Kickstart your recovery journey with a caring community of others
working to conquer OCD
i read some things about ocd and the different types of it and symptoms and I can honestly relate to them (im not trying to diagnose myself with ocd but I think I have a type of ocd) lemme explain: so like this been happening since the summer. me and my best friend did something sexually together and me and her afterwards wasn’t okay after that and she told me how she felt afterwards and after that I felt totally disgusted and sick about myself and that’s when all the intrusive thoughts started. I keep having the urge to kill myself everyday I keep thinking about death and it’s getting to the point that I can’t eat because after I eat something I immediately think I’m gonna die because I ate something. When I’m at school or in public I have bad anxiety and thoughts about me dying. And after the situation happened with my friend (I’m Christian) I just feel like God is so disappointed in me because what I did. Nobody knows this situation. Nobody knows what’s REALLY going on with me. Im trying to stay strong but it’s getting really hard to im at my breaking point the thoughts are getting worse and worse everyday I wake up with these intrusive intense thoughts. I want help. But idk how to help myself. I try to go to my mom for help she doesn’t understand me nobody understands but me.
I fear I’ve reached the end of my road. I’m scared. I don’t want to die but I don’t want to live. I’ve struggled with depression for years I’m 27. I can’t see away forward. OCD has consumed me. It sounds nice to not suffer anymore.
It ruins every single day I don't feel like I'm self I have no self worth left I'm a constant mess I'm constantly panicking I can't do this anymore everything triggers me every single day is something new iv been struggling with this for ten years every single day is hell I haven't even eaten in days bearly I spend days obsession and my partner has to help me and it's putting strain on our relationship I can't even express how low I am and how I can't do this anymore I'm constantly having. Seizers from stress I ocd In my sleep it's constant hell everything triggers me I can't do anything without conpoltions I'm constantly in fight or flight and frozen in fear every single day I can't do this anymore
I was watching a video about mental health and self hatred was mentioned and as i was listening it, i started feel anxious and then i was like "i hate myself its so bad" and i started to feel depressed. This happened in the past alot of times and with different topics too, but now i was more aware and i could notice, this isnt true. If i would go to therapy and i would tell that i feel depressed cause i hate myself, we would work on loving myself, but now i was aware that its not that the problem. I felt really sad, cause i believed the thought that i hate myself, when i dont, i just struggle a bit now and i cant feel that big loving feeling towards myself as in normal days, and i interpreted that as i hate myself, so i started feeling sad about it. Is this part of ocd? Alot of times it happened that i had a really strong thought like this, i had like "youre depressed, youre a narcisisst, youre suicidal or i was suicidal in the past" and i believed these thoughts, expecially when the feeling of sadness came with them, it was hard to not believe them.
OCD Journey Stories
Promoted
It can feel like stepping into a bizarre version of the world, and all you want to do is get out.
By Michael Corey
Read my Existential OCD story →Is it worth being here if I’m so unhappy and struggling with my self and everything in my life? When I’m this hateful scum? I just feel awful and wish I didn’t have to put up with this, or myself. I’m sorry
tw: csa A therapist that actually cares. A therapist that’s good at their job. A therapist that understands. I have nobody else to turn to in my life to talk about things I’ve been through I feel like I don’t even know who I am because I have hardly had any real life experiences and my mom is always casting her evil judgements onto me. She once told me, “your father was a pervert who wanted you and then abandoned you.” Y’all I’m so heartbroken. I have 0 friends. I have always been the girl that nobody likes or cares about. I’m so tired man. I know this is so personal but I’m so tired of holding it all in and I’m terrified of becoming a bad person because I was raised by bad people. My OCD is so bad and I’m not getting any real love or support. I feel so unseen and unheard.
Whenever my mom thinks I’m trying to argue on purpose, that makes me think “what if I am?” “What if I’m just a baby who can’t take what she said”. I feel scared. I just disagreed with her when she told me not to wash my clothes with my work clothes because they’ll smell bad and I disagreed because she’s never said a word about this for years but two years before she told me not to wash them separately because that’s wasting electricity. So, her shutting me down by saying “don’t argue with me” makes no sense to me but at the same I feel like “does this make sense though? What if I’m just an asshole to her?” Then before she got irritated with me when I was about to throw away expired lemonade but she was the one who yelled at me by saying “if you’re not having it just throw it away!” Like I honestly don’t know what she wants me to do anymore!!!!! Sometimes when changes their mind or something, I keep feeling like “what if I’m schizophrenic and I just thought that had happened” or “what if I’m crazy” or “why am I upset by this? What if they didn’t change their mind and I’m just thinking something else” My parents getting irritated with me makes me feel like I’ve done so much wrong and I end up losing my motivation but that makes me feel even more gross because I’m not bothering to wash the dishes now..
Okay.. let me start by saying I’m in a VERY committed relationship of 11 years.. and I’m Absolutely not interested in another person. But at a my job, I sell some rocks that I paint.. and this guy expressed interest in buying a custom item I make and asked if we could get coffee discussing what he wants.. eagerly, I said yes, wanting to sell my art, with it going right over my head that this man is asking me out, so I gave him my number eagerly wanting to sell my art, but as I did, I realized that I shouldn’t be and immediately regretted it.. couple days later he texted me, and I informed him that I’m in a very committed relationship ship and wouldn’t be interested in anything romantic, he said that he wasnt either and is only interested In a friendship… great, I thought… not great.. he’s been texting me relentlessly, and showing up to my job almost everyday, and it’s making me very uncomfortable.. I don’t know what to do. I’m so afraid that I was wrong to my boyfriend, or just scared that im leading this man on, even though I made it clear I wasn’t Interested, or afraid he’s going to attack me in someway.. If I would have just had the freaking balls to say no to giving him my number, I wouldn’t be in this situation. I’m so afraid, I want to change my number and quit my job.. how should I handle this??
After trauma I developed harm ocd with the worst kind of thoughts and I am in an existential crisis, its been 1.5 half years like hell for the first year, now I can read books and do sport but the thought doesn’t leave me and I can’t find the strength to just accept it because it’s awful. It’s hard for me to meet friends and act nonchalantly. When I am not reading I feel just depressed and that I don’t want to live anymore. It’s a hard daily fight what can I do more?
To start off, yes I have a therapist, yes I have a psychiatrist and so far I am only diagnosed with ptsd, ocd, gad, hypochondriasis, and panic disorder. So for the past 5 months I’ve been dealing with a terrible ocd/hypochondria theme where I have COMPLETELY convinced myself I am in the beginning stages of schizophrenia or some other related horrific psychotic disorder. Ive read way too much on common delusions, symptoms, hallucinations, personal stories, Reddit stories etc. Anyway, for some reason my ocd has really latched on to the common symptom schizophrenics have which are religious delusions, at least I hope it’s just my ocd and not actually schizophrenia. Everyday I get these terrible existential/demonic “delusional thoughts”. Like “what if my wife is a demon” “what if my cat is a demon” “this song has demonic energy” “the face that person made was demonic” “this house has negative demonic energy” “what if you are possessed” “what if these ugly brown mushrooms growing in your yard are a sign of demonic energy”, shit like that. Literally everything I look at now has some sort of “negative energy” or feels eerie or “demonic”, everything I look at always has to have some sort of malicious intent or negative undertone, I can’t watch anything on YouTube anymore, I can’t listen to my favorite bands anymore like Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden etc, these thoughts have made me become so avoidant of dark things and even normal light hearted things! Now first off, I am a literal atheist, I am a complete skeptic, I have never ever been superstitious. I was a huge Marilyn Manson fan in my teens, I’m a horror movie junkie( or at least I used to be before this theme took over), i literally have shirts with pentagrams and upside down crosses etc. why has my ocd suddenly branched off into this religious ocd/delusional thinking? Is this maybe a dp/dr thing too? I know for sure that every single one of these thoughts and feelings are untrue and very unlikely. I do not believe any of these thoughts at all, yet the fear they create and the vibes that accompany them make it feel almost real. When I’m in full blown panic and start to spiral really bad sometimes I feel like I almost believe these thoughts, and feel paranoid almost, when the anxiety and fear passes though I can have a brief moment of clarity where I can laugh these thoughts off and almost be myself again, but it’s very short lived before these thoughts start creeping back up. The content of the thoughts is scaring me but the fact that I’m even having these types of thoughts and fears in the first place is scaring me even more because it is reinforcing my fears that I am becoming schizophrenic/psychotic. Why have I suddenly become like this? I can’t enjoy anything anymore without getting these awful awful thoughts. Has anyone ever experienced anything like this?
Long story short it feels like I might have cheated on a class final project and my ocd is causing intense rumination and mental checking that I did nothing wrong or had no bad intentions. Also feel the urge to get validation from others if what I did was cheating or not and even confess to make the thought cycle stop. My question is how do I discern what I should truly feel guilt for vs what’s ocd just making my life harder by telling me I’m a bad person and done something terrible. How do I just let it go and move on without knowing for sure I did something wrong or confessing?
Hey guys, I‘ve been struggling a lot recently with the feeling that i in fact may not have ocd. I am feeling a tremendous amount of uncertainty and fear and i think i know where this is coming from. I‘ve dealt with psychiatrists and therapists in the past that i feel like were obsessed with maintaining psychological power over me, which is very toxic especially because of their high responsibility towards their mentally ill patients (who are not capable of dealing with this additional dimension of struggle in the phase where they do not (yet) have any trustworthy relationship with them) I felt abused, unsafe and so anxious; i never felt sth like this before. It was a bit like a black hole or the feeling of drowning. They kept making me feel like i have to prove my pain and one time my therapist literally said to me that my stuff i was telling him was basically nothing. And now i am constantly feeling like an imposter and think that others have it so much worse than me. Can somebody relate to this? Much love (P.S. i now, luckily, have a very understanding therapist where i feel quite comfortable and safe, but i‘m still not over my past experiences)
Ever since my mom had a recent health scare, I've been obsessing over the inevitability of death, of the people around me, of my loved ones, and of my own. Looking at historical figures, hearing about dead people triggers a lot of these obsessions. Combined with the fact that I'm agnostic, and do not necessarily believe in an afterlife, so a thought that constantly appears and distresses me is the fact that when someone dies, they don't exist anymore, and they wouldn't know they existed. I've been struggling with these thoughts for a few months now, everytime I'm laughing or having fun with someone, an intrusive thought such as "They're going to die one day, and none of this would matter" would pop up, and it prevents me from grounding myself and enjoying the moment with loved ones. It makes me feel alone, and scared. I don't tell anyone about my thoughts, and I do not seek reassurance from them because I know it doesn't help. Some days it's okay, some days it isn't. On really bad days, I secretly wish that I would pass away before anyone that I cherish does so I won't have to bear the pain of losing them. I'm only 19 years old. And I know that my entire life is ahead of me, but with these thoughts, it's hard to visualize my life, and that it's worth living for sometimes. Ever since these thoughts appeared, I lost the ability to make long term plans, and visualize a future that I want because the thoughts tell me that none of it will matter. I know deep inside that what I do matters, and that I matter as well. But these thoughts cloud my judgement, and it takes a toll on me because of how persistent they can be. It's really hard to deal with these thoughts because death is a real concept, something that *will* happen. And because of these obsessions, I've become nihilistic, and I slowly lose the drive to accomplish anything. But I do try to live my life as normal as possible. Do the things I want to do, despite the heavy burden that I carry with me each day.
Additional trigger warning topics of self harm I struggle with self harm. When I opened up to someone about my struggle with it they told me that my scars were so bad and that my future husband would have to see them. It hurt me really bad. I’m working on stopping and am in therapy to stop doing it. I’m honestly trying so hard. I’m now just afraid that because I have scars that look “bad” no one will love me. That was my best friend at the time who said those things abt my scars. Now I feel unlovable. My ocd tells me that I’m gonna die alone, and that no one will ever love me.
Today it feels real. I have my online boyfriend my current boyfriend who is perfect and right for me that I want to meet and marry soon. I'm tired of these ex thoughts. I don't want to be with my ex or do anything with my ex. I moved on and I'm happy being with my current boyfriend. I don't know what to do. I feel like a traitor and a cheater. Why is this happening why does it feel real. I'm hurt having these ex thoughts while being with my boyfriend. I'm tired of having to fight these ex thoughts time and time again. I love my current boyfriend I would never be with my ex or do anything that involves with my ex. I don't wanna lose my boyfriend. I'm trying everything I can to prove these thoughts that I don't want my ex. I'm hurt I'm lost. I'm this close to even ending my life because I keep having these ex thoughts while calling my boyfriend. I don't wanna view or think of my ex. I wanna think of my boyfriend. I'm scared. I'm tired. I don't wanna lose my boyfriend I don't wanna keep contuining this cycle. I want these ex thoughts to stop once in for all and let me be happy again with my current perfect boyfriend.
-social anxiety -existential ocd -religious ocd
i don’t know if this falls under a specific theme or is even related to ocd. if someone could help me out i would really appreciate it ever since i was younger, i’ve had really upsetting thoughts about losing my loved ones and it would get to a point where i vividly imagine their death scenes play out in my head and it’s started to effect me during a day-to-day basis. sometimes i even imagine myself dying and the imagery shows me how my friends and family react to my passing usually when i think of something happy, my brain enters this cycle where i begin to think of some upsetting and distressing moment and i cant help but think about it for the rest of the day i’ve had a common fear of death for a really long time, but it’s gotten really bad now is this a form of some intrusive thought? please let me know what you think
I haven’t been diagnosed with existential ocd but I have every single one of the symptoms. Death/afterlife and the meaning of life is 90% of what I think about day after day. I really hate it. I wish I could go back to the days when I never thought about death. I really just want it to stop. The worst part is know that no matter what it’s inevitable and nobody can stop it😞 any suggestions on how to feel better??
Why do I have the urge to off myself when having ocd thoughts? But I dont want to die.
If you are in crisis, please use these emergency resources to find immediate help.
OCD doesn't have to
rule your life