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OCD Recovery -vs- Managing OCD This has recently been on my mind and I have landed on the opinion that Managing OCD is a more productive mindset for me. To me the word recovery implies cured, gone, and it is my understanding that OCD does not leave the brain, but the symptoms and effects can be managed to the point that they do not appear for long stretches of time. Therefor I believe it is not necessary for managing OCD to be the primary daily focus during those times of remission. Currently coming out of a full blown relapse with OCD symptoms about 85% reduced (from at their worst) at this point. Went thru intense ERP treatment (5 hrs a day, 5 days a week, for 8 weeks) and my symptoms were about 95% reduced for a few months, and then I had a major physical health issue. About a month after the health issue happened I realized I was almost completely back to where I started when symptoms were at there worst. Knowledge is power: With this new mindset I have written out for my self and my family a few proactive steps I can taken in the future during times of major life events, flare ups with other health issues, or if they or I notice an increase or reappearance of symptoms or behaviors associated with my OCD struggles. I sincerely believe this approach will help me catch or even prevent a potential lapse in the future, before it turns in to another full blown relapse. Just my thoughts… figured I would share if maybe it resonates with any one else too. 😊 Happy Saturday 🤘

"Ocd has no cure" isn't exactly a special case. Google any mental illness, including depression and anxiety, and it'll say there's no cure. People on here seem to think that this means we gotta live the rest of our lives just coping well but not ocd-free, which I don't think is true. All this really means is that with any mental illness it's not just "take this pill for a week and you're good to go 100% guaranteed." I used to have severe anxiety for example and now I have none, I'm not just "coping" well with the anxiety, it's actually not there anymore. I have the same intention for ocd.

I saw the most triggering post on here about someone getting ERP and becoming what they feared. I feel sick to my stomach and I am crying so much. I am about to start ERP and now OCD is telling me to stop ERP or your life will blow up. You'll lose the life you created with your partner. I am trying not to do compulsions but I feel so sick. I just sat on my bathroom floor and cried for a good 5 minutes. I'm so over everything.

Hey everybody! I hope everyone had a good day today! 😀 I was out at this pizza restaurant earlier today and I saw this skeleton with his skeleton dogs setup outside the place, lol. I thought it was funny and that I would share it with everyone in hopes that it would bring a smile to everyone's face. :) How was everyone else's day today? I hope you're all happy and healthy and that OCD hasn't been giving anyone too much trouble today. If anyone wants to talk though please feel free to comment and just talk about anything that's on your mind whether it be OCD related or just anything else going on in life. Or if anyone else just wants to share something happy or funny that they saw today please feel free to share that too! 😊

Any success stories with ROCD? Really struggling here. No reassurance, just need some hope that it will get better

Real event OCD people, how do you feel about the upcoming way to erase memories? Would you get them erased? Scientist are working on a better form of electroconvulsive therapy that doesn't get rid of good memories as well.

tw: reassurance seeking. i love my bf so much. we are long distance and i had a thought about this guy who lives close to me. i became obsessed w thinking “what if i like this other guy, what if my relationship isn’t good enough”. even tho i feel like i know i am not attracted to him i hadn’t been able to stop worrying that i like him for days on end. my bf came to visit me for the weekend for our 2yr anniversary and i felt so relieved from the thoughts. not even an hour after he left the thoughts came back bc i saw the guy in class and haven’t stopped since the beginning of this week. i keep comparing them to try to stop the feelings which makes me feel so guilty because i know he doesn’t compare. it only makes me feel worse. is this normal and how can i stop it? i just want to feel that relief again. i told my bf how i was feeling last week and i told him how it’s not real but it feels very distressing. i haven’t told him that the feelings returned this week and i feel super guilty bc the guy is one of my friends. it’s just really stressful. idk if i’m using compulsions by asking these questions, how to stop using compulsions, or if i even have ocd, but i have thoughts that i obsess over day and night (literally while i’m sleeping too) and i need advice:( it’s super confusing bc i feel like i know the truth, but the thoughts feel unbearably real. idk rlly how to not use reassurance seeking/compulsions while i’m venting abt this? i’ll put a tw on this in case.

I hope this doesn't sound crazy, but is there any way I could get a therapist to contact my previous therapist about an issue that I need to resolve with them?

Anyone else’s OCD not constant? I don’t know if this is normal or not but I’ve had 3 flair ups in my life time that I can remember. The first 2 we’re harm OCD (obviously I didn’t know this was what was happening to me at the time.) I was in middle school the first time and i randomly had a fear that I might hurt my mom. I remember laying awake all night and not being able to focus on my school work. That slowly just fizzled out on its own (Thank God.) Fast forward to 2017 and the harm OCD came back towards my boyfriend. I almost broke up with him over it because I thought there was no way I could ever be with him after having these thoughts of thinking I might harm him physically. Again, it just kind of went away after I opened up to my dad about it and he introduced me to what I now know are intrusive thoughts…Fast forward again to 2 months ago exactly. I got an intrusive thought that I didn’t love my Fiancé anymore after randomly finding someone else attractive. This is the same man I had the harm OCD towards. I married him a little over 2 weeks ago and I’m still currently struggling with ROCD and I’m surprised to say it’s even worse than the harm OCD ever was. Every relapse or flare up seems to consistently get worse and last much longer. 😞 I don’t want to have to live in fear of this always being a roller coaster I can’t get off of.

OCD can often make you doubt your diagnosis or your struggles. So many times, I hear from people who feel like they are faking OCD or are an "imposter" - like they're not sick enough or OCD enough. OCD is the doubting disorder and will make you doubt EVERYTHING - including your treatment, your symptoms, whether you have OCD in the first place, etc. Try to respond to these doubts the same way you would with other doubts in the disorder. Just try to let them be there, try not to answer those questions, try to just move on with your regularly scheduled programming as if you did not have that thought and witness the anxiety come down naturally.

I feel like ever since the pandemic and the intense anxiety that came with it, my intimacy has never been the same. I focus too much on how I “should” feel or if I feel “enough” for my partner instead of just letting myself feel. I have unrealistic standards about what sex should be and I have this mindframe that sex should be visually appealing as well, as in I need to find every single thing about my partner attractive. I love my partner, but I’m not a fan of hair and sometimes I see him naked and think damn genitals are weird lol and then I feel guilty for feeling that way. The biggest reason I don’t let myself just feel and think how I want is because I’m terrified that I don’t truly enjoy it or that I’m forcing myself to. If my partner looks attractive to me naked I worry that it’s only because society says I should like a shirtless man and not because I actually like it. All these thoughts and false notions make me feel like something is “wrong” during intimacy even if I’m truly enjoying myself which makes me spiral more and worry that something is truly missing even though all I really desire is to have my partner with me in bed. I worry that if I didn’t push past my anxiety, would I even like it ? Am I just forcing myself ? I don’t want to, I don’t think I am. I have my likes and dislikes just like everyone else but for the most part I truly love seeing my partner in pleasure and when he does the same for me. What can I do to fight these unrealistic standards and the feeling of doom and despair and worry I have each time we engage in intimacy ?? My themes have gotten better but the biggest battle I fight now is just letting myself feel without worrying that I don’t feel enough. Is this even a part of ocd ??

Is there anyone I can talk to about existential thoughts. I’m not sure if they are intrusive or not but they are about that. I just need some advice please. If you don’t get triggered easily than I would appreciate the help!! If you do than continue scrolling and have a nice day :)

Im having thoughts which I dont even know are intrusive or not towards girls. Rumination and overthinking has brainwashed me so much, I was reading my comments on ocd videos when it first started and i cant recognize or feel emotion towards my own words. I was sure it was ocd back then, I was sure that I was straight and liked women and not men I was sure of many things but it feels like all that was accidental and all the rumination(if thats what it was) led me to today giving these urges, feelings and thoughts and that these are the real me and I believe in it too. All the shit ocd put me through makes sense when I put the pieces together, Idk what I have done to myself. Im genuinely scared that Im gay now, If I told a therapist all my thoughts they would think this too, I dont really want to commit ßuicide but its the only way out it seems, Im too far gone

does anyone else struggle with worrying that they don’t have ocd bc that little voice in your head during compulsions has shut up? i realize i’m doing compulsions now with no little voice telling me what will go wrong, what might happen if i don’t do xyz, etc. and so now i’m worried i really don’t have ocd bc there’s not the thoughts telling me to do the compulsions i just do them now. and most of the time i’m not aware that i’m doing them and so whenever i do have that realization i get super freaked out and my anxiety rises bc i think that it’s not actually ocd and that i’m doing this to prove to myself that i do when i don’t?? but i KNOW i have severe ocd (self diagnosed) for example, today i opened the fridge at a grocery store and it took me 6 different tries to pick the “right” smart water. now 6 isn’t an ocd number for me but the feeling of something being just right is and so earlier when that happened i realized i didn’t have any thoughts beforehand telling me “if u don’t pick the right smart water xyz is true/will happen” << which that is a typical intrusive thought for me but when i had that realization i freaked out and my brain listed all of the intrusive thoughts i could pick from and put in place for that compulsion however i didn’t think of it beforehand and so i’m freaked out i don’t have ocd idk i’m so fucking tired of all this shit.

Why is it I only feel love randomly… I know I’ve been under a lot of stress. My uncle died 2 days ago and I am sad about it but I feel normal more than I have ever been. Why…. I know I need to sit with it but it’s difficult. One day I feel so good to at I can say okay. I know I love my partner and everything is okay. But then I start thinking about the future and it all goes down hill.

Hey everyone! So I’ve been having incredibly terrifying panic attacks recently and feeling like I’m dying. Does anyone else experience this/learned any skills to calm down/cope?

Does anyone else have problems of doubting what if it’s not ocd and what if and I actually want this if so what do I tell it when it does ??

Today i decided to open with a therapist about my suspect of ocd. I've been suffering with hocd and pocd for about a lot of months and I went to see a therapist of my school, but when I was there i discovered he was a psychoanalyst, but even though I decided to continue. Now I'm feeling worse, he said that what I have are desires and he totally ignored everything that I've told him, saying that "ocd" is a form of rationalization and that what I need to do is to pray when these thoughts comes to mind and avoid some places, which i see as an increasing of the compulsions. I'm feeling really bad now.

I need a little bit of hope, please read me... My relationship really was the best but when rocd hitted me, it destroyed everything. It's been almost 2 years and everything was a little bit better. But one day the obssesions came back but feeling more realistic than ever. Like this time it's really the truth. I have 0 libido, it gives me so much anxity to kiss him. We have a lot of problems because I am never turned out. I have so much nightmares about cheating and being turned up with other people. Im exhausted. I just wanna end this rocd phase but i am so scared that i cant and that it can ruin my relationship instead. I feel so numb. I can't feel anything and i am so worried and quedtion if i've finally lost everything that i felt for him. I am so scared. I really feel that i wanna be with him and that everything is going to be better but also i have so much fear , what if things cant get better? And everything is already ruined. I need hope, im scared if it isn't rocd anymore? 😔

So I just wanna speak some stuff out that I keep going back and forth on to hopefully give me some clarity. (Feel free to share your own stories if you have gone through something similar, I’d love to get different perspectives!). So I’m a sophomore in college and spent my whole freshman year doing classes online from home. In august I moved in and had the most intense panic attacks I’ve ever experienced. Eventually I chose to take a leave of absence for this semester and I’ve been working on becoming mentally healthier and focusing on doing things I want that I never made time for before. So now I’m conflicted on whether I should go back to the school I’m currently enrolled in which is 5 hours away from home or transfer to a school I can commute to. Luckily I have some really good schools within driving distance but I also like the school I am currently in. It’s well known and has really good academics. At the moment I’m leaning towards transferring because I would be able to continue seeing my therapist, have my own room where I have space to work on myself, I would have my own car, and some more stuff. I’m kind of at the point where I feel like either my ocd is subconsciously trying to sabotage me so I don’t go to school at all or my pride is holding me back. I also feel so much less confident applying to schools this time around compared to before. I don’t know what it is but I’m scared of rejection ( even tho if I’m rejected from schools close to home I would just go back to my original school). I wrote my essay yesterday and now I keep feeling like it’s not good enough. Writing this actually helped so much. I feel like the issue is less about what school I go to but gaining confidence in myself and my capabilities.