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Why is reassurance a bad thing for OCD?

i feel like crying. i keep coming back here but it’s the only place that calms me down. i keep getting thoughts and feelings that i’m going to give into these thoughts today. all i get is images of me harming my family members and i’m panicking so bad. i don’t want to hurt them, and now it’s saying that i actually do want to. it feels inevitable. i feel like a terrible person. i know i don’t want to do these terrible things. i was just fine a few minutes ago but it all just came back like always.

so a few months ago i heard about “the lamp” story on reddit. it’s sent me into overdrive since and i’ve been struggling extremely bad since i heard about it. earlier today i was showing my friends my tattoo, i was telling them what it said off memory but they corrected me and said “no it’s says “until being strong is the only choice you have” and i can and have only remembered it said “strength is the only choice you have”. (that is not the full tattoo that is just the part that was mixed up). it instantly brought me back to the lamp story … in the story he saw a lamp was looking “odd” or “warping” and it caused him to wake up from a coma. in his dream he had a family and a whole life and a job and all and came to find out none of it was real. since then i have been struggling with nothing being real and convincing myself i am also in a situation similar. my brain instantly brought me into hyperdrive and has told me the tattoo is my “lamp” and it is going cause me to wake up from a coma because it’s not what i remember it being. please tell me someone understands. i am really not okay and in all honesty i feel like im going insane.

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.

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.

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?

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

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?

My OCD gives me the need to confess things. It’s really hard and exhausting. How do you combat this, anyone else had this problem?

So I'm not sure if it's just me, but I've been diagnosed with OCD for a couple years, and I've had symptoms since as far as I can remember, but I still feel like maybe it's all in my head and I'm just imagining all the compulsions? I sometimes feel like maybe all the struggling from compulsions is just me trying to sub-conciously manipulate other people to do things for me out of pity. I don't like the pity, and I want to be able to easily do things for myself, so I know it makes no sense, but sometimes I just can't talk myself out of it. Any thoughts or recommendations?

i’m very aware that one of my main compulsions is confessing/seeking repentance, specifically from my boyfriend. however i can never seem to get past this one specific event from my past. to sum it up, i remember while having me time (if yk what i mean) i kept having random ppl that i know in my daily life popping into my head and sexual images of them kept coming in as well. i felt like i couldn’t fully control it which makes me think it was OCD and i didn’t know it at the time. however, a specific person that kept coming to mind is now standing out to me. i would be lying if i said he was not an attractive person, but i would never in a million years actually want to be with him in any way. i love my boyfriend with every fiber in me and i am confident i would never do anything to jeopardize that. the thing is that since i know i found him attractive at the time i am struggling with my intentions behind those thoughts i was having about him. although its out of character i wonder if it was real thoughts and not just intrusive. it feels like a cycle of me trying to figure it out and i feel so incredibly guilty at times over it that i feel as though i should confess this to my boyfriend. this happened over a year ago and this person is no longer even in my life but i still can’t shake it. is this something i would need to confess to him or is it just my OCD taking? also, something that feeds into my obsessing over this is that i remember distinctly trying to make sure i looked okay when i was around this person in the past. not in a way that i wanted him, but just that i didn’t want him to think i was ugly or anything. i don’t think this is uncommon to want to look good in front of an attractive person, but at the same time i wonder if i was seeking attention for the wrong reasons or something. it’s just so conflicting bc it’s very out of character for me.

How to know are your thoughts OCD or it’s just you. (if that makes sense)?