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POCD How are you supposed to accept uncertainty and move on when you feel so uncertain about ur attraction?

I'm about to have my period in a few days so all my feelings and doubts are even harder to deal with than usual :( I have been ruminating for the past 3 days, last night I had an hour or so of feeling okay, but it went back to doubts and numbness soon after. I'm now almost fully convinced that I don't love my boyfriend, I'm just using him for gifts and the idea of a relationship, I've been faking it the whole time. I feel like a horrible person and I'm struggling not to tell him I want to break up. I don't want to break up but I do but I don't but I do. It's so frustrating and confusing. When we're together he makes me feel nice and comfortable and he makes me laugh and I always wanna hold onto him and kiss him but I can't feel that right now. I've been stuck in bed for hours worrying and doubting and sometimes I cry or cover my face out of frustration. I don't know what I truly want or need.

All I can think about is death. I’m only 26 and everyday feels like I won’t live a long time and that my time is up. I wake up with death instantly on my mind. All I do is cry and sleep. I miss who I was. I can’t enjoy anything without thinking “this will be gone one day” I miss loving life

Hey all, Im Ashton, a 29 year old trans man. I grew up having obsessive thoughts and I am surprised my therapists and psychiatrists Ive worked with over the past 20 years have not ever caught these patterns to diagnose me. It goes way back to childhood but Ive always had intense intrusive thoughts. Some earliest revolving around harm OCD, not so much me actively inflicting harm on others but just harm coming to others. Emergency vehicle sirens would trigger me into panic episodes as a child because I would get graphic thoughts of people dying. I would cover my ears and cry and mu parents would shame me for it. I also have trichotillomania and I was diagnosed with this along with ADHD as a child, and OCD was never brought up despite trichotillomania being highly comorbid with OCD. I later had intrusive thoughts of my mom dying which made me so distressed that I would cry. My mom actually ended up dying of suicide shortly after those themes started and it actually began this magical thinking OCD theme because my mom's aunt told me it was a premonition. I was later diagnosed with BPD AND Bipolar disorder in my young adulthood and they gave me both because they couldnt tell which one I was more aligned with. I am starting to think it was misdiagnosed OCD the entire time but because my compulsion pattern didnt look like counting rituals, they probably never thought to evaluate me. Ive worked in healthcare for four years now, and it has intensified my health OCD themes way more than any other theme I've had. I can feel ever sensation in my body and my brain automatically jumps to the conclusion that it is a symptom of a rare deadly disease. Ive realized recently that theres nothing that will stop the torture my brain puts me through but I want desperate to get ERP to at least quiet the fear response to the thoughts I have. Its made my life very hard to live this past year. Its increased my stress so bad that I actually began to physically deteriorate. Stress can absolutely affect physical health to the point of developing chronic pain and other physical symptoms. I still have to get an evaluation, but after seeing other people's experiences, ESPECIALLY with health concern OCD, and with the suggestion from my primary care physician, I am almost 100% certain that I have OCD.

I don’t know if this is the right place to ask but my sister has really bad compulsions and at first i thought it was ocd but as it turns out the compulsions are the only thing she actually experiences (maybe she could be hiding it but i doubt it) Are there any other things this could be? I remember she had a compulsion and for some reason she wanted me to rewind the show we were watching and i thought i was helping so i refused and she got so mad and she started shouting saying it needed to be rewinded. She herself says she its thinks ocd but i was under the impression ocd is obsessive thoughts and compulsions

Im really scared of making this post if someone wants to read it just read it I might delete it bc I’m gonna get hate for it but it’s okay I’m just scared and yeah. I was never clinically diagnosed with ocd. I can tell you my story and why I’m 99.9% sure I have it. I feel just so bad and horrible like a liar. So it started when I was like 4 and I couldn’t sleep without my dad being in my room and each night I would wake up and felt forced to go to my parents room otherwise I couldn’t sleep. Then I got obsessed with the number three. When I was 10 I developed severe emetophobia and fear of contamination- I still to this day can’t eat anything in public with my hands. And now it’s hocd. I just feel like a fraud and mean and like I’m invalidating other people’s experiences and like a pick ‚em I feel so bad for it but Idk what to do I’ve asked my parents to get diagnosed but they. Say that I don’t need a diagnosis because it’s obvious that I have ocd but idk I just feel horrible

With the current violence and destruction against American civilians, I’ve been scared shitless to leave my home. I don’t live in a major city. But now I’m just scared of getting encountered by an 🧊 agent and getting murdered on the spot. Especially as a person of color I’d just be wiped off and disregarded if anything were to happen to me. And only my family and friends would remember me and it’d devastate them. It’s hard to know whether I’ll be safe or not whenever I go out anywhere. Current world events and politics is just freaking me out and it’s been devastating to me. I guess at least my OCD is latched onto that and not my other themes. I don’t know what to do. Since the fear feels much more probable.

OK, so I’m a Christian and I decided to start an art account just because I have wanted people to really interact with my artwork and follow, like, and support my art. My goals is to at least hit like 5000 followers or 10,000 followers. It would be really fun to have that experience. but my mind is going wild cause I can’t tell whether or not this is considered idolizing. I know that people say not to search up certain things when you’re dealing with OCD but I still did it anyways. I searched up if wanting followers is idolizing and the first thing that popped up was yes this could be a form of idolization and I’m just sitting here thinking about the ways I could be idolizing social media, cause I’m not putting it before God. I also searched up if hoping you get likes idolizing social media and it said yes it is. like I still make time for God so read my Bible and pray every day. I just have that goal of hitting a certain amount of followers and having my art being liked. the one thing I just wanna do right by God and I don’t want to do wrong that’s why I’m looking into idolizing. I’m a little bit confused I can’t tell whether or not it is or isn’t. I don’t tie my worth to the likes that I get I’m just happy when I do get them. I guess I’m also a little bit worried about this because when I was a bit younger, I made like a little TikTok account and posted. When I didn’t get a lot of likes. I would be disappointed and would kind of tie it to my worth because I started to feel like oh what I’m putting out isn’t good enough. So now I’m afraid of going down that mindset again and my mind is like OK so like maybe I should delete all of my social media art accounts and to stay off of them because you’re idolizing it like. I also have thoughts like what if God wants me to delete all of my social media accounts because I’m idolizing it. I don’t think I’m gonna do that because I’m pretty sure this is an obsession. I low-key been fixated on idolization for like quite some time and that’s why I feel like it’s an obsession because I’m always so worried about idolizing things that even when I get achievements like on this account I ended up getting like close to 600 followers in my art blew up and instead of being happy and grateful I cried because I started to think about if I’m idolizing this if I should delete my account if God wants me to delete my account if I’m doing wrong by God because I wanted legs and followers and I finally got those legs and follow like this whole obsession cycle and I wasn’t even able to be happy about it because instead I tried to figure out God really wanted me to just delete what I had worked hard for. I guess I’m just coming here for advice and just to feel a little less alone.

Hi, I’m just wondering if anyone has experienced this and has any advice for me. Since I’ve been having a flare up, I wake up very early (around 4:30-5am) with a racing heart, sweats, shakes, severe anxiety, basically I feel like I am in fight or flight. I am so tired, I have tried meditation, but I end up laying in bed playing multiple meditations until it’s time to get out of bed. I just want to be able to sleep the night, and not wake up in a full blown panic.

Well this vent turned into a long story… so buckle up if you’re interested. Group projects have always been a struggle… frustrated by the quality of work turned in by others that negatively affects my grade. I used to pair up with kids who didn’t care & just do the whole thing myself. In college, I thought it might be different. I had a group in my undergrad who was so rude to me, but I showed up and did my best anyway. My part of the presentation (that I made completely on my own) got the full # of points. At the end, we all gave each other a score from 1-5. I gave them all 5s even though I didn’t think they deserved it, and I got a score that was 4-6 points lower than 100%. So, someone or several people rated me poorly. Our professor bought us beer at the school brewery to celebrate finishing our capstone, and I ordered a large. Everyone else got small drinks, but I didn’t know until I sat down. I got attitude from them about ordering a large drink. This memory has haunted me for a long time. The scores my group gave me knocked my GPA down to a 3.0, which is the cutoff for graduate school. I’ve questioned if I deserved that. Was I a worse group member than I realized? Was I selfish and rude for ordering a large drink? Was it too expensive? Why was my GPA dropped that much? Was it karma? Would I still be accepted into a grad program? I was healing from a major life-altering, near-death experience car accident and concussion at the time. I vaguely told the group I had disabilities, but since my medical issues were invisible to them- I don’t think they believed me. My dog wasn’t service trained back then… after she was, people were nicer and seemed to believe me more when she was with me. I hated that I felt like I needed strangers to believe I had medical problems… and now I can see how that was related to OCD. I still feel like I have to prove myself. People used to come up to us and start petting her without asking and bombarding me with questions about “how to get one” …it seemed like people still didn’t believe I had disabilities even though she was a clear physical representation. It was so frustrating… especially if I was symptomatic or trying to catch a flight. Eventually when people approached us, I learned to start with, “well, you need to have a qualifying disability and paperwork to prove it” …that usually forced people to check themselves. Although, I had a lady scream and wave her hands in my face at the airport. She was yelling asking if my dog was an epilepsy service dog. We were on our way to our gate, so I didn’t stop and she kept yelling as we rode away on the moving sidewalk thing. I don’t understand why people think I owe them any explanation or lesson on service dogs. It’s so bizarre. I slowly started to give up, and was letting people touch her when I didn’t want them to because they would go away faster. My dog loved the attention, but it messed with her focus and training. I started getting frustrated with her too. It wasn’t her fault but I wanted it to stop. I think she started appearing like a “fake” SD because of her attention to/from strangers. So then I worried about appearing like a fraud even more. I felt trapped like once someone had permission to pet her… coerced or otherwise, I couldn’t change the expectation. I got in a bad habit of letting grad school classmates pet her… which felt impossible to undo because I had classes with the same cohort for years. I started being standoffish to people, wanting to be left alone. I was constantly running late (also connected to OCD- checking locks, compulsions, etc). Then I was worried if I was being mean to my dog because I was annoyed and always rushing her around. We were constantly in a frantic hurry. It was more difficult for people to stop us if we were rushing, but I was stressing us both out. I had a grad party recently & found out a classmate who also has disabilities thought I didn’t like her. She was forced to sit in the front because she was in a wheelchair and I wanted to disappear in the back, so I always rushed past her. She asked me about the SD process at some point too, and I wasn’t in the mood so I was probably rude. She’s the only person who actually did deserve an answer… I feel bad about that, but it’s also not my job to educate every single person about service dog training. My service dog is retired now due to getting older, and I’ve started getting nasty looks from people again as I’m adjusting to existing in the world without her. Usually when I park in the handicap spot… even though I have a state issued placard from the DMV and my medical issues are real. I have stacks of documents proving it. I think the desire to be believed might be a validation seeking thing… but it never goes away because there are always new strangers. I also had to literally prove myself and the legitimacy of my medical issues in a court case against the person who ran into me with their car. My brain was still developing when it happened, and then it was seriously injured… so I think there are some strong neural pathways related to proving myself and not feeling safe. The car insurance company we were suing was aggressive and tried to challenge my credibility. It’s their job, but still hurt because they were attacking me personally. I became obsessed and paranoid about my medical records. Worried if I said the wrong thing, I wouldn’t win the case or be able to pay off the stacks of medical debt that came from the accident and recovery. I became obsessed with safety, and never felt safe- in the world, in my body, etc. We won the case, but the money didn’t go very far. That’s a story for another time. I applied for disability benefits a few years ago when things were bad, and gave up after they denied it the 1st time. I’ve heard they commonly deny the 1st app, but I didn’t have it in me to jump through hoops to prove myself to yet another entity. It seems like I’ll never be able to fully prove myself and feel relief. I have regret for how all of these feelings built up to me completely shutting down and being unwelcoming to anyone and everyone. My personality changed… to the point my doctor thought I had a personality disorder. I was angry at the world for years. Why me? It’s all so unfair. I was seriously hurt by a careless driver 10yrs ago, and have been suffering ever since. It’s not enough that I’m forever physically injured, have permanent medical issues, and I’m in debt. I’m also being socially tortured, questioned, shamed… I just want to live in peace. I want to be left alone unless it’s a mutual connection. This injury created a metaphorical gaping wound that never healed and gives people access to my most vulnerable parts. I just want to be treated with basic respect and kindness. I want to be believed. Why don’t people believe me? Why do I care if they do?!😵‍💫

So, I was stuck in a pretty intense spiral from the beginning of November until almost the end of December, and I’m finally starting to feel a little bit better. I’m starting ERP this week, and I’m just really nervous and anxious about it because of it possibly reigniting the spiral. Part of me doesn’t want to do it since the spiral is slowing down and seems manageable, but the other part of me knows if I put it off then the spiral could come back even worse. I’m just scared and exhausted. Even just making my trigger and response list made me pretty anxious. I almost feel like I’m more scared of getting re-triggered than I am about the thoughts themselves.

First, coming here and admitting the things that go on in my head is daunting. I often fear I won’t be loved by my boyfriend or family and friends if they knew the extent of the intrusive thoughts that come into my brain. Picking a OCD subtype felt strange.. it’s almost like my brain was trying to think of a way to categorize myself into every subtype. I know for sure I have/had harm OCD. When I was a child I was terrified I would one day wake up and hurt my parents. And they are some of the most important people in the world to me. I remember my 8 year old self hysterically crying at night and my parents coining the phrase “bad thoughts”, then of course I didn’t understand and I thought I was a bad person. It seems like my OCD evolves with me. I’m of child bearing age have a partner and can see us having kids, now when I see kids I instantly have images of something bad happening to them and them. To call it POCD might not be accurate (but then as I type that my brain says “but what if one day it was accurate” “what if you’re just lying to yourself”). This is a cycle my mind frequents. I noticed this is triggered by stories online or on the news about terrible things happening to children. Not to mention… my current therapists husband was arrested for CSC on their young child.. It seems like my OCD tackles the vulnerable populations. I notice I do this thing where I constantly second guess myself. I’m in healthcare and I’ve been in healthcare for a few years now, enough to know what I’m doing. But I have this fear when working that I will do something wrong or upset someone or get yelled at or hurt someone by accident. It’s caused me panic attacks at work. Did I place that line correctly? Was that medication the right one? When I’ve checked multiple times… I’ve found myself seeking reassurance that I’m a good human in the people I love the most. I wish so desperately I could find that within myself. Typing that makes me tear up a bit. Sometimes I wonder if I’ll be like this forever or I wonder what my OCD will latch onto next, as it seems it comes in cycles. (As a child I had contamination OCD, people would call me a germ freak). I just want to know it gets better and you overcome things. Thank you for reading and thank you for allowing me a safe place with trustworthy folks that can relate.

Rant :’o This past month ive been feeding into my ocd cycle. Even when I know it’s bad I still do it? My cycle seems to looklike this: -gets intrusive thought - gets reaction to thought, views it negatively, so I get defensive and push away physically and emotionally until I get clarity and reassurance that my thoughts aren’t real or that they have no validity. It is SOOOOO HARD to break out of the defensive mode when im simultaneously having thoughts that are telling me “do I trust him? Do I want this relationship? Is this relationship something I still want? Do I care about him or am I even in love with him?”. It adds fuel to the fire and makes it hard to break out of that defensive stage. It makes you feel like whats the point in fighting for this relationship. Listen I didn’t ruminate much or at all on this thought im about to share and im not seeking a why behind my actions but just spreading something I noticed and feel could have some validity behind it but if it’s a possible reason then so be and if it’s not then so be :3 But I feel like when I’m in a defensive mode all im feeling is anger, sadness, emotional numbness even, that it leaves no room/space for the love I have for my boyfriend to enter or even be seen to help me lend out my arm and be trusting. That’s what im feeling in my defensive mode/ defensive tunnel vision so when I’m asking myself why should I even trust him and trust that my intrusive thoughts aren’t real then it feels like there’s no point in trusting or stop pushing him away when there’s no feelings of love or happiness and excitement to combat the negative thoughts. I know im just ratting on myself for checking feelings and you should just trust that your intrusive thoughts aren’t real and all but im not used to having checking feelings as a compulsion or at least im more self aware that im performing the compulsion now and im struggling on how to approach this with erp. If u have tips regarding erp and checking feelings then feel free to let me know !! Ty ^^ I hope im making sense and im not just talking in circles lol. In sum, those negative feelings in my defensive mode make it hard to be so trusting and break free when that’s all you’re feeling and im letting those feelings navigate how I approach trust when I don’t have that reassurance there to make me break out of my cycle and I have to do it on my own. My New Year’s resolution is to be better at maintaining and improving my erp. I will be trusting and I will be better.

Hi all! I’ve been having unwanted thoughts of limerence about a celebrity (who is, obviously, not my partner) for the last few months. I find the celebrity attractive (as it’s human to find other people attractive!) both physically and personality-wise. The thing that gets me are awful thoughts of “What if life was better with them?” “What if you’d love them more than your partner?” “They’re so much better looking and more talented than your partner.” And worst of all- “You keep thinking about them because you want them more than your partner. There’s no doubt about it.” These thoughts are so torturous and sometimes I fear that they could be true! It eats me up and fills me with so much guilt. I love my partner and I just want to life a happy life without these thoughts plaguing me. I also think a lot about Ethan Slater and Ariana Grande and the cheating scandal that happened between them and their prior spouses, and that fills me with dread and makes me fear a similar thing happening to me. Would love any help/advice or mental exercises for people who have dealt with similar things! Thank you!

TRIGGER WARNING. I just got diagnosed with OCD but after talking with my therapist, we think it’s something I’ve struggled with my whole life. As of recent, I have not been able to control it. I constantly feel like I’m going to d¡e and I don’t know how to control my thoughts anymore. If anyone else struggled with health OCD, please give me some tips and tricks on how to manage it.

I got blackout drunk last night and feel the worst unexplainable guilt, dread and shame today. I’m worried I could have said or done something embarrassing while out at the bar towards the end of the night when my memory is absent. Worried I could have been judged for being drunk by all the people I ran into (lots of people home for the holidays). I just have an unshakable feeling of guilt and shame and the false memory “what ifs?” catastrophizing everything. Like I know drinking heavily isn’t healthy but outside of that, I feel like nothing inherently bad happened last night. Most people probably wouldn’t be dreading the “what if I said something embarrassing” aspect as much as me and would just say, whoa I overdid it last night. But to me it feels like rock bottom every time I’m hungover from drinking heavily lately. Didn’t used to be this way but it’s almost like the alcohol is pouring gasoline on my OCD catastrophizing. I don’t really know how normal this is but just wanted to see if anyone else deals with it or has advice for today. Because it’s so hard to get out of my head right now.

This is my first time ever making a post or even talking about this in general, but I just want to vent i guess. For years ive been dealing with gerd/acid reflux, it has me constantly burping all day everyday and causes severe stomach pain at some points when it comes to my meal timings. Recently though, it’s like I can feel its effects more intensely. It’s been causing pressure in my chest, a racing heart, and other odd sensations within my body that Ive never had or noticed before. Earlier this year I literally had to call paramedics after a gerd flare up caused some weird pain in my chest. Of course my habit of searching up every little symptom ended up sending me into one of the most intense panic attacks I’ve ever had :( I genuinely thought I was having a heart attack and I made the call. Even after getting the all clear, my brain wouldn’t stop spiraling and I had my father contact many of his cardiologist friends and even got a second ekg because I was convinced something was wrong with my heart. There is nothing wrong with it, it’s just gerd! And nowadays, even though I KNOW that the odd sensations and feelings of discomfort that I feel are very likely caused by gerd, I can’t help but feel like something else and more serious is going on, and I enter this rabbit hole of looking up new conditions and diseases that I manage to convince myself that I have that I most definitely do not have. I zero in on normal bodily functions like breathing, heartbeat, the sensation of swallowing, etc and the more I focus on them the weirder it feels so I start to panic and am forced to do breathing exercises to calm myself down quite often. It has been so stressful to my mental health this past semester and the anxiety messes with my sleep! At times I find myself unable to sleep due to my body jolting awake as I fall asleep and feeling a sudden rush of adrenaline. Of course I searched this up too (I’ve really been trying to stop searching up symptoms, but I can’t help it sometimes) and found that my nervous system being stimulated due to my anxiety contributes to these jolts! So im essentially stuck in this loop of feeling slightly unwell, getting anxious about it, trying to figure out what’s wrong which then makes me more anxious, and then ruining my sleep which results in me feeling even more unwell. I’m so tired of this, I just want to be calm and worry free :( I will note that I have been seeing doctors and am working towards seeing a proper gastroenterologist! I just wanted to let out my frustrations about how I currently feel and see if maybe someone is going through something similar. Now im just rambling at this point but I also got all 4 of my wisdom teeth out last week. If you’ve ever had a tooth extracted, chances are you know about the risk of dry socket. This week has been so bad with me being paranoid about getting it, even while I’m already past the risk window! I keep checking my extraction sites and every little spike of pain causes me to worry. I’ve limited my diet to liquids and mush, and as a foodie it’s been so difficult to deal with. Im so hungry all the time now and I just can’t wait to be fully healed

I make my boyfriend want to die and I feel disgusted with myself My boyfriend and I have been together for 2 years and nearly all of it has been long distance. We started talking April of 2023, we started dating September 2023 though we acted like a couple way before then, then I moved like march of 2024. Immediately after I moved, I started confessing a bunch of stuff to him. I still talked to my ex the months while my boyfriend and I were just in the talking stage. It wasn’t in a romantic way and it was maybe a few days out of the month, like maybe once a month or sometimes more. I’d ask questions about how I was in my past relationship with him so I could be better in my new relationship or I’d talk about my mental health and things I wasn’t comfortable talking to my now boyfriend, about. My boyfriend started talking to me literally like a month or two after my relationship had ended so I don’t think I was completely over it, I needed time to heal. I liked my now boyfriend so much though that I just blocked all of that out. He treated me so well, he was so handsome and interesting, I loved being in his presence. I was so happy with him and I felt like my old relationship didn’t matter anymore. Anyway, I also stalked my exes socials even when my boyfriend and I had started dating. I stopped talking to my ex when my boyfriend asked me to be his girlfriend though. I didn’t think it was wrong, I didn’t realize it was wrong at the time. I didn’t want to be with my ex, I didn’t like him anymore and I actually ended the relationship. He treated me so horribly that I stoped loving him, or liking him at all. I confessed everything to my boyfriend though while on my way to my new state. I hurt him so much and that was only the beginning. He initially wanted to break up, but eventually chose to stay. It was a rough few weeks though. Then I got my first job ever and that opened up a whole new can of worms. This was my first real, serious relationship. I started finding other people attractive, I found myself wanting to other people to think I was pretty, I had thoughts, and I also stalked people from my past on insta. I confessed yet again, everything to my boyfriend. Every single thought, every single small action, everything. I had never experienced these things before, being in a relationship and still finding others attractive, being in a relationship and stalking people from my past, wanting other people to notice me. These were things I was used to doing while single and things I’m not sure if I did in my past relationship, but I just didn’t notice. I felt horrible though, I felt disloyal, I felt like he needed to know. I made him feel so horrible and depressed. Then I got a new job, same stuff happened, I confessed, and the cycle repeated itself. Then again, I confessed my every thought, every small action, everything. He begged me to stop confessing, he said he didn’t want to know anything, he said I was making him depressed and insecure. I was making him feel like he wasn’t enough. I confessed such horrible things to him, not cheating just things you should never tell your partner, things you should keep to yourself. If I imagined myself with someone else, I confessed, if I stalked someone from my past with no weird intentions but then maybe started to think I found them attractive and my intentions were weird, I confessed, if I walked past someone on purpose or found someone attractive at work, I confessed. If I didn’t confess, it would eat at me. I’d feel sick, I wouldn’t be able to eat for days, I’d lay in bed crying and I’d call out of work. I’d feel so dirty and confessing was my only way to feel clean again. I stoped confessing around December of last year. The damage was already done though, I changed my partner and our relationship. Then my partner got a new job and I started to think he was cheating. I’m not going to go through every single thing that happened, it would be too much. I made him unfollow girls from work who made me uncomfortable simply because I was insecure even though they were just his friends, I was constantly questioning him and getting upset, I was constantly stressing him. He wasn’t perfect and did some things to make me uncomfortable, not display just things that weren’t okay, but it didn’t warrant my behavior, I was too controlling. He lied to me twice and I found something out that really hurt me. Again, wasn’t anything disloyal, just not okay. It really broke my trust and since then, I haven’t been able to feel secure. It’s been over a year and I still question him about situations, I question him about irrelevant girls, I stress him out so much. For the past few months I’ve been questioning him about a girl he talked to for maybe two months before him and I met. They were just friends as well but she was really weird and he ended up hating her. I’ve consistently brought her up probably every week for idek how many months. I’ve asked if he looks at her account, finds her pretty, I ask him and over and over again if he liked her, I’m always bringing her up. One time, the same day I brought her up, he had listened to a song, the same song she posted herself to on her story. It wasn’t a very popular song, and he said he had seen it in an edit but he couldn’t find the edit anywhere. Ever since then, I’ve questioned him about it and I’ve accused him of looking at her account. Inconsistent things have happened in the past before though and that triggered me. Like him saying he doesn’t have Snapchat but there being a green dot on his name, him saying certain people are blocked but they disappear off of his blocklist, there’s been a lot more. I’ve asked for proof of things, I’ve kept tabs on him, I’ve been so horrible. I used to have his location but I deleted Life360 because that’s weird. His location was off one time that he said he was with family and I questioned him. I stalk his PlayStation and if he says he’s busy but it seems he’s playing video games, I question him. I ask to see his blocklist to make sure every girl I had him blocked, is still blocked. He visited recently for a week and it was amazing, we’ve never been happier, but after he left I spiraled. I searched that girls name on insta to see if she’d come up and she didn’t. A few days later I asked him if he had blocked her and he said yes, I asked to see and his blocklist order had changed. He said he didn’t know how and I spiraled. We had talked about it a few times prior to him leaving but it wasn’t enough. When he got back home, his WiFi was out for over a week and he couldn’t text. He had to walk far out of his neighborhood which is dangerous, just to text me. I spammed him, I told him I wanted to break up, that I was done, that he’s a cheater, etc. I kept having these ups and downs and these mood swings. One minute I was convincing myself he cheated and the next I was like, he could never do that to me. He would walk out of his neighborhood sometimes just to answer, I knew it was dangerous for him but I felt so insecure that I didn’t care. He asked me to stop texting until he had WiFi again and I tried, but then I’d start to spiral and overthink again and I’d spam. Finally he could text because he had went to see family in Mexico. He promised he’d answer some old messages an hour after waking up the next day but ended up not doing that. He had to sleep on the floor and he told me he had spent the day so tired, trying to sleep. I didn’t care, he broke his promise and I was so upset. I’m used to him ignoring my messages sometimes so this really pissed me off, especially since I spent a week not being able to talk to him. This happened on Christmas by the way. I spent all day waiting for him to keep his promise and reply to my messages but he never did. Then he didn’t reply to me for like 12 hours, no update or anything. I spammed him again, and I sad the meanest things I could think. I hate you, you’re horrible, you’re just like everyone else, you make me want to die, I hate you so much, etc. I had convinced myself he didn’t care about me anymore. He broke his promise and he didn’t update me. He answered at like 2pm today saying he had went back to California and he still didn’t have WiFi at his house. He said he didn’t update me because his phone had died. Then today, I questioned something he had said during a conversation where I was talking about that girl. We ended up getting into an argument and he called me. He was crying, saying that he’s so tired of me bringing her up and that she’s not relevant at all, and I make him want to die and he’s so tired. This made me realize how absolutely horrible and disgusting I am. I love him so much and I just want to be happy with him, I don’t realize what I’m doing until after. I convince myself he’s this horrible cheater sometimes and I piece together a bunch of things in my head that I think is evidence. I stalk his every move and think certain things are proof that he’s cheating when really, they’re a product of my imagination. I’ve ruined my relationship, most of it has just been be stressing him out and making him want to die. I know I need help, this isn’t normal. These mood swings, my overthinking. I don’t know what’s wrong with me and talking to a therapist doesn’t help. He’s cried to me before, saying he could never cheat on me because his dad cheated on his mom and he was cheated on twice as well and it’s just such a horrible thing that he could never do. Is my relationship past the point of fixing? Have I ruined things too much? Everything is so dirty now and I can’t make it clean again. I can’t undo everything that has happened and so much has happened. Every single day I’m stressing him out. He’s mentally ill too and I make him need therapy, well his family too but still. I haven’t been there for him when he’s needed me the most, I make him swear on the people he loves just so I can believe him, even when they’re sick. I’m literally such a disgusting person. I don’t mean to be this way, I really don’t, I don’t want to be horrible. He makes me so happy and I’m so happy with him. I just convince myself he’s cheating or doing things behind my back and it feels so real in my head. I ruin his happy day, the holidays, his birthday, I ruin everything. These past two weeks that I’ve convinced myself he’s doesn’t care about me or love me and that he’s cheating, I’ve imagined myself with other people that I know or knew because I’m so scared of being alone. I’ve looked at people who are attractive, I’ve hoped people would notice me, I’ve been so horrible. I was convinced he was cheating and I’d end up alone. I don’t want other people, I just want my boyfriend. We’ve been together since I was 17 and I’m almost 20 now, is it too late to be better for him? I feel like I’m so manipulative sometimes too. I don’t feel like I do any good. I make him insecure, I stress him out, I don’t stop when he tells me too, I just keep going, I trigger his ptsd by being so stressful, I hurt him and make him depressed, I haven’t supported him in crucial times and I even STILL questioned him about things when he was going through heavy things, I let my insecurities consume me and I let the need to confess, consume me.

In a span of less than a flipping week, I've gone from crying because I didn't want to leave my boyfriend to go on my 2-week trip abroad to see family to feeling nothing for him at all and feeling the need to break up. I cannot feel anything. I feel numb on the inside, but function okay on the surface. I feel numb to nearly everything with a few moments of emotional clarity during which I do appreciate him and enjoy my time. But most of the time it feels like I don't feel anything for him, feels like I don't want to talk to him, feels like we've grown apart (we were literally sleeping in the same bed for the first time ever last week??). I've been crying to him on our nightly calls for a while now, but since this trip started it's been mostly me complaining about this issue and crying my eyes out. He just wants to help me out in some way, but I've even been getting frustrated with him because he sounds so nonchalant about it (he isn't, I'm just really annoyed by anything small lately). I'm trying to summon things that should make me anxious, such as thinking about what it would be like if I broke up with him, but it won't elicit any response other than crying out of frustration. I can't even think of past happy memories or imagine our future, because my brain is so fried from all the anxiety and stress I've felt the past couple months. I'm just so emotionally numb and exhausted, it doesn't feel like I'm living my life. When I'm not feeling like we need to break up, I feel like I need to be in his arms. It's just going from one extreme to the other. I hate this so much. I know there are techniques to help with this (hell I even recommended some to someone else on here suffering from this). But I'm just afraid I don't know the truth about my feelings, despite me literally not feeling ANYTHING remotely deep. It also doesn't help that I've been PMSing and starting my menstrual phase like tomorrow. It's always so much worse around this time.

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve been on this app and I just wanted to give an update! I’ve been experiencing OCD for roughly 2 years and it’s been a revolving door of obsessions. I had been to therapy once and it seemed to help for a few months until October of this year when I had one of the worst breakdowns of my life stemming from one of the worst thoughts/urges I had ever had. I couldn’t eat, sleep or focus for almost an entire month and it was unbearable! Since mid-November, I’ve been going to one on one therapy and I’m currently on Lexapro (the lowest dosage available). At first, I had increased anxiety and it was very hard for me to function. I can say now that my body is starting to make the turn! I’m eating & sleeping very well now but the only thing that’s getting me is that I’m still having those lingering thoughts! One thing that has kept me ground is remembering that the thoughts & urges I’m having will pass and they don’t last. I’m in a way better position than I was months ago. Stay strong!! (Question: who else experiences unwanted thoughts but doesn’t feel anxiety about the thought? What do you do in that instance?)