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Does anyone suffer from the fear of schizophrenia or having psychosis or being possessed just want to know I’m not the only one I feel like us as ocd sufferers think we’re alone

Hi!! I've been doing pretty good lately but the thoughts haven't stopped the anxiety is less now. But tired of hearing the thoughts. I'm a confident straight woman and all ai want to be with is a man. I've been single for years and i have been wanting a boyfriend. The thoughts are making me feel like I'm just lying to myself and it's annoying and frustrating.

Every time I talk to my bf I feel worse, but when I’m not talking to him I feel fine. I don’t know what to do. I keep obsessing over everything he says and the way he sounds, and the way he acts. I feel like I don’t like him anymore. It’s all so confusing. I’m so scared of hurting him. Looking back I’m pretty sure that I was experiencing ROCD or relationship anxiety, but now I’m worried that it’s morphed into real feelings. I’m so scared. I’m so worried. I cry almost every day. I’m so tired of it all

Everything is so chaotic right now and I feel like I’m making a terrible mistake in my relationship. I’ve never been in a real relationship before now, just a lot of failed talking stages and infatuated crushes who didn’t even bother to look in my direction. And now I’m with someone who truly does love me and care about me, he checks of all by boxes, but now I’m worried I don’t actually like him or I’m just not that into him. I’m worried this is one of those things where they’re great on paper but I just don’t feel a strong enough attraction. I feel so confused and stressed and doubtful and anxious all the time. I don’t want to hurt him, and part of me so badly wants this to work out while the other part of me feels like I want to leave. The thought of being with him forever scares me and I worry it won’t be right and I won’t be happy. I also worry that I’m convincing myself to stay when I shouldn’t or deep down don’t want to. Every day it feels more and more like I want to leave. It’s just a mess. I’m worried I won’t ever be happy. I’ve been fighting for this relationship so hard, I’ve been trying so badly to make it work, and despite all the stress and anxiety, I’ve stayed. But I’m worried I’m just forcing a relationship that isn’t right. I’m so lost

I've been dealing with my so-ocd for a bit now and I've been doing pretty good. But i just read someone's comment saying that if you've gone through a questioning phase then that could mean something. I went through a very small questioning phase before i even found out i had ocd. That phase lasted no more than 2 months even if that. I figured out that I was still straight and that is what makes me happy and comfortable.

Hello, does anyone here want to talk about their day and how they use coping strategies to get through their day I’m curious to hear how you guys fight your compulsions and intrusive thoughts I like to get another perspective because that helps me

I am suffering which i hope hocd & tocd , i want to ask lesbians/bisexuals females , when you see a woman touches/ kisses a man in a video or photo , do you feel like you wanted to be touched instead of the man ? Do you feel like the touch on you ?

I need help because I’m really really struggling with what I assume (or hope) to be ROCD, but I’m worried now that what I’ve been assuming is ROCD is really something else. I’ve seen a lot of talk about ego-dystonic thoughts and I’m having a hard time piecing that together with my ROCD, mostly because I obsess over flaws that do actually bug me, so those thoughts seem more ego-systolic. I do genuinely feel bugged by certain things my bf does and says, but I obsess about them to no end. i feel like some of the “flaws” I don’t want to obsess over because they are so minor and unimportant, but other flaws I feel like I need to obsess over because they do feel more important and they bug me more. I love my bf and I don’t want to leave, but I feel like I need to do something about the way I feel in the presence of those flaws. I have so much anxiety about them, feeling like I need to do smth, like I either need to try and find a way to stop disliking the flaw, or to remove the flaw all together. And I don’t want to try and change him, because that would be wrong. But I constantly feel like I need to do something. Help please! I feel like I really don’t love him enough, and that’s not fair to him, and I don’t know what to do.

I love my bf, he’s amazing, but there are certain things that I’m really struggling to get over and I’m genuinely starting to think it’s not ocd (for context I’m not diagnosed right now). He’s super great but one thing that really bugs me and stresses me out is the fact that there are times when he sounds really whiny like a child, it’s not even that he’s doing it consciously or with the intent to whine, sometimes he just sounds like a child. And because it’s not something he’s doing intentionally and sometimes it’s just the way he sounds, it’s not something he can necessarily change, and I don’t want to constantly be picking him apart every time he does it. But it’s brings me so much stress and anxiety because it’s kind of a turn off for me and I’m worried that if I don’t like it that means I don’t like him and I should leave. I don’t want to have turn offs, especially because he’s so amazing, but that one is. And it’s worrying. I’m worried I’ll always be bugged by it and it’ll only get worse. But I love him and I don’t want to leave. But in that moment it feels like I’m turned off and annoyed and concerned at the fact that he sounds and acts that way, and it brings be so much stress. I feel like I catastrophize little things. I worry that if anything is a turn off I should take it as a gut instinct. And I don’t know what to do. I’m scared, and so mentally exhausted. And I don’t want to hurt him with my thoughts and feelings. Please help.

I love my bf a lot (at least I think so) but I really struggle at times because I obsess over every little thing he does that I find weird or cringy or annoying or unattractive. a lot of times I’m just blowing things out of proportion. But the problem is, sometimes these thoughts don’t feel intrusive, it’s not like my brain is telling me something is annoying when it isn’t. There are definitely times where he does do things that I cringe at or feel annoyed by, or I just have this weird feeling of being put off. And those are the things I obsess over. So now I’m worried. I’m not sure how to describe my thoughts and feelings, I guess it’s more that something he does will trigger me (i.e. he does something weird or cringy or annoying) and I respond (i.e. thinking and feeling weirded out, annoyed, or cringing) and then all I focus about is the weird things he did and the fact I feel that way about them, and I start obsessing and playing over the situation in my mind, and I worry that his actions will make me not like him entirely, and I start putting him under a mental microscope, picking apart everything. And I worry that me not liking those things is bad or wrong or it’s a sign I don’t like him. And I don’t know how to move on, because my brain wants to like everything, but it can’t, and it can’t move past that, and I don’t know what to do. I can’t get over all these thoughts and feelings and I worry that it’s not OCD because it’s not necessarily entirely intrusive and idk if it’s bad to feel this way, and even if someone told me it wasn’t bad to feel this way, I would continue to worry that I just don’t like him and or that I wouldn’t be able to handle those “flaws” forever.

Hello! I have been dealing with postpartum ocd since right after having my first child in 2017. It started with worrying that someone would drop her. Then I was terrified of her getting sick. All of these symptoms could be shrugged off as being an overly protective new parent. I had my second child in 2019. I used an owlet device to help prevent sudden infant death (SIDS) in our baby. Turns out it did save her life, multiple times. The first time being the day we brought her home. We were told, after many tests and three days, those devices often just cause anxiety. I trusted my gut and continued to use the device which ultimately saved her life a second time when she stopped breathing again. We had to do cpr on her and she spent over a month in neo natal icu, come to find out she had severe central apnea. I feel like this experience reaffirmed my ocd tendencies. If I didn’t obsess over her health and be overly cautious she wouldn’t be here. The whole first year was her being on machines at home and oxygen. She was monitored constantly at home. Now she is a beautiful four year old. She’s strong and healthy and a normal kid. I however, am still a walking ball of dread and fear. I’m terrified of finding her blue in bed. Or even my oldest daughter blue in bed when there’s no reason at all to fear this. I’m terrified of “missing” something and them getting deathly ill. If one of them feels off or is tired my mind goes to “what if they have cancer and I’m missing something.” “What if they have a sinus infection and it turns into meningitis because someone is missing something.” “I am thinking this all the time because they ARE going to die and the universe is preparing me.” I don’t think other people can understand how debilitating this is. Constantly playing out every single scenario in your mind and preventing it from happening. It feels like I am trying to outrun fate every single day. The reality is “fate” is my obsession to keep my children alive when they ARE alive. I’m sorry to vent. I’m not really sure why I’m writing this. Maybe someone understands these feelings. The silver lining I guess is I love my children so much, my mind will solely exist to try and keep them safe. I know that they deserve a mom who lets them live this life outside of a bubble, to live not just to survive. I want so badly to be that for them.

I can’t believe I’m writing this, I feel I’m starting to get attracted to children, I don’t believe I’m writing this, what shall I do

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? :)

Ever have the feeling of “I’m never getting better, I might as well quit if OCD is gonna be with me forever, louder and bigger than me or not.”And in turn, you sit in that feeling of sadness and failure yet in a way it’s comforting cause you don’t have to do anything anymore? That’s me right now. I hit these moments of giving up or losing faith in myself often. I get back up one day, I know I will and can…but when I do, sometimes I feel like a fraud. As if I’m tying to convince or gaslight myself it’ll get better when I can’t really see much change myself. And if there is change, it doesn’t last long. You gotta keep practicing it as techniques start working but for some reason I slip up and ruin the progress and process each time. I go back to the compulsions, I go back to letting the intrusive thoughts make me feel awful and afraid to do anything, I go back to hating myself, my brain, and my life. There’s a strange comforting feeling in quitting and doing nothing, somehow though. I’m not sure why, exactly. I guess it’s familiarity after leaving that old routine? Maybe just not trying and hurting my brain is why it feels toxically nice. I’m not sure.. I don’t really need advice but I welcome it. But I would like to know if I’m not alone in this?

Hey yall. Some back story: I have had OCD since I was a young child. It manifests as compulsive behaviors, a LOT of intrusive thoughts, relationship ocd, harm ocd, and contamination ocd. I also have PTSD due to having been abused and neglected (I nearly died of scarlet fever as a child). On the first day of 2020, shortly after becoming a single mom, after a year of complaining of constant, heavy periods, bloating, hair loss, exhaustion, and abdominal pain, it was discovered that my uterus was bound to my bowel and kidneys- a complication from having two back to back emergency c sections. I had a complex vertical abdominal hysterectomy in the height of the pandemic and over 15 pounds of scar tissue were removed from my abdomen. After 4 years of recovery, I've been feeling the healthiest, happiest, and most attractive I've ever felt. I was in a bad car accident three weeks ago, after which they discovered a mass on my one remaining ovary. Today, I learned that the mass is 10cm (the size of a grapefruit) and that, if it doesn't shrink in 3 weeks, I will need another abdominal surgery to remove it, along with my one remaining ovary. They mentioned that part of the reason for possibly removing the mass is to rule out ovarian cancer. I am ok right now. But I know that the intrusive thoughts are about to be bad. My fears of being abandoned and or undesirable to my partner, having serious health problems that prevent me from enjoying my life, and having health problems that hurt my children have something to latch on to. Please send me advice, reassurance, kind thoughts, advice on how to remain positive, or whatever you have that may help.

People make it sound like with partner focused ROCD, the flaws you obsess about aren’t actually real or legitimate, they’re just in your head, but is it also normal to focus on flaws that do actually exist? Like recently I’ve been super obsessed over my bf’s occasionally whiny voice, whether he means it to be whiny or not. And it’s a real thing that I have physically witnessed, it’s not just in my head, and I can’t stop obsessing over it. It feels harder to try and get over when I know it’s a real thing, not just something I’m making up. I keep wanting to not feel this way but I’m worried it will never happen because the things I’m obsessing about aren’t always in my head, they’re physically being played out in front of me, and I can’t make that change. I’m scared.

Hello! I’m Jen, and new to this app/community but definitely not new to OCD. I’ve been experiencing obsessive thoughts on and off for 30 years, since I was 8. My Pure O always flares up when I’m going through periods of intense stress. I’m currently in a really bad place with my OCD—I’ve been experiencing a resurgence of obsessive thoughts (I think “assaultive” is a more fitting description) for the past 2 months. My aunt, who was more like a mom and who I felt loved me more than my parents, died relatively suddenly February 5th. The first month after her passing I felt fine—I was just kind of numb and disbelieving. But the next month, I had a panic attack at work so severe I had to go to the ER. And since then, my OCD, anxiety, and panic disorder have all been working in conjunction to make my life as difficult as possible. It’s been so frustrating because before this, my mental health had been in a really good and stable place for EIGHT YEARS! And now, in the wake of my grief over my aunt, I feel I’ve been reduced to that frightened 8 year old girl I was when this started. I just want my life back! My current themes switch back and forth between fear of ki****g myself, fear of ki****g loved ones, and fear of going insane. Logically I KNOW that because these thoughts cause me this much distress and pain, I am not likely to act upon them. And I also KNOW that I’ve never acted upon any of my dozens and dozens of intrusive thoughts I’ve experienced over the years. But KNOWING is not the same as BELIEVING and I’m just constantly terrified that the worst things I can think of will happen. In the past, I found 150mg of clomipramine to be very helpful so as of Tuesday 5/7 I’m back up to that dosage. The problem is this medication takes 4-6 weeks to make any noticeable difference. So I’m here to try and find other ways to help myself in the meantime. I’ve been aware of ERP for a few years but I’ve never done it before because A) clomipramine has always been highly effective on its own, and B) honestly I’ve been too scared. But now I’m sort of at the end of my rope when it comes to dealing with this monster and I’m willing to try anything and everything that could help. Of course I’m also terrified I’m the most hopeless case and it won’t help me and I’m a lost cause, etc. etc. It would help me to hear about your experiences with this program, your success stories and coping mechanisms any of you have had success with. Thank you for reading this whole thing, and I hope to read some hopeful messages. 💛

I just got triggered by something and I started to spiral. I was obsessing with my thoughts for a really long time I wasn’t doing anything but sitting there and obsessing. I finally had to bring my partner to work and it takes about 40 min to get there. I finally noticed that I had to pee really bad I was obsessing over my POCD and I got in my head thinking what if this feeling is sexual and you are a P. I finally made myself pull over at a gas station and went to the restroom. I never had a problem with my OCD until i started heavily drinking. When I was drinking with friends one night at a bonfire there were these two little girls at the time I really loved kids I wanted to have some of my own some day. So I started playing with the little girls just being silly and picking them up and playing. I eventually pick one of them up and kissed her on the cheek because I thought she was so cute. But I was drinking and the father told them to go inside the house. Know that I’m thinking about it I don’t know if it was because or he just wanted them to go inside because it was getting late. He never said anything to me and my friends never said anything to. But I instantly felt bad for being drunk and playing with. But for some reason I woke up the next day and I felt like I had done something wrong and what if I was a P for kissing the little girl on the cheek. I started drinking back then just for fun but it slowly became a problem I had just turned 21 and I wanted to have fun with my friends and that is what people do when they turn 21. I’m now 31 and an alcoholic but for the last 10 years I haven’t been able to forget about that night and I just have been obsessing about it ever sense. I think now that the alcohol brought out my OCD and I wish I could go back and never started drinking in the first place. Now I am almost 3 months sober. But recently I have been prescribed medication that will make you physically sick if you drink on them. I also have found an online 24 hour zoom meeting that is awesome. The reason I bought the drinking up is after I stopped to go to the bathroom the thoughts of being a P went away greatly I wasn’t having sexual feelings I just had to go to the bathroom. When I got back in the car and started listening to the zoom AA meeting my thoughts pretty much went away. I wanted to let everyone know about the online meetings it’s called The Zoo Crew. I am so happy to be sober now and so grateful that I found the meetings. So I just wanted to get that out there for anyone struggling with POCD, OCD in general, or alcoholism. There has been very few problem that I have talked about having these thoughts with. Most of them have been with medical professionals it feels so good to have found this app and be able to talk about it with other people. I hope this could help someone else in knowing you’re not alone in this. I know this was really long but I hope it helps someone. Thank you!!!

This is going to be a longer post so hats off to the ones who take time to read it, luv you besties 🫶 So I’ve been struggling for the past 6 months or so with what I hope is ROCD, though I don’t know for sure because I’m not diagnosed. I really struggle sometimes because my bf is a little weird, I’m willing to fully admit that. He’s just a little hyper and goofy and different from other guys, which can be really great at times, because he doesn’t take himself so seriously that he isn’t willing to have fun, he’s willing to be open with his emotions, and he isn’t easily uncomfortable or embarrassed, and I’m not like that. I get nit-picky about those behaviours as times, but I just like to rationalize it by calling it his golden retriever energy, which I think is a cute way of looking at it. But he’s also awkward at times, there are times where he does something super weird or cringy or irritating and I can’t stop thinking about it, playing it over in my head, and it bugs me so much, and I try to rationalize it but I can’t. One thing I really struggle with, is his voice. For example, yesterday I hung out with him, and we were talking, and I was about to say something but stopped myself half way through the sentence because it was a secret I didn’t want to give away, and then he started sounding really whiny as he said “you can’t do that” “why won’t you tell me” or something like that. And it wasn’t like angry whiny, it was a little more lighthearted, but I don’t think he was being ironic or jokingly whiny, I think it was genuinely him just sounding whiny, and then all of a sudden mid sentence he cut back to a regular voice. It made the whole thing just sound really cringy and not very masculine, like he was poorly acting, but I know he wasn’t, it was all genuine, just really cringey. And I can’t stop playing it over and over in my head, trying to make sense of it, trying to make myself feel better about the whole situation rather than uncomfortable. I do that with a lot of things that he does tho, even normal things, but I especially have a hard time with his voice and his vocal inflections and idiosyncrasies and the way he sounds in certain situations, literally every little thing. I obsess over whether he sounds/acts masculine enough and normal enough, I keep picking apart every time he sounds whiny, whether he’s actually whining or not, sometimes his voice just sounds whiny because he has a higher pitched voice and he can’t really change it. I pick apart his voice when he laughs about something, or when he sounds excited or happy. I pick apart his voice when he tells stories. I can’t stop, and it makes it super difficult to be present in conversations. Idk if it’s ROCD, because he does genuinely do odd things that make me cringy and bug me from time to time, sometimes even things that are a bit of a turn off, but I think I get so carried away that it becomes way bigger than it needs to be. Is it ok, even if I didn’t have ROCD, to find things that he does weird, cringy, annoying, a turn off, etc? Sometimes it genuinely feels like the “ick” (I hate that term so much). Is it normal, even in regular relationships, to experience this “ick” feeling? Everyone seems to say that when you like someone, nothing they do is weird or cringy to you, you never get the ick, and if you do then it’s times to move on. But I’ve also heard others say that it’s not about them being perfect or not having any Icks at all, it’s about loving them enough to look past the Icks and not focus on the cringy things they do. Is this true? If so, then how can I do this? The other day he told me he loves being with me because he feels like he can genuinely be himself without judgement, but little does he know that all my brain is ever doing is picking him apart and judging everything he says or does, and that’s not fair to him. He is such an amazing person, and he deserves so much better than me.

Does anyone else have some “fun” ways they’ve noticed their main reoccurring thought/fear with SO OCD or OCD in general change as you’ve worked on accepting your thoughts? When I really fell down the rabbit hole of SO OCD at the start it centered around, the possibility, that I repressed my sexuality due to a past experience I may have blocked out as a child. As I got started with ERP my main fear of repression then went to that of being in denial. Eventually that moved to a main fear of being a late bloomer with OCD then to a centered fear of not having OCD at all However if the passing thought that caught me after my therapy session today was anything to go by, it may me switching now to using my comfortability of seeing gay scenes and attacking me for not acting on my thoughts if I’m so comfortable with them. Like I’m not truly comfortable with it unless I go out and act on my same sex thoughts It’s funny to see OCD switch tactics/reasons as I grow more and more comfortable with my thoughts, but also frustrating because it still got me distressed for a moment with that new thought after my session today and wishing that that thought doesn’t stick.