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Does anyone else ever feel like they can't write down anything that has to do with their OCD? (even making this post is hard and I'll probably delete it) I feel like when I put things into words or write it down either way it makes it more real and so I avoid it. Also, I had a realization and I want to see if this is accurate.... When I have a thought, whether it be valid concern or something wildly made up, if I take a moment and think about this thought and if I don't I'll have anxiety, is that a mental compulsion? I always thought I wasn't really doing mental compulsions but sometimes I hide in the bathroom to try and sort out my thoughts so I must be doing them. I always feel like I'll forget the progress I've made in my thought process since my mind is always going 24/7 so I have to fully think it out before I can let it go. And then when my mind comes back to it, I start the process over.

If I didn’t have ocd my life would be so beautiful is sad 😞

Something I’m having a hard time understand and accepting is that you can’t control your thoughts. On one end, I’m told that it’s not my fault that I have these thoughts so it’s ok for them to be there, but the automatic thoughts about that thought (such as negative connotations) are what I need stop doing. But because they are thoughts, and thoughts are uncontrollable, what am I supposed to do? I understand I need to just let my thoughts be there. I understand I need to not beat myself up. But everything is so automatic I feel stuck. Any advice is greatly appreciated.

Last night I had such an awful rejection thought! My mind has been coming up with more and more blasphemous thoughts. It was a rejection thought towards Jesus. It was something about “I reject J…… with my heart. I tried to brush it off and apologized to Him last night. I felt like I knew the thought was trying to come but couldn’t stop it. At first I thought “what if I thought that thought?” or sometimes I feel like my mind tells me I “wanted it” which I don’t! It’s like accusing thoughts & feelings! The more I thought about it I was telling myself this isn’t me! Obviously I started to have doubts. This morning I started freaking out because I’ve had this thought before, it was about God about a week ago. It scared me! I woke up this morning crying asking for forgiveness about last night! It breaks my heart to have that thought! I cried. I’m still scared! I need & want them forever! Am I okay? Are they still with me? I love them so much and it hurts to have these thoughts! I would never say that thought out loud but it still hurts my heart. Will they forgive me and be with me?! Any advice to move forward? I’ve been struggling hard.

I made a post earlier about how I was feeling so much better yesterday after receiving so much support on here but I woke up this morning and my ocd threw old intrusive thoughts and false memories at me that were my most painful. I just can’t escape my ocd. So now i’m back in the loop. My ocd always comes for my kids. They mean the most to me in this world so it’s the most painful theme of ocd i’ve had to face. My ocd will take any situation and twist it into something horrible. Examples are: one morning when my son was a toddler(he would sneak into bed with me at night sometimes) he woke up and he had the blanket wrapped around him and he was naked with his underwear on the floor. I had no idea why or how that happened thinking maybe he used the bathroom during the night and was half asleep so he took his underwear off before going into the bathroom instead of when he got into the bathroom and forgot to put them back on and he just got back in bed but my ocd said I must have done something inappropriate to him in my sleep and that has to be the only explanation. There was also a night my daughter fell asleep in my bed watching tv and I was in a deep sleep so I don’t remember much other than her saying “mommy” and I said “sorry mama” and moved over. I’m guessing I just rolled over on her or something but of course my ocd as always said I did something to her in my sleep. Why is my brain like this? I am always questioning myself knowing I would never hurt them or do anything inappropriate to them but my ocd makes me believe I did or every time I have a drink my ocd tells me I hurt them in some way. This is torture and a nightmare. I don’t want to live most days because of this. 😩 Does this happen to anyone else?? How do you get through it??

Has anyone gone through this or is still going through this and can give any tips on how to make it stop? The intrusive thoughts during sexual activities are simply bothering me so much that I'm afraid to do anything like that because of the thoughts. I couldn't do it for weeks because I was always thinking about some atrocious thing, but yesterday I failed and now I'm feeling bad because even though I tried not to think, it's like I had an open folder in the back of my head and I blame myself for not being able to delete or block it. I'm afraid that avoiding it will become a compulsion and disrupt my sex life, but I also don't feel comfortable doing it often because of the thoughts. Does anyone identify? any tips to improve? I'm repressing myself because of this and I know it's not something that will do me any good. Sorry if this is inappropriate.

Hi guys, I know I’m annoying as heck. I am always on here posting or needing help. I’m having bad anxiety right now and just am so scared. Everyone says sit with anxiety or just let it be. I always just think about going to the hospital or why I feel so bad. Wondering why or what I can do. I know I’ve had OCD but it just came for no reason besides that! I’m so scared!

Anyone else’s OCD come in waves? That’s the only way I can describe it. I’m doing good in therapy for a few weeks, and then all of a sudden it gets really bad, with no apparent trigger?

Lately I've been having a bit of paranoia due to one of my events. I do art commissions for money. Late last year I took a kind of big commission. It was something I hadn't tried before and wasn't super comfortable doing but I took it anyway because I wanted the money. While working on it I got less and less confident and ended up getting too anxious to work on it and kept putting it off. Because of my avoidance I didn't realize the commissioner was trying to contact me about an update until I finally worked up the courage to check my socials until early this year. I apologized genuienly and refunded them immediately. I then took a break from taking them because I had a habit of taking more than I could chew. There was another commission I forgot to do, nothing big, and I refunded that one too and apologized as well. I started taking them again, this time making sure to limit myself to a manageable amount and not take payments until I've actively started working on it. It's been great, I haven't had any trouble finishing them and any I thought I couldn't I didn't take. But now I've been having an OCD theme lately where I'm worried people are calling me a scammer behind my back or spreading that I am one. I haven't been able to find proof of this but I also wouldn't be able to if someone just posted it to their followers and not publicly. This has been really making me want to quit doing art for money even though it's nice to have the extra income and I genuienly dont want to scam people, I just have bad avoidance problems I'm trying to work on. I dont know what to do, I can't stop thinking about it and it's making me anxious to advertise. I want to compulsively delete my accounts and change my name so I'm unrecognizable. But I don't want to not take accountability, I want to be honest and open and prove I'm different like I've been able to so far. I still get commissions, but i feel like its not as many as i used to. Or maybe I'm just paranoid. I don't know what to do, I know it's my own fault but I dont want this to follow me forever.

Lately my ocd is latching onto my children. In my opinion, for me, this is the most painful and most debilitating theme of ocd. My daughter asked me to help her wash and rinse the shampoo from her hair while she was in the shower because she has thick hair and sometimes she has trouble shampooing and rinsing it all out. A normal, common task for me. At some point I caught a glimpse of her private area and my ocd immediately tried to make me believe I looked intentionally. I know I didn’t and I know I do not think of her or any child in that way but now my ocd has me questioning myself. I was just doing what I always do so I don’t remember at what point I saw it. Was I reaching for and looking down for the shampoo when I saw it or was I reaching up to her hair and saw it as I looked up? Did I look due to just normal human tendency to look where we know we’re not supposed to and if that’s the case does that make me horrible? I’m driving myself insane trying to prove I do NOT feel or think that way about her. I don’t want to live if this is how my brain works. Ocd is evil and this is the hardest kind of intrusive thought to get past. 😩

Does anyone ever get compulsions when it comes to texting? I will receive a message from someone and if I don’t want to respond right away I won’t open it, but if it’s been too long before I open it I just can’t until they text me again. Or if I text someone I have to reopen the message multiple times every few seconds in case they responded and I didn’t notice, or in case they read it, or to make sure I said what I meant to say and it can’t be perceived differently. This usually leads to me having a crazy amount of unopened messages, and a crazy amount of anxiety. Texting has become an unreliable source of communication for me so I usually call or don’t talk to anyone unless they’re in person

I have some questions as to how to distinguish avoidance vs. self-care. I am struggleing a lot with things like rumination and obsessing over certain topics. But at the same time I know that full-out avoidance of triggering topics/material is also bad for OCD. So how do you draw the line between the too? Like not compulsively engaging with certain things but also not to avoid them?

I’m a 31-year-old woman born into a Muslim family. I don't know if my childhood was good or bad because it was strange. When I was born, my parents left me with my mother's sister, but my mother sent money and gifts. However, I never felt the warmth of a mother or father. Even my aunt was not present; she left me with the housemaid. This affected me significantly, and when I speak, my language is weak. Don't ask me why I didn't improve myself during those 16 years; I was utterly lost. I sought motherly affection from every woman I met in school. I don't know if this is the reason for my homosexuality. Suddenly, without warning, my aunt returned me to my family when I was 16. She would contact me, asking if I prayed, even though she never taught me how. When I turned 20, I searched online for how to pray because even my parents never taught me. From then on, I started suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) related to cleanliness and repeatedly performing prayers. By the time I was 27, I stopped praying because there was a voice in my head that wouldn't stop. Even after I stopped, the OCD continued, and the voice persisted. I don't know if the OCD is due to my childhood lifestyle.

Hi!! I've been doing pretty good lately but the thoughts haven't stopped the anxiety is less now. But tired of hearing the thoughts. I'm a confident straight woman and all ai want to be with is a man. I've been single for years and i have been wanting a boyfriend. The thoughts are making me feel like I'm just lying to myself and it's annoying and frustrating.

So I’ve recently discovered my ocd, my brother had been diagnosed when he was younger and struggles to a lot more noticeable degree. My parents have tried to their knowledge to help him with his obsessions before he had started therapy. I’ve always been there for my brother when he’s really dwelling on a trigger. Over time I had learned more and more about ocd and started to discover things about myself I never understood. I have struggled with mental health since I can remember and always brushed it off as chronic paranoia. But I started notice a lot of similarities between mine and my brothers triggers and after researching, realized I too suffer ocd obsessions and compulsions. My huge concern right now is even though my triggers and obsessions are different than his, I feel doubt about whether it not I am valid to speak on it. I feel guilty because I have watched him suffer false memory ocd and I don’t experience that so to me it seems ultimately worse. I had opened up to him recently about things I’ve been struggling with since I was little and he confirmed all of it as ocd thoughts and obsessions. I feel like suddenly all these unanswered questions about what’s wrong with me suddenly makes sense, but I’m so behind in discovering this that I’m afraid of being honest about it, and it being perceived by others as me trying to combat with my brothers experiences. I can talk to a therapist and it’ll feel like I’m being seen, but in my personal life, even with my boyfriend I have the chronic fear that people think I’m lying

Since I was little I had a passion for mathematics. I'm currently 14 doing university-level math and have practically decided for math to be my future career path. Quite oddly, it seems like OCD started attacking this interest, as I'm really unsure if I even enjoy it anymore or not and I'm really scared because if not math, I'm not sure what I'd want to do. Is this OCD or a sign I should move onto something else?

I am having such a hard time right now. So I’m a person who suspects they have OCD. I’ve been struggling with intrusive thoughts about harming myself or my family, Also those of being a pedophile for years now. But the one that is currently in my mind is that I’m Asexual. I’ve always felt I was gay. I wanted to kiss boys I’d be aroused by the sight of them, and just wanted to be close to them. I always suspected why I never had a boyfriend was because of my apprehension and the small dating pool, and being in high school almost non existent one. So I vowed to just save it for the right person. But earlier in the week I got the thought that I subconsciously never wanted that, and that I was just lying about being gay and actually never felt attraction. Now I’m racking my brain of all the times I’ve ever liked someone, trying to find out if it was real. And it’s terrifying me. I know there’s nothing wrong with it but it just doesn’t feel right for me.

While I was praying I had some nasty blasphemous thought about Satan & my heart and I thought I said it out loud! I started freaking out and crying! It’s just sometimes the thoughts are SO loud they sound like I say them! I would NEVER say! Honestly part of me really doesn’t believe I said that because I feel like I’d know but it’s so scary to think “oh my gosh did I say that Satan & my heart intrusive thought out loud?!” Im just trying so hard not to be scared I prayed for forgiveness IF I did! Ughh I just hate these fricking thoughts and thinking I said them only makes me even more afraid and shameful because I’d NEVER say that on purpose! I love God & Jesus so much! Do you think I’ll be okay? Does they still love me?! Will they forgive me? Like I said part of me doesn’t think I said it but the other part makes me doubt myself and thinks I said that blasphemous intrusive thought out loud!!

Any moms of young children on here dealing with both ocd and raising kids? How do you guys get by? I’m feeling very off right now, very uneasy inside. I’m not sure what’s going on but I’ll take any advice to feel less alone or crazy. Thanks in advance !

Hey! I don’t want to get too political or upset anyone, but I just am feeling really alone: Has anyone else been facing moral scrupulosity or other intrusive thoughts about world events like the war on Gaza? It’s hard to know what’s an appropriate amount of concern and what’s OCD and it’s kind of taking over my life.