is causing so much stress in my life My ocd has a fear of losing objects everytime I lose something it's the end of my world and I have to go to a certain trash can to "repent" it as my ocd would like to call it I'm going aboard soon for university and I'm worried if I lose something aboard and I'm not able to access the location and my brain will stop working destroying my future I need to preform erp for this but when I try to do erp it fails as my brain doesn't stop nagging until it gets as it pleases My brain is wired so strongly and is so used to certain habits making ocd recovery and erp almost not possible And without meds is erp treatment really realistic anymore? Any advice if someone is going through something similar