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working to conquer OCD
Does anyone feel like worry 24/7, out of reality, numb, mentally in pain, like you know smth is not right with you, even when you don't have any OCD symptoms anymore or thoughts for days ????
Hi everyone. I really need some help or just to hear from people who have been through exactly this. I'm 18 years old and I've been in a relationship for 6 months. Just last week, we celebrated my birthday. We went to his village, slept together, and everything was perfectly fine. I thought he was super sweet, and I the last week missed him whenever we weren't together. The feelings were definitely there. Suddenly, 3 days ago, when I went to his house, a question popped into my head: Do I still like him? That was the last straw. out of nowhere, I completely lost access to my feelings.I wake up and go to sleep t totally anxious I feel totally numb. I don't want to push him away because I want to be with him, but at the same time, I feel this extreme pity for him because I feel like I'm giving him "nothing" and when he shows his feelings for me and I reciprocate, I feel like I'm lying. This triggers a horrible cycle of guilt and sadness. What I'm experiencing right now is severe anxiety and panic. The thought of losing him or not having him in my life brings me deep sadness and panic, not relief. I've spent the last 5 hours crying, trembling, afraid I wouldn't recover my feelings, and longing for the past. It feels suffocating, almost like I'm forcing myself to feel something that is currently blocked. My brain keeps throwing terrible intrusive thoughts at me. Earlier, it told me it would be easier if he just broke up with me so this pressure would stop. And another one said I only want to stay with him because I'm afraid no one else will ever love me. I keep testing my mind to see if I feel anything, which just makes me more exhausted. I took Clonazepam (Rivotril) for the last couple of days to try and calm my extreme anxiety, but it obviously didn't bring my feelings back, which made me feel even more hopeless. I don't want to break up. I want my feelings back desperately. If I truly didn't care, I wouldn't be in this much agony and I would just leave. Has anyone experienced this? Did your feelings come back? Please help me and a big thanks
My intrusive thoughts seems so real about me and my girlfriend breaking up even though I really love her and I don’t want to break up with her my intrusive thought make it seem so real and now I’m starting to have anxiety thinking if this is real or if this is my true feelings going to make me feel emotionless and numb and I don’t know what to do anymore.
How do you forgive someone that has hurt you? I’m ruining a relationship because I can’t stop ruminating on what they did. My ocd has been feeding on “evidence” of what they did. They have apologized and have done work to be better but I can’t stop thinking about it. I feel like a monster incapable of letting go of the past and it’s killing me. It’s all I think of. Am I even capable of being with someone if the only thing I can see is their flaws and how they have hurt me?
Hello, I was going through a super confusing scenario. I am currently getting TMS for my depression as I feel it helped as much as it can but the main cause of my depression and episodes is truly my OCD I may have to wait a year to get treatment for TMS for OCD as this triggers me because I struggle with taking medications, I was prescribed Pristiq, I feel like I am poisoning my body because the easier option is just a couple months out and I have an ED so major fear of gaining weight on medications has not allowed me to take them recently even if the bad outweighs the good, I have OCD over this because what if I ruin my body taking medications, how much weight would I gain?? does anyone know if TMS for OCD is good for helping ocd and anxiety or is tms not even beneficial for ocd? is medication management better for OCD? I don't know the correct answer being to multiple care, therapist, doctors, physicist this week alone and they all tell me different things. I don't know who to trust or believe and I have no one to help me outside of the healthcare field I am spiraling and confused more than ever please please help thank you
So, for years now, I've been waking up with this pressure on my chest. It's like when I wake up in the morning, all the OCD-induced anxiety just kicks in again. It's hard for me some days to even just get started on my work or anything because the perfectionism and responsibility OCD is so intense it makes it hard to begin. Any advice on how you start your day with OCD to ease some of that anxiety and set yourself up for a more grounded, productive day?
Does anyone have a list or examples of “feared outcomes” for just right or perfectionism type obsessions?
Help Hi there, I’ve been dealing with a recent flare up for 2 months now, it’s destroying me. One thought has turned into an obsession about a whole topic. I’ve been testing myself with scenarios and feel nothing, just numb . I’ve been reading about the topic and feel nothing, no horror, no anger, no disgust and it’s really killing me inside . Has anyone experienced anything like this? I don’t want to be a bad person 😭
When I first started nocd like 2 months ago maybe, I told my therapist that whenever I had any intrusive thoughts or images while I pray or just in general, I make myself think about Jesus on the cross ✝️. For me, it helps me shift my focus on what He did for me and who ive taken as my faithful God and Savior. And when I told my therapist that, after a few sessions of me mentioning it she told me that although its okay to think about Jesus, that i shouldn't think about Him at the same time. And dont get me wrong, I love my therapist, she's awesome, and I just feel like i want to be able to have someone that has experience with helping people with ocd while having a God-driven perspective. Im so worried that I said something wrong or that i somehow by talking about how thinking about Jesus on the cross, that ive messed up and driven her away from God in a sense, even though I dont know her religious beliefs and I dont really plan to discuss it. Im scared cus idk if my therapist can read my post (she probably can and I think I kind of want her to) and i dont want her to think that she did anything wrong. I dont want to change her as a therapist, as in get a new one, I just want someone more God-driven (at least openly and that I can talk to). Idk if i should talk to her about this because its been on my mind since ive started therapy here. I dont want her to feel like she's failed and I dont want her to take any of this personally. Does anyone have advice?
I know I shouldn’t confess to my fiance what thoughts I have because they’re intrusive and they would just hurt him. However, I feel like I did something wrong and he needs to know :/ I’m just wondering how to keep myself from needing to confess
I've been using AI on and off for a little under a year and even though I recently stopped I can't stop feeling so guilty. I knew some of the problems it had and while I was against it for the most part, I still shamefully resorted to using it for things like roleplay and as a compulsion for OCD anxieties. I confessed some personal real-life situations to it and feel sick that my chats will be leaked and linked to me. My friends are extremely against generative AI and have said they hate people that use it, so now I feel like a hypocrite and that I'm going to be cancelled. I just don't feel like I deserve anything anymore because of this and it's been extremely difficult. I can't bring myself to make major life decisions out of fear of being found out, I avoid talking to my friends because I feel like I'm disguising myself as a good person to them, I don't feel like I deserve to be an artist and writer anymore because I used it in creative ways. I feel like my life is ruined because of this and I just don't know how to forgive myself.
I am currently taking hydroxyzine and Prozac but I feel like they aren’t really targeting my symptoms. Is there another medicine I could try that could help more? Does medicine even actually help?
Hey everyone! Long time OCD sufferer and hypochondriac here. Wanted to get some perspective from people who understand the difference between rational concern and OCD taking over. I work in an office area adjacent to a manufacturing facility that produces fiberglass materials. I've noticed dust settling on my desk regularly. I've been experiencing sore throat and chest soreness, and I've been spiraling about whether it's fiberglass related. Here's where it gets complicated - I heard about two former colleagues who worked on the production floor for 10+ years each developed lung fibrosis. So there's a real history at my workplace. EHS is incompetent - there was literally an explosion and fire at the plant recently. One department even runs an air purifier in their area, which makes me wonder if others are quietly concerned too. For context on my exposure: the last two years I've been mostly remote with maybe 40% on-site presence, no mask during that time. It's only when I recently heard about those two colleagues that I looked into it and started wearing an N95 at my cube. Nobody else in the office wears one, they either don't feel irritated or choose to ignore it. I am the only one at my desk wearing N95 looking dumb lol. But here's what I know rationally: I work in an office, not the floor. Air locked doors separate production from office. I've been wearing an N95 for three months now. I understand it's peak allergy season. My OCD is making me seek reassurance constantly and I know that's the cycle. But I genuinely can't tell where legitimate concern ends and OCD begins. Do I have lung damage from inhaling microscopic fiberglass? I really need the job so can't quit right away. This is causing me immense anxiety.
What’s your favorite ocd quote? Motivational or even just anxiety or mental health quotes? One I found recently that I really liked is “A man who fears suffering is already suffering what he fears”
Ok so I went to the bathroom yesterday but it got clogged and I made a stupid decision of trying to use a large dove soap container head and try and get it out not only did it not work it just got inside the soap pump stick so I put it in a bag and threw it in the outside dumpster but I’m worried I didn’t wash my hands well enough between the tasks I did to throw it away because I was rushing and probably/most likely didn’t use enough soap or wash long enough and I was touching doorhandles and I had to change clothes and shower and getting a bag for the stuff I’m worried I spread feral matter all over my house including bedrooms(like mine),my kitchen, my little cousins’ toys which are in the hallway I could’ve bumped into them or gotten fecal matter on them and this could get them ill when they come back over. Or worse my kitchen where we make food which could everyone in my family or guests sick I have had mini panic attacks trying to comprehend everything that could’ve happened when I was cleaning up what happened and I thought about how I basically doomed my family I didn’t tell them because I thought I was overreacting and this would be ERP but I haven’t been able to get over it. I mean I sat on a chair in my kitchen and my clothes were not clean so now the chair and the two tables in my kitchen are infected since the chair touches them. I have thought of getting a cleaner to clean the house but I’m not sure how to prepare and I’m only 17 so I’d need to ask my parent but I don’t think I wanna tell them. The chair I know people sat in and my little brother and possibly dad used that restroom and I know I sprayed the bathroom with bleach but I didn’t wipe it up just has been sitting and I could’ve missed some spots. I’m just scared my house is infected and that I’m missing a key detail to add or a section of my house I didn’t clean and is really infected. I’m terrified to even step into that bathroom or my room or use the clothes I had on the floor that I stepped on after the bathroom thing before I showered. I’m worried me, my friends, my family (especially the kids) are going to get hepatitis, e-coli, or other fecal based diseases of infections and it will last in my house forever and it will be my fault. And I don’t know if I should tell anyone.
My OCD has made my mind feel like I don’t know who I am anymore. I broke up with my girlfriend in January. I was in the inpatient for 7-8 days and something snapped in my brain. Ever since I got out I haven’t felt the same mentally. My mind gets overwhelmed easily now. I feel so broken and scared. I’m 29 years old. I’m on 250 mg of Clomipramine. I don’t feel it working anymore. My doctor told me there is no other medicine he can prescribe that would be stronger than this pill. I feel like I’m dissociated so hard right now and I haven’t been able to snap out of it for a month. Please help me 😢😔
There's been times where I had horrible pocd thoughts and I felt like I wanted to touch myself in response to them or something. Or felt intense groinal response more than my usual arousal. Like it felt like I was holding myself back even tho its so foul. And im worried that means its true. It's almost like flight or fight but I feel like im covering something up.
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OCD doesn't have to
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