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I feel like I’m going to stop breathing and it makes it seem like an effort just to do it. I just want to be normal again and have my breathing go back to being automatic. Idk how to beat this, I’m constantly worried about it

i feel the need to say sorry because i’m posting yet again. i’m having a REALLY DIFFICULT episode of ocd that i haven’t had for a few months now. i experience contamination ocd everyday and have constant anxiety attacks, however because that’s so normal to me and doesn’t affect anyone but myself, it doesn’t affect me in the same way harm ocd does. i haven’t had to deal with really bad harm ocd thoughts for a good bit now so i’m struggling so bad right now. if anyone has seen my previous posts (which i’m sure you have), this came about over a small change that happened a couple weeks ago. it’s now blossoming into a full episode. it’s making me feel paralyzed and not want to do anything, but i know in the past i had to force myself to distract myself by actually doing things. i’m supposed to hang out with my friend tomorrow, but i’m so close to cancelling because i feel like i can’t do it. my physical symptoms are also worse than what i feel like i’m used to and it’s terrifying me into thinking i’m gonna get sick. i just don’t know how to get through it. it feels like impending doom and constant panic. i just want to feel like myself again and happy

I’m 19 and struggle with health anxiety, contamination, harm, and magical thinking OCD and would love to meet people with similar experiences and hardships because I have never had an opportunity for such a supportive community!

I want to get thought this weird horrible period, it has been horrible. I am doubting everything. I’m not diagnosed but when I look at my past I’ve always been horribly anxious and worrying about health, death and basically everything while suffering from major a lot of insecurities stemming from bullying and lately a lack of intimacy with my partner, Every time I think I’m on the way out, or see some light at the end of the tunnel my mind always pulls me back in. It’s torture. I’ve always been insecure about how I look and I find myself comparing myself at other males and it’s made my self esteem on the floor. I have a girlfriend and prior to this we had a future planned and talked about kids (we’re still young, but it felt so real), this all began to bubble when we stopped being intimate and the loss of my job. I don’t know anymore how to move on, every day feels like a chore. The intrusive thoughts telling me I’m in denial, constantly thinking about men I’ve felt insecure about their looks compared to mine wishing I looked like them plaguing my mind. The false attractions, prior to this i was comfortable in acknowledging good looking men. However now my mind takes this as evidence, every single thing in my past seems like some form of evidence. Not having male friends, the comparisons, being questioned about my sexuality from siblings. I’m sorry if this is reassurance, I am just needing to get some things of my chest. Every time I think about my first real attraction or girls I found pretty/attractive or I liked my mind is like your in denial and then I feel horrible about thinking those thoughts as I have my girlfriend. I miss just being with my girlfriend and not having these thoughts and feeling horrible. I feel like a fraud and a horrible partner. I’ve tried to accept maybe, maybe not, but something always comes back. These 4 months have been terrible. I want to sleep without horrible dreams, I want to eat. I want to feel like myself again. Thank you to anyone who reads this. Hope you’re strong too.

for past three years I would take pills for anything, anxiety related to even medication for infections. But I just cant anymore. My throat feels really small, even when I eat food. I asked my dentist to prescribe me liquid Amoxicillin, and she did. My parents picked up my medication and it was capsule form instead. They know my aversion to swallowing pills so they broke it apart and was mixed in with orange juice, but even then that worries me. what if I get a health defect from that method? Thats why tomorrow I am asking for a presciption Liquid Amoxicillin, I've been extremely anxious today and it sucks.

I was on Zoloft for over a month , then 2 days ago my heart rate got to 140 and I made my mom take me to the hospital. everything was okay just anxiety, now I’ve been waking up with anxiety and being nauseous it goes away after a min but it just sucks. I wanna stop my Zoloft idk how to go about that either. I’m so stressed. 😞💔

Nearly a week since I stopped in the middle of a compulsion and I still feel stressed and tempted to finish it. My throat, ears, head, chest, legs,arms, my body has been hurting since then. And if I finish it will it stop? But what's stopping me is.. I've been trying to trust God to handle it. Idk what to do rn, Ive been trying to set up a schedule for this week but it ended up not working out so I will try again next week, and School work I'm years behind (I'm in yr 10), I don't rlly have any friends either to help me. But anyways I try not to think about school that much since I have alot more to think about. And I don't even have any talent or anything I want to be I just want to be a good person but I'm horrible I just need to do focus on stuff Like getting closer to God. looking after myself. The OCD thoughts which. I can't do any of these tho because the OCD makes me so stressed I just want to hit the OCD in the face but I can't obviously so I do it to myself, And they make me want to do more to myself but I don't because ✝️ And I don't want to. Anyways I can't even do the basic things to look after yourself, and The OCD thoughts keep saying about death all the time, and illness. I don't like hearing it in my head all the time I can't do anything properly. And Those thoughts are active when I try read the Bible. Even when I used an audio bible. And a app where u read 1 verse at a time it's still hard. But basically what do I do My throat keeps feeling weird like burning without the feeling hot ughhshsheh I don't want to go back into that life when I was 12-13 where I was worrying about my health and checking with doctor all the time

i’ve been doing okay lately. but then tonight, my stomach started hurting and obviously that set off an anxiety spiral for my emetaphobia. and it went on for about an hour or so when i started feeling better and being more rational with myself. then all of a sudden, i’m hit with a second wave because my stomach started hurting again that i’m still going through. i’ve been having second waves of anxiety recently when i get anxiety attacks and they’re probably worse than the initial hit because i start to think “oh wait, maybe i am sick.” and i’m still not out of it and i’m currently terrified. i know the anxiety is making my stomach worse, but i cannot calm myself down when it hits. so i have an ice pack on my neck, heating pad on my stomach, turned my lights off, turned my fan on and have my tv on for background. i’m trying my best not to take a zofran but it’s getting hard

I am trying to see if there are others like me. For the past 12 years, I’ve had crippling Anxiety that leads to intense panic attacks. I’ve been in and out of Ambulances and ER rooms and have called 911 several times. The panic is that intense. I can be just driving down the road and out of no where, BOOM! Hit by the anxiety bus. Most of the time it leads to me panicking, thinking I’m going to die or something is fatally wrong with me. The fear is so intense that I can only find a fraction of calmness by consistently checking my blood pressure, putting on a pulsometer and even checking my blood sugar until it passes. I’m not even a diabetic. I’m always having intrusive thoughts that doctors can’t even fix me. I’ve never met anyone else like me. I feel so scared sometimes that I’m going to loose my mind and that I’m going crazy and will end up in a straight jacket. Then I get another attack just thinking about that as well. Starting new medications freak me out too. If I experience ANY minor side effect, I immediately panic and freak out. I’m being so held back by this . This is a constant obsession that I can’t shake. It’s like I walk hand in hand with Anxiety and panic. Anyone else ever had these issues?

i’ve been struggling with tics a lot lately. my doctor and neurologist are still unsure whether it’s a tic disorder like tourette’s, or if it’s myoclonic absence seizures i’m having. i’m getting an EEG done soon, but does anyone else have this or know someone who does??

Not necessarily asking for reassurance and I know I’ve mentioned this here before but my OCD has been affecting my cognition seemingly. I’ll forget small things or put things in odd places sometimes, or mix up words - things like that. Obviously this triggers me to be like “Alzheimers/dementia.” Can anyone relate? And if you recovered what did you do for it?

im so tired of trying to express my feeling and feeling so dumb. im so angry and my chest hurts from sadness and stress all the time with no one to talk to, this is so lonely. the only friend i had got annoyed with me and said maybe this is happening because i dont listen. i hate this so much and i gained so much weight from stress. i cant look pretty or happy if i tried.

PLEASEEE READ!! I know this sounds ridiculous but lately I’ve been soo hyperfocused on my breathing. I feel like I’m not breathing right/properly, it’s hard to explain.. it just feels wrong or like my breathing pattern is wrong. How that’s possible? I have no clue. I’ve had this all day. Has anyone ever experienced this?? My doctor keeps saying anxiety but I just feel like something isn’t right.

Today marks my third day on 150 mg of Sertraline, and I've been noticing some symptoms or issues that could be related? I'm wondering if anyone else deals or has dealt with something similar? I've been having really vivid dreams and nightmares, and when I wake up from them, I'm DRENCHED in sweat. Like absolutely soaked. But besides that, I'm extremely anxious. Even the dreams I can't remember leave me feeling off, and then I spiral wondering what they were about. Then there's not being able to cry? I'm not incapable of feeling emotion, but the tears feel trapped, and I just get nauseous if anything. There's been a couple of times where I've been able to cry, but it's like on and off 😭 Oh, and the last thing is constantly feeling hot? Like my face will feel flushed, but the rest of my body is a normal temperature. It's weird🧍‍♀️

So I have been diagnosed with GAD and OCD and my psychiatrist prescribed me with zoloft 🤔 but I dont know im really hesitant to start medication because im scared of the side effects and ik afraid of relying on a medication for a long time. Does anyone else take zoloft? What is it like? Any side effects?

I had a very bad session with a therapist today (NOT FROM NOCD). She basically told me I can’t be helped without medication, said I am too needy and if I keep being needy, people will continue to leave me, and my past trauma from relationships is my fault. I then had a second session with my old therapist who helped process and explain that OCD is lifelong and some people manage it but others have flare ups and I think I’m having a bad flare up (a month long basically) and that I may need medication which I’m terrified to go back on. Does it get better? Will I need meds? I’m scared. I don’t want to get worse and I don’t want these thoughts to scare me.

Hey fellow OCD warriors! Wanted to ask if anyone else’s OCD tends to latch onto change and catastrophize with all kinds of worst-case scenarios. There’s a lot going on in my life, and even though they are all exciting things that I truly want and am happy about, I’ve had moments of deep fear at so much change happening and even a sadness that I can only think is a kind of grief of entering a new stage of life/a new me and leaving the old one behind. I am in my mid-20s and a lot of this centers around nostalgia and fear and intrusive thoughts of changes like my parents getting older, myself aging, friendships growing apart leading to loneliness, etc. I know I need to treat it as any other OCD flare-up and do ERP, but it also feels different than other OCD themes because I feel blue and like existentially sad. Even as a young kid, I always hated change and the thought of growing up (even if exciting things were happening) - like I cried when I turned 10 because I was leaving the single digits behind forever! 🤦‍♀️ I feel like I’m preemptively mourning things like losing my parents or my health even though I am healthy and my parents are too. I don’t want to waste the time I have ruminating about the future. I haven’t heard this kind of theme mentioned a lot so just wanted to see if any others could relate.

i’m so sorry, this is a bit longer than i anticipated. for the people that struggle with periods on this app, i’ve had irregular ones all my life. the one i’m having now has been going on for almost two and a half weeks, i’m in so much pain, and i’ve bled through pants multiple times a day since i’ve been on it. i went to the gyno earlier this year for my first pap smear and tried talking to her about the problems i had previously faced. it felt like she ignored me and rushed through my appointment. i had to go ahead make another appointment with her because she could see me the soonest (since i was already established with her. every other office i called could only take me starting late june) due to the issues i stated previously. i’m extremely nervous to go because i’m scared she won’t listen to my issues like last time. i’ve also gone to the er a few times trying to figure out what’s wrong, but they all just do a blood test and an ultrasound and tell me to go home. i’m swimming in medical bills that i already can’t pay. on top of that, my ocd is getting to a point of being extremely debilitating. i tried seeing if the app would accept my insurance, but they don’t. even with a payment plan, i absolutely cannot afford to find therapy here. i’ve also tried looking at therapists near me, but it seems like none of them specialize in ocd. i live in a small town, so in a way that’s expected, but it doesn’t help my case. i’ve been feeling incredibly weak due to the blood loss and the lack of therapy. i just need some kind words to help me keep a positive attitude, because it’s been extremely hard to do so as of late.

So I’m 16 years old, currently going through my sophomore year of highschool. I’ve recently quit nicotine and weed after chronic use for about 4 years (has affected my development extremely). I quit because I wanted a better life for myself because I knew that I was using nicotine and weed for short term happiness and long term made me very depressed about this life. I was also experiencing trouble concentrating on simple tasks and what I wanted to do currently in my life. Which was learning about life and having more knowledge about life in general so i could feel more comfortable and happy in the future. So I quit nicotine I thought I was going to be able to overcome it and be more comfortable with myself knowing that I’m not in a constant loop of short term happiness, long term making me less happy overall. Although I have quit nicotine and haven’t touched it in about 3 weeks I expected to have some major withdrawals because I’m still in adolescence and used nicotine about everyday for 4 years. Sorry I’m rambling about this but through those years of always suppressing my anxiety with nicotine when anything came up that triggered it. I started noticing that on vacation in very stressful moments like at the airport and there were people around me when using the bathroom I felt as though it was nearly impossible to go but after sometime I eventually went and shrugged it off. Now that I’ve quit though I’m my 4th week it’s almost like my brain really latched onto that fear of not being able to go around people publicly (paruresis shy bladder syndrome) and that’s also what addiction does to you I’ve acknowledged. But when I started coming home from school I started thinking about not being able to pee more and more to the point i haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since which now every time i feel a slight trigger of having to use the bathroom i start obsessing over it like everything I would try and do that i usually do my brain would draw me away from it and go back to the fear of not being able to go which created a lot of anxiety and thoughts like “would if im not able to stop going” which made me think about it more and more I would just wake up with that thought in my head each day to the point where i was really thinking about killing my self because I thought i would have such a better life without nicotine and weed but ultimately made me feel like i was going crazy and I really wanted to go back to vaping and weed but i knew that this was the cycle of addiction and that i may have a more underlying problem here i need to overcome somatic ocd. I haven’t been diagnosed with it yet and I know a lot of people go through a cycle of self diagnosing. But as I’ve slowly started to mentally figure out ways to get through this obsession over peeing and fight it, it’s like my brain is now trying to look for a new bodily sensation to obsess over. My breathing. I noticed this as well while using that sometimes I would think about my breathing a little bit to much for example saying to myself am I breathing right should I breath this certain way would if I can’t stop thinking about it. But as I was thinking about that I just hit my vape talked to my brother about it and just slept it off. Now that I don’t have a vape I’ve had to go through these expierences but with it feeling more real and not really having something to run to, to suppress like my vape. I’m writing this today as I feel better to myself talking about it and opening up about it as I’m trying to not respond to this fear with anxiety and go throughout my days ignoring these obsessive thoughts leading to extreme anxiety that I don’t have anything to suppress it with anymore besides my own mental. Maybe someone here will have some more knowledge about it than I do and can give me some advice to try to keep me more motivated to deal with this ocd I feel as though I’m having so I don’t end up in a dark place. Thank you.

I had blood work done for a test I was having a couple weeks ago. The phlebotomist hit my vein weird, my arm bled a lot, but eventually stopped. My arm is still sore several days later. The following week I had my bronchoscopy. The nurse used the same arm that was already sore to put in the IV for the meds. My arm started hurting, swelling and burning. I told her it hurt really bad but she ignored me; then I was out. It’s been a week and my arm still hurts, and my veins are tight and hard. Couple that with the white stuff all over my face, that nobody from the care team bothered to wipe off- which I didn’t know about until my husband asked me what it was, I got harm from my OCD! At first I chalked it up to the white stuff on my face was bad bedside manners. Now, I keep thinking that my doctors and everyone associated with the clinics are trying to harm me. This morning I had an incident with the fryer oven while toasting my bagel. I asked my husband about it and he says he didn’t notice anything. I was down to the last few bites of my bagel, and suddenly started feeling loopy. I spit it out and threw the rest away. After sitting awhile thinking of the doctors and phlebotomist etc… it dawned on me that it was my OCD telling me people were trying to harm me. I don’t know how to get over the fact that my arm hurts really bad and my doctor completely ignores my health concerns. I’ve been nauseous for the past two weeks or so - there is definitely something wrong! I think when they find out that you have OCD and/or Anxiety, they treat you differently, as if you’re making up the symptoms. I most certainly haven’t felt heard! My husband always says, what’s wrong now? It’s such a horrible feeling to hear him say that. Is this what you call Harm? Or is it associated with Harm? I’m not sure if this is triggering or not. I hope not.