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My dad knows I have been having a super hard time of it and am basically at my wits end with my ocd. He sent me this tonight. This is why no matter how much I want to give up, I never will: "Just wanted you to know that I am sitting here in the living room and am looking at that absolutely magnificent picture of you and me at the wedding. It is so beautiful! Honey, I want you to know that I am here for you and that I will fight hard for/with you to overcome our concern. We have to dig in and really battle this. I am right here with you. You can't give up; I will fight with you. It would kill me if you ever give up! We CAN'T GIVE UP! Remember, there is nothing we can do that can't be done I will take you ANYWHERE to get help. I love you and I need you. Always, Dad."

I feel that I have lost connection to my life and myself. My life seems to be lived through compulsions and senseless thought & my emotions are not in line. Has anyone experienced a feeling of emotional detachment where your emotions are out of wack? Is there anything you have done to combat that?

I’m sad. I keep thinking about things that have gone wrong in my life. The job I loved that I lost. The girl I tried to save but couldn’t. The fact that I’ll never be a therapist like I wanted to be. :/

Has anyone ever dealt with false memories after a night out drinking with friends? Thinking you may have done something so against your morals?

Any HOCD sufferers around? I’m sorry for posting so much but I am in a dark place. I just got married and my HOCD has flared dramatically. I try not to post to lower my anxiety but I had a sex dream with a woman and have started once again to doubt myself. The idea of hurting my husband bc he’s my best friend not someone I love bc I’m gay is haunting me. I don’t have it in me to fight anymore. I’m seeing a therapist but it’s so hard to do erp when I have been aroused by that stuff in the past. So it’s like confirming I’m a lesbian. I’m going insane. Any help, at all. Or advice is deeply needed.

ocd for 10 years is this too long to recover

I just read a gay story on Reddit linked to hocd and he said he turned out gay and at the start he would do tests and stuff like that and want to be with girls, this has triggered me and now I think I’m gonna be like that cause, the thoughts are convincing me that I like them ( gay sex) even tho it made me feel sick and disgusted

I’m having trouble again with when I find someone cute that I see in public I begin thinking that I dont like my boyfriend because of the fact that I find someone else attractive. I start to question the validity of my feelings and our relationship and man it sucks. Does anyone else experience this? What do you do to combat it?

How do y’all get over the dark days? Because it’s this constant anxiety and thoughts. The last several days have been bad.

When I say you want to be X, it doesn't feel right anymore. The thoughts made me so numb that it feels like I'd be better off with what my thoughts are telling me which sucks. At the beginning, I was like I want to be straight, but now, it doesn't feel right :(((

think one of the most scariest feelings is feeling like you want the thoughts or like them in anyway it’s awful and disgusting

I've been really struggling for five years with a theme after I received intensive ERP. OCD knows my weakest point and it's therapy & recovery. I do care a lot about beating OCD and the OCD knows that. It's throwing out demands in the disguise of exposure & it's really hard to know what's therapy & what's OCD. Sometimes I'll even question whether or not I have listened and following through on it's "exposure" instructions, which then I'll go back to check if I did listen. Of course that doesn't help. My character is being destroyed by this, constant instructions that if something bothers me as me, or I don't like it, that it's OCD and I need to habituate to it, when in reality, it's just something I don't like. I really wish there was a therapist in my area who could help me navigate through this. I agree that keeping it simple is key. I do wish somehow this were easier to convey to a therapist. No matter what the OCD content, it should be about letting yourself experience the obsession & not performing the compulsion. Not actually doing what's inside the obsession, which is where my OCD warps everything. Really struggling and really need help.

Guys I think I’m just now a pedo. I just want to kill my self i’ve been thinking about how this is literally my one and only life that I get and that it is possibly one of the shittiest ones filled with a never ending OCD cycles that has lasted for decades. I’m sad that I have to do all this goddamn ERP the rest of my life and have to do maintenance forever and have to do all these fucking work on top of the work a normal person has to do. All I ever feel is rage and frustration and depression and I’m on an antidepressants. I hate my life it’s honestly not worth living anymore I have no skills I had to drop out of college because of this, I can’t be around kids anymore because I genuinely feel like I want to touch them, i’ve hated almost every job that I’ve worked and can only get jobs that I hate and I’m absolutely god awful at them, and I haven’t really fully been attracted to people my own age in a year I can’t even look at porn and get off on it anymore. Also, before anyone asks, yes I’m in ERP and guess what shit ain’t working and in fact it’s starting to convince me that I really am what I feared all along. I’m supposed to start a partial hospitalization program but that got taken away because of COVID-19 stipulation bullshit. And I have to start looking for another one that’s probably way more expensive. honestly I’m not even sure that’s gonna work. I don’t wanna live long enough to see myself become a monster. Fuck everything I hate my life!!!

Hi guys, I'm supposed to take my first exam in a week and a bit. However, I'm not ready at all. I haven't revised properly and I know there is a great chance for me to fail it (as well as the other ones unfortunately). I really wanted to spend the following week revising and studying as much as possible (I know it shouldn't be like this but I have no other choice at the moment). But I'm afraid I won't be able to do it. The main reason for that is the intensity of the feelings of shame and guilt (and disgust towards myself) I'm currently dealing with. I keep having this thought in my head that I'm a terrible, terrible person for doing certain things. I also keep having the thought that I should be in prison or that I will go there in the close future. No matter how hard I try to acknowledge these feelings and accept them as they are, I still feel very miserable; I feel like the most disgusting, perverted person that ever existed in this world (I know I'm exaggerating but that's what it feels like). There is this immense (emotional) pain in my body that I don't know how to deal with. It makes me feel suicidal. Most of the days I keep thinking how I don't want to spend another day on this planet, and what a relief it would be to end this pain. I know I've been given such great advice so many times, which I'm really thankful for, and I should use that to try and start working with my problems by myself, but I still don't know how to do it, so that's why I'm asking for your help once again. I'm sorry for starting this post so lightly but ending in such a sad, upsetting note. Thank you for reading this.

Hello everyone hope everyone is doing well despite the circumstances

ERP homework: wash hands no more than 20 seconds. ... I just washed my hands multiple times. Washed the soap bottle. Cleaned the toilet. Drowned it in disinfectant. Touched my clothes the wrong way. Wanted to change them. Can’t get them off without them touching my whole body and this contaminating my whole body. Decided that meant I needed to shower. And then—I thought of all the “Face your fears” advice and “Sit with the discomfort!” preaching I’ve done on here. SO I am sitting here, unwashed, unchanged, contaminating my chair, for *you guys.* lol. And for me. I appreciate NOCD and the community on here. Thanks for what you do. ❤️

PLEASE not reassurance but just advice I am scared.. I realized one if my biggest issues is feeling stuck, and purposely feeling this way like as if im some stubborn punk who wont do erp and wont get better then leaving myself in a panic mode of stuckness for life. How do I do ERP or CBT for this, I bounce from harm which isnt as bad because I know I wont do it, to then this obessesion which I cant seem to get around, I know uncertainty is the answer but anytime I try to look into cbt / erp i get thoughts to stop and to not do it etc, I just tried doing research and immediately started to freak out because I cant tell what my persona is and if I will be able to recover.. just due to my own self keeping me stuck.. please help.. I am freaking out because I will never be able to escape my own mind and I am making this way worse for myself

All the Christians on this app, drop your instagrams (if you want). I really need other Christians to talk to who also struggle with religious ocd and doubt ?

i need help, if ANYONE can give me guidance PLEADE. I NEED IT. im a minor, i cannot tell my parents about these intrusive thoughts im having, so i cant get a therapist, nor can u get a diagnosis. im scared i am a pedophile. i experienced a groinal feeling a couple days ago when i saw a picture of a little kid. I DID NOT REALIZE IT WAS A LITTLE KID AT FIRST, and i when i did i freaked out. i even unfollowed the acc i saw the child on. im so scared im a pedophile. i cant live like this. what if i am but im in denial? i cant do this. ive experienced something like this before so i think i might have OCD. i was constantly online looking for answers for the thought. i was constantly confessing the thoughts to my ex (the thoughts were about him) and im just terrified. AND THEN, MY BRAIN KEEPS ON SAYING “well if you are a pedo, its okay no one knows” BUT I DONT WANT TO BE LIKE THIS. I DONT WANNA THINK ALL THIS. i wanna be normal. i wanna be a care free teenager. This whole POCD thing started about a week ago, but the last two days ive been calmer and THATS been worrying me. im not worrying as much and it gives me so much anxiety. i keep on repeating to myself, “im not a pedophile, im not a pedophile”. what do i do? ive also been avoiding children and anything sexual because i dont want to look at then inappropriatly and feel anything. i dont want to see anything sexual because i dont want to think of any kids. it worries me when im not worrying. ALSO, i keep on getting groinal responses AT EVERYTHING. is that my anxiety?? ill even feel a tingle all day if im focused on it? does it have anything to do with actual attraction??? im just so scared. PLEASE GIVE ME GUIDANCE

Does anyone feel like they are getting better like I genuinely feel a little bit less anxious than other days but deep down I feel super uncomfortable with the thoughts but I’m not reacting to them as much and then it’s so hard to not believe them at times because the possibility of them being true is still there and you’re like yeah that could be possible but you know what’s true because before this you didn’t think twice about your sexuality and you just want the thoughts to go away so you can feel yourself again but then you’re like but what if they go away and then I turn into what I fear like I don’t want to “turn gay” because I don’t feel comfortable being with the same sex since it feels wrong for me personally not that there’s anything wrong with being gay and you were never homophobic before and you still don’t feel like you are but basically I’ve just always felt attraction to the opposite sex since forever but your thoughts go “okay but you could’ve been faking it the whole time” and yeah that could be a possibility but then you remember when you used to fantasize about the opposite sex either when you were younger or recently and those feelings felt more real than this because now when I look at the same sex all i feel is anxious and uncomfortable and no attraction just really uncomfortable because my thoughts are saying “what if you are attracted to her” with less reaction from me lately and then you’re like that’s ridiculous I can’t just “turn gay” because normally when they go away your true self would remain right logically speaking the reason why I’m doubting myself is because of these thoughts right so then you’re frustrated that they are still there but you aren’t reacting as much to them so that’s like a good sign right but then you’re sad that you still have the thoughts because before this they weren’t even a problem to begin with and you’re sad because since the thoughts are still there it confuses you and you don’t really know if you still feel attraction to the opposite sex anymore because even thought the anxiety is way less than before you still feel anxious and worried and then you get frustrated again bc if you were to encounter a thought like this in the past like “am I gay” you would answer no or dismiss it and then it would fade away and you would go back to doing whatever you were doing because this was never even a question to begin with it was meaningless because it was like asking yourself something so basic about yourself like if you had brown hair “what if I don’t have brown hair?” That’s seemingly a dumb question at least for me it would be and this wasn’t even a big deal for me personally before because I was never “boy crazy” like I never felt the NEED to have a boyfriend and that is a common thing my brain likes to use as fuel for my doubts but I’ve had several crushes and fantasized in the past about men and male celebs but now you feel like you’re stuck even when you’re doing things it feels like you’re being held back and in the end you just feel sad because you really don’t feel yourself and I don’t know if this is just me sorry for the rant needed to get this off my chest lol