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My mind keeps going in circles and it’s so much to think about and I don’t know how to stop it and I’m all alone. I don’t have anyone I can go to and it’s hard for me to feel like anyone cares about me. Maybe my head is spiraling right now? It feels like it is 😭😭😭 I just want it to stoppppp it’s putting me in a fog and I’m so scared ):

Hi. I'm new here. Never been diagnosed but identify with symptoms. I want to seek a diagnosis but I'm terrified of seeking help and having the doctors think I'm just faking it or being a hypochondriac (I have a laundry list of thing I want to look into as far as diagnosis go). I just need answers and help because it's hard and after having a kid it's even harder. How did you get diagnosed? Was there medical gaslighting for you?

How can I respond to some of these intrusive thoughts without feeling like I need to fight, resist, and etc?? They’re extremely distressing and make me question myself, my reality and my health/brain. I’ve tried just distracting myself, ignoring it, and letting it scream at me. But then it comes back with scarier ones and I’m just struggling . I’d been doing good with them lately but suddenly they’re awfully intense and hard to ignore Help😞

i remember feeling more hopeless in the past, having lower moments, mentally, you know, in 2022 i completely lost it. and i remember being 14 in 2020 and for the first time really considering ending my life. but still every day i wake up and go to sleep in the ocd prison, i am so tired, no one understands the patterns are the same, have been the same for years and yet i don’t know how to cope. it’s so exhausting.

After that triggering dream where the worst thing could have happened, I don't feel legimitated anymore to feel genuinely distressed by triggers, to call compulsions as such. It all feels disingenuous. They don't feel valid anymore. Like crocodile tears. Because the one thing I didn't want to happen probably happened, that undoes everything else. I feel like a hypocrite, to feel distress and worry about those things, being anxious of that particular fear because in that dream it happened. I felt arousal and probably genuine attraction, I'm afraid that I could have agreed with it. Maybe it isn't true, maybe it didn't happen, maybe I'm misinterpreting, but then why I was left with that impression? All because of a damn dream, because ocd, all my triggers intrude even in my sleep, because I can't even be safe in my dreams. This is the worst mental illness.

Anybody else get depressing thoughts and feelings with their existential ocd? Like you have convinced yourself so much that nothing is real that you literally start to become emotionally detached from things. For example I’ll be watching a YouTube video about the war that’s going on in Gaza or even a tattoo video on YouTube and I’m just getting thoughts like “so what? None of this is real anyway, why should I care?” Etc etc. and it feels natural, like it’s 100% fact but at the same time you know something is wrong and you try and reality test your way out of these feelings but it just doesn’t work. I can’t enjoy anything anymore because of this.

I am new to this. I recently was reading the Bible and then had a horrible blasphemous thought and it was vile and intrusive. It hasn’t gone away and now I’m questioning whether I will go to heaven or not if God will forgive me. I cried and cried and I kept repeating numbers in my head or stating different colors in my head. I asked God to help me but the thoughts won’t go away like it’s cutting me and I keep seeing the scar. I didn’t do good at work because I keep getting sweaty from guilt I tired to be more productive than usual so I wouldn’t think but then would stutter over my words bc the thoughts wouldn’t let me breathe. Then at home I tried to drown myself in alcohol only to end in a fight with my husband. And none of this is in chronological order because I feel dumb just writing all this. The most important thing is I know I Love God , Jesus and the Holy Spirt. I just want to feel better and not feel like a complete monster 😔😢

i've had a terrible dream this morning about my fears getting pretty much confirmed. I've avoided to address this the whole day doing a rehearsal, going at the bar with friends and playing games till 2 AM. I don't know how to move on from that dream. Something horrible happened. I felt genuine arousal and now everything seems meaningless. That dream basically confirmed my fears and invalidated all the things I reassured myself about false attraction and staring ocd. I don't know how to proceed after that dream. My hopes of being a good person got crushed. All is meaningless now. I don't even feel that much distress about it. Probably because I shut it down and didn't fully address the dream, reality hasn't kicked in yet I feel defeated. I feel like a **** and my identity is in shambles. Even at school I felt defeated and was wondering what's the point. "What's the point now of even avoiding sophomore and junior girls""who cares feel attraction like your friends do" and I felt like I stopped caring about my moral code and when I realised that I didn't like it. It all feels meaningless. The one thing I didn't want to feel I felt and now l'm empty. I don't even feel distress no more.

Today and tonight I'm just feeling lost...like I'm not living a full life that I should be. That everyone else is living their best lives and here I am working on my OCD, hating my horrible job and just trying to male it thru the days...😥

Of crying of every little thing I hate how sensitive I became I wasn’t like this I used to be so strong there was a point in life where I didn’t even cry for three months I thought I was getting better I’m sick and tired of my own self I wish I could buy a new heart and mind because I would do anything for it I’m so tired.

Since I was little I had a passion for mathematics. I'm currently 14 doing university-level math and have practically decided for math to be my future career path. Quite oddly, it seems like OCD started attacking this interest, as I'm really unsure if I even enjoy it anymore or not and I'm really scared because if not math, I'm not sure what I'd want to do. Is this OCD or a sign I should move onto something else?

I don’t care if this sounds mean. The man just decided to post that OCD is a beneficial disorder. It angers me so mucn that people think of ocd as this thing where it makes you more clean or it makes you more meticulous and perfect, etc. etc. it took me so long to get diagnosed with OCD because nobody could understand the fact that it’s not about being clean or having any sort of obsession with cleanliness or structure. For me, I’ve always struggled with OCPD. I’ve never not been obsessed with something in my entirety of existence. I have relationship OCD. I have OCD about being in narcissist I have OCD about climate change. I have OCD about the wars going on and how they might end up the state these things have genuinely impacted my left the point where I live in fear and I get so scared and will spend hours and hours researching the possibilities of these things being true. Misinform damages literally every single person involved even people who don’t have OCD. I’m just so sick of it. This dude has a huge platform and it really bothers me that people can get away with this shit

I’ve been dealing with the fear of schizophrenia for about 10 months now with symptoms varying from fear of hallucinations, constantly on the look out for negative symptoms such as flat affect, low mood etc. to now constantly having to fight off delusional intrusive thoughts. I feel it’s worth it to mention I am an atheist, secular humanist and realist and had/have very firm beliefs about reality that were evidence based and very grounded. Ever since this theme has started, these thoughts and feelings coupled with derealization have completely warped my mind and I’m constantly getting thoughts such as “the world is way too good and complex to be true, there must be something more at play here” “there must be something sinister at play here”“this must be some sort of simulation” “there must be more to the world than just science and biology” “what if satan is the true creator of the world” “What if the government is working in accordance with Satan to keep up with this simulation” etc etc. just bizarre crazy shit. these thoughts feel very very convincing, despite there being no evidence for them. I’ve gotten to a point where I’m done fighting and don’t know what to believe. No amount of logic that I feed these thoughts will ever be enough. I feel like my case is different form most peoples with ocd, from what I’ve read, everybody with my kind of thoughts still have a meta awareness that there thoughts aren’t real and the world around them is very much real. Well I feel like everyday I’m losing that awareness more and more, moments of clarity are quite rare for me now. I feel like I am becoming convinced what I’m thinking is true and I’m getting thoughts and feelings like “how could I not see this before, this is all way too good to be true” and I don’t want that. It is scaring me that I am thinking this way. Like I said this is a COMPLETE 180 from the way I used to think. Please help. My mind has me convinced that there is no other way to think about it and I’m possibly just in denial about it

I’m having difficulty sleeping again. My left arm is hurting and I’m experiencing a slight headache. I can rationalize it out but it’s still keeping me up because I’m scared I will die in my sleep. (My arm hurts because of crocheting for hours on end and my headache is from sinuses) I shouldn’t be scared because I know I’ll go to Heaven. But it’s still keeping me up. I think about death then my son and husband and how they would be devastated. And keeps going… Any tips to help me sleep

It genuinely feels like this disorder is taking away my whole life. I cant go outside and hangout with the people I love or even be around strangers because my thoughts will include them and I’ll just get really uncomfortable and anxious. It has made me distance myself from so many ppl in my life and made me have thoughts and feelings that I don’t want and that I hate making me feel like a monster and a disgusting person. Sometimes I’m genuinely so close to taking my life. It feels like there’s no hope for me at all and that I’ll be like this forever fighting my own brain till I’m old and on my death bed. I’m supposed to be enjoying my summer but I just can’t. I cant go outside, I can’t go on social media, hell I can’t do anything because there will be a child around that will trigger me into a spiral. I can’t stay all summer locked up in my room and constantly making excuses to not go out. It’s been feeling so real too like I’m really the type of person that I don’t want to be and it’s so scary.

I feel 99.9% certain that i am a doll. i cant stop thinking sbout and and its getting to the point where people are asking me if im ok but if i dont act like one somethings going to happen to me.

Worrying so much is so comforting somehow. I feel as though it’s the norm. I’m a little hesitant to part with it. I’m scared to feel nothing when I’m supposed to be worrying. I hope this doesn’t sound ridiculous.

I need to go to church tmrw but I feel like crap... ^^ Idk if this is OCD or not but I feel like I do not fit in my own skin no matter what I do :( Yeah basically I feel like sleeping forever idk :p

Waking up in a panick everyday thinking if this is real life or not, the thoughts never stop, I just want to get better, I had a panick attack yesterday thinking this wasn’t real life, I coped with alcohol for the past 4 years, now when I wake up it’s straight to this isn’t real life and you should just hurt yourself, am I going crazy ?

I’m wondering if anyone can relate? I often overanalyse my feelings/emotions and check that I’m feeling happy enough. If I’m not, it makes me super anxious that I’m not enjoying life enough. In the past, Ive been known to keep diaries when on holiday to keep track of my feelings so I can check back afterwards to make sure I did actually have a good time. In my brain, everyone effortlessly seems to enjoy life, social gatherings, big events, holidays…enjoyment seems to come to easy to other people? Whereas I, whilst I do enjoy myself at times, find myself obsessing over enjoying stuff enough or being happy enough. Like if I’m not euphorically happy or crying from laughter every 2 minutes, I’m clearly not living life. I’m not sure if it’s an OCD trait or…? It certainly feels it, what with all the checking and monitoring of feelings. It’s definitely heightened around big events (parties, social gatherings, weddings, holidays). It’s a theme I come back to quite a lot and I find it quite distressing. Most of my themes are very internal and a lot of compulsions are mental, I spend a LOT of time ruminating if I’m having a bad day. Hope someone else can relate or maybe has some tips? :)