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Ok. Here it goes. I’ve had OCD (one theme or another) my whole life. It would come and go. I have a wonderful and devoted husband and two beautiful little kids. Around my 35th birthday (6 weeks ago) I snapped. My panic and intrusive thoughts broke through the medication I had been on since I was 19. I got hot and tingly, couldn’t stop crying, felt like wretching all over the place. I called a crisis hotline and they gave me Ativan (.5mg) as well as 40mg of Prozac. The first few weeks I felt like I was winning the battle. Some days I would just be able to scoot by with 3 Ativan, other days 5 or 6. I was figuring I only needed the Ativan until the Prozac took effect. Fast forward to a week ago, my anxiety and thoughts (which would only spike at mid afternoon or evening) began as soon as I woke up. I called my psychiatrist after it became so bad I couldn’t take it. The nurse then dropped my Prozac down to 20mg and prescribed me busiprone at 10mg 2x a day. I spent a few nights at my parents’ house thinking the triggers would be less and I could clear my head. The thoughts kept coming. “You don’t love your husband, you should leave. You’re trapped. You don’t love your children. Your life is a lie.” Over and over. I’m trying to wean myself off the Ativan as I know it can be addictive. So far I haven’t taken any today. I haven’t eaten more than a piece of toast (that I have to choke down). I’m shaking and feel sick. My OCD has now morphed into harm/self harm ocd now. I had such a great conversation with my husband last night where I was honest and open about my thoughts. I cried the whole time while he held my hand and said, “I’m not going anywhere.” I felt better for about an hour or two afterwards but then it all came roaring back at 10:30 before I tried to go to bed. It’s gotten so bad I’m afraid to be around my 4.5 year old and 12 month old. My NOCD diagnostic appt isn’t until Thursday. I feel like screaming and tearing my skin off. I don’t know what to do. I love my family and would rather die than not have them. I have been googling to satisfy compulsions and texting my mom incessantly for reassurance. I just don’t know what to do anymore.

Why can't reassurance help me? If somebody tells me with good arguments that I'm not a pedophile, I can let it go, right?? I really can't take this anymore. I rather give myself a painful death than being a pedophile. I hate my life..

everything feels so forced in my relationship with my boyfriend. our love. our sex. our kisses. just everything. i overthink everything. like i know i wouldn’t be having sex with him if i was lesbian. and until these thoughts emerged i was loving our sex i was addicted. now it feels like i’m forcing myself to do it but i don’t know. our kisses feel different now, the thoughts always say “you should be kissing a girl not him” and it messes up the mood. i question if i do even love him at this point. i had a good relationship the first 2 months and then it just went downhill from there, it’s just so difficult i don’t know what to do. i feel like breaking up with him every single day and it makes me so sad i can’t even get up. what if i’m so depressed because i should be with a woman instead?? but why would i hate these thoughts. i don’t even get aroused by them as much anymore. but i can’t masturbate unless and actually cum unless i’m thinking of lesbian sex. it’s awful. i’m lost.

Hi, I'm so, so sorry for my second post in a day but I really felt like I need to share this with someone. So, I usually have questions about POCD. But this time it's about something different. Okay, here goes: I've started work 3 hours ago and since then I have thoughts about hurting people that I work with. I know, I absolutely know that what I'm going to say will sound immature, but for some reason I have this feeling that some of my colleagues have started to dislike me. I really hope that this is just my social anxiety playing with me but it truly feels like they've changed their behaviour towards me; they seem to be colder to me and treating me like I've done something really bad. Again, I am probably wrong but there is a gut feeling that I can't ignore. Well, for some reason, in my head, it feels like I want to hurt these people for not liking me anymore. I know, this is just so stupid! Makes no sense! None! And the worst thing is that it feels absolutely true. There is no anxiety. I feel like a serial killer. I'm really panicking as I don't know what all this means. I just want to go home and cry but I can't, I have a few more hours to do. I don't think that having the thoughts is my problem. The feelings similar to desire and no anxiety are my problems. Also, the thoughts were not intrusive at all. It's like I was planning crimes in my head. I'm really, really sorry. I feel really ashamed. I'm currently on my break and I have to go back in 2 minutes but I'm too scared and ashamed to do so. Please, be honest. If you think there is a chance that this could be something more than OCD, please let me know. I will accept the truth as it is. Again, I'm really sorry. I don't know why I am like this. Thank you for reading this, and I really hope that you can help me!

What is it like to be a parent with OCD? Is it hard to focus on the kids? (not pregnant and won’t be anytime soon, just genuinely curious)

Linking thoughts to every day actions. This is something I have been unable to find much information about. My OCD attaches to every day actions. It started as I’m worried I’ll deliberately act out a thought and then moved on to that I now imagine that *ordinary action* is doing the *OCD fear*. Linking the thoughts with actions makes it feel so real and like I have “done something”. Examples - Intrusive thought - canibalism Link to every day action - thought that food I’m eating is a person Intrusive thought - touching someone inappropriately Link to every day action - any movement with fingers - thought that the action is like touching someone Intrusive thought - oral sex Link to every day action - any movement of tongue is like performing oral sex Does anybody have any exposure suggestions? Many thanks in advance.

Does anyone have any tips for sharing a room with others? I start college next year, and I’m nervous about having a roommate and dealing with perfectionism compulsions.

Can someone name some common rocd thoughts please?

Also this may not be ocd related, I’m not really sure. Talking to my friend, we are both 23. I asked them if they ever still feel like a teenager. And they said not really. Sometimes but not really. They talked about how they finally wanna figure out what they should do with their life. I got just, really scared. I have this existential dread as I get older and tho 23 is young I still feel old. I involuntarily age regress to a younger age and I guess I feel alone in that. Even my friends still feel like kids or teens to me but they’re all adults. It’s hard to remember. I’m also just sad and scared because like, I’m scared I won’t be able to go trick or treating anymore soon. Have sleepovers. I’m afraid my friends will all get married and live their own lives. I’m trying to work on these deep issues in therapy but even when I talk it through with my therapist I feel hopeless about it because it’s all things out of my control. I fear of being alone. I don’t want to get married, I don’t like romance, I don’t want kids. But I still want to be apart of a family. People I go home to every day and feel that security and safety and permanence I felt as a child. A lot of my adulthood even in hs has been nothing but trauma and bad things so that’s what I associate adulthood with. Add that with everything else I am just a mess of a human being. I’m scared my friends despite being my age are all too old for me. Like they’re all moving on and I’m stuck behind. I’m scared my parents are old and my mother has Alzheimer’s and I get intrusive thoughts about them leaving all the time. I replace my trauma from 4 years ago with instead of my grandmother my intrusive thoughts make it my parents. It hurts. I have trouble caring for myself and I’m trying my best I really am. I just want to be loved by a parental figure and I’m scared of that going away. I just do not want to be alone. Trauma, OCD, Depression, BPD, possible autism. All of these things. I’m trying to navigate it all. I’m just tired. I feel really alone and it feels like no one understands. People don’t understand sometimes my brain just goes back to 2006 as a way to protect me. People don’t get it. And my ex best friend of 10 years leaving me last year bc of me doing a bunch of shitty things has hurt bc she felt like that familial love to me. It’s my fault she walked away. I just hate how ocd and bpd combined make me obsess about her even after almost a year later. I’m scared everyone will leave me eventually. That’s just how life is. Everyone will go home to their own families and who will I go home to eventually? Room mates that are just friends who can leave any time once they get their lives together? Idk. My mind is just going 100 miles a minute. Sorry I just needed to vent. I needed to get it all out I guess. This is such a long post. I feel weird today. Nothing ever feels right anymore.

I don't know :( ..... there's just too much evidence and the urges feel so damn real. im so convinced at this point that i don't even know what i ACTUALLY want. even if i say i want boys, "what if i don't?" appears and my chest tightens

So I have HOCD, along with ROCD and perfectionism. I am 25 and I believe the onset was roughly when I was 12-13. I struggled with intrusive thoughts about the same sex (however filed them under the “everyone gets them” until my brain said “maybe you are gay”) and being an athletic person who was involved in team sports with the same gender made it even harder. I went away from team sports when I was 16. All my life I had bullying at school and at home about being gay because I wasn’t like my older brother, because I didn’t like to get hurt, because I liked performing arts and because I liked having females as friends. I was interfered with by my next door neighbour who was a male as I thought it was “just what friends do”. The intrusive thoughts continued however it made it hard. I was in two serious relationships where my ocd attached itself to and it made it hard. Now my brain uses it as evidence of that I am gay and opposite sex relationships is a waste of time because I’ll just come out as gay and waste their time. My attraction to women has gone both romantic and aesthetic attraction and my brain convinces me I never had it. Like I can’t remember what it feels like. I was exposed to porn very young and escalated to finding same sex “gay” porn arousing at first I didn’t like it but I habitualise myself to it, which turned into an addiction (I struggle to stop) which also messes me up more. Now I’m 25 all my friends are settling down and having families and I am still battling what I hope is HOCD. I question whether it is even hocd or whether it is just me in denial. I’ve tried accepting the thoughts but I couldn’t so I settled for bi because “it’s the best of both worlds” and I don’t have to act on my gay intrusive thoughts. Though the intrusive thoughts are with every male that I see. I am honestly feeling lost and don’t know what to do. I know reassurance is bad but someone help a OCD brother out. It’s my first time posting.

Shoudl I apologize for something I did when I was younger? I've posted about it before-- my sister was sleeping, and I put her hand in my breast. I was 10, she was 7 or 6. I feel like I should go to jail for what I did. A part of me even wants to convince my therapist that I did something wrong. I deserve to be punished, I feel like. Too many mistakes and slip ups in the past. How do I move on from mistakes that happened that hurt other people?

I feel like my POCD is getting out of hand. Not only am I having thoughts daily. But anything that is associated with children (colors, toys, or clothing) I get immediate triggers, intrusive thoughts, false feelings of attraction. I sometimes even feel like I'm a pedophile because of the way these thoughts make me feel. I'm worried since I no longer show the thoughts emotion, it means that I'm becoming what I fear to become. Help me.

I don't know if this is a normal ocd thing, but I'll have a disturbing thoughts sometimes and I'll know they are horrible but sometimes all I feel is higher anxiety and not the disgusted feeling I should.

I can’t stop checking for myself on porn sites. I’ve never been blackmailed and I’ve never had proof of anyone secretly taping me, but since it does happen to people all the time, I always fear someone planted a hidden camera in the past or maybe I was black out drunk and was filmed. When I get relief from one check I’ll think of another word or combo of words with my name or a description and I feel another urge to check. Sometimes I go weeks without checking and then I’ll just remember randomly and get the urge again. When it’s really bad I go for like an hour checking. It’s horrible. I know it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack, but i always think I’m gonna find something or I need to dig deeper and on more pages to find it. Then seeing what’s actually on the porn sites makes it worse. There are so many people being taped without knowing. There are so many “hidden camera” videos. So disturbing.

I feel like a monster, how can I debate thoughts that say I'd hurt my pets or loved ones? I don't deserve them at all.

#harmocd This is the most uncomfortable sensation in the entire world. It first started with me having a random thought of “I could hurt my dog so many ways right now” I instantly felt this weight on my chest and internal distress that I cannot explain. Now, I feel uncomfortable being around my boyfriend of 7 years because I feel that I will really hurt him although I know I won’t. It is an internal battle that Is absolutely crippling. I can’t help but question “Am I really a psychopath? Do I really want to kill my boyfriend?” Just writing this I feel crazy. I even catch myself caressing him and touching him more just to assure myself that I won’t hurt him. I feel like this is taking over my life. I wake up with immediate anxiety without any thoughts. I feel more anxiety then I even do the thoughts and If I forget for a split second, it rushes back to the surface and I am crippled again. Can anyone please share some advice. I can’t take this.

I need someone to calm me down. I was reading an article about a celebrity pedophile and the accusations against him by his daughter. When I read outloud to the person I was with, what his daughter said he did I got a really heavy groinal response. Different to any other that I've ever had. I want to die. I don't want to be a gay pedophile. Please help.

Who knows that you have OCD?

TW pedophilia I know you lot aren’t professionals, but I need serious advice. In the past I would imagine myself doing sexual things with a teenager to see how I would feel and generally I would go “ew no”, but now it feels like I would. I’m worried that I would do things with a teenager when just a few days ago I would have told my brain that I absolutely would not because I’m not attracted to them. I know false attraction is a thing. I feel like my brain has taken “pedophiles feel good about their pedophilia and since you experience anxiety about it you don’t” and made it into “now you don’t feel anxiety and maybe you’d enjoy it”. I don’t want this. It fee unrealistic that I would make such a 180 in under 24 hours, but I feel convinced that I am a pedophile. I don’t know what to do and my appointment isn’t until the week after next. I just want some insight to see if anyone has heard of this phenomena or experienced it themselves.