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intrusive thoughts have gotten kinda bad again after a few months of control. i think i might spiral over something again, how do i prevent it? i can’t go through this again i won’t make it😭

So every-time I get intrusive thoughts It triggers automatic anxiety and then I feel so anxious. How do you guys just “sit with the feelings” the thoughts bring when it feels so uncomfortable and like something bad is about to happen?

I hate this OCD stuff. I have been out of work for over a year because OCD has taken over my life. I need to return to work in two weeks, and I don't think I'm going to be able to. I just started woth NOCD about 4 weeks ago, and I'm sure this will help me, but I'm just not there yet, and I'm stressing. And the more I feel stressed by this stuff, the more the little OCD stuff affects me too. My leg just bumped my computer keyboard, and now I want to change my pants. I intensely hate this. This sucks.

hi yall so my theme kinda jumped from harm to fear of schizophrenia. and i saw a scene from greys anatomy of a paranoid schizophrenic and ever since i feel like ive had intrusive thoughts pop up that sound like paranoia. last night i had “what if my parents aren’t actually my parents” and so then im like am i paranoid? am i experiencing psychosis or schizophrenia? do i believe that thought? then it combines with my harm theme and there’s this fear that i am going into some kind of psychosis thing and the paranoid thoughts are gonna make me harm someone. so i have intrusive images of that happening anyone have anything similar? please answer if you have and how to deal

Does anyone have trouble with anticipatory anxiety especially with physical sensations? I constantly find myself worried about “what if my heart palpitations happen again?”… It’s pretty consuming when I’m stuck ruminating about it and causes me to lose focus on the present.

anytime i describe how i’m feeling or who i am as a person, i physically feel like i’m lying. for example, i clearly am anxious over these thoughts, but saying that i’m scared feels like i’m lying. or when someone says “you are not your thoughts” it feels like i’m upset or don’t want that to be true because i want to act on them. like it’s making me feel like the only way out is to do them. but then i think back to when these began, the idea of actually committing such acts made me absolutely terrified as a child. i couldn’t even imagine why i was thinking those things. why does it feel like the opposite now? i just feel like my morals have completely flipped and no matter how much i try and find an answer to it, i never can.

I don’t know if I have OCD, but I’m in the verge of asking my mom to maybe go and get me checked. I will get a thought or several thoughts in my head and then think about them for HOURS and not be able to do anything else until I am satisfied. It is usually an agenda and I will go over it again and again in my head until it drives me crazy and I break down. I get thoughts in my head while out in public usually, ones that I am so ashamed of and make me feel disgusting. I also get unnecessarily angry and violent when certain sounds happen. Especially coughing. I don’t know if it is the repetitive part of it but when I say angry and violent I mean it. I think this might be misophonia, but I heard the two are related. Anyone with OCD, does any of this seem familiar? I’m hopeless at this point

Hi all, I’ve just increasing my Zoloft dosage to 150 mg, as my psychiatrist told me the dosage needs to be high to see results for OCD. Ever since increasing the dose, I’ve had intense physical anxiety throughout the day and my brain feels foggy. I can’t even go to class without trembling. I find myself overthinking and ruminating for entire days at a time, unable to get out of bed. I’m worried about these symptoms but also scared to try any other meds. Has anyone else had a similar experience?

I am not asking for reassurance I’m just freaking out about something that just never crossed my mind before. I’m helping to raise my nephew since he was a baby. I vaguely remember patting him on the bottom when he was one playfully. He was bouncing around the couch and I was also just making sure he didn’t fall. I never thought of that contact or interaction as inappropriate or weird. Why on earth 6 years later am I freaking out? I started having unwanted intrusive thoughts surrounding past events and my anxiety is through the roof. Is it normal to question yourself like this if you have ocd? Please know I love my family so much and this questioning is killing me.

hi. so i’ve been struggling with a schizophrenia/paranoia/psychosis theme this week. yesterday on accident i saw a scene from greys anatomy about a man with schizophrenia and he was saying “my mom was impregnated by an alien” and i was worried id get stuck on the thought which is exactly what happened. so now that thoughts in my head, and im like am i experiencing paranoia, am i schizophrenic, do i believe this thought to be true, i don’t know and i was trying to just relax and my mom was like im tired and my brain said “cause you’re alien pregnant” and now im really not sure if its an intrusive thought or paranoia and i dont get how to tell the difference and im really really struggling. someone please help

Not reassurance seeking but is it possible to feel so overwhelmed by your thoughts that you feel like you are going insane 🫠

I always put trigger warning just to be safe because honestly OCD will find ANYTHING to trigger itself. I used this app when I really needed people who had a similar experience and since I have ADHD and OCD my OCD meds are slowly not working because my ADHD meds were upped. Which stinks but I’m going to call and tell them I need the dosage upped. I wanted to come here and say that this road to recovery isn’t easy. It’s bumpy and it’s messy. I’m still confessing as a compulsion and giving any new friends an out so they can leave me. I just want you to know you aren’t alone and I know how it feels❤️we will get through this and we will be okay😊

Hi, I’ve always had OCD, but it was very manageable. I’d obsess over something not being clean or in the right place, but I’d be able to redirect quickly and move on from the thought. After my Mom died in 2015 and I had my first child, I started to have intreusive thoughts. I’d replay her death over and over and wonder where her soul was or if she was okay. It kept me up all night and turned into insomnia. I was put back on Lexapro at a high dose and a sleep med and anti anxiety med were added. It seemed to help for a while until til I started to get adverse side effects from all the drugs. About 16 months ago, I started to wean off. The tapering process has been horrendous and I have had every symptom in the book , the worst being bulletproof insomnia and extreme irritability. I feel like I’m reverting back to the intrusive thoughts, but ten times worse. I keep thinking that I will never sleep again and that my life is ruined because of the long term use of meds. I’m not even off all the meds yet, but I keep playing the worst case scores over and over in my head. How do I get through this tapering process especially the obsessing about sleep and health?

I hate how compulsions can just lead to more obessions. I have fears that I ended up on dark web sites and a video popped up on my feed about illegal websites. At first I didn't want to watch it but I hoped it would reduce my anxiety if I watched it and didn't remember being on any of the listed sites. The creator ended up listing dark web search engines, and thats where i stopped the video. While sort of relieving because I didn't recognize any of the things he listed, now I have a fear that since I know how to get to the dark web I want to and look for terrible things. I should have listened to myself and moved on from the video.

I’ve been doing good by not posting but I’m hoping that someone can validate me a bit… I know I don’t feel sexual feelings towards anyone but my partner, but the thought of intentionally imagining someone’s body intentionally makes me so anxious, even my own family including my little daughter… I guess what I’m asking is do people without ocd experience that same discomfort of not wanting to intentionally imagine anyone’s body regardless of the context or who it is? I feel like depending on the person and context, maybe imagining someone as a whole person may not be bad? But I feel uncomfortable about intentionally imagining just peoples body even though there’s no sexual meaning? Does that make people without ocd uncomfortable too? I don’t want to feel like I have to do things like that to become “normal”… sometimes I’ll have intrusive thoughts saying to intentionally do something and then it’s like the image just comes in my head when I don’t actually want it to?? It’s really confusing and upsetting. Can someone please give me a bit of clarity? The AI thing on Snapchat said that it’s normal for people without ocd to feel uncomfortable by that… and I understand you could have a thought and an image just comes in on it’s own without you trying…

When you realize that your thoughts will never go away, but that you need to create a world where you and those thoughts can exist in harmony, is where you find peace. ✌️

Made up scenarios have gotten so much worse lately. My intrusive thoughts make this whole story up where Im an awful terrible person, and vivid images show up in my mind. I feel so so guilty about it until i finally snap back into reality and realise its just my brain trying to trick me. I am so sick of this.

Does your ocd ever make you feel like people/pets/loved ones are somehow "contaminated"? I have about 1 real bad episode per year.. that my dad & my cat are somehow "contaminated" just because I had scary thoughts about them. The belief that they are "contaminated/messed up", leads to depression. It is the scariest thing. It's like an emotional contamination fear.

I (20f) adopted a cat about 7 months ago from my local animal shelter. I absolutely adore him and he is the light of my life. However, I can’t help but obsess over the fact that I am not giving him the quality of life he deserves and that he’s actually suffering and depressed. He is a healthy cat and I’m giving him the best quality foods/toys and attention that I can as a busy college kid, but this thought just plagues my mind and I can’t seem to think that the life im giving him is sufficient. How do I get over this guilt?

I’ve fully convinced myself that I want to harm my family, and I don’t know what to do, as I’m completely paralyzed by this and can barely get out of bed. I’ve been struggling for the past three months, 24/7 every second of the day. I used to have panic attacks, and I knew for a fact that I didn’t want to do these things, I just couldn’t get the thoughts out of my head. Now I keep telling myself that I just don’t care anymore if I do act on them. It’s like there are two completely people inside of my head, one convinces me that I want to, and the other is completely terrified. I bought some weed gummies yesterday, knowing that it was going to try and convince me that I bought them to make my thoughts worse and so I would act on them. I’m feeling super guilty because I feel like I just don’t care anymore, and I still ate one anyway while convinced of that. Fast forward to today, I can’t function at all. I have no idea how to forgive myself, and then I question if I do want to forgive myself. 😫😫😫 If I was truly this evil person, why would I be completely debilitated and unable to focus on anything?