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The last few days I have felt amazing! No ruminating! Today out of no where… it came back!!! Why?

Please share some tricks how to reduce the intrusive thoughts.I really cannot afford a therapist right now, so please share some things your therapists have told you to do

I gave into a major compulsion after a major trigger. I haven’t done that in many months. My anxiety spiked because of a trigger. How do you forgive yourself? I feel like a failure. 😞

Is the anxiety still meant to be there? I have so much evidence and it feels like no matter how much erp, I can’t get past the facts and evidence I have from my past memories…. This is so scary, erp is so so hard. Reassurance is easier but sitting with the thought makes me feel like it’s real and I get lost in these thoughts and spiral. Isn’t it supposed to go away? This is why I hate erppppp

I had a hard day today with my mental compulsions, rehearsing and thinking about stuff between me and my boyfriend and brought something up I thought was important. What happens every time I do is that he gets annoyed because it’s a demeanor that is intense as a result of obsessing. I didn’t say anything mean, I know it could have been much much worse, and I stopped talking about it much more quickly than I’ve done previously with going on and on and on. It’s really hard though, I’m thinking about it more, and it’s another reinforcement that it really is the same every time when you think about something all day. I feel like I’m going down a rabbit hole now where I’m thinking about it more after the fact, feeling distress at the uncomfortable thoughts. How do I stop this?

Some examples of my thoughts, images commands, feeling and sensations. Who relates to these? -stomach dropping making my chest tight -rapid heart beat/skipped beats -images of horrible scenerios like driving off a bridge or hurting someone or images of what me “snapping” would look like. -looking in the mirror and getting scared that my face will change into a demon face so I stop looking in the mirror. -looking too long at my son and having to look away so I don’t hallucinate a different face on him (even tho I’ve never hallucinated) -what if you’re a horrible monster and you’re going to off yourself -what if your husband and son are demons -you shouldn’t be left alone with your child in case you hurt them -images and scenerios of me texting my husband while he’s at work and telling him I’m killing our son and then myself (even tho I would literally never do this. It makes me sick to even type it on here) -what if you you have schizophrenia even though you’ve been professionally diagnosed (twice) with ocd -what if the ocd specialist was wrong and you don’t have ocd and you’re dangerous -what if you go into psychosis. -what if you are In psychosis right now -what if you were scared of your hands…?¿ this one is so weird lol -what if that bug isn’t real -what if you hear voices -kill them -they’re better off without you -you’ll never get better - you’re crazy. -this can’t be ocd it must be more -nobody else gets these thoughts and feeling -feelings of scared, worried, uncertain, intense anxiety -fears intensifying at night as I’m drifting to sleep -nonsense thoughts that don’t make ANY SENSE at all as I’m trying to fall asleep -what if you believe people are after you one day like a crazy person -what if you already believe this. What if you are delusional. The list goes on. I hope these help some of you feel not alone if you have them as well

TW: Parent loss My OCD has spiked since losing my mom in March. Like my nesting is trying to find its new obsession to hold onto. Not sure how much more of this I’m going to take.

Hi all, I wanted to share that I am trying hard to exercise frequently with many different sports/activities, but I’m finding that it’s keeping me in my thoughts even worse and making my brain increase and accelerate the unwanted intrusive thoughts passing through. Does anyone experience this/ and have recommendations to combat this? I need to exercise not only to get healthier but I also want to enjoy it and not dread it with the seemingly increased OCD thoughts and compulsions/rumination it causes. Thanks! 😊

OCD makes me feel like I’m holding in the biggest secret about myself and I don’t deserve happiness. I feel red faced and nervous all the time, when the thoughts come on it feels like a big rush of “truth” hits me and I can’t not believe it

Does anyone else feel like your OCD goes after everything that’s important or precious to you? Like if you have a dear memory of something, your mind will try to tell you why that’s wrong or bad even when you know it’s something perfectly pure and a happy memory. I feel so beat up by this illness.. it steals my joy. Only Jesus can help me, only he knows just how bad this torment in my head is.

So lately I've been able to control OCD after a long time. If I have a harm intrusive thought or image, I just let it go. By doing this, I am able not to feel anxiety with these intrusive thoughts, and therefore improving over time. But sometimes I start to feel anxious for not feeling anxious with these thoughts. It's like: "If I don't feel anxiety with these awful harm thoughts/images, does that mean I want to do them??" It drives me crazy. Also, as I tend to have intrusive thoughts and sudden images at some point everyday, I think "what if maybe it is not OCD, but another kind of mental issue? What if I don't treat myself and I go crazy over time? What happens if I think I'm improving, but I'm not?" Anyone feeling this way as well?

I was hoping to get some insight into what recovery/remission looks like for those of you in it. Does it look differently for each of us? I am managing much better than at 22, but it’s still annoying and constant. I’ve done CBT and ERP therapy, I’m on Prozac, and it was helping quiet the thoughts, but I still have flare ups or flooding of thoughts. My wonder is, is this recovery? I have a job, I’m a mom, I literally live in exposures everyday and I keep going. I never avoid, I always continue what I’m doing when the thoughts come up. I just get frustrated when I hear people say “I beat OCD.” What does that look like, sound like, feel like on a daily basis? Does it mean, despite the horrible intrusive thoughts, you carry on any way and don’t let it stop you from living your life? But to me, it’s just always there :(

Hey everyone so the last to days I’ve been having a anxiety flare and my ocd has spiked so I was laying in bed this morning when I woke up and started thinking about how big the earth is and how the earth is round and I was thinking omg what if I got that stuck in my head and started getting dizzy and lost control. I’ve had this thought bother me before and it’s always been something that kinda terrified me about how big the earth is and how small we are. It’s impossible to control things around us and control what others do. It’s almost like I’m use to being in my little thought pattern and when something pops in and scares me I feel anxiety and panic and then I start to panic again because I’m scared of panic and losing control. I don’t know I’ve been feeling really overwhelmed the last day or two. I felt like I was making a lot of progress but my brain doesn’t want to shut off it’s always worrying and it gets so annoying between me getting things stuck in my head or feeling like I’m on the verge of panic and loosing control. Sorry I know this was a lot but I needed to vent because my brain has been boxing me in lately and it feels as if there’s no escape because something will always be causing me stress and giving me anxiety. On the bright side I know this will pass or maybe it won’t I’ll just have to except the uncertainty

I was worried today that I might oversleep and forget to let my friends' dog out in the morning to use the bathroom. My therapist said "What's the worst that could happen?" I told her the worst would be that the dog uses the bathroom inside and I'd clean it up, which I know wouldn't be bad. My therapist then said "You'd even get some extra sleep if you did sleep in". I'm a bit confused though, because I don't want to ACTUALLY sleep in and let the dog out late. And then I think about other intrusive thoughts like "What if you threw your wallet away?" or "What if you smeared soap all over your TV?" or "What if I left the stove on?" Or "What if you leave the gas on?" I don't want these thoughts to actually become real. I thought we treated all intrusive thoughts the same, as ego dystonic, not representing us. Not to make them real. I was thrown off by my therapist saying "the worst that could happen is the dog uses the bathroom and you'd get some extra sleep". Just a bit confused. I guess you could kind of compare this to "What if I'm late for work?". Like yeah, it wouldn't be the end of the world if I was late, and I would get some extra sleep, but I don't want to intentionally make myself late for work.

TLDR: I’m about to start a competitive medical school program, and need advice for how to navigate panic attacks during ERP, since starting this fall I literally won’t have time to deal with panic attacks during classes and clinicals. I’m going through a bad flare up with OCD, and I also deal with a panic disorder on top of that, and my OCD lovessss my panic disorder lol. Short background; This is my third time dealing with it heavily. My first time I was in middle school. My second time was a bit over a year ago, my first semester in college. It took over my life, and my grades were bad during that time because of it. I learned how to properly use ERP, and actually recovered very well. Unfortunately, at the beginning of spring semester in college this year, I started dealing with intrusive thoughts and OCD again, and had gotten so comfortable not having to use ERP, I let the anxiety take over and developed another OCD spiral. It wasn’t “that bad” at first, but because I neglected ERP and kept doing compulsions, it’s gotten pretty rough. Yesterday I had my first panic attack in a long time, as I was doing ERP and having 10/10 anxiety. Im trying to approach this realistically; since I’ve been doing compulsions for a good while, recovery will also take a while, and if there’s one thing I know, is that it’ll get worse before it gets better. Classes start in a little over a month for me, and I will NOT let OCD take over my life and ruin my grades like it has before. Does anyone have advice for navigating a busy lifestyle while also prioritizing ERP? And any advice for as peacefully as possible going through panic attacks during ERP?

Hello everyone, My therapist cannot diagnose officially, but I want to look into next steps regarding getting an official diagnosis and how to go about that. My husband keeps pushing me to get diagnosed, but I keep getting locked into a thought spiral - telling my therapist would mean telling them about my behaviors, which could lead to judgement or them thinking I’m overreacting; getting referred to someone that can diagnose means calling and getting a primary care physician, which means calling and figuring out what to say, which means sitting in a doctor’s office with sick people, which means bringing up things to a doctor, etc., etc…I just keep psyching myself out. I’ve denied having anything wrong, but have noticed my symptoms are getting worse. How did you go about those first steps, and what was it like? Thank you so much in advance.

i need help with this im going to start sobbing and I really need someone to talk to out loud that also has ocd , these thoughts im dealing with right now are having me panicking too much ,please I really need someone to talk to even through text

I told my doctor that I was having bad anxiety due to ocd health related problems. So she prescribed me this as a temporary relief. However I saw the side effects saying it could cause cardiac arrest and I'm kind of regretting even taking it now. I don't have anything wrong with my heart that I know of but like I already get bad ocd thinking I'm gonna have a heart attack. Then to find out the side effect of this one usually is with the heart it's kind of making me not even want to take it anymore. I don't want to panic over it but now I'm worried that I should of taken it in the first place tonight.

This fear is very complex cause it comes from 2 extreme side, one being that the only thing you have to do to be saved is to believe in Christ and accept him as your saviour, and the other one is that it's not enough but it makes me spin then cause i feel like im not saved, cause i question many sins if they are really sins, and i feel like i do it to still act on it and its a way to speak myself into doing them so i dont feel bad about myself which is pride i think. But the first one makes me angry, cause people are abusing Jesus death. In my opinion the "Just accept Jesus and you're saved" view is false, yeah you dont have to do anything, but if it doesnt show up in your life that youre accepted Jesus, you're not saved... It makes me angry cause i see people who claims that are christians and they still act the same way as before, they still live in sin, and these people would say they are saved cause Jesus paid it all... thats abusing his sacrafice... There are things that are hard to leave like drug or alcohol addiction i understand, but its an excuse to still act on it cause Jesus already paid the price for future sins too... I even heard someone saying " a christian who is abusing at home like beating his wife and childrens, but he accepted Jesus in his heart he is saved" this is so wrong. This sounds like its made up just to make you feel better. Its like an excuse to still live by sin cause you will be im heaven cause you accepted Jesus. I just cant accept this view it sounds really wrong. I feel bad for those people, i feel bad that i judge them, but it still not right. Then its like we dont have to fight sin, just accept Jesus... But as a said the other side makes me go crazy, im afraid im not really saved cause i still question which sin is actually a sin. Im watching Mark Dejesus, he has good videos, but when he talks about feeling like everything is sin, he brings up things that are clear that arent sins like doing something you like, going for a hike, drawing, or i read that some thinks that taking a shower is a sin, or going to school. You can tell this is ocd, for me, im obsessing about the grey areas. About joking, watching scary things,saying bad words but not in a harmful way to others, just randomly say one if i accidentaly hit myself or something,thinking about sex(this was a big one) and with this i realized it might not be a sin cause how you educate yourself about sex? You have to think about it. It seems like its a sin when you do it to satisfy your feelings or youre thinking about someone else. But in a normal way, it seems like its not a sin. But im overthinking this too.

Please someone leave any advice or similar stories. I had identified as bi and then had fears about my sexuality a few years ago, and decided on the term unlabeled to describe my sexuality to anyone who asked and it made me the most comfortable because i was confused about my romantic atraction and sexual attraction towards women vs men. Recently, seemingly triggered by pride month and people discussing comp het, while in a relationship with my boyfriend I have been dealing with fears of wondering if I'm really attracted to men at all or what attraction really feels like and being sexually aroused by explicit images of women I had seen by accident. I am worried that I am experiencing comp het or I'm in the wrong relationship or I'm going to hurt my boyfriend. I have also voiced all of this to him and he is there for me, but that doesn't mean it's easy. I have other anxieties about my relationship and worry if those are ocd related or not as well(such as worrying about limerence) but I'm just so terrified. I feel that just because I have ocd that doesn't mean I can have these experiences that other queer people actually have and it makes me worried that I coukd go years without ever knowing just for one day to know and my whole world to be flipped upside down. I'd rather die than for that to be my reality. Someone please leave advice or tips it's all so appreciated.