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Hi Everyone. I am a 27 years old married straight man. Month and a half ago I had an intrusive thought that I am gay. I started having intrusive thoughts. I started reading the book “Overcoming unwanted intrusive thoughts”. It was very good for a while I started practicing. I started exposing myself. It got very confusing , it would say you have to accept , let the thoughts come. I would do it, but then again it will say Ignore them and dont do any entanglement. Right now I am in the worst state of my mind, I can not think clearly, Like I dont know how to think , or cant keep calm in my mind, my mind is always asking questions etc. Cant even focus always scared of that there might be a thought. I started ignoring thoughts and suppressing them. It started physical pain in my head. I dont know how can I feel better, I am literally in a very poor state and cannot take it anymore.

Anyone who suffers from intrusive sex thoughts available to talk? I was getting better, but I’m really struggling right now. :(

Hi , I am so afraid of everything. Last night I had a panic attack and a feeling of derealisation. I was so scared of death and couldn't sleep. I also have OCD symptoms every single day for 5 years now. I think I might have to visit a psychologist.

Yesterday my brother opened the garbage door on me after I just got out of the shower and out clean clothes on. I mentioned it before. I reminded him that it is something that bothers me even before o had ocd, of people opening doors and drawers on me without saying excuse me so I can get out of the way. He also wiped his hands in my towels and said oops like he didn’t care. He knows i want the hand towels being used and not my personal towels. He said I demand when I get triggered rather than requesting. However I have a feeling he’s trying to okay doctor and do things that bother me. I’m triggered to wash the towel out of retaliation.

I’m really freaking out right now. I read in an article that a lot of p*dos have low IQ and I just did an IQ test online and got an extremely low score. I don’t care if i’m not intelligent I just don’t want to be a bad person. I remember in school I liked more creative subjects like English but did really bad with logic-based subjects like Math and Science. I never did well in exams but just thought that since I didn’t apply myself that that’s what it was. I’m really really scared and anxious right now. I really regret taking the test and now I’m scared that it’s proven that my fears are real.

Suicidal. Please help. Was just making progress and then my mind was like, what if you can send people your intrusive thoughts by having one and thinking about them at the same time. So now I have an intrusive thought and my mind is like “you just sent that to X person” saying your a predator or murderer and now they know! What the fuck. Also I can almost “feel” the thoughts leaving my head area and travelling to that person and i am tapping my head to stop it, checking with people to see if their mad, or not my friend anymore and screaming over the thoughts in my head so none of them “get sent”! Is this OCD? I can’t find anybody who has the same experience is this magical thinking mixed with harm I don’t know anymore I’m spiritual too so it feels like that’s playing into this! Just wanna die

I’ve been working really hard at ERP/Mindfulness/ACT and wanted to share notes I’ve been taking for what’s helped me. Sorry for the overwhelming length! 1. You can’t lose to OCD if you know what it’s doing ahead of time or during. (Ex: reading a triggering article for exposure and saying “okay OCD I know you’re going to twist and manipulate this to make it seem real but I’m not reacting”) 2. You can’t control what goes on in your brain, but you can control how to react 3. The importance of response prevention: once you practice it starts to become second nature instead of the compulsions. Even noticing you’re doing a compulsion (hmm, I think I’m analyzing right now, I’m going to shift my focus here) is progress. 4. A big part of overcoming TERRIBLY intrusive thoughts and makes them less powerful or less frequent is when I hold it in my head and let pass without caring if they’re there or not or never knowing forsure if they mean or don’t mean something (hardest thing to do ever!) this comes from Graysons book on Accepting Uncertainty 5. Its my choice to not monitor and do a compulsion. At first it annoyingly seems like you always have to be on guard and in the zone ready for OCD to strike, but I’d rather that than be down compulsion lane. 6. I can live with discomfort and still do another task. 7. Do not be disappointed w the ups and down. Bounce back. Plan for triggers. (I notice an increase in thoughts at night and started telling myself “I can’t wait for OCD to come back tonight!”) 6. Most of the time, fighting a compulsion feels anxiety ridden or a spike or hard. Do it anyway. 7. Going in with a strong mentality (no matter how crappy or believable my thoughts feel I’ll wake up every morning saying I’m choosing not to believe you today!) even if I felt a spike of anxiety I’d try my best. Even if you disregard 10% of thoughts that day and 20% the next it’s progress. (Ali Greymond podcasts) 8. Predict !!!!! Where will I be triggered? And when it happens you won’t be so shocked 9. Intrusive thoughts related to my theme are just a good practice now for disregarding/response prevention. “thanks brain for sending me these thoughts” *moving on* it’s a choice to believe or not. 10. Actually believing I CAN recover- you don’t HAVE to overthink these. The doubt of having OCD or OCD about OCD is REAL and something I still struggle with. But it doesn’t have to be that way, you can still show your brain you’re in control. 11. 99% of the time your anxiety dies down later in the day and you’re able to think rationally (not to be used as reassurance but rather motivation to delay compulsions) 12. For me, exposures or triggers that happen randomly or in real life instead of me planning them are HARD. It was just this week that I started to address these the same way as other planned exposures: response prevention always wins! 13. Choose to not believe/Choose uncertainty(“okay maybe I’m my worst fear OCD and you can keep screaming at me, but I’m going to do what’s best for me and make my best choice right now even if im wrong in the future”)- even if you have no confidence and are filled with doubt it will come back eventually with practice.

"False memories in pOCD" I don't know what to do anymore... How to shut up my mind... I feel like I am trapped. I've gained a false memory that I masturb- thinking of a child, the same child that caused my pocd to appear for the first time. I'm almost certain that I never did it but at the same time I can't let go! I am considering taking my life because this is too painful to endure

I’ve been having intrusive thoughts of becoming paranoid schizophrenic ever since my cousin committed suicide in March and it’s been destroying me mentally beacause I’ve heard of all the symptoms and I’m scared to have them and have been having thoughts of paranoia ever since I’m currently only diagnosed with OCD intrusive thoughts anxiety and depression I get thoughts that people with that illness might get ever since I was researching it and it’s been hell

Hey, just wanted to share an accomplishment with you guys. i’ve finished 100 exposures. it took me 7-8 months. 3637 minutes total, so a little over 60 hours. my life has changed so much. feel free to ask me anything too ? thanks guys and keep it up

So I did my second therapy appointment and I'm just so hopeless. These "intrusive" feelings if that is what they are I just can't handle it. I can't handle the possibility of being bi. I can't. I'm trying but I cant. The fact that it could change at any time too and that I'll never known for certain is the worse. I just don't know what to do anymore. She had me write a narrative to read every time the thoughts come up and that I'll have some form of clarity after I recover. I dont want to know if I'm bi because I know that is what is going to happen. There is no way I can come out of here straight. No way. That thought alone is enough to keep me stuck. She also said if I'm really distressed and want to compulse to go brush my teeth or to sing the Happy Birthday song to cheer myself up. Don't even know if that will work.

I mope around for days and barely do anything besides sleep, eat and shower. That is the bare minimum. Not working. I’ve been on this app a lot today. I can’t stop ruminating over bad things I have done and just lay in bed thinking about all of them. I am so depressed, literally everything is a trigger. I can barely go about my day without thinking of a bad thought. Some days I try to push through them. I just feel like the absolute worse person. I’ve lost desire for everything. I probably need to stay busy and stay on a schedule. But OCD has ruined everything!

Can I please talk to someone?? I'm extremely anxious tonight :(

My therapist said I have OCPD as well as OCD and it sent me in a downward spiral to where I had a hard time sleeping last night. Now I think I’m having intrusive thoughts about OCPD and worried my therapist is damaging me. The problem is that this is sort of an unanswerable question that can fuel obsessive doubt, which I already do, but if I do have OCPD, that seems like something I would NEED to know. It’s like a catch 22 for OCD, because ‘needing to know’ is a problem, but not knowing whether I have OCPD or not has big implications, I would imagine, on my treatment/prognosis. If anyone has useful suggestions on how to deal with this it’d be a huge help, because maybe these are just new intrusive thoughts and I just need to do an exposure on it, or maybe I need a another professional opinion.

I had very obvious and observable behavioral symptoms of OCD as a child and young adult but I didn’t realize how it has manifested itself as an adult. After a very emotionally abusive dynamic in my last long-term where my obsessive thinking and compulsive researching led me to expose a terrible fraud and even cope with the fallout of leaving him. It had been almost exactly a year and I was still researching and digging and exposing more fraudulent info about my ex. I was about 6 months into a wonderful new relationship that we took very slowly (he waited 4 months only texting with me until I was ready). At about one year from when I started uncovering my ex’s cons, I began obsessively looking for flaws, lies and infidelity in a wonderful man. And on the one year mark almost to the date, i hurt him so terribly when I randomly just sabotaged over the course of about 2 days with my suspicions that he couldn’t get past it. He took about two weeks to try to start over with me and I just kept making it worse. It’s been two months now yet I’m still ruminating and trying to convince myself I was right and I know deep down I was wrong. I can’t fix it. He’s moved on and moved on far too quickly which validated my suspicions even though I know I’m wrong. And I’m still digging into his life like I was and can’t seem to stop. It’s been two months and he’s very happy with someone new. Now add to it that I can’t stop punishing myself. It’s dug up the trauma from my ex all over again. I just realized my medicine got messed up in my refill just two weeks before this all happened (I was supposed to be taking two smaller pills instead of my usual one larger dose pill but didn’t realize it) but its no excuse. I then realized in my overthinking that in my 30s I ended all of my relationships right before easter and in my 20s all of them right before my birthday so now I really have something all new to overthink about. I feel so overwhelmed and I feel so awful that I hurt someone. I want to make things right but I realize that’s just more of my harmful behaviour to want to fix everything and try to justify my actions. I don’t ever tell anyone about anything I’ve done because I don’t want sympathy or encouragement or placating. I am new to trying this method and i will do my best to learn from this. It was bad enough when I only sabotaged me but I hurt someone who had a very traumatic set of experiences when he was at his weakest moment and needed me most. It was my wake up call. And I’m finally ready to ask for help.

I am so afraid to get help in case it turns out I am gay. I don’t want to do anything out of fear things won’t get better and I won’t ever have a good relationship with my SO. Anyone else have these fears

So this is really hard to talk about but my past even ocd and other themes are killing me When I was a child I used to do weird things with a dog like dry hump Then in my early twenties I'm sure I remember letting the dog lick down there and I am so ashamed I cant get this memory out of my head, my family have all said to move on and to stop trying to self destruct but I cant move on I do not do this now and am not attracted to dogs at all. I love my dog and absoloutly love dogs and find them therapeutic. I just want to stop feeling like a criminal and that I'm not alone.

Does your harm ocd thoughts ever tell you you want to do the things your worried about? I always worry I’m gonna become a serial killer or just go crazy and kill people. Everytime I worry about this I go no no I don’t want to do that I’d never do that but my thoughts tell me “I do wanna do that I’m an evil person” and “I wanna kill people” these leads me to even more anxiety and I literally burst into tears everytime it’s horrible

Did my ERP for HOCD and it spiked me way up worse, obviously the goal but there was something else. Instead of making me feel better, it made me “feel” gay. Obviously you can’t feel gay and gay people don’t feel gay like we don’t wake up feeling straight but when I tell myself I’m straight I feel like I’m lying and I’m actually believing the OCD thoughts that say I’m bi/gay and thoughts about women that wasn’t there before is coming. I told my therapist and she said “it gets worse before it gets better” and I have to go through it to become better. Did ERP make anyone feel like this afterwards? Am I on the right track with this? Is this really part of the process? I don’t fully feel comfortable with my therapist yet to tell her everything but I do tell her enough and I don’t think she understood when I told her this. This feeling of it feeling like it confirmed my worse fear of doing ERP and realizing it was the truth but obviously I know it’s not but I doubt what I even really want. I have two more ERP sessions to do today but I really don’t want to do it again if I feel this low. It takes me several hours to bounce back after ERP. Any resources about ERP would be great.

Hi, I have struggled quite badly with relationship ocd for about a year now and am always getting new worries coming and going at different times. Was just wondering if anybody here ever creates situation in their head like: ‘how would I react if an ex partner or someone else wanted something to happen between us’. Even though I know I would never do anything as I am very happy with my current partner the more you question the deeper into the intrusive thoughts you get. I can tell it’s stemmed from ocd as it just randomly popped up recently and took off really quickly in my head, I still become obsessed in my mind with things like: ‘why am I thinking that’ ‘I shouldn’t think that if I’m with someone else’ even though I know it’s the ocd I find it very hard to differentiate and not ruminate. Thanks everyone