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Does anyone else deal with unsettling thoughts like “What if Gods wants to me to go to another country as a missionary?” “If I don’t do x,y,z, then God won’t accept me?” When I get these thoughts I get very anxious, pain in my stomach, sometimes panic attacks.

My ex and I broke up a few months ago.I learned his license plate number while we were dating as it was silly, and I had some joke about it with him. Anyways now I find my self checking license plates as cars drives by ( as I live on a small island ) worried I’ll see him. But like even cars that aren’t his make and model. Also… what does this even mean.

So I'm fairly new to OCD and Intrusive Thoughts. It all started about 8 months ago for me. I had health anxiety and generalized anxiety and got put on meds for that. I read side affects of meds could cause su*cdal thoughts and it freaked me out and lead me to think what if I started having thoughts of harming others too and instantly for the last 8 months I've had horrible intrusive thoguhts about harming others. Now the other day I ran across a post about how ocd can lead to psychosis, reading about it freaked me out so bad that I'm now scared I'm gonna get psychosis. Paranoid thoughts is a sign of psychosis so I started watching myself I guess to see if I'd become paranoid. And now every thought I have seems paranoid. I'll think things like what if I start becoming paranoid of my loved ones and think they're out to get me? That leaves me questioning if I am paranoid and if I actually do think that. Anyways, I guess I'm just wondering if anyone else has had this happen to them? I pray someone can relate because I'm terrified.

Hi everyone, I just wanted to share something really quick that I believe relates to Relationship ocd. For a while now, I’ve liked this guy and at some point, I felt that he probably feels the same way or had at some point. Not sure how he truly feels because he has never admitted how he feels and I haven’t either, but just from picking up the signs he’s giving me and how he acts around me, that’s how I’ve been able to determine how he feels, which has been a bit confusing, but recently, he has been trying to get closer to me by opening up to me about some personal experiences from his past and trying to develop a closer connection. Noticing this, it has made me only want to shut myself away from him bc I’m afraid to get closer for many reasons and a part of it involves ROCD I believe. I’m afraid to get close to people in general whether it’s in romantic or platonic relationships bc I feel as though I always have negative energy from my ocd that I don’t want others to be affected by or even know about. I’m afraid to open up to people about my personal experiences with ocd, especially a guy that I like that I can see myself having a relationship with. I’m afraid I’ll only scare him off or bring him down with me and he won’t be able to understand me or accept this aspect of myself and view me in the worst ways and at some point leave me if we were to ever become something. I fear this with any potential partner I may encounter in my future. I feel as though I may never find love bc who would want to be with someone that has ocd? So this causes me to not reciprocate the same energy back to him. I close myself off from him or barely say anything bc I don’t want to reveal too much about myself that involves my ocd or anything I’m ashamed of from my past. Then this thought will start to go to other thought process and insecurities I have that make me feel like I could never be loved by someone or specifically he would never like me bc I don’t feel like I am a good person or will be good enough for him and that he could find better bc of my struggles with ocd and i just feel there’s other women that are above me in many ways that he would rather be interested in and give him the happiness he’s seeking. I feel as though I lack so much as a human being and that I’m not interesting enough or beautiful in any way. Because I struggle with self love and have a fear of getting close to people bc of my ocd, I prevent anything good that could possibly happen, such as becoming vulnerable with this guy and possibly getting closer to him. All I ever feel is not like myself and I feel crippled, disabled, and lost everyday from my ocd. I don’t feel I deserve love or happiness bc of how negatively I view myself and how unforgiving I am for my past experiences where I’ve screwed up or could’ve done better with something. I’m so hard on myself and the ocd experiences I have with my thoughts only make me feel I am a bad person in many different ways based on any ocd subtype I’m experiencing with my thoughts that are scary to think about or that make you hate yourself and feel shame and distress towards. I also even doubt how he feels about me even when he’s giving me clear signs that he most likely feels the same way bc I doubt that I’m that great of a person for someone to like or even love. I don’t feel I have the potential for people to love, whether that’s in a romantic way or platonically. Maybe it’s best if I continue to close myself off from him so I won’t bring any negativity into his life bc of me. All I ever feel is that I’ll only bring negativity into peoples lives. I just don’t want to feel like this anymore and ruin opportunities for myself that could become something worthwhile. If you guys could give me your honest opinion about this, I would really appreciate it. Btw, I’ve noticed myself become like this in the past too when I’ve liked someone or been in a relationship with someone, but back then, I didn’t know I was dealing with ocd or I wasn’t experiencing so many different subtypes of ocd.

I have been with my SO going in 13 years now. We met in college and have been together ever since. We got married in 2021 and welcomed a baby girl in the world last year. I had a severe mental breakdown in 2013 that landed me in the hospital because I was contemplating suicide. That breakdown nearly destroyed our relationship. I had severe intrusive thoughts and felt the need to tell him all of them. I felt like if I didn’t tell him, I was lying. I destroyed his self esteem, telling him all of the mean thoughts I had about him. I would feel the need to tell him anytime I saw an attractive guy in public, I questioned our relationship and told him I wasn’t sure if I loved him anymore. It was bad and very dark. Fast forward to now and I feel like I’m letting him down in different ways. I don’t feel the need to tell him every thought I have now but since having my daughter my OCD and depression seem to be getting worse. I just feel like I’m no longer happy and my daughter should’ve had a mom that wasn’t damaged like me. Didn’t have the abusive childhood like me. Wasn’t broken like me. I feel so much guilt. It’s putting such a strain on our relationship and I feel like my husband deserves someone better. Someone whose happier.

Why do I worry that things will be bad if I don't worry?

Is this OCD existential? So started last week, I began to have OCD thoughts about our faces. This may sound silly to some of you, but my mind trying to get me to panic about how our faces look. It's like, it is trying to question about, "wow, our faces look like that. That's how ppl look." I'm freaking out right now and trying to calm myself down and think logical or realistic here. My heart is beating really fast and I can't concentrate. Please help me what should I do. I'm trying to tell myself, like "it just OCD, calm down". It's like it's trying to trick me into believe our faces look weird. I was okay yesterday and trying to managing it, but man I had panic attacks all today. Off and on all day while I'm at work. Its not making it any better when I look at ppl faces. Please, please tell me how I can I deal with this. I thinking about getting on medication. Have y'all ever had this experience before?

Hi there! I’ve just recently received my OCD diagnosis and found out that I’ve just been raw-dogging OCD since I was a young child. Im considering taking medication to help me and my therapist suggested Zoloft. Has anyone taken Zoloft for OCD/anxiety? Any side effects that I would want to be aware of from personal experience? Thanks !!

I get very anxious when I forget someone’s name or a memory that I can’t remember. I spend a lot of time searching until I find the name and memory. I purchased a 360 pages notebook to write down names and memories so I won’t forget; it temporarily relieves my anxiety. I have always had the urge to remember names and memories but I didn’t have anxiety until now. My first panic attack happened 4 weeks ago due to forgetting a person’s face and name. I hope someone can relate to this or help me understand what’s going on. I booked the 15 minutes free consultation. I’m feeling sad, scared and exhausted!

To the ones who have been working with their OCD for awhile now and feel somewhat experienced in handling symptoms, I have a question… If you could go back in time and tell your younger self (pre awareness of your condition) one thing, what would you tell yourself to help with your condition? I have no means to treat my OCD, and only have just joined this app and acknowledged my condition and my, now, desperate need for help. Anything will help and I honestly am needing some sense of community to feel less alone. Thank you for everything!

I’m so fearful that I’m having a heart attack and was given meds for acid reflux. I’ve had 2 ECG that were normal and a chest x ray. I’ve been dealing with these symptoms since November. Not sure if I’m just hyper aware to the point that my mind is imagining all of the symptoms of heart attack. When I don’t think I’m having a heart attack, I notice improvements. It’s so hard. It’s an achy feeling at my left breast bone that switched to the center of my chest where the sternum is located. I’ve also felt it on the right side with these sensations running through my arms. When I get worked up, I gasp for breath, get dizzy, and experience heart palpitations. I guess coming to the current moment has been my savior when I think about it. It’s the future thought of what if I have a heart attack that is scary and that lies in the future.

TW: hello you guys. i really regret doing my compulsion, my intrusive thoughts these days is not really affecting me that bad but still im doing my compulsion for reassurance and relief. i searched on google, does anybody with harm ocd acted on their intrusive thoughts, i saw some threads in reddit and i opened it. i saw a comment to that thread and the commenter commented that he has this friend that has severe harm OCD. he said that his friend has this urge to act on their intrusive thought, not just a compulsion, but on his actual intrusive thought. he said that his friend went to different psychiatrist and nothing helps and that made him breakdown more. that urges gave him so much anxiety yet he wanted to do it. thats why, in several scenarios, that friend acted on his urges to shoplift and collided his brand new car in the wall and felt regret, guilt, shame and even broke down after doing the actions. after reading that, it really scared the hell out of me. what if i do something like that? what do i do? every person that has OCD has this feeling that its an urge to do the actions and somewhat gave them/us an anxiety for having those urges. we also think that our OCD is lying to us, that the urges we feel is not an genuine urge. i think i will be starting to be in spiral again after reading that reddit comment. i really hate me, i really regret doing my compulsion. can somebody give me an explanation about this and somehow help me with a reassurance please?

No encouragement please because it wears thin. I’ve been single for 19 years. I’m not hideous, I’m a little overweight from meds but not incredibly so. Women have always enjoyed my company. I keep turning down good offers because of morals. I’ve had offers from attractive 19 year olds but I said no because I was over thirty and it felt wrong. I’ve had offers from drunk women… nope, women in relationships… nope, women have offered to have sex with me in exchange for my drugs… nope and I gave them the drugs (I’ve been clean for 7 years now). Now I have it in my head that I appear weird to them and I can’t even start conversations incase they scream pervert or something. I’m at the point (I’m 40) where I have come to terms with it. That should be depressing and I should not be okay with being single for the rest of my life but here I am settling for something I don’t want because of my illness. I know that whatever people say it won’t change a thing because they have said it for nearly twenty years and like I say it wears thin. People shouldn’t give you false hope.

I’m 28 years old and I’ve been battling with OCD since I was around 8 years old. However, I didn’t realize it was OCD until a few years ago. I’ve dealt with multiple themes of OCD that are on constant rotation. Currently, I’m struggling with real event OCD, and moral scrupulously OCD. It has made this past week extremely distressing. My husband is aware of all of my thoughts and feelings, however, that’s due to my need to “confess” virtually everything in my life. He is never stressed about the content of what I’m worrying about, but unfortunately, that serves as temporary reassurance for me, and the cycle continues. This week has been one of my HARDEST. I have been stuck in a loop over the same obsession, with barely any relief. I’m self employed, and usually the winter months are slow, so I currently have no distractions to get out of my head. I can barely eat, and I go through multiple waves of panic attacks a day. I’m starting to lose hope that I can figure this out alone. I’ve never seen professional help for my OCD, and to be honest, it terrifies me to have to explain my thoughts and feelings to a stranger. What if I never get better? I guess I’m just looking for guidance, advice, etc. I’m feeling so lost and scared.

Hi everyone. I have PANS OCD and had it early as a child around 5. It was debilitating I went though counting, contamination OCD even thinking family members were contaminated, hand washing till my hands were raw and more I had a good childhood but it was heavily OCD based which stinks. I am now 25 and have had manageable OCD throughout the last 10 ish years. Up till late last year I got it back again worse than ever.. I am now worried about asbestos and mold and lead and household things we moved into an older home and it’s been awful. I also worry constantly 24/7 about death… also We don’t have any of those materials In our home but my OCD won’t leave me alone. I went into treatment didn’t sleep the 4 days I was there and checked myself out, I instantly regretted it and tried going back but they wouldn’t let me back right away unfortunately. I am seeing my therapist once a week and trying to live life as an adult with OCD it never fully went away but it was so manageable and now I need to learn to live with crippling OCD all over again if anyone has any advice or relates to this please comment so we can talk. Thanks Lydia

i dont know what is trigger and what is not so i will just put the warning just incase, i am new here and idk what im doing, ive had therapy before for trauma and major depression and its never really worked for me, it did help me get over the trauma i got from my parents divorce but the depression never got better. ive stopped having therapy for months now and its only gotten worst. now the reason i search for an ocd test was because recently i learned that ocd isnt the stereotype of only being like wanting things neat but it's actually more than that. when i heard it dealt wit intrusive thoughts i was shocked because i always had so many thoughts that made me sad to know i was having those thoughts for example raping someone or doing sexual deeds with a minor or killing something or hurting someone or doing something inappropriate with my younger sister and those thoughts are making me want to kill myself bc i know those thoughts are bad and im just so scared im gonna hurt someone. ive also gotten to a point to where i dont care about myself anymore. the only reason im here is because i just wanted to validate my thoughts and knowing its a disorder makes me feel a bit better. i still dont care about living tho i think that sooner or later these thoughts will just overwhelm me that i will just end my life to end stop my thoughts from playing anymore, im so tired of this i just want it to end

My nervous system is on high alert.

Had for ocd for years about loyalty towards my gf would feel awful if I thought bad off my gf and thinking other girls r goood looking missing my ex ect but now I’m almost better and now don’t avoid looking at girls which I did for a year I find my self wanting to look at girls and get an overwhelming attraction feeling that I don’t get towards my gf? I find every girl attractive now and feel awful like I’m better off alone as I feel Numb a lot towards my gf but thY would be because of all the trauma towards her from ocd. Any one else struggling with this ? We have been together almost 24/7 for 2 years is this normal the lack of attraction ?

I just started Exposure and Response prevention teraphy due to my OCD getting worsed as time pass by and I would like to ask question to someone who has gone throught his process already.

Hello, My husband has moderate to severe OCD. He struggles with contamination, some checking, some tied to religion/prayer/confession and really bad intrusive thoughts. He has been diagnosed. As his wife, he often asks for reassurance. "Did you wash your hands with soap?" "Did you touch the trashcan?" Those are a few examples. How do I respond to these frequent questions in a healthy way? Any tips or pointers, because I only understand OCD very little.