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I’ve acted to an extent on my thoughts in the past. I never cheated..but I did try and look attractive in front of certain people even though I only want to marry and spend the rest of my life with my fiancé…. How do I get over this😣

Ive been with my partner for 2 years. I haven’t had sex with my partner in a pretty long time. I feel like it’s been so long now that the idea of having sex is really causing me anxiety. I also don’t want to kiss or makeout as much. When he brings up sex or making out more or anything intimate it gives me anxiety. I feel like I truly don’t want to do those things, and that scares me. When we started dating I don’t think that this gave me anxiety, I think I was excited about it. But now it’s something that I find I’m almost avoiding. I want to be excited to kiss him and be with him but I’m just not, and I’m worried that that means the relationship is over. I know that the honeymoon phase isn’t forever but is this really what a relationship is supposed to feel like? This has gone on for so long now that I’m almost scared enough to admit to him how I feel rocd wise. I wanted to add that I’ve been on antidepressants nearly my entire life and i definitely have low libido anyway, so not being intimate doesn’t really bother me. Sometimes I can’t figure out if that’s the case or if it’s just because I don’t find my partner attractive anymore. I really don’t know what to do. I don’t want to force myself to be intimate but I think he’ll catch on that something’s wrong if I keep telling him no. If anyone has any advice, or relates at all, id really appreciate it, thank you.

Is anyone on Wellbutrin and willing to/okay with answering some questions?

Ok so…. I have never had a kiss I’ve never had a bf. I am also still a teen. I feel so inexperienced and I was talking to someone today about how I was going on a date this weekend with a boy a really don’t like, but I am going in case I feel something. Anyways the person was like shocked I never had my first kiss or much of experience at all and like she tells me I’m pretty. But boys don’t really approach me and all the guys I have ever “liked” or was attracted to tend to be completely out of my league or I lose interest immediately. I just am feeling kind of numb because the person asked if I was self sabotaging…. Like looks arent the most important thing to me but you need to have a good personality to go with it and I guess I’ve never had an in person convo with a man that made me feel anything. I am also very obvious if I don’t like something it will show on my face and my actions. I just need advice because right now I feel lonely and am tired of bothering people with my issues. Should I put myself out there? But I’m honestly horrible at criticism if it is not constructive or even sometimes criticism period, also am scared of rejection. Also like what the heck do you talk about to these men like I swear I try to make convo or like talk to some people and its the blandest convo. I want to step outside my comfort zone and maybe download a dating app or something…. But I just dont feel pretty and I think my personality is not great. And whenever I bring that up I never want any damn sympathy I just want to say how I feel. I am just having a lot of anxiety about this and just relationships in general. Please any advice would do.

I feel pain in my chest and can't breathe I always wake up anxious with intrusive thoughts that I'm unforgiven I'm scared so scared please I need anyone to talk to i can't breathe i can't get out no matter how hard I try and take my medication or talk to my therapist I'm so so tired.. I don't know who am I anymore I wanna be with God because of love not fear why I have all these bad intrusive thoughts I just can't enjoy because I have these thoughts always with me and always afraid and anxious can't enjoy anything

Hi everyone, I’m struggling with OCD that’s very existential and focused on suicide. A few days ago I was convinced my life with my family was good and I felt calm and grounded. Then a disturbing shift came over me: a quiet, reflective feeling that felt almost omniscient, like nothing matters anymore and that love and the reasons we live are superficial and have no real value. Since that feeling arrived, my conviction that life is worth living has disappeared. The current state feels more like the ultimate truth because it is so intense and deep. It even feels, and I hold this as a kind of sacred conviction, that what I’m experiencing, feeling, and “knowing” is unique and has never happened to anyone else. When I don’t have this feeling, normal life — living my life and loving my family — doesn’t feel as vivid or important, and that makes my head tell me the normal reality must be fake. I try to draw strength from my love for my wife and children, but the more I think about it the more I get the sense that I don’t truly love them enough or that their love might not be a strong enough reason to stay alive. I’m constantly stuck in my head wondering whether this is depression or some unshakable knowledge or obsession I can’t get rid of. I also get intrusive thoughts that if I ever felt better and no longer had suicidal or depressive impulses, I would just be burying my head in the sand and pretending everything is fine. It feels hyper-important and overshadows other OCD, depression and anxiety worries. Has anyone else experienced existential or suicide-centered OCD like this, especially the sudden omniscient feeling that everything is meaningless and which then feels more real than ordinary life, or the conviction that your experience is totally unique? How do you cope when your love for family feels insufficient because of the obsession? Any strategies, therapies, or ways of thinking that have helped would be really appreciated. Thank you.

I'm going to preface this with: I just wanna vent a bit. Maybe show you a piece of my and many others' experiences. I just need feedback, not even reassurance. This is what some of if not most of my days look like. I keep asking if it's just OCD. I've been stuck researching and ruminating, anxious, trying to figure out whether I'm having OCD or going into the territory of sexual deviation. My thoughts involve multiple taboos and also fears of sexual abuse. I just can't tell sometimes, and I'm scared. I keep asking myself whether OCD hasn't changed my morals, why I'm desensitized to the unthinkable, and I feel like I am beyond repair. I've read about everything from arousal nonconcordance, to groinals, to even false attraction - and I'm not sure if it isn't just all cope to deny a real problem. Did I get desensitized when it came to Harm OCD too? Sure. Was I panicking? You bet I was. But it once again feels like OCD has gathered enough evidence to make me anxious again. It all feels too real, like too much. I've been anxious for the past few hours just stuck. Pure O is a living hell - if it still is Pure O. I keep looking into my past, asking myself "Does this increase the risk of me being a pervert?" "I've heard childhood trauma can lead to paraphilia - what if that's happening?" "I was exposed to NSFW at a young age - oh my god, what if I end up being a r*pist?". I question every decision I've made, my reactions and behavior, I look for symptoms to confirm or deny whether I am a sociopathic deviant. I avoid certain situations because I fear getting the intrusive thoughts, experiencing attraction or straight up finding out I'm someone I don't want to be (even though all of that sounds absolutely insane and irrational). Whenever I see a trigger, I immediately start checking if I'm feeling something. I can't even look in the general direction of it because I'm afraid I will feel something. I tend to physically avoid triggers. Sometimes I feel like people around me can sense my OCD and look at me because of it, then stay away from me from sheer disgust. Sometimes I'm afraid of even my own imagination - it's very vivid and detailed which would be a great thing.. if I didn't have OCD to use it against me by giving me mental images of the most disgusting and abhorrent scenes imaginable. I'm afraid of doing art because I feel like I'll lose control and draw something deeply disturbing, or somehow uncover some hidden truth about me in the process. It really sucks. I can't be the only one in this, right?? I can't be the first person on planet earth to have gone through this exact torment? You guys, I just need advice / support. Please, to anyone who's gone through something similar, feel free to share your experiences. I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy, seriously.

Does anyone here often get frustrated from all the double checking they've been doing? This is one of my OCD compulsions. In fact, I don't just double check. I triple check. Four, five, almost twenty times. It revolves around making sure that my nursing files in MacBook are perfectly synced with my Google Drive. It drives me insanely mad that I already know and can see that they're synced, but there's always a part of me that believes they aren't. So, here I am, ending up spending twenty long minutes checking the same thing over and over again. It's so tiring, folks. I don't understand why my brain can't just properly decipher things. I have this feeling that my eyes are lying to me, and what I check couldn't really be true unless I've done it a bunch of times. Honestly, it's driving me insane, and this is the only place where I could tell how I feel without sounding like a lunatic.

does it happen to you that you suddenly have the urge to look at the trigger on purpose (for me it makes me look at pictures and look for facial expressions that associate me with sex) people, pictures, something...? Always when I do it, it's like I deliberately imagine something sexual about it, and if there's no reaction, I imagine it until I get it? ??? What am I doing anymore?

So after going back to therapy, I’ve been doing really good. I didn’t care about the thoughts or any of my obsessions. But this past week, my mind has just been looping so many thoughts that are scary and sad. The rumination cycle feels like how I felt before even receiving therapy. I don’t know if it’s just because I’m not doing compulsions as much, but I’ve been so afraid this is never going to away, and I’m going to feel anxious and scared forever:(

Hey, I am a 19 year old girl, who have since February 2024 begun questioning if I am a lesbian. I have always LOVED boys, and have always known that I do not like women sexually, but I remember one night I got the thought “what if you like women” and I have not been able to not think about it since then. I remember I began questioning this during Covid when I was home alone in 2020, but has since then been able to be 100% that it was just a fase where I was curious, but had since then been able to talk openly about me not liking women without it triggering something. But since February I have thought about it EVERY day and every single minute of the day. I have a boyfriend of 3,5 years who I love so much, but since I began having these thoughts I cannot feel attracted to him. I need to ask him for reassurance 10+ times a day “pinky promise I’m not into women but only men” and have to ask him a certain way. I also think “oh I feel the need to look at women’s private parts and get a tangly feeling 3 or more times before I can look away cause it has to feel right. I also feel like I can’t listen to eg “I kissed a girl” or “born this way” because if I do I will feel attracted to it. Another example is that I constantly seek reassurance from Google, ChatGPT or TikTok and it is so draining because in the end I keep thinking “I don’t have a OCD diagnosis what If im in denial and is just a lesbian who is lying to me bf” I feel as im in denial just writing this. I have lived with it for a year now and is starting to question “what if I have just changed and must accept that I don’t like boys and is masculine e.g.” but the thing is, I have ALWAYS loved makeup, and loves girl stuff, but when I have these thought I can’t feel as I am in control of who I am. It makes me question myself to the point where I feel as I have to go out and be with a women because it is what my brain tells me to do. During a 5 month period in between this year the topic changed to “what if I have cheated on my bf without him knowing because I don’t remember” and I went down another dark hole. I have thrown all my clothe from that period of time out because I felt guilty and as it held “bad memories” and now I regret it because the topic has changed. But during that time I had to seek reassurance from friends “have I flirted - do u think I talked flirty or looked at them, have I done anything” and I had to have it IN writing, otherwise it wasn’t valid. I even promised God that I would not go out clubbing until New Year’s Eve at 12 am, because then he would forgive me and it would make me a not lesbian person. But it did not help a bit, the topic just changed and my “am I a leabjan” spiral started again. And it makes me so sad because why can it not just think “okay you are bisexual” NOT JUST “oh you are either heterosexual or ONLY into women” it is like my mind is afraid. So I guess my hope and question is, is there anyone who can tell if this sounds like OCD, and if I am into women. Before gaining these thoughts I was certain, and I know i don’t ONLY like women, but I can’t even be sexually active with my bf because if I think of women during it, I must get turned on by it and be a lesbian. I am so exhausted. Sorry for the long question, I am just so drained. Backstory: my family has a lot of mental illnesses on my dads side, and when I was a child I dealt a lot with having to wash my hands until they bled and crying because i did not know why I lived. I was never diagnosed.

my name is isma, i am 19 in nyc. i met this amazing guy at the beginning of the year, we hit it off immediately and he really stood out to me. i recently broke up with him because i feel like if id put him thru a lot if he’d stay with me. i recently came out to my parents and it wasn’t voluntary. i was caught with him and then had to reveal that i was gay. my parents didn’t take it too well. i felt uncomfortable and a little scared to be at home for some days. that settled in a week and both my parents told me they were acceptant but in the end it just felt to me like if they accepted me but they just didn’t wanna know about it anymore in a sense of just avoiding touching on the topic. now me and my boyfriend, i was going thru a lot and he gave me all his attention and was there for me whenever i had to vent or just cry because of everything going on. it’s crazy to think that at 19 years old id be coming out to my parents when at the start of the year, i never thought that’d be something id end up doing. ive never been open about my emotions or a “soft” person because i was never able to be myself at home and with my parents. sometimes i can’t even hug anyone. i find it hard to speak to strangers that r not my friends. i’m very picky when it comes to making friends. i feel like my thoughts are all over the place and im very indecisive. i miss my boyfriend and i wanna go back with him but im scared that ill ruin things again. before him, i was stuck in hookup culture and thought that by hooking up w a guy i was interested in, he’d wanna stay with me and get to know me. i was used many times and ive also used people many times. i’ve been done dirty and ive done people dirty, i dont think of myself as a good person but i felt loved and deeply cared for by this guy. he lives in nj and i live in ny. sometimes he’d even surprise me at work and i cried the first time he did. i felt so special and in awe because i would’ve never thought i could get so emotional over a small gesture. to me it wasn’t a small gesture. it was everything because he came from all the way in nj to ny just to see me for a couple of minutes. i hate the way that i am. i am unconfident, i think i am so ugly, sometimes i question how he found me attractive to date. i overthink everything, i cried one time imagining him coming to see me in ny then having to go home so late back to nj, i dont think im worth it and i felt like i didn’t deserve that and maybe it’d be better if he found someone near him. i also compared myself a lot with him. he’s such a kind spirited person, he’s always smiling and i on the other hand get told i look sad or anxious. i am i pretty negative person and that just adds on to me being an overthinker. i always thought someone as happy as him deserves another happy person and not someone who gets mad or agitated easily. i wish i can be more for him, i do miss him a lot and i plan on talking with him again. i just wanna talk everything out, even if we don’t date for sometime, i wanna be around him and know we’re gonna get back there again someday. he’s the best person that’s came to my life, i know ppl may say to let it go and see it as a learning experience but i don’t wanna move on if it’s not me moving on by his side. i really do wanna be with him i just wanna get my head clear. i don’t know what to do, im stuck

Hi there. I’ve been having such a tough time with being agoraphobic for almost two years and then having real physical manifestations from anxiety and stress which makes everything harder. I feel so bored all the time and I feel like all I can do is watch tv and do crosswords and read and scroll. I feel like I’ve just become so afraid to do much of anything else and I’m going so slow with my erp because a lot of it feels way to overwhelming for how I am right now. It’s crazy to think there was a time before this where I was functioning so normal and so on track with things. Does anyone have any advice or suggestions for things that may help? I barely get out of bed and I’ve been dealing with dpdr that makes it so much tougher but I want to get back to how I once was. ❤️‍🩹

Hi wonderful people. I hope you’re all doing well and if not, I really hope you find a moment of peace soon. Im really glad this app exists as a safe space for people. Im just coming on here to vent, I hope thats okay. The last few days have been rough for me OCD wise. Im getting ready to drive back to university which is a really long drive, and I have to do it alone. Driving is one of my worst OCD triggers- every time I’m on the wheel of a car I have these horrid intrusive thoughts about crashing, or what would have happened if I crashed and died/killed someone, or breaking a traffic law and being arrested. I feel like I need to turn around and double check I didn’t run a stop sign and ruminate over it and it’s terrible. And I have to drive exactly the speed limit or I’ll be arrested. Idk- I try my best to manage and just take breaks when I need to but my palms sweat and my hands shake and staring at nothing for hours at a time makes for great intrusive thought breeding grounds. And because I’m stressed my other ocd issues are popping up like rocd- I’m so grateful my poor boyfriend has the patience of a stone. We’ve both grown a lot over the past few months and a lot has changed since my diagnosis- especially now that we both know my “trust issues” are a symptom of something bigger. But I go through these cycles where the goblin convinces me he’ll someday become abusive. The whole “oh she/they/he was so sweet until xyz and then I was trapped and I thought they were going to murder me.” Back before I had my diagnosis and I was having “moments” as we call them, where I ruminate and ruminate and compulse for hours while having panic attacks, he would sometimes get frustrated and stressed and yell. It was always with love, something like “I dont understand why you cant just listen to me and take care of yourself” or “you know the coping mechanisms to feel better so why dont you do them” or “what do you want me to say? That everythings going to turn out horribly?” (Reassurance seeking). I know in my heart that these were vulnerable moments coming from not know what to do or how to help, but the goblin wont shut up and stop telling me these are somehow “red flags” that someday hes going to turn and become abusive towards me. And then sometimes i compulse that if I just do xyz it wont happen, like not talk or something. Idk, Im just scared and frustrated. We’ve had conversations about the yelling and how it’s a trigger and hes been really good about stepping away when he needs a minute- especially now that we both know what “moments” really are, instead of a seemingly random psychotic break multiple times a week. Im also getting better now that I’m on meds. But gosh when the goblin pops up it just makes me crazy. Im just grateful he knows about ocd and has been so supportive throughout everything. (I feel like in post I should note that we’re partially long distance, we live 5hrs apart during the school year and see eachother on breaks. He gets frustrated and stressed when I’m having an attack and he physically cannot be there to help me.) Idk, Idk what Im really saying. I’m just quite stressed and theres a lot of goblin thoughts pingponging around my head and making quite the racket. I spun out last night in a compulsion attack and panic attack and it really stank, I don’t really remember a lot of it now. My partner was with me and it was related to both of the above and all he could do was keep me from pulling at my hair and hold me until I came out of it. I feel horrible for putting him through all of this but I’m also so grateful. Idk, everything’s just so stressful right now. If any of you read to this point thank you, I’m sorry this was so long, I just really needed to explode out into the anonymous void. Thanks again

Hi group, My pre teen daughter deals with constant nausea. She said she felt it for the longest time, however, it wasn't until the start of 2025 that it began to control her life. This led to panic attacks when going to school and not wanting to go to places that were too far from home. She doesn't even want to sleep over her grandparent's house, or friend's houses. It got so bad she missed the last 3 weeks of school, amongst other things we have never seen in her before. She is taking some meds, but they aren't helping with the nauseous feeling like we hoped. Anybody else face a constant nausea feeling that brings about a level of anxiety and panic? The idea of getting tested for food allergies was brought up, which does make sense. -Thanks-

Hey, everyone! Really struggling with my health ocd, again :/ I am stuck on the fear of a brain tumor as I have been having tension (I think) headaches lately. (Which I’m sure my anxiety is making worse due to holding my body tight). I am just feeling quite discouraged and could use some encouragement.

this is a long post, so just skip to the bottom if you only want to see my question pocd has been one of my themes for about 15 yrs now. i used to be so scared i would hurt a kid or that i was sexually attracted to kids which was reinforced by groinals. i'm at the point now where i know without a doubt that i'm not sexually attracted to kids and will never hurt a kid, and i very rarely get groinals anymore however since i overcame that part of pocd, now my ocd has latched hard onto worrying other ppl will think i'm a p*. for example, yesterday i was carrying my paddleboard to the boat launch, and a grandpa and his granddaughter were walking near me. i purposefully wasn't looking in their direction, but then the guy commented on my paddleboard. the girl started talking to me too about how she also had a paddleboard and was telling me all about it and i responded enthusiastically to her comments, like "heck yea," and "that's awesome." the guy was still included in the conversation and i replied to him enthusiastically as well. when we got to the boat launch, i told them to have a good day and the guy said "yea you too" and my ocd was immediately like "he thought that interaction was so weird, he probably thinks you're a p*" when i got in the water, i purposefully made sure i was rowing in the opposite direction of them (which conveniently was the direction i planned on going anyway). occasionally i would glance back to see where they were to make sure he didn't think i was following them and my ocd was like "he knows you're staring at her bc he thinks you're a predator." so i made a show of looking behind me in the other direction to make it seem like i was just looking around. i tried to ground myself and focus on the water and my breathing and used my erp skills and within a few minutes they were completely off my mind i'm wondering if anyone else has had a similar experience with overcoming the main obsession just to have the ocd double down on a different part of the theme? how did you handle it? i know i'll be able to overcome this just like i overcame my previous compulsions, but rn i'm frustrated that i worked so hard and my ocd pretty much laughed and gave me the finger lol

I want to ask your opinion about this cause I start to feel bad and not enjoying my hobby. I like music and I'm currently learning to play on a guitar but I don't really have time to do it every day just for now but I would like to be able to play music. For a while now I write lyrics, I really enjoy it, I started doing it when I was in 10th grade, so like 6-7 years, and I really enjoy it, and a year ago I found out about Ai and that you can make music with it. So I tried it and since then I made alot of songs and I really enjoyed it, it helps me to use my writing talent as for now, until I learn to play on an instrument, but to be fair, for some songs I would need a band to set it into music cause I can't do all that, and findig a band is hard. I uploaded some songs, I made videoclips too and that was my work, I did it, the only thing that I used ai for was setting my lyrics into music. And the problem is that I got alot of hate cause now it's a trend that you have to hate ai(while everyone is using chatgpt...) and some way I understand it, I don't want ai to take people's jobs, and some people use ai for bad things, just go on facebook and you will see alot of stupid things, but I feel like what I do is much different cause I use my talent, and the lyrics are written by me. If that would be written by ai too then you could say that its pretty untalented. I say this btw cause I got called untalented by someone and it really made me feel bad... So because of this hate towards ai content I don't feel motivated to do any songs and I feel like i'm a bad person cause i'm support something that takes other people jobs... I want to hear your opinion about this. BTW: My plan is that if I ever get a band or learn to play on many instruments, I want to redo these songs so it will be played by a real person, not ai. I'm also open to give it to others, I would like to be a music producer, and writing lyrics to people, but as for now I can't do these things... But I think Ai really helped me using my talent...

In hindsight, I’ve had OCD my entire life. However, it began to be extremely distressing around August of 2017. I began to have intrusive thoughts and obsessions around health and harm/ losing control. Since 2017, I have had OCD pop in and out of my life. I thought I was losing my mind, but was always told that I just had “anxiety”. This anxiety was irrational! It was nothing like the anxiety my friends experienced. 7 years later, August of 2024, I was finally diagnosed with OCD. That is when I began my ER/P journey. E/RP and NOCD have helped me regain control of my life. I no longer engage in avoidance, due to fear. I embrace uncertainty. I can now sleepover my friend’s houses, travel, watch scary movies, and listen to true crime podcasts… things I once loved to do before OCD convinced me they were dangerous. I am forever grateful for this journey and for NOCD!

Whenever I get in an argument I can never tell if I’m exaggerating, being over the top, or if I’m being reasonable. I can’t tell if I’m standing up for myself or if I’m being stubborn. It feels like I either think I’m wrong and stupid and bad for being wrong, or I’m right and everyone else is wrong, stupid and bad…