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I was watching this random tiktok on my fyp and this guy was comparing his art vs how how he looks or whatever. He is 15 and when he showed how he looked in real life I had a thought that was like 'damn that's how he looks??' and immediately after I thought 'he's 15 why would you think that' and im so anxious that's proof that im attracted to minors. I am 22 and I have never been attracted to a kid, nor have i ever considered dating or persuing a kid. Ive had POCD intrusive thoughts before but still, the pictures had his face covered and they looked like those aesthetic pinterest pictures people post, and i wasnt expecting that. I feel like vomiting but that thought felt so natural and im worried i meant it. Why would I have a thought like that?? I know we're 'not our thoughts' or whatever but that didn't feel like an intrusive thought and now I'm worried that was proof im attracted to a minor and that one of my worst fears is true. I'm also worried if I pass It off as an intrusive thought im in denial or making an excuse. Please help.

I don’t know what to do! My 13 year old son has suffered with intrusive thoughts for years. He feels guilty of things he’s done in the past when he was super young and obsesses over it to the point that he has to come clean about everything!! He fears that he may be a phedophyle at times because of intrusive thoughts. He’s on Zoloft 75 for it, it was getting better for a bit but it’s getting aggressive again! He is so kind and such a good son and person. He is in counseling but his counselor doesn’t specialize in OCD. I don’t know if I should have them change his medication, idk if there’s a medication that will help him more. I’m so scared I suffered with intrusive thoughts as a kid and teen, I never got help but I’m good now.

okay hi, so i am having awful thoughts that are just plaguing my mind. i got into a relationship almost 3 months ago and i got on nexplanon for birth control a little under 2 months ago and i think i am driving myself insane. like i’m having intense anxiety and i want it to stop. everything was fine until like 2 weeks ago, i was staying with my bf at an air bnb and i started overthink having sex and stuff. one of the things that i’m most afraid of is that i’m going to give him consent, we’re going to do stuff, and i’m going to realize that i didn’t really want to do stuff, and have weird feelings toward him even though i told him yes. but i know how to tell him when i don’t like something and i have before and i know how to tell him when i want to do stuff. i’m getting so hung up on a few moments when we had sex a couple of months ago and there was one instance where we both had sex and i forgot to ask his consent and afterwards he says “you didn’t ask my consent” and he was joking but that really bothered me and we talked about it and he said it didn’t bother him he was just making a joke. another time, we had sex and the opposite thing happened: he didn’t ask me for it and we talked about it and it didn’t feel like a violation and i know it wasn’t but i’ve been super anxious and depressed this last week and kind of driving myself into the ground worrying about this. i don’t want to ruin my relationship because i know that when i am rational, i am able to be like “no, that didn’t happen” but i’m scared and overthinking and i’m not rational right now. i don’t know what to do but all i feel is intense distress and anxiety and i want to get over this because i know the truth but i can’t stop spiraling. can anyone relate and help me? i feel like i’m losing it.

I have been struggling with pure ocd symptoms for years, constantly fighting with myself and ruining relationships because of things that aren’t real. I’m not physically strong and I’m introverted and quiet, yet I constantly have intrusive thoughts about hurting my friends and family. I’ve had sexual images pop into my head or my dreams about every person, relative, animal that I’ve ever known. At 14 I had my first sleepover, where I locked myself in the bathroom all night because I thought I’d hurt my friend in her sleep. It didn’t help that I didn’t understand I was gay and that liking her was normal. I thought I was sick and twisted. At 21 I did the same thing, I was dating a girl and at her birthday party we shared a room for the first time. Even though we slept on different sofas, I still didn’t trust myself so I stayed awake all night. At 22 I went to a tattoo place and a massive storm happened, where all the roads closed due to crashes everywhere, so I couldn’t get a taxi home. My tattoo artist let me stay on his sofa. For the next few weeks I had intrusive thoughts that we’d had sex, or that he had watched me sleep and done things to himself at the same time. At 22 I slept with someone I thought was out of my league. I convinced myself for weeks that I never got consent even though I did. At 23 I was home for Christmas and had to share a bed with my little sister. I begged my parents to let me have the sofa to myself. I’d been having multiple pocd intrusions for a couple of months. At 24 I’m in my first relationship and I still continue to have these nightmares about everyone I know. It makes me feel like I’ve been unfaithful. My partner doesn’t trust me either. She wakes up and tells me she’s had dreams of me cheating on her, whilst i did indeed, have dreams about cheating on her. After drinking heavily one night I blacked out, and convinced myself I’d cheated through false memories. Cheating is the worst thing in the world to me so why would I do it.

I feel less emotions now. Being stoic is different, and i feel like having less emotions. The more amount of emotions i feel normally now are sadness and irritation. Ocd takes a toll on a person. When the thoughts and images decrease, i still don't feel improvement in my condition. I am sure it takes time to get normal, but by then i relapse. This feels like a constant in my life now, and now i actually feel as if it's a part of me, and that i have to always fight it without any recovery. My relationship/singlehood life isn't any good either, and hocd just makes it worse. The thoughts and images are so frustrating, but when they decrease, i don't even know what to do then. It's as if i hsve forgotten how to live without struggling against ocd. I don't take meds. Meds feel like living well with ocd and not actually recovering from it. For the past 3 out 4 months i didn't take it meds, it still felt good and like progress in my recovery. I just want to defeat ocd and live my life as per my own choices.

WHY CAN'T THEY GO AWAY ? I understand that is the point of ocd attacking you, but it's still so frustrating. I do acceptance therapy and to a degree erp, and it works. But after a point, the thoughts and images should decrease. When they do, fixation and overthinking ruin things again.

I don’t watch porn often, but if I do, and if I ever go on to porn websites I just feel so uncomfortable and dirty afterwards. I clicked on one of the main porn websites and clicked out after seeing the titles because I just felt so uncomfortable. Now I feel dirty for even searching up porn. I can’t really take that back as it’s done now. How can I get over the dirty feeling though?

I was told by my therapist that it's possible that I'm a covert narcissist. Since then I started feeling very anxious and ruminating when I did something that could be a symptom of narcissism. For example today, I was editing my social media profile and I started going over my posts and looking at them. I got a thought "why do you like looking at this? Why do you do this so frequently?" and started ruminating that I'm a narcissist so I must be a horrible person. So I wanna know if anybody also obsesses over mental illnesses (not particularly npd)? It's really making my state worse because everything there is on npd online is written in a vibe that all narcissist are manipulating monsters who know what they're doing and can't be helped so break your contact with them. I wanna cry when I see this because I didn't know what I was doing until the diagnosis, also I'm terribly scared of being left alone

So lately I’ve been feeling better and happy I’ve been laughing with family and friends but sometimes when I do laugh because I get a burst of happiness I instantly get anxious and get intrusive thoughts trying to tell me that it’s weird that I’m happy.. that something must be wrong because I feel happy.. or I feel happy it must not be real My brain goes through everything trying to convince myself that my happiness isn’t real and it ruins the whole moment for me when I feel the happiness… it scares me. Any reason why this is happening or can anyone relate and give some advice?

Why do I have the urge to off myself when having ocd thoughts? But I dont want to die.

So, the last 2 days I have been running an experiment on myself with what food and drinks I consume to see of it would have an effect. I haven't had a single intrusive thought in weeks before this. So I know refined carbs, caffeine and food with E numbers are all neuroinflammatories which makes the neuropathways on your brain harder to use. Making it harder for people with ocd to rationalise. For the last 2 days I drank nothing but carbonated drinks and processed food high in saturated fats and f***, the intrusive thoughts came in like a tsunami and were hard to deal with even with the knowledge I have on how to deal with it. Highly recommend not to do the same experiment. So this can cause high levels of homocysteine. Vit B12 is used to break this down but I didn't have any B12 during this. I also planned to upset my methylation as this is the method on which our gut usually digests stuff and creates hormones. I've been looking into something called the brain-gut dysfunction as it's linked to bowel problems and stress/ depression etc, a of which can make ocd harder to manage. I don't expect you to analyse everything but when you eat, especially junk food or snacks consider what may be healthy for your brain. The healthier your brain is, the better it works.

Do you guys sometimes think the WORST things? Like SO inappropriate. You know your family wouldn’t want you around or if they knew what you thought they would absolutely think you are sick and not want you to be around their kids or family? Idk I am really convincing myself I am not okay. And this isn’t OCD. I am so scared.

I’ve been sleeping great for the last few months, but just recently I have been having a hard time sleeping at night even if I try to take a nap. So obviously I’m more tired than normal, which makes my ocd worse. Now when I try to fall I sleep i have anxiety flare up and makes it even harder to fall asleep. I’m literally tired trying to fall asleep relaxed and comfortable and can’t. Does anyone else have this problem?

My boyfriend showed me a video on Instagram with a person interviewing a couple on the street asking the guy if he’s okay with his girlfriend having male friends, trying to bait them into saying it’s not okay but they were just like no obviously that’s fine, and they said anyone who tries to control who you’re friends with is controlling and isn’t worth your time. This really triggered/upset me because my boyfriend has a female friend he’s known longer than me, but they’ve had feelings for each other on and off in the past. Over last year and the year before their feelings came up again and we had a rough time within our relationship with him being confused and me being insecure. Last summer he broke up with me (it ended up being temporary) and while we were broken up he hung out with this girl a lot and they kissed once. We later got back together and worked through it and he said that it made him realise it was me he wanted to be with. But basically I’m still really insecure as I always have been and my OCD focuses a lot on this girl and what they did etc. I have at times expressed that their friendship makes me uncomfortable, and before they’d kissed I know that he thought I was being controlling but I was just afraid of what would happen with their feelings, and then what I feared did happen. Now even though we’re stronger than before and he says he’s 100% sure it’s me he wants to be with and his feelings for her are gone, I still feel so insecure and ruminate on it all a lot and have compulsions relating to it. The words from this video “controlling” and “not worth your time” are going round and round my head and I’m so afraid that’s what he thinks of me or will come to think of me and that I’m a bad person, and I just can’t stop thinking about it. I cried with my boyfriend after seeing the video and he knew why and reassured me, but of course OCD doesn’t take reassurance. It sucks because I know it’s partly OCD, but it also feels like a genuine thing to be worried about given what’s happened in the past. Thinking about it all really takes over my life a lot of the time. Anyway sorry about the rant :/

Hi everyone, I want to talk about something kinda personal because I don’t really get to talk to my family about my life without being judge. So I have had anxiety/OCD and more since I was a kid. I have some terrible thoughts, including about the dead and etc. anyways I feel like I was neglected as a kid and a young teen but I don’t want to put false blame on my parents. I just need to know. Ever since I was a kid I’ve felt different, I’ve had these terrible thoughts and feelings that I wasn’t enough. My sibilants would always tell me to stop crying, shut up, call me names and hurt me. I always thought it was just a sibilimg thing until we got older and they still bask my mental health and hurt me. For example my sister and I worked at the same place together and people there didn’t like me . And all I did was kept to myself. Well my sister threw it in my face all the names I was called and it hurt a lot. My siblings don’t know about my ocd bc when I shared it back in 2021, they laughed at me and told me to stfu. There’s moments where they are nice, but more where they judge and hurt me. Nobody in my family seemed to care for me until I was on the verge of killing myself a few years ago. I’ve always gotten my basic needs from my parents, but I can always feel the difference in how my mom and dad talk me to my other siblings than me. My mom calls me names and my dad just recently stopped only bc he was having bad anxiety (when it’s in his favor). My mom always screams at me about money and getting my dog outside and my dog being bad ig. But no matter what I cannot catch a break. I am told my parents feel like they have to “walk on eggshells” around me because I’m so sensitive, and my siblings have kids and made a comment if their kids were ever like me they would “nip that in the ass”, to stop them young. I kinda just sit there and take this all. Always have. I always stick up for my siblings and help them. But when it comes to me they don’t care. Same with my parents. My mom tells me to not tell her what I’m going through bc it’s gotten old. Can anyone help me? Help me understand. Is this neglect? Like is this why I always feel hurt and just not good enough. They make me feel like the black sheep.

Racing thoughts and can’t sleep. Dealing with scrupulosity and ROCD and addiction. I’m so sad

My mind is literally running around in circles over this…. Bit of a rant, so stay if you’re ready to read it…. Okay so bit of back story: in the past while I’ve been with my bf, before I had ocd, I used to basically “like” or react to whatever post/photo (to an extent) I do admit some things were like why tf would I even like that…. Anyway so even tho I never had any bad intentions I used to like whatever, and not think twice about it…. I’ve always had the rules/boundaries for my partner that if he sees a photo of a girl in a bikini to just scroll on and not like or react because even if he had no intentions it made me uncomfortable… which is a fair request not that he was the type of guy to do that anyway… a lot of time has passed by since back then & I developed ocd (mainly POCD, ROCD AND SEXUAL OCD) I took myself off social media Agers ago because of being triggered and it just filled my head with bullshit. But I’ve recently had the intrusive thought “what if one day if you go back on socials you come across a tik tokker I followed who I’ve looked up her onlyfans befroe in the past - not with intent - just out of curiosity but still massive regret” anyway - me and my partner had a convo because of this thought, even tho I know confessing doesn’t help, and he basically said to me even tho I don’t consider myself bi anymore since I’ve been with him because of my expectations of him (which is fair) then it should be the same for me, wether it’s a shirtless guy or a girl in a bikini I don’t know (unless she’s my friend) then It’s not okay for me to like - now I’m just pointing out that’s not an issue for me, even if I would never have any intent by liking some tik tok persons photos or something like that - he still wouldn’t ever have intent either and I wouldn’t ever want him doing something like that…. So since that point because he said to me don’t like photos of guys with their shirts off or girls you don’t know in a bikini, it’s sparked all these questions in my head like , “what if it was a girlfriend of mine with their bf at the beach, or what if it was a friend of his that I became friends with his gf and they posted a photo at the beach, what if it was a friend of mine who posted a photo of her and her friend at the beach, or what if it was a photo of my boyfriend with his mate but they were at the beach, what if an old friend died and someone posted something for them but they were in a swimsuit.” Anyway I know these things sound ridiculous but that’s what ocd is, it makes me question my own morals…. Because my brain is not logical - it’s hard for me to understand right from wrong cause for so long I’ve felt everything is wrong, and because of how I used to be I just used to think that liking certain photos was normal…. I sometimes depend on him to tell me what is okay or not because I don’t have that logical part of my brain working, anyway as you can imagine I’ve had all the “you would like this, you wouldn’t like that, maybe this maybe that” all that BS! Putting images in my head, confusing me so much… I would never want to do anything to disrespect my relationship or man. When I’ve tried to ask him these specific questions it has made him almost break up with me because he can’t handle hearing this stuff 24/7… all the hypothetical things that won’t happen etc. He refuses to read or listen to those questions about specifics which he is totally in the right about putting up boundaries - I just am confused because ocd tells me one thing while my heart says another…. I have thought to myself that I wouldn’t have worried if he ever liked a photo of one of our mates with his gf, because I knew there would be no intent; but he still just wouldn’t do that because the girl is in swimmers and he feels that is disrespectful to me or our relationship. And now it’s saying well you don’t think any of this is a big deal it’s been repeating that for so long…. Like when I’ve found out something is disrespectful to my partner and he has voiced if he wouldn’t do that then I shouldn’t either - then it’s obviously disrespectful to me because anything that he feels disrespected by obviously I think is bad too cause I never want to harm my relationship. It just keeps saying “you don’t think this is a big deal” putting all these different scenarios in my head… like I’m not trying to think that??? Just because I may not have seen things as a big deal back then, doesn’t mean I feel that way now, when I heard it from his perspective it made me think differently and think I should have the same expectations of myself that I do for him - that Is fair and equal! But then I just have these continuous things go through my head trying to make it seem like I want to do those things or something… making it seem like that I think “he shouldn’t care because I have no intent” like um hello??? I know he would never have intent but I know straight up certain things would make me uncomfortable if he liked it. He is aloud to care just like I care about him liking certain things - my rules should be the same as his, isn’t that fair??? He does have a point, tho im not anymore, but I used to identify or think i was a different sexuality until I met my man, I didn’t want to associate with that label again when we were together. So really it should be the exact same rules for me as it is for him… so why the fuck does it keep saying that I will do these things or want to do these things or don’t see them as problem? When I actually do now. Even if I had no intent it’s about not disrespecting my bf, he never has spoken up and said these things before so I never used to see an issue with liking anything back in the day but I just feel like my whole viewpoint has changed now. All it needs to come down to is that if someone is shirtless or it’s a girl I’m not friends with who has a bikini on or something along those lines, then I won’t press like, simple it should be, not so simple for my ocd brain 🧠 to understand, because it puts lots of different hypotheticals to make me doubt and question everything, I would never mean to do anything that would hurt him, or disrespect him but he’s actually verbally told me what he thinks is okay and not okay - I trust other people’s judgment more than my own because I have ocd. It’s not like “oh my boyfriend told me no but I still want these things or think it’s acceptable” it’s not like that at all, when your partner verbalises to you something makes them uncomfortable you should be respectful if you love them & I do love him so much… why is it so hard for my brain to understand I’ve had a change of opinion compared to what I thought was okay in the past…. He won’t answer my specifics so just to be safe even if I never had intentions I’m just not going to like anything that has a girl in a bikini (unless it’s my friend) or a guy that’s shirtless - because I now view that as not acceptable because of how he has put it to me…. Why does ocd torture people like this? It’s demanding I give it Answers, I literally was just crying and almost having a panic attack today saying “JUST STOP” over and over again while I showered. I almost lost my relationship today because I can’t stop confessing for almost 2 years. I have lost him before because of confessions constantly, he doesn’t deserve this as much as I don’t deserve to go through this either. Like I just don’t understand why it keeps saying “this isn’t a big deal to you” when it has become one, just because it may not have been in the past doesn’t mean I have that mindset now. F U OCD.

i was “diagnosed” with OCD less than a year ago. the reason i use quotation marks is because my psychiatrist isn’t very thorough, although i’ve only ever had one psychiatrist so maybe this is the norm. essentially, i went in to tell him i’d been struggling with intrusive thoughts, and he just said “that sounds like OCD” and wrote me a prescription for medication to treat it. when i went in to talk to him about it, i’d already had the suspicion i’d been dealing with OCD after learning about it in my college psych 101 class. ever since i was 8 years old, i’ve had awful intrusive thoughts regarding my faith, and i’d combat them through repeating prayers or little sayings over and over again in my head. i’ve been doing this for over ten years now. i have other intrusive thoughts and related compulsions (if i really have OCD) , too, but that’s the bulk of it. here’s the reason i’m writing this, though: the medications i’ve been taking haven’t helped much, so i think i need therapy, but therapy makes me nervous. i’ve been taking anti anxiety medication for roughly 5 years, so when i told my psychiatrist i was dealing with intrusive thoughts, he was really surprised because the medication i was on is used to treat OCD all the time. he’s tried a couple different changes to my medication, but none have worked, which leads me to believe i might need therapy to bridge the gap. therapy terrifies me, though, because i have this sinking feeling that if i seek out therapy, my therapist will discover i’ve been lying about my symptoms without me even knowing that i’ve been lying, if that makes any sense. i’m sorry this is so long. i guess i’m looking for some encouragement.

How would I book an emergency appointment? I’m having a bit of an ocd crisis over here lol

Some of the convos on here scare me. Like I genuinely think a small amount of people on here have other issues besides OCD and it’s making me freak out about if that’s me too.