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Hey everyone, I’m still pretty new to OCD and was wondering if anyone has any strategies that help reduce OCD symptoms that are not compulsive.

Undiagnosed but I'm trynna observe my behaviour to understand. Could this be considered OCD? I'm at the library. Book a study room on 2nd floor and set my bag and everything in the room. Go to the bathroom and suddenly i remember a book. So i go to the third floor and look for it. I don't know when - but somehow somewhere - i knew / decided (?) that i *had* to keep that book on my desk to study(dont know the name or author but only what it looks like from the side). I keep looking over and over again. Through all isles. Its not a textbook, its a fantasy fiction book. I start getting more and more anxious. I dont know why im looking for the book. Only that i cannot leave 3rd floor without it and i hadd to have that book on my desk as i studied. I went through the same 20ish isles at least 10 times. Browsing, eyeing for that black book with a golden "&" and a gold imprint bird. I am googling lists of fantasy writers, 2023 fantasy writers, 2020 lists, 400+ pages books. Found two empty slots where books couldve been and started to panic. Spent time convincing myself that others could've borrowed the book. I am now trynna convince myself that others couldve borrowed it and thats okay. I continued looking for the book. I searched the empty slots book number in the library database. Continued looking. And im trynna calm down and continued telling myself that maybe someone took it. But the compulsion remained. The need to find the book. The need to hold it. The need to find the name of the book. And the need to leave 3rd floor with the book. I was about to cry at this moment. I considered calling the librarian to ask if someone borrowed a thick black hardcover fantasy fiction book. I didnt stop looking for it. I had a similar loopy situation the other day trynna find the right playlist to plan and then play the right playlist to study. I couldnt find the right playlist to plan so i couldnt plan and didnt study. I recalled playlist incident to tell myself that its nothing and i can just leave any moment. I can *choose* to leave 3rd floor and go to my study room. The clock tower bell rang twice. Its 2pm. I arrived at around 1:20pm. I tell myself i spent half an hour here. I shpuld just go down to my study room. I cant. I keep looking. Then i find it and i exhale a hige sigh of relief. Then i left the 3rd floor. Went to the 2nd floor, to my study room. Put the book on the table. Felt just right. Started studying. The time is 2:24pm. Spent an hour looking for a book. Extremely relieved to find it. Not to read the book but to keep it on my desk so i can study. It was scary though. I wondered what wouldve happened if i didng find the book. There was no other option. I HAD to leave 3rd floor with the book. I wanna know what yall think. And ask me questions about it too. I am undiagnosed. I want to observe myself, so i can present them to my counselor.

Hi people, I’ve been feeling really down lately and am wondering whether I may actually have some form of pure o ocd after doing some research. Just not sure how if it’s just me being a doubtful person/ major over thinker or something a bit more. Some of my experiences which are making me wonder include… in high school I experienced very consuming overthinking around a could areas - humility - I was constantly paranoid I would be perceived as self-absorbed. I would sometimes feel really uncomfortable whenever I would say ‘I’ in a sentence for fear there was too much focus on myself. Embarrassed by achievements and friends dubbed it a ‘humility complex’ - friends - constantly doubting whether a friend actually liked me or if they were just faking it/being nice. Also worried about things like silent pauses and if that would mean the friendship wasn’t real - sexuality. Since realised I’m actually asexual but growing up in a religious household I did not know this. I would be scared to watch movies because of how much time I’d be spending watching the male vs the female and if that would mean I wasn’t straight. Worried about me finding female influencers pretty and then feeling the need to also look at male people to see if I felt the same about them. - people - although I’m aroace, would get attached once in a blue moon to a person emotionally and constantly be thinking about them (like years) and feeling terrible about the fact that I’d never be able to like them in the same way as others. This could last for ages and the person wouldn’t even know me that well Now at uni… - my faith - completely destroyed my faith in a complete existential crisis. Couldn’t put the breaks on endless existential questions, spending hours googling - my love of music (as a music major) - this is affecting me right now terribly. Alway have felt guilty maybe not being as passionate as my peers and now I feel like I can’t even listen to music without thinking about whether or not I’m enjoying it or not and if not, does that mean my passion is gone. Feeling the need to see if I’m following as music people online as my peers. Then I want to avoid things because I feel like any involvement in musical activity is performative :( - mental health - feeling like crap and checking whether I might have depression (so many online quizzes). Then feeling bad because maybe I’m just tricking myself into it and feeling sorry for myself. Thus, not wanting to get help because I’m scared I don’t actually have depression and I’m just either overly self-aware or looking for an excuse for my current laziness/general lacklustre about life. Feeling bad when I am happy because maybe that means when I am depressed ‘I’m just faking it’ I feel the constant need to go in long walks or watch brain dead shorts on social media just to get my brain to be quiet. Feeling very unproductive and I hate it but am not sure if actually I’m just super lazy and directionless Sorry for the long post - a lot has been on my mind, but would appreciate any thoughts

Im really stressed right now because im worried my boyfriend is too boring for me and not deep enough. He’s not great at communication, doesn’t have many interests and it feels like we run out of things to talk about. We also do spend everyday together with the rare day off. His family is from Poland and they don’t talk much during dinners I’ve had with them and seem a bit boring as well. I’m wondering if this is something he could change or if im just overreacting or if it’s an incompatibility. I do love him and he’s really kind and sweet but I need him to know how he’s feeling but he always says he doesn’t know or that he isn’t thinking about anything. im so scared and i don’t want to break up but I don’t want to be bored and lonely in a relationship forever.

I was diagnosed with IBS at the top of this year, and my ocd panic attacks coincide with when my stomach is not doing well- but then it becomes the chicken or the egg I can’t tell if the stress is coming from the pain or if i’m creating pain with stress!! Anyways- just curious anyone else struggle with tummy issues of that variety. I write this as I try to make sure I don’t pull myself into another panic attack due to the feeling in my stomach, but instead try something new.. like write in this forum! Hope you all have a great day !

How are you and sum it up into one word or phrase 😊 💚Amazing 🧡Ok ❤️struggling 💙awful

Idk if I actually have feelings for my coworker or if it’s hocd, before this I never looked at her that way but now it feels like I’m actually attracted to her. I find myself subconsciously checking how I feel around her and I always end up feeling something. The thing is I Can’t see myself in a relationship with a girl, I cannot see myself committing to a girl. Intamicy with a girl does not seem satisfying to me at all. However for whatever reason with my coworker I find myself constantly checking how I feel and then end up feeling something like an urge to kiss her or an urge to be close to her, I never had that before. So now I constantly ask myself can I see myself with her in this situation? In this situation? And the answers are always no but I always find myself asking the same questions. I don’t know if I’ve been thinking about this so obsessively that I’m conditioning myself to be okay w the thoughts and even think I might like them but I never once in my life wanted this, I never looked at a girl and thought oh I want that or had girl crushes or paid any attention to them more than the typical oh she’s pretty. I even have moments where I don’t think about the hocd and I’m working and we start talking and I feel nothing. It feels like a friendship but other times completely out the random I become conscious and check the feelings. What does this mean??

Can anyone relate to the fear of blood clots? That makes up 80% of my OCD. I’m primarily health OCD but I also have religious OCD. I’m a Christian (I think) and I’m terrified I’m not actually saved and am not going to be with my family when I die.

So I wanted to make an account on here because I need help distinguishing if it’s ocd or just plan anxiety. I have always been an anxious person, ever since I could remember. The earliest memory of me being anxious was when I was around 6-8 (memories from those years are blurred) and I’m 20 now. That being said, I’ve always been overly paranoid about my health, and always asking my mom or grandma to take me to the hospital because I thought that I broke something or I thought I had cancer, or some other health issue. I’ve also ruined a relationship recently because I was overly paranoid that I was doing something wrong in the friendship and I did something bad in our past, and I would always mention it and block afterwards after I apologize profusely. I realize I was in the wrong in this situation, which is why the sneaky feeling of me having ocd popped up, although I could be wrong. Another thing is that with my mental health, or health in general in recent times, I tend to spend at least 30 minutes to an hour making sure my symptoms aren’t anything that I deem “bad”. I tend to get extremely worried and irritable when people come into my space to help me clean or just to hang out, in fear they might find something or ruin my room in some way, which causes me to hide things that are really important to me, and if I can’t do that, then I don’t let people into my room. I also have a feeling that someone’s always following me or someone might pop up to my family home to kick us out, and it leads to me always checking windows, and I get extremely anxious when a car pulls into the driveway. I haven’t left the house in such a long time because of how bad my social anxiety is, for multiple reasons. Like I’m extremely scared of getting hurt or kidnapped, etc. Overall, my brain makes me think of the worst case scenario in most situations, and it’s hard for me to turn of my brain. All my life, most people and most doctors just chopped it to me being extremely anxious, but I don’t know if everything adds up to JUST anxiety, and I know I should tell this to my psychiatrist, but I’m not sure if I’m going crazy with thinking it’s something more than just anxiety, and it’s really frustrating.

My intrusive thoughts have been so consistent and loud and distressing I don’t know if what I’m feeling for my coworker (the reason the HOCD started) is false attraction or actual attraction. I never looked at her as more than a friend until one day I told myself “I wish I had this connection with my bf” after having intense ROCD for months prior. He and I started having opposite schedules and we never saw each other so it felt like I missing out intimate connection we had but of course ROCD made it 100x worse. It spiraled so bad from there. I’m having urges like I want to kiss her and touch her but I’ve NEVER had that before. It literally started with a thought to myself. Sometimes I can see myself w girl (I don’t get anxiety anymore I just feel numb) and sometimes it’s uncomfortable and not for me, and sometimes I can see myself with a man (I thought I was straight all my life), other times I don’t see myself with either. My thoughts did a complete 180° from before I had OCD and I truly don’t know what to believe about myself. I’m doubting every interaction I’ve ever made with guys even though I know I’ve never been attracted to girls growing up. This doesn’t feel like me but at the same time it does.

Ok so this might be a long one, I didn’t realize I had OCD until recently and when I found out it was such a weight off my chest! I’ve struggled with this since I was a child I used go to constantly wash my hands to the point that they were dry and cracked and had a fear of touching certain things like bleach and still do but not a much but my nan was in the garden and I went out in a panic because I touched a bleach bottle and thought I was going to die and she had compost on her gloves and rubbed it all over her face and was like do you think I’ll die now? After that it snapped me out of it but then it changed to something else, I was playing a game boy a lot and my mam told me to stop playing it so much or it would have my brain buzzing and one night when I was randomly playing it I started to panic and imagined a game boy in my brain and I had severe anxiety and didn’t even know what it was, all I could tell my mam was that I feel nervous all the time! Eventually that stopped too and when I got to around 14/15 I had a dream my friend who is a girl tried to kiss me and woke up in instant panic! All of a sudden I kept having thoughts of being a lesbian when I knew I wasn’t and have always liked boys! I’ve always wanted boys attention I’ve never felt attracted to girls ever! This effected me for months and the anxiety was so bad I could barely eat and sleep and getting up in the morning to go straight to the bathroom to get sick the anxiety was taking over totally and the thoughts never stopped. I was constantly repeating sentences in my head over and over like I know I’m a girl and I know I like boys for reassurance. I couldn’t look at any girl without feeling panic. I looked in the mirror and didn’t feel real, it was so bad I used to cry and think about ending my life and it would make me feel better but I didn’t want to hurt my family, I spoke to them and told them how I was feeling and eventually this stopped to a certain extent. Now I’m older and all of a sudden these thoughts have come back again. It’s so bad I could be in bed with my boyfriend and feel like I’m lying to him but I’m not I know I love him more than anything and I think about the time we first met and how excited I was and how happy I was and I want to feel like that again. Some days are better than others ❤️ when it’s so bad I lie in bed and can’t sleep I’m afraid I’ll dream of the intrusive thoughts I have in certain scenarios. I used to think there was something wrong with me and if I told people what I was thinking they would think I’m a freak and still do. Im glad I’ve found an app where there’s other people that go through the same thing I go through. I hope I can eventually get over this and be happy and not let these thoughts affect me!

Salaam walaikum, I need help, I'm a Muslim, I pray 5 times a day, but idk what's going on in my head, it's like I'm going crazy I can't explain it, like for the last 3 months I've had no peace in my head, I believe Allah SWT exists but there's something in my head dragging me down saying he doesn't exist and there is no god, I've been praying tahajudd and making dua sincerely, please help idk what to do, I don't want to be an atheist but it's just thoughts running through my head making me crazy please help Idk if I'm possessed or something idk, I want to get these thoughts out of my head but I can't, I can't do anything, these thoughts are literally in my head like 24/7, I'm not in my normal state I can't explain it, it's like I'm in constant derealisation, i forget stuff alot, I am in constant stress, I get panic attacks. I'm not normal anymore I haven't had ease for 3 months straights, I get into state in my head that my mind goes blank I can't think straight, RN I'm in that state that I can't explain, the only way I can't get out of this is through Allah and islam, like a few days ago I got out of this state, was awake, was normal, had my memory back, I could think straight, the only way I can ignore this waswasa is if some is talking about Allah and me ignoring it and I keer forgetting how to ignore the waswasa I’m contstantly in my thoughts So I can’t think properly I can’t focus I’m constantly zoned out I feel so close to being normal yet so far I’m contstantly in my thoughts So I can’t think properly I can’t focus I’m constantly zoned out I feel so close to being normal yet so far I see everything like I’m high, I have memory loss I can’t think properly or critically, me it’s like I’m stuck in my mind, my head hurts when I try to focus, it’s like my brain is just blank,

Hi, I have a question about some meds I’ve been on. I have intrusive, weird thoughts along with anxiety and depression. I’m on Prozac, zyprexa and trileptal and am only 2 weeks into taking all of these. I’m still having all of these existential thoughts and feelings about what is real, and on top of that as having intense brain fog/numbness. For anyone who’s taken one or multiple of these meds, does it get better, and if so when? I’m just scared that this won’t get better I’ve tried so many meds at this point.

I live on this small island … very small. Since I was in 2nd grade I have no memories but remember my feelings. I HATED it here. Like seriously I’d constantly wish I could run away and move. So I don’t feel suffocated and trapped. My situation with my parents didn’t help. I wanted to leave everybody, everything, just…..fade? I thought of how it might be to have parents that care about you. Your feelings… your thoughts. It’s been just me and my imagination, my inner voice and all of my thoughts for years. I’d drift away and talk to myself in my head constantly making scenarios or imagining things. Anything to not be in the moment I guess. But now sadly it’s something constant that I can’t fully control. I drift away when I need to be aware and attentive; forgetting what I’m doing or how to do something. Having to re-focus and not drift away again! Little me…. Trapped on this island no friends and nothing to do finally cracked around the time covid started. Online wasn’t for me making everything 10x worse. I couldn’t focus on anything at all, my memory empty, listening to words…. what’s that? It’s like I forgot how. I was— in my own words “brain dead” completely not here. So that year I failed…. Got held back a grade. At this point I’m devastated but I come back into reality? Like my brain has teleported. The shock from my failure waking me up. Oh to be aware…. The depression. It all hit me crushing me killing my brain… I had been depressed that whole year but I just slept and ignored it so me having realized my feelings I’m now broken? Fast forward I end up in the same grade but depression doesn’t help so I basically give up. I fail but got put in an alternative school to make up the grade so I don’t get held back again (thank god). I was somewhat smart ig… before covid at least. I got all As without ever studying or trying because everything just “made sense” in my brain. I get into this alternative school and we take these assessment tests, they basically told me that I scored very high and they’d like to take the chance of sending me to 9th without me having to make up my 8th credits that year. An opportunity! I say yes, though it was a hard year I made friends and lifted myself up at the end. Now I’m in 10th and still hate it here but i can bear it. Or can I? I’ve thought of moving to Tennessee after high school to live with my grandma who is walking distance of the university, everything is really convenient and I’d love to be close to family because it’s something I value. But last week I went to Tennessee with my mom just for a week and realized how much moving now and finishing my two years in the states would benefit me. I’m very serious about what I want to do and my aunt is also in the same career field. She told me she could help me with those opportunities and even get me some other opportunities where I can make money while in school those years. I would have a jumpstart on feeling comfortable in that state and would already be familiar and established. Meeting people and making friends is wayyyy easier in high school too which I feel I’d be more open to doing than if I were to move when I’m 18. I could also join more sports and find hobbies that I enjoy while they also help me stay active.But my father just doesn’t care. He won’t think of how I can benefit and wants me to be “safe”. He’s not open minded about it and basically established his answer… NO. I feel like a whiny teenager but god I haven’t been this passionate in forever and think that this is my chance to stand up on my own feet. I hate it here and staying gives me no benefits so comparing these options to me is a no brainer. I hate to admit it but my aunt also gives me that feeling of having a parent that I’ve been yearning for my entire life. She’s so helpful and understanding. She doesn’t shame mental health and weirdly obsessed with being natural like my dad is. She truly cares and I can feel that. I want it…. I’m upset that my father won’t let me have that. Sorry for the long rant but, any advice?

hii everyone, so, it has been about 2 or 3 years I’d say since I’ve been dealing with this. let’s just get right into it, so first, whatever I have (which might be OCD, I’m not entirely sure what it is) has taken over basically most of my childhood, and what kills me is that I’ll never get it back. one thing I know is that im not normal, i now get sleepless nights. why you may ask? because of my horrifying thoughts, “if you don’t look up you’ll be praying to the devil and you’ll go to hell!” “if you don’t say ‘God bless them’ their condition will happen to you!” “if you don’t say ‘good yetho 2x’ (idek..) ‘your mom will die 5x’ you’ll die and forget how to read. “if you don’t put your arms up, look directly up at the ceiling because if you look down you’ll pray to the devil so you need to look up, and say ‘Dear Heavenly Father, I pray that you forgive me for my sins in the name of Jesus Christ Amen.’ you’ll go straight to hell!” or whenever I touch a wall, i need to touch it with my small finger because if I touch it twice with my pointer finger my body will go to hell. it’s an endless cycle, and what’s even worse is that I may never be able to get help. I’ll never get that life back that I wanna live, and it kills me. I’ve named most of the compulsions and obsessions I have and I have 18 compulsions that are physical and about 5 obsessions that I really don’t wanna name right now. anyway, i really don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’ve done a lot of research regarding around disorders, and it’s safe to say that I may have OCD. Now, do i want ocd? absolutely not. however, there’s a family member in my family who has it. so the chances of me having it are strong, i don’t think I’m able to get better until I’m 18. an adult. I’m 12 years old, my mom has noticed my compulsions and me repeating certain words. but she does nothing, absolutely nothing. instead, she just argues with me over it. if I ever tell my mom to sit down and ask her about getting a test, she would probably call me the R-Slur and tell me I’m crazy. Therefore, I’m all alone in this situation with no one to help me. another obsession I have is about me catching cancer if I don’t do a compulsion or I might get paralyzed and get sleep paralysis. It’s so horrifying, there’s more obsessions and compulsions I have but I really don’t wanna name them right now. I cry almost every day because of how exhausted I am, and how much help i truly want to get but I don’t think I ever will. I’m unsure whether or not I have ocd, people tell me to get a diagnosis. but the situation I am in right now makes it impossible. i have no way of getting tested but I have a good feeling I have ocd, if you’re reading this, please try to give me your thoughts and what I should do, and if I even have OCD. Thanks! :))

Hello, I joined this app because for about a year and a half my life has been turned upside down by my constant fear of peeing my pants when I’m anywhere but my house and I fear that if I can’t get rid of it then I’ll kill myself eventually, it’s embarrassing to have my parents family and people around me see how panicked I get sometimes. I have to use the bathroom about 2-4 times an hour at school and I get really stressed when going in the car for 30 minutes or longer and I’m afraid that if I let myself relax my body then I’ll pee my pants so I just pinch myself and tense my body up until I let my flight (flight or fight) win, it’s really hard for me to perform with my band for more than 5 songs because it would be so humiliating to pee my pants on stage, I can barley walk down the street without thinking about where the nearest bathroom might be and when I’m out for dinner with people I get stressed out about what if they think it’s weird that I leave the table too much anyways. It started when I was in class one day and I just got a random thought of what if I pee my pants while the teachers talking and that really scared me I can still remember how I felt afterwards sitting in the bathroom thinking what just almost happened and I haven’t been the same since. I’ve consulted doctors and I think it’s mainly psychological. I’m just tired of always having to think about my fear and being scared to let it go ,

I spent the entirety of my childhood trying to figure out what was wrong with my brain. I crossed out multiple personality disorder, schizophrenia, and even autism (anything that could explain that second consciousness that I felt in the back of my head). It wasn’t until I was 16 that my compulsions and obsessive thoughts got so out of hand that it was undeniable that I had OCD. That year I made the self diagnosis of OCD (I know self diagnosing isn’t good but getting answers felt necessary). I’m a first gen kid with immigrant parents so mental health was not talked about or even really believed, sometimes I feel like it was even discredited:(. Because of this and the many other problems my dysfunctional family had I felt like bringing up my mental illnesses would be seen as a plot for attention so I pretended that everything was okay my whole life. I didn’t let anyone see me struggle, not my friends, family or coworkers. I would feel like talking about my issues especially to my mother specifically would just be burdening her with extra stress that I know she didn’t need. Also talking about myself and my problems requires a level of vulnerability that has always made me so uncomfortable (so much so that no other person can attest to seeing me cry in almost 10 years because of how weak and uncomfortable it makes me feel for others to see me hurting) so I would always depend on myself. Cry to myself, struggle completely alone, and hide from anyone else. After a certain point hiding your struggles gets exhausting, mentally draining, and on top of that my OCD does everything in its power to remind me that I am completely alone in this (even though in a way I’ve made it that way). So, when I was 18 I decided I would tell my physician at my physical since this was the first year my mother wasn’t in the room with me. I told my physician some things that were going on and she gave me a loose diagnosis of OCD. That day I went home with a paper saying my diagnosis, more confident because the paper sort of proved that I wasn’t conjuring up these fake problems like my mother assumed, but had an actual medical diagnosis. I told her what the doctor said at my physical and my mother responded with “You don’t look like someone who has OCD.” That comment made me so angry. It took me years to feel like I was ready to tell her and she shot me down so quickly. A big part of me blamed myself though, I had realized that I’d been pretending like everything was okay so well, and for so long that now no one would believe me. This made me feel incredibly alone, like I didn’t have anyone in my life to talk to because they probably wouldn’t believe me. But that’s unfair, being vulnerable and talking about your feelings isn’t easy for everyone especially when your own brain is telling you your pathetic for it. And that’s the thing about OCD, most people are so uneducated or MISeducated about it. They have the idea that OCD just means your super clean and organized and that’s it. And that definitely plays a part in it but it doesn’t define the disorder as a whole. My room is messy most of the time and I’m not super organized (about things most people would notice anyway) but that’s not what OCD is. OCD is the loss of control of your own brain, that “second consciousness” that starts off as dark thoughts when you’re a kid but evolves into a full blown parasite that fights over control for your own brain and for the most part wins. This parasite creates all these rules that don’t really mean anything but forces you to live by them. It also forces you to think about these obsessive thoughts, the most horrible things your brain can conjure up and forces you to think about them so vividly that it starts to feel real. This disorder can be all consuming, it has taken away so many parts of me including my mental health, affects my school and work, my social life, my ability to have relationships and friendships with a lot of people because it makes me terrified of change. Any non-constant or routine in my life scares me beyond belief to the point where I am unhappy with the life I am living because of all the experiences my anxiety/OCD is preventing me from. All these obsessive thoughts lead to compulsions, mine happen to be multiples of 3 aka “3-ruled” most people with OCD have a number or series of numbers that run their compulsions such as even numbers, numbers that end in 5, etc. For me it is 3s and multiples of 3s. The obsession with 3s started when I was about 11. At the time I was obsessed with this show called Once Upon A Time. The show was about how magic was hidden in the real world, and I wished more than anything that the show was more than a fiction. I noticed that the number 3 was very significant in the “magical world” (for example “3 magic wishes” etc.) that running my life by 3s would in some way bring some of that magic into my real world. Now it’s gotten to the point where almost every action I do is in 3s. Light switches, opening bottles, pen clicking, almost everything. If not the 3 rules my OCD creates other compulsions that make me feel at a lack of control of my brain and life on a daily basis. The constant thoughts and worry of anything and everything make it impossible for me to turn my brain off because it feels like it’s not being run by me. This is why I’ve struggled with insomnia since I was a kid. Sleep has always been something that has come difficult to me which is why I value it so much. The second something or someone would wake my brain up the thoughts would awaken also almost like a crying baby. There’s so much more I could ramble on about but I don’t think there’s enough space in the world to explain everything. Now I’m 19, have just started ERP (Exposure and Response Prevention) therapy which I am hoping will give me a glimpse of what a normal life can look like.

So I tend to think about the fact that I may have ocd a lot. That alone is enough to give me major anxiety. I usually will try to talk to somebody about it when it makes me feel anxious. I’ve noticed though as soon as I try to talk about it, I forget most of the obsessions that I’ve had. Is that normal? It makes me feel like I’m crazy sometimes

I’ve been feeling very horrible lately. I think I may be experiencing POCD. This all started like a year ago. So, I have a niece who I adore so much. We spent so much time together when she was born because her mother had to work at night and I had to watch her and sleep with her. Everything was good until one day she was crying and didn’t want to sleep so I rubbed her arm because thats what helped her calm down. Then I realized I felt a groinal response and I tried to ignore it but I was scared cuz I didn’t know what it meant. Everyday I kept wondering why i felt that. I know that I wasn’t attracted to a baby. I love her and would never see her in that way. So I just ignored it. But then I had a dream about my niece kissing me on my lips and in the dream I was turned on (i feel so disgusting saying this😔). So when I woke up I felt disgusted in myself. Every since i’ve been forced to be around her cuz i still take care of her but I still get unwanted groinal response when she sits on my lap or when I have to rub her arm to make her fall asleep. I’m so disgusted and I feel so ashamed when i see her or anything that reminds me of her…. I love her so much but I want all this to go away.

I feel like it’s a struggle to trust and believe your partner when you are 100% certain you either heard or saw something while engaging in a compulsion such as spying. Then for them to tell you they have no idea because the proof isn’t video it’s just audio. So now I feel like I’m internally struggling to believe what I heard or believe my partner. I don’t know what to do😓 and it makes me want to engage in more compulsions and set up hidden cameras in the house to get proof.