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Has anyone found a correlation in their OCD / Intrusive thoughts getting WAY worse during their cycle. I am doing fine with medication any other time but when I have my cycle it is debilitating… And have you found anything that helps?

hi i’ve been struggling with religion recently. when i was younger i went to a catholic school that was very poorly run and as a result i decided to not follow a religion when i left. within the past few months dealing with my ocd made me feel like there was no hope other than turning back to religion. i have been praying more frequently and i talk to God a lot abt my ocd. however i just bought a new cross necklace and have been wearing it for the past few days. however i got the intrusive thought this morning that if i wear a cross it means i am a hardcore conservative christian. and although there’s nothing wrong with that if you are, it is most definitely not who i am. so now i don’t know if i should still wear it. bc i also feel like if i take it off God will be mad at me and i’ll go to hell. i don’t go to church or read the bible or anything my religious journey to me is just the relationship between me and God and i am extremely private about it bc it’s extremely person to me. i just don’t know if following a religion is a good thing for me to do with ocd idk if lost

cheating has been always against my morals, most of the people i love the most got cheated on, including my boyfriend in his past relationship. i never wanted to cheat on him or hurt him. i have this classmate that i really wanna be friends with, she's fun to be around with, everyone in the class likes to tease her bc of her personality, and she's pretty too. she's one of the unproblematic person in my class that's why i wanna be friends with her so bad. fortunately, i became her friend, and we will be classmates for upcoming school year along with my bf. on the last week of may i started having thoughts about being attracted to her but i just ignored it. on june 3, she messaged on our gc jokingly wanting us to get her a boyfriend, i felt jealous that time but i never wanted to feel that way. i ignored it until june 5, we went to the university we will be enrolling for along with my bf. i acted normal around her, i always tease her a lot. june 5 at night the thoughts took over me, i felt so guilty thinking i cheated and my energy went from 100 to 0, my bf even asked me if i'm fine. i convinced myself that it's just a false attraction, but maybe it is a real attraction. now i'm wondering if i'm a cheater or not, because all this time i thought it's just a false attraction that's why i still treated her the same despite having those thoughts that i like her. i am still not sure if i am really attracted to her but the jealousy feeling is making me believe that i'm really is. i'm terrified that i am attracted to my friend while i'm in a relationship, i don't have any control over this feeling and i know to myself that i will forever choose my boyfriend over anyone. i just couldn't get the guiltness out of my head, thinking that maybe i cheated on him because i thought it's just a false attraction so i just continued to be friend with that girl despite having the thoughts, but as soon as the thoughts got severe i put a boundaries between us and my bf knows about it. all this time i believed that it's just a false attraction but i read in reddit that it's normal to feel attraction to others while in a relationship, but freaking out and worrying about it means OCD, that's when i realized that maybe i am really attracted to her and i'm just terrified that i'm cheating. i just want an answer if i cheated for not putting boundaries as soon as i got the thoughts, because i thought it was just a false attraction at first. send help pls.

I downloaded this app a few days ago but this is my first time using it because idk I feel uncomfortable talking about what I’m going through. Whenever I’m on TikTok and I see videos about rape and children who are raped, it makes me really uncomfortable of course but the thing that makes me uncomfortable is when I hear about it, I’d think about it explicitly. Like a man’s body part being forced into a woman’s or a child’s and it makes me feel weird. Like when you watch porn and you feel some kind of way, idk how to explain it because I don’t wanna say it turns me on cs that would be insensitive, but like it’s weird and I hate it. The thought of it clouds my mind and it makes me cry, I feel sick and like I should talk to someone about that but I don’t wanna feel like a pedophile or labeled as someone who likes when people get raped because I really don’t, I think it’s awful that happens but it’s just the way it makes me feel.

So POCD is one of my themes that crops up from time to time, but when it does, it's the worst one, like a sledgehammer. Recently I was just watching a crime movie (I'll omit the name) and this kid was one of the protagonists. As soon as they showed his face, I thought 'what a cute kid! He's going to grow up so handsome'. I was horrified that I thought that, and it threw me immediately into checking behaviour that I KNOW I shouldn't do... analysing my reactions to him in the rest of the movie, analysing his features, comparing them to adults. Unfortunately, it's led to me spiralling and thinking about ALL the times I've ever thought a kid was "cute" - like photos of my friends' kids, or other movies, or in the street randomly. It's truly amazing how much OCD files away, that you thought you'd forgotten about, until it comes to slam you with it. I then remembered watching a crime movie about a kid who was abused by a Catholic priest, and then a story I read once with similar themes. I dont remember thinking much about it at the time, but now I look back and think "did you enjoy watching/reading that? Why would you read/watch such horrible things?" And yeah, sleeping has been difficult. In those quiet moments at night, I can hear my brain just yelling at me that I'm a p***. The worst was then reading that apparently some p**** are also attracted to adults too. I don't know 100% how true it is, but that was devastating to me, because it's always been reassuring that I am definitely attracted to adults, and always have been. (Even as a teen myself, it was a joke how I always would be the one to crush on an older teacher!) It's just horrible, it really is. I mean, I used to volunteer in schools- no problem at all! And then suddenly this happens. In my more kinder to myself moments, I think about the darker crime stuff and wonder if it's just morbid curiosity. I mean, I didn't make the movies or write the books, and no one is accusing the authors or filmmakers of being p**** so.... !? Idk.

I am almost 18 right now and when I was 16 and under I did some horrible things I regret and make me feel like a bad person. I won’t go into detail but stuff people would find weird/hate me for. I am quite popular on social media and I see people getting cancelled so much on TikTok for things I used to do. It scares me. I acknowledge that what I did was bad and don’t do it anymore/havent done it again but the things still haunt me :(. I imagine scenarios of being cancelled and being infamous and everybody hating me. The stuff I did was because I was immature/didn’t really know it was wrong but I still feel like such a shitty person. I really want to be a good person and try to and whenever I try to think “I’m a good person” my ocd cancels it by reminding me of all the stuff I have done and I can’t call myself a good person. It also affects my boyfriend as well and my ocd latches onto him being imperfect. He has done things wrong/ things that have upset me, but my ocd takes this and uses it to show me “he’s a bad person” and we are both “problematic” I’m currently obsessing over it.

Hi 10 years ago when I was 12-13 years old I used to own a pet rat. And I really liked her a lot. I never thought about it until now. When I had a “do u remember thougt” that I used to let this pet rat go in to my mouth bc she wanted to. And I can’t get it out of my brain how discussing that was. But back then I didn’t think it’s was discusting. I realiteten regret it. And now I think that imagine all the boys u kissed how discussed they would be of u if they knew that they kissed someone that had a rat in there mouth. Can someone help me I feel like I deserve to die how discusting I am for doing that. If I could go back and undo it I would in a second. Now I feel like I can never have a partner bc I’m disgusting 💔 is this ocd am I discusting?

Please respond. I’m losing my mind and im tired of keeping this in. It’s a lot. For the past two months almost three, my ocd has been revolving around having a fart fetish or not. I’ve never desired to do anything fart related with my past partners, but I have watched fart related porn in the past, due to porn escalation. It’s really embarrassing and im disgusted with myself. This porn escalation was one of the reasons that I quit watching porn. I watched some weird porn because of I was addicted to it for 5-6 years, leading me to having to watch more extreme things, but I don’t watch porn at all anymore. But I always get these intrusive thoughts about farting and I get a groinal response, because of the porn that I watched. I just recently stopped watching it about two months ago. It’s just so disturbing because I know that I don’t have a fetish for this stuff. I never even worried about having a fart fetish or not until two months ago because that’s when this annoying obsession started. everytime that I do research about it and try to read about it to see if my intrusive thoughts are right it makes me unexplainably anxious. To the point where I can’t even breathe or function. This obsession is so bad. Everytime somebody farts around me I have to check to see if I like the smell or not, which is something I never did before. I would get angry when people farted around me because I found it irritating. Now my brain is telling me that I like it. It’s gotten so hard to tell the difference between intrusive thoughts and real thoughts. I’m so scared of my thoughts being right. Like it actually terrifies me. I don’t want to have ANY fetishes at all.

okay i took only an 1/8 of a thc gummy and i hate the way it’s making me feel. it’s amplifying my intrusive thoughts at the moment, making me feel calm and like i don’t care about acting on them but also anxious at the same time. my body feels kinda numb. my chest is heavy. and my adhd symptoms feel stronger. is this normal for some people?

I just found out that one of my favorite bands has had SA allegations (involving minors) for a while now (I didn’t keep up with them on social media or anything - I just enjoyed listening to them up until I saw people discussing it on SM lately) and I’m so upset about it. This is always one of my biggest fears when it comes to bands and my OCD makes it worse because not only do I feel absolutely dizzy with anxiety due to the nature of the allegations (because of my POCD), but I feel bad every time their songs come into my head and continue playing on repeat. Like the reality of what they’ve done is sickening, but also it just upsets me to even enjoy the sound of it, though I know it’s partly just because I’ve always loved those songs. I was so emotionally invested in their music too - a lot of things have happened so far this year (I lost a pet, for example) and their music spoke to me during those times. One of their songs even felt extremely relatable to my experience with OCD. Discovering them at the beginning of this year was so great for me. But the allegations are almost certainly true (there’s a lot of allegations that all add up together - and some of their 100% proven behavior outside of that is really just evidence of it) and they’re absolutely horrible people. They filed a lawsuit against someone for literally just pointing out the sheer number of allegations against them (and the person who the lawsuit was filed against ended up taking their life). It hurts to know I thought these people were cool and fun when they were really just absolute creeps. And maybe I should’ve been more vigilant about the signs earlier even which is worse (especially because like I said, this is a big fear of mine and one time I had already wondered idly “what if they’re actually bad people” though I do that with other bands too). Like I noticed something before that probably should’ve been more alarming to me, but I guess I didn’t realize the actual context until now? I don’t know :( I’ve been listening to their music almost every day this year before now and I feel guilty for even sort of wanting to hear it again. It sucks because it’s exactly the kind of music I like. I could listen to nearly any of their songs from any of their albums and love almost all of them. I could pirate it at least so they don’t benefit monetarily but genuinely I think hearing it would probably emotionally mess me up - I know my brain associates the music with good emotions and feelings but meanwhile I’ll also be thinking of how horrible they are and how I’m probably horrible for even *wanting* to listen. It’s this weird back and forth of “I want to listen like I always do but I also really really *don’t* want to!” I’m still reeling but I just know I’m gonna continue to feel guilt and shame over this for months to come especially as the shock wears off and it sucks. This sort of thing always happens where my initially strong feelings start to dwindle and I feel numb and worry I’m not taking it seriously enough anymore. That and I’m sure I’ll struggle with kind of wanting to hear it but also really wanting the desire to listen to just go away completely. I wish I had known beforehand so I never would’ve gotten attached to this band :(

Feeling like a bad person has always been one of my reoccurring struggles with OCD. I’m working through trauma therapy at the moment and recognizing a lot of stuck points, and connecting a lot dots in relation to my OCD. But I feel like even if I make a small mistake or mess up, I can’t give myself grace - and I assume I’m an awful person. Obviously, my realistic self reassures me I would never intentionally hurt someone or have malicious intentions in situations. But sometimes I go round and round, and even think the only reason I think or want to be a good person is because I’m scared of being a bad person? I know that doesn’t make sense but it fucks with me and I’m sure only this group would understand. Anyway, today for example: I got sorta mad at my bf because he was trying to smack my butt and accidentally hit my back. And I said “ouch, stop - you got my back.” - in literally the least menacing way. And we laughed it off and he felt bad. And then I just couldn’t help myself from apologizing to him because I felt like I overreacted somehow. He seemed very confused and was so sweet about it. But I just felt like I overreacted, and I told him that I felt gross - I was trying to prepare food and it caught me off guard. And he was like “no yeah, that makes total sense - you literally don’t have to explain yourself or apologize at all!”. But I just got into this weird mood now, where I’m convincing myself I’m a bad person and a bad partner. And he should be with someone who is truly the sweetest person ever and beautiful to add on to the obsession. Sometimes I just don’t know what’s wrong with me. I know I’m not a bad person but sometimes the OCD itself is very annoying. I feel like this wave has passed, and I’ve worked a lot on grounding myself and bringing myself to reality. Which is great! But I would really love to know if anyone else struggles with this kind of thing and what helps them in these times?

I am about to go on a night out with one of my girl mates just the two of us! SO ocd has stopped me from doing that with just two of us drinking for 4 years and I am so proud of myself for saying yes I will go. I of course have had some intrusive thoughts pop up but trying to focus on the small win of saying yes and going. Wanted to share with people who will understand how big this is for me!!

I feel so anxious lately I have made so much reassurance seeking through the AI online to reassure myself that I live my partner. I’m terrified of the idea it might just be attachment and denial. I have this “gut feeling” that tells me I don’t truly love him because I don’t consciously care about his happiness and well being when it is said that the difference between attachment and genuine love is that you deeply care about your partners happiness. The thing is that I don’t think about it very much or at least not consciously and I don’t do things “because it will make him happy”. This annoying feeling that I don’t truly love him and that something is wrong plus this thing about caring about his happiness stresses me out sm but I don’t want to break up with him. The idea of breaking up terrifies me and makes me so so sad. I’m with him because he makes me feel good, I enjoy spending time with him, his arms are the place where I feel the safest, I love spending my time cuddling him, we are long distance this year and I count the days before seeing him again, I wouldn’t mind spending the rest of my life with him (sometimes I feel excitement about it or I feel nothing but I don’t feel much negative feelings even tho I can be a bit worried about some aspects because we have different personalities in some aspects). I’m just good and happy with him. The idea of breaking up literally makes me stop wanting to eat, stresses me out so much and makes me want to cry. I cannot accept to break up. Please help is this even really ocd ? Am I just in denial ?

first and foremost, i have not been diagnosed with OCD. about a month ago now, i had an intrusive thought about suffocating my boyfriend after watching a news story about a man who did that to his wife. i freaked out, and when i got to his house i was physically sick. i made him take me home to get away from him because i was so scared. well since this thought, it’s like i can’t shake this fear that i actually want to do it and i keep feeling like i “need” to do it. i’m so scared im going to do it, what do i need to do? i’m panicking at the moment.

I feel like ERP both works and doesn’t. My OCD is very much mental and trying to resist compulsions is an all-day task. When I do my ERP homework, it works for that scenario but OCD comes back the same force later. I am tired at this point. Days are long but I don’t feel like much happened. My prayer life is the only thing that works as joy is being sucked out of everything else. Did anyone else go through a stubborn bout of this?

I feel like I have been spiraling lately because all day every day I’m scared to do something wrong in my relationship. I can’t be near men because I’m scared that I kiss them If something touches my lip like my hair or sweater or even a rain drop tbh I think I kissed someone Just today i was getting out of my car and I was on the phone with my boyfriend and I think I turned my head and my hoodie hit my lip and right away I started freaking out bc from a distance I saw a man so I was already anxious and I convinced myself he was near me and that it was him just bc what I think was my sweater hit my lip and I was on the phone with my boyfriend and I still think it was another man I feel like it’s getting out of control but I can’t help but to confess everything all the time because then I feel like I’m hiding something and then I start feeling guilty and then it turns out to be for nothing But I can’t sit with the uncertainty especially if something touches my lip, I can’t stand it I hate living like this tho because I lose all motivation for everything tbh 😭

guys! guys! omg ok for once I have a good post. (sort of) SUUUPPPERRRR long post. sorry. perhaps this also includes symptoms of OCD. alright, so basically I have been chatting a bit with a coworker of mine. here’s a breakdown: our relationship is like “bullying” each other. ofc, this isn’t anything serious but just us being silly goofballs cos work gets soooo boring at times when there isn’t much business. he started it first by giving me attitude when we started talking 🙄 (in a playful way lol) anyway, he’s 19 & goes to the same college I go to! so now I’m thinking “omg! I can make a friend!” bc it’s been SO hard for me to make friends. he’s pursuing a career in architecture and that peeked my interest even more. a bit about me: I’m currently lost as to what I want to pursue in my life but for a long time as a kid, I thought of being an architect. I have a couple of uncles on my dad’s side that are architects, although they’re in a different country. soooooo, ofc I became interested bc I can talk abt design and other stuff!!! and ask him a buuuunch of questions. we just don’t have much time to talk at work bc of how busy it gets most of the time (our workplace has high business during lunch hours) and we work morning shifts. I feel like each shift we’re together, I can get slightly closer to having that friendship. now, where does OCD fall into this? I have a fear that I might have a crush on him or something. this isn’t the first time that I felt this way for a coworker. I’m thinking it could be false attraction or just me romanticizing a person that’s not there???? I have been struggling with my usual daydreaming of having a boyfriend. my type is someone who is open-minded, but also has their own beliefs, kind, loyal, musical, older (or same age), etc. basically the bare minimum + music & other fun stuff. the problem? he’s 2 years younger than me & I feel like I’m contradicting myself. I have dated a girl 2 years younger than me (really just 1 year and a couple of months…but bc of our birthdays, it looks like two years) before as my first relationship. but I feel like I have more attraction to older people? there’s a reoccurring thought that says maybe I’m destined to be with someone younger even though I suffer with POCD (not diagnosed, but definitely share symptoms) also, I have been fearing that my friendships with guys are always starting with “potential love interests.” this probably happened with my other friend whom I met online and eventually met up irl. we got drunk and were cuddly that night. nothing past that. when I first met him online, he texted me an update of a conversation we had the night before and our friendship grew when I invited him to play games. in that, my brain started to imagine random love scenarios and I started to “like” him based on his personality, voice, etc. I didn’t even know how he looked like irl. he’s a very nice friend & absolutely cool but I’m worried I have just labeled him down to “friend that I possibly have a crush on” bc I remember geeking to my best friend abt him. these sort of “potential love interests” have started ever since my ex broke up with me. I realize that I have a very strong preference for men. and now I feel like each relationship I try with men, I end up “crushing” or sometimes even “flirting.” I have done some of that to some and I feel remorse about it now. I feel like I did this during the time I was dealing with extreme loneliness and was just seeking attention. I’m still struggling as I haven’t had any irl friends since 16 years old. I don’t know why I’m being like this or that my brain is telling me things I don’t want. I don’t want to keep looking at guys and think they are “potential lovers.” that is just a shitty thing to think. I wanna have friends but this has been ruining it for me for guys. it’s like I’m “searching for the one” and discarding my other guy friends. ofc, I have never done that. I have good friends. I just might’ve romanticized some parts of them and “built” my dream lover in my mind. I don’t know how to fix this. going back to my coworker; I’m scared it will be the same as it has been recently with my guy friends (some of them). I do find him pretty though, I won’t deny it. I have definitely been making eye contact with him, which is a very big thing from me bc I hate eye contact. once I do it, it’s because of trust/interest. only time it’s not that is when I want to let people who are having a convo with me know that I’m listening, although it makes me uncomfortable. I don’t like making eye contact with majority of the people. but with him it seems different? I haven’t known him for long but I feel this sort of trust??? idk. he has pretty eyes. and sometimes I look at him and wish I looked like him. like be a guy. I do that often with other men. I wish I could look as good as them. but I’m a woman. that’s another issue for another day. ANYWAYYY, so I was about to cancel my movie theater subscription bc I forget to cancel since I haven’t been using it. I currently have some credits to watch movies. I thought about asking my coworker if he would like to watch a movie! I want to get rid of these movies and hey, free movie! I’m just nervous bc this will be the first time asking someone to hang out outside of work/school. (except for one old friend last year) another thing I’m scared of becoming friends with is that of moral list I have for myself. what if he doesn’t share the same morals as me? I am a forgiving person and willing to accept change, but scared having to deal with arguments and stuff. this is another thing that stops me from having friends. just by having a high standard of morals. I mean, they’re basic morals but even then, in this world, there are people that do not have them. I feel like I am dipping my feet into the pool. I think I am willing to risk it to see if a friendship grows out of this. I hope so. I’m tired of this loneliness. help!!!

Just sharing this a bit as I got to terms with the end of my high school career. I feel like I've spent a big time after starting medication on rumination and just feeling overall terrible. I didn't recieve any treatment until it got unbearable for myself, my family, my friends, and my school work. I was constantly having breakdowns and trying to get someone around me to understand. I can recall instances of these breakdowns where I would just get called crazy and irrational, which does not help at all. I was always terrified of getting close to people. I start having bad intrusive thoughts but I know that I would never want to hurt anyone. I can't stop thinking if people would've just taken me seriously in the beginning I could've done so much better. I had many failing grades as a lot of days my mind gets so occupied by every little thing ever I can't even just focus on working. This made my post-grad plans complicated. I want to apologize to the pain I've caused to my family and anyone involved in my life. I'm scared if they touched me I'll contaminate them with something. I was also constantly in ans out of hospital from stress relatwd illnesses as well as "illnesses" my brain convinced me I had. I feel like an instrument of destruction. When I was really young I was fully convinced I was the anti-christ and the only way to change that is if I ended my life. I went off on a tangent, but overall I'm glad at last I could get some chemical relief. While it still effects me everyday, I try to push myself out of my boundaries while making sure I have people around me to reassure me even if the reassurance is "if you do get a heart attack we'll call an ambulance". The best advice that has worked for me as a hypochondriac ia when i feel like mind spiraling to crazy ends like illnesses and possible deaths, I think abt even if you were getting close to it, theres always a way to srop it through diagnoses and help from professionals. It calms me a little to know that even if my obsessions are "right"(they never are), There is always a solution to it. Hope as time goes on I can come to terms with the way my brain is wired, and function like the ones around me do. I had a therapist told me I was incredible for staying in school despite all that I've told her. I felt a relief at that moment since for the longest time I thought I wasn't doing Thanks for making it to the very end sorry for the incredible long vent!

I recently got diagnosed with Austism and this very loaded paragraph was on the report: "Other differential or other possible alternative diagnoses for your consideration are complex personality structures resultant from effortful attempts to cope with unmet emotional and attachment needs. These included: - rigidity associated with ***obsessive-compulsive disorder*** or personality and overcompensations associated with narcissistic personality' (emphasis mine)" It was surprising to me as I don't have any of the stereotypical OCD behaviours like excessive cleaning. There was nothing else mentioned in the report and I only had one hour to go through it in person with the assessor, and OCD didn't come up. Wondering if there is anyone else here with ASD and what if anything is the the relationship between ASD and OCD? Part of me thinks there is something worth exploring here (because nothing else is really helping me) and another part of me thinks this is just some vague conjecture the assessor put in (and it's not clear what the point of putting it in there was, like sure I *might* have OCD and NPD like I *might* be *pick random DSM diagnosis from the manual*) Is there something to explore here? The only thing I have that seems to be similar or related to OCD is I often have a voice in my saying negative thoughts ("you are the most pathetic person in the world" type thoughts, and those can often spiral out of control and lead to a meltdown/rage. Sometimes it feels like the entire universe is mocking me, and sometimes when an inconvenient coincidence happens it's like the universe is playing a joke on me, just to provoke meltdown so it/they can laugh at me having a meltdown for their own personal entertainment) Sorry for the huge post, I have great difficulty with brevity (I'd be super surprised if anyone has actually read up to here!!!)

Hi friends. I like to think that most days I am in the drivers seat of my ocd, I’ve came a long way with ERP and medication. However, today has been a rough day. My ocd and anxiety both seem to be kicking back in lately. I’ve been dealing with a waxing and waning symptom flare for about a year now. I have never switched my medication. I’ve only went up in dosage, I am now on the maximum dose of my SSRI. (200mg Zoloft) and I’ll say that for the past year it has not packed the punch as it used to. It worked really well for the first 4 years. I did have to titrate up in dosage over that time. I am still functioning, in school, sleeping and working so that says a lot. However, it’s still hard and getting in the way of living life at my fullest potential. (So much time spent thinking about things that don’t even pertain to my life) I have been better than this. OCD and anxiety used to be maybe a once a month occurrence for me. Now it is half the month. Does anyone have any experience with their medication pooping out on them and not working as well? Or having to change from one medication to another? All your advice would be helpful. Thank you!