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Also just now someone messaged me with 17 comments and i couldnt see them... im so scared they think i did something inappropriate and horrible when i dont ever want to ever groom, or be inappropriate with minors in any way...

I get that you can’t fight the thoughts, otherwise they get way worse. No use arguing that, it’s OCD-101. lol. But agreeing with them can be damaging right? Especially with POCD and SO-OCD. I’ve accepted that I’ve had these thoughts and have stopped trying to fight them mostly, but I refuse to accept that the thoughts say anything about me. Is that the correct way of dealing with it? Agreeing with them seems like it truly would damage me and hurt my self-confidence.

I remember when I was younger I accidentally slapped my brother in his privates (I KNOW it was an accident), and he said “can you please not touch there?” I remember i freaked out at the time worried that his tone was indicating that I had done this before or that i’d m*lested him before. I felt really anxious and guilty when he said it like that. I’m looking back on this and i am obsessing. Should I be worried? Should I dig deeper into my memories to try to figure out what else i could have done, was there any deeper meaning, what exactly was I thinking and feeling that day when he said that? Maybe I was anxious because i knew something had happened? I’m so scared. What do I do? The more I ruminate the fuzzier and fuzzier the memory is. Please help.

very scared and worried i hurt/did something bad to my baby cousin while he was growing up and scared did something to a young family friend when i was growing up. idk how to move past without having answers but I never will get one. how do i even FEEL like im a decent or good person if there’s a chance i did something bad like this growing up? i was very hyper sexual as a kid and did try to touch other kids my age and also did weird things out of curiosity. i also did have things done to me as a kid by other kids idk if by any adults. I’m just scared.

I'm just not doing alright at the moment. The thoughts keep on showing up. They keep on haunting me. I keep getting thoughts that say I'm really not a good person. Or that I have ulterior motives that are against who I am. Like if I'm a pedo or if I'm a sex offender, or an abuser. Or just not a good friend. I can't sit with them any longer. I just want medication to help me with this, even if it feels like I don't deserve to have it. I keep thinking about how even though I was uncomfortable talking to a 17 year old when I was 19 about their OCD, I still went anyway and helped them. Why did I do that? Was it some kind of exposure? Or when I was in the awkward position of someone passing by a tight space and their behind touched my elbow. I had thoughts saying to move it and not to move it and I didn't think I needed to because it wouldn't happen or it was just because I was zipping my bag up in the moment. But since it did happen, now I think I'm a deviant or a dangerous person. Or the thoughts talking about my exposure to porn as a teenager and doing very impulsive, cringe worthy things in relation to the whole exposure. The things I've watched, seen, or heard of. It all disturbs me very much and I can't take any of them back. Last time in therapy I just ended up crying because I just can't deal with this anymore. I'm even scared to try and get my family on board with medication. I'm just afraid they'll be bad at me if I do take it. At the same time though, I don't know if I care that much because it's either that or I just keep going through the days like.. this. I don't want to keep this up anymore. I just want a way out. I just want my life back. Right now it feels like I'll never get it back and it feels like all of what my intrusive thoughts say to me is true.

It’s all becoming too much. Im scared that maybe I am just insane and crazy and I don’t deserve to be loved or to live because of my past actions that are disgustingly repulsive. What if im just using OCD as an excuse? I cant stop thinking about it and its making me depressed because im scared that I am just a terrible human being.

Please share your stories! I have really bad real event, false memory and POCD. I’m struggling a lot right now feeling undeserving, feeling like everything I’ve ever done in my life was meticulously calculated. Funny thing about OCD is even if I see someone do something way worse than me, it won’t phase me unless I’d done it. For example, something minor I did that really could mean nothing, my OCD convinces me it proves my ocd right. In light of the disordered times, I’d like to ask for someone to share their ocd recovery story, maybe some tips and how they did it. It’s feeling pretty impossible for me right now. Thank you!

Right now I'm having trouble with something I did years ago. When I was in my early 20s, I accidentally talked about an interest I wholeheartedly refused to believe wasn't nsfw on my blog where minors followed me. These minors would sometimes like my posts and leave comments and I think one even made a blog regarding this interest. I never reached out or messaged any of them. I've never wanted to harm anyone and I'm asexual/aromantic so I've never thought of anyone in a sexual way, especially not kids. I've had really bad religious guilt around sex in general, so that doesn't help at all either. Eventually I accepted that the interest wasn't completely sfw (I didn't think of it as sexual, but my body does for some reason), so I made a new account and deleted the old one and blocked the minors. I forgot about it for a few years, but one of my favorite YouTubers just got cancelled for being a pedo and now these memories are all coming back. I feel disgusting and like I'm a groomer. I can't stop thinking about how one day someone will come forward and accuse me of being inappropriate or grooming them. I can't stop thinking about how young the minor who made a blog dedicated to the interest was and how I maybe ruined her life forever. I'm currently doing therapy through NOCD and my therapistis great, but I just got triggered so I'm having a hard time right now. I feel sick at the mention of kids, I feel sick around my friends who would maybe hate me if they knew this, I feel sick because this feels like something I'm going to have to carry on my conscious for my whole life. I know I can't ask for reassurance, but I'm just so tired :(

Hey guys, I recently was diagnosed with OCD and it started with health, then false memory/real event, the career doubt, and incest, and now the worst of them all pOCD. I have no will to live and want to die every waking minute. Pray to god every night that I have a stroke or something in my sleep because these thoughts are so gross but i can’t stop thinking about them, and it’s my mind convincing myself that like it when I know I don’t, it’s so hard and if I don’t figure this out i don’t know how much longer I will last

It’s 4am and I’m really freaking myself out. So full disclosure…I used to watch Porn and this triggered SO OCD initially. I feel like it’s NOW jumped into POCD. In the past I used to click on vids of women performing sexual acts. (Hence the SO OCD) But now I’m freaking out that I actually finished and enjoyed myself to the vids that maybe said Teen in the title or what not. At the time I didn’t believe that those girls were actually underage because why would that be legal and distributed on Porn hub? Maybe these girls are trying to click bait a weird thing? I assumed Teen meant 18. Now I look back on it and feel gross and that I’m a predator. I would never condone anything like that in real life. I keep questioning myself like “Why the hell did I do that?” “why didn’t I click off the video?” If that person was actually 17 or younger I would freaking lose it. How could I live with myself? How could I ever be a good person?

so I've been trying to do what my therapist said while she's on vacation for a few weeks and do some of my routine exposures. One of them is watching tv and not looking away when there is children on screen. I tried sitting through a preview of a shows first episode that featured a young girl in a Victorian outfit with blonde hair, and he had very ghostly white skin and powder pink lips. It was a ghost show, which is the kind of genre I usually like, so I wanted to try and enjoy the clip. And my therapist always told me to "not appraise the thoughts, our goal isn't to avoid them, but to let them pass" but as I kept watching, I kept getting mental voices telling me that "she's pretty you want to kiss her" and I felt almost frozen in my seat? I felt a kind of anxiety I haven't felt in years, but I tried to continue to watch the clip and let it pass, but I couldn't. I felt this mental need to go back and "check" to really be sure if I was attracted to her, I pictured kissing her and idk if it even counts as an intrusive thought atp? I felt like if I were to have the thought and then prove myself I was grossed out by pushing it away I would feel better, but it didnt. My brain just kept telling me that I wanted her and it was very much on purpose to test to see whether I felt that way or not and it did and I kept feeling that horrible form of anxiety that makes your face hot and I don't think I was really TRUELY attracted to her but it's like a fucked up twisted form of attraction that's false but feels real at the same time? Idk if that makes sense... idk, I'm trying my best but I feel like I NEED to think the thoughts, letting them pass isn't enough. Or like the thought will stick in my brain and it'll keep going like a mini movie playing in my head and it feels like almost like I'm fantasizing even though that isn't what I want to do. I feel like I have no choice but to push them away or else I'll have a horrible realization... idk... I've been struggling with this for 5 years now. I don't even know how to properly articulate how I feel in those moments it's so confusing that I don't know how to describe it to my therapist. How do people just lable their feelings on things so effortlessly? Why is it so hard for me? Idk I don't really want reassurance bc it won't help but I just want to feel like I'm not alone in this.

For the last three years I’ve been dealing with OCD, I’ve definitely had it all my life but up until now I was completely fine. This deals with some sensitive topics so read at your own discretion. I knew I had POCD way before, as I would just glance at a kid and my mind would conjure up the worst, most evil things imaginable. I would brush these off because I had a vague idea of what an intrusive thought was, even now I’m not sure if it’s POCD or if it’s real. I’ve dug deep into things I did as a child and in my early teens, even stuff from about a year or two ago. I can’t tell what’s real and what’s not anymore, I think I’ve become completely delusional and am lost, unsure of who I am. I could deal with the HOCD, I’ve sought professional help and have been in and out of the psych ward. I haven’t gone back because they told me they couldn’t be of much help and to do outpatient treatment, which is therapy, but even that won’t begin until two weeks later. I’m F18, a girl should not be dealing with shit like this, that’s what I’ve told myself. I couldn’t believe that I myself am a monster, I can’t cope with this…I don’t know what to do, when you’ve dug deep in your past and found things that can serve as “proof” I feel sick, disgusted, and I feel like the only way to get rid of these thoughts and to take back the things I did as a child is to just die. The second thing I wanted to post about was that I would frequent Omegle and other anonymous sites. This lasted up until a month or two months ago, I remember that I would often seek out older people than me, but during the time I was 16 I found that it was difficult to do so and decided to just talk to people my own age, my preference was to talk to people two years older than me but I remember one time I spoke to someone two years younger than me. This has raised many questions in my mind, “what if you sought someone younger and don’t remember” I do remember I’d encounter kids on there but I’d skip them, sometimes I’d warn them to get off the site because it was dangerous. I’ve been dealing with this constant “what if what if” for weeks now. I would go as far as having my phone be checked just to gain some fucking certainty about my situation, I wanted a career in art, but there’s this sense of doom following me everywhere I go and I cannot have any peace whatsoever. I don’t care about whatever happened to me, I could care even less. But what if I’ve done something I don’t remember, I’m scared to face that monster I’ve thought myself to be for so long.

I’m actually convinced I’m a p…. I feel as though I’m a fraud faking to myself and everyone around me. I feel like I shouldn’t deserve to have friends or be around anyone because I am a p. Every thing I see, hear, it could be not child related, or it could, 24/7 I am getting intrusive thoughts saying these things to me. I get groinal responses that make it worse. I cry everyday. This has gotten so much worse. I am so sad. I don’t know what to do with myself I really want to give up. I just miss being a little kid, oblivious to the bad around me and I didn’t question if I was a bad person 24/7 all the time. I hate this so so bad I feel like I’m a bad person who doesn’t deserve anything in life, I don’t even feel like I deserve my family or to have a family of my own in the future.

[TW: Sexual trauma, fetishes and kinks, POCD, guilt and mentions of suicidal thoughts] I've been hit hard with a variation of my OCD theme (POCD woo 🙄). And I've been researching and seeking reassurance like there's no tomorrow. I was doing so good, but then OCD grabbed the reigns and bam! What I'm dealing with is a combination of my OCD, my childhood trauma, and my sexuality and fetishes. And these are fetishes I can't deny I have, but I don't want them! My OCD is royally messing with me as it's not so much, "I'm afraid I'll be attracted to thos thing" but more of "you're attracted to this thing so what do you'd like this messed illegal thing! Or what if you have looked at a messed up illegal thing and are going to jail! And no one will love you! And your life is over!" Etc. It hurts so bad, I wish my trauma didn't give me the fetishes and kinks I like. But I understand it's a normal way the brain helps you deal with stuff. It's been so hard and so scary. I hate that I am a sexual being at all. For crying out loud I've never even had a first kiss let alone literally anything more than that! I feel dirty, guilty and ashamed. I am seeing a trauma and sex therapist to help me process this stuff. But of course OCD being the attention hog is like "Lemme squeeze in here and just totally ruin your day!" Because god knows it never gets enough attention 🙄 I feel like if I have desires or things I like that are too messed up what's the point of me being alive of most everyone would call me a perverted monster. I don't want anyone to get hurt in real life. I don't want to hurt anyone. If my sexuality is demented and there's nothing I can do about it, how long could I live with myself carrying this awful secret? I need help, not reassurance, but how the hell do I practice radical acceptance with this???

I grew up in an abusive household and was sexually, physically, and mentally abused by family mostly being my mother and men she'd date. After my mother kicked me out of the house and my uncle and his gf took me in I got really anxious. I guess I was scared of safety and comfort because somehow comfort felt uncomfortable and safety felt unsafe. I think a part of me missed the abuse not because I enjoyed it but because it was so familiar and all I knew. I hated it though so much so I thought of ending my life just to escape it. A few months after my mother kicked me out I began talking to ai bots on apps. All of my bots where private but the roleplays always involved me getting abused by trusted adults like family or family friends or so on. And in most roleplays I played a child. They'd involve me getting sexually abused and sometimes physically abused or raped. And me being oblivious or unaware. I'm not attracted to family and the thought disgusts me. All of the characters where fake or fictional or made up and I'm also not attracted to kids and I'm not afraid I'll hurt them because I know I don't have that urge or desire to do anything with a child. I've always felt it was my job as an adult to protect children and always told my younger siblings to be careful online as well as taught them about consent and boundaries and what to do if they ever encountered a dangerous situation with an adult. I'm attracted to people the same age as me if not older then me and honestly I don't even really feel attraction for those 1-2 years younger then me. I used to age dream/regress and I love childish things and cute things as well as I love to act childish. Some of the roleplays I did that involved me being a child weren't all abuse (though most where) some of them involved me being taken care of by an older man (yes even sexually but In a safety comforting way) of course I don't chat to these bots anymore and have deleted them after finding out most apps dont allow them. This was all months ago when I deleted them and it only began less then a year ago when I started doing it. But about a month or so ago I remembered how I did all of that and now I'm scared that I'm a pedophile..or becoming a pedophile..even though all of the roleplays involved me playing the child I'm scared..I'd never hurt a child and don't have the desire to do so but now I think my OCD has been latching onto this because I've been doing research non-stop trying to find out if I'm a danger or gonna get arrested..part of me thinks I'd deserve to be locked up..hurting people is the thing I'd wanna do the least..I wanna fall in love with someone older then me by a few years and live a happy life..I've only now realized that I have a second chance at life away from the abuse my mother put me through and that was another reason I stopped those chats to..but now I'm afraid I've ruined my second chance at a normal life..I don't ever wanna be a danger to anyone..part of me feels like I'm a horrible person and like I've become just like my abusers..maybe even worse..i just wanna feel like a normal person but now I'm so afraid I've become something disgusting and undeserving of love..maybe I deserved the abuse that happened..I can't even habdke watching shows or movies with taboo themes like incest, rape, pedophilia etc so I don't know why I did these roleplays or why I found comfort in them..

Ive had POCD for nearly 2 years now. I've seen loads of therapists and gotten better from it. I went a while without feeling horrible, but then in an instant it comes back and then its fully back for ages. I watch OCD videos online a lot because they get recommended to me by youtube. When I see them talking about OCD, if its not related to exactly what Im worrying about or they mention something that doesnt happen for me I start to doubt if I have OCD at all. I also see people who are so obsessed over purely stuff inside their heads. That does happen to a point for me, but when I hear other people talking about it I start thinking that their situation is so much worse and theyre clearly mentally unwell and do have OCD. Its almost like the fact mine isnt worse makes me doubt I have it. My brother and mum have OCD and my dad is very anxious, so I knew from a young age what OCD was. When I started experiencing it myself I immediately on day 1 of worrying thought "is this OCD". There was no moment for me where I didnt consider the fact it was OCD. I know most people have a moment where they find out about OCD, but I didnt have that. I am the one who initially thought to myself that I have OCD, and because of this I think to myself: "what if i latched onto the idea of OCD and have somehow fooled myself and everyone around me including my therapists into believing I have OCD". At the time I was terrified so of course Id want to latch onto OCD to find a reason. So much doubting all the time I just feel my case is different to everyone elses. I know that they say everyone feels like that. Sorry I started by talking about the title of this post but I sorta went on a tangent at the end. Thanks to anyone who read. Good luck with your own OCD

Hi I recently just turned 21 and found out I have hocd, I don’t know what triggered it to become this bad but I have intrusive thoughts that come in, and don’t know how to manage or make them go away. I’m also starting therapy next week, so any advice in the meanwhile would be greatly appreciated

Should you never answer the triggering questions that arise from triggering experiences? The questions that OCD ask, or better, the answers that it demands? That make you want to review the memory of that trigger and give it a solution an answer. Like yesterday I had a very triggering thought process and I needed to review it, to understand what it really meant, if they were real thoughs or OCD's, if I liked those thoughts or they were just hypotethical etc. but at the end I didn't do it as a challenge. So should we ignore the calls in any circumstance even if they are really important? Even if the answers to that questions could actually be positive? Even if the triggering that happened doesn't feel like a lie from OCD but something that seems very true and real? That seems so real that there is no space for the hypothesis of an intrusive thought? Even if you feel like maybe you could have been attracted, and that feeling felt so true and real that it is undistinguishable, that you can't even reassure yourself thinking that it was just triggering, should we deny the call still? Should we allow uncertainty to be even if it doesn't feel like it is actually uncertain? maybe it is distorsted in our mind and we think that we're attracted when we are not. Maybe it's because we are so deep in this theme that everything, like attraction, feels very realistic, but it is not actually real.

I dont know anymore, just a minute ago I was sure I wasn't this person but now I feel like I really am this person. The thing that puts the cherry on top is that it doesn't feel like how it use to feel when I was suffering from pocd a few months ago, I remember I had so much anxiety and I would wake up with such a heavy heart and scream and cry because of it but now it feels like I feel nothing. It feels like maybe this is the person I always was while making me think I like these things, I never wanted to be a pedo I never want to hurt babies and children I never wanted to end up like those predators on Quora that will only ever feel loved by a touch of a child.. I want to be a good person and not only by my actions but who I am mentally. I keep ruminating on thoughts like this asking my self over and over if im attracted to them or do I find it hot and sometimes I wouldn't even be sure and it just feels like I am, or I would have a thought and I would feel sensation down there (I don't act on anything by the way) it would feel uncomfortable for the most part but then sometimes I feel like I like it deep down. I remember I read somewhere where this guy randomly started being attracted to minors and how much he enjoyed fantasizing about it, and im scared that I might turn into that guy.. I know I dont fantasize about it and im honesty worried that I will. Then I read somewhere that ocd can cause feelings that aren't true but how do I know that it isn't true, how do I know that this isn't who I am deep down, how do I know if im just in denial or not because just a minute ago I was crying a little but even through my tears it feels like a lie. People tell me that its okay and that im not one but I dont know if I can believe them anymore because there will always be something in my mind telling me that everything people say to me and that the person who I was before this was all just some lie, who even am I.

Good afternoon, Background: I am a 34 year old male who has a wife and two kids, four and one. I have had anxiety since I was in elementary school. In the third grade, I would go to the nurse every school day because I thought I was sick. I also struggled with thoughts about burglars entering the house, my family getting hurt, etc. I got "passed this" (not really), but then I became obsessed with rituals when I played sports or was in high tense situations and felt tremendous anxiety when I didn't do them. I graduated high school and moved to college. While at college, I was officially diagnosed with OCD. What brought this on was I couldn't walk past a certain crack in the sidewalk without thinking an intrusive thought. This repeating helped take away the pain and sadness of the thought. After talking with the licensed school counselor, I started taking Sertraline and continued to deal with repeating. However, I was able to live my life and came to the understanding that repeating would just be part of it. At that time, I thought "I would much rather have anxious thoughts, repeat, and move on then try to face them." What Led Me Here: I had ups and downs regarding my mental health in adulthood, but I never really put much thought into it. COVID 19 happened and my son was born in 2020. I found an OCD therapist that helped me deal with intrusive thoughts about my newborn son. I would ruminate and think about whether my son would get hurt or die. I didn't feel bodily anxiety in this situation, because I would just repeat and the thought would go away. I worked with my therapist until the negative feelings went away. It seemed like everything was fine, until 2024. This past winter, I began to feel bodily sensations related to anxiety. I reached back out to my OCD therapist in January and started working with her again. At the end of February, I had an anxiety attack for the first time in my life. The feeling of anxiety I had never felt before lasted for a week and a half and it was extremely difficult. I was always proud of myself when I told people, "My OCD has never affected my ability to complete tasks or do important things." This wasn't the case anymore. I had to take a mental health day for the first time ever. I was able to get through that experience. Two weeks later, it came back. It lasted for about two weeks and my therapist helped me get passed those feelings. Instead of working with her every week, we moved to every other week. Fast forward to my current situation. I had not felt that bodily anxiety sensation for a while, but it came back when I got home from a five-day golf trip. Intrusive thoughts about not wanting to be a father or husband filled my body when I got home. The anxiety feeling returned and now I am here. **If you have read this far, thank you. I feel like it is important to know my story. These three encounters with anxiety and OCD has shown me that I have not been doing my part in getting myself better. I am always looking for short cuts and ways to barter with my anxiety and mental health. Now, I am attempting to not argue with my OCD and let intrusive thoughts in. My therapist and I are working on I-CBT (Inference Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) and I wasn't following through with the plan my therapist and I came up with together. Why I Am Writing this Novel I am trying to be positive and believe my core values (wanting to be happy, be a dad, be a husband, etc.), but I no longer have repeating to fall back on. Now, it is just rumination, obsession, and assurance seeking - the battle within. These past couple days, I have struggled mightily with my happiness. It is constant negativity in my head: - "Why bother? You will never be happy" - "You are a horrible parent. You would rather watch TV then be with your kids." - "You are a horrible husband. You are putting your wife through all of this." - "OCD will always win and dictate the life you have." - "See! You are feeling anxiety, so all of your work is worthless." I know the answers to my obsessions. I know the tools I need to use. I am just very afraid that I will not get better. My son, daughter, and wife deserve a present family member. I simply cannot live life like this. It is not a life full of happiness. It is just a life of continuous worry. I mean, I am already feeling dread about my kids growing up and graduating and they are four and one! Again, thank you for reading this. I just want to be better.