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working to conquer OCD
How do you guys deal with rejection from other people or them pulling away when you talk about your OCD and intrusive thoughts? I've been dealing with that a little bit lately and it hurts a lot. I don't know how to deal with it.
As someone who has bad thoughts , obsessive out of fear will it “manifest”? I don’t want to be a criminal!!
Hey y’all! I am asking for some support for a rough time with my OCD. I’m a straight woman who has SOOCD about being attracted to women as well as hints of ROCD and previous themes of the environment and religion. SO OCD has been kicking my ass on and off for over 2 years and I’ve seen 2 different therapists for treatment. With my current therapist we are doing I-CBT which has helped in some ways but not in others. I had an incredibly bad flare up thinking about some 🌽 I watched as a kid and it made me spiral thinking I could have a fetish that made me feel so awful gross and scared. I spent about 2 straight hours scrolling through forums trying to get an answer before feeling relief. I can’t see my therapist until next Friday and decided to make a list of my triggers, obsessions and compulsions to bring to her so we can talk about it and hopefully find a structured way to confront my fears. I’m currently ok right now but am nervous about when my next spiral is going to be and to go to sleep because I frequently have dreams relating to my triggers and it stresses me out so much :( This illness has stolen so much from me and feels like it borderline ruins many components of my life. I feel like I have « lost » my attraction to men becuase im so anxious all the time and im nervous to have sex with my bf (im a virgin) becuase of what ill think about or how ill react to certain thoughts. It doesn’t make any sense because I have so intensely wanted to have sex and be sexual with men in the past and that has always been my normal. It is destroying me. I’m sure people can relate but does anyone have advice on what I can do in the meantime until I can see my therapist? What I can do if I have an intrusive thought and want to engage in a compulsion? Thank you for any and all advice :))
OCD tends to attack my personal morals. I try to not only be a good person but I feel like I pressure myself to live up to impossibley high standard and be the best person. Lately my ocd makes me worry if someone/everyone assumes I'm gay. I'm straight but I support, but the fact that I have these worries makes me feel guilty and like I'm a monster. My friend said that nobody's just assuming this and that if I was homophobic I wouldn't be so guilty. I then worry when I mention these fears to people that they make them think I'm gay if they didn't already, which then makes me feel homophobic again. My friend says my OCD is just tryna give me something to worry about and make me feel bad.
Hi im 15 and my name is Asia and I have a really bad fear of drugs I think their everywhere and on everything and I keep convincing myself I did them and I always tell myself I took something dangerous like cocaine or worse it happens everyday when I eat or drink something when I’m around certain people or places I get these thoughts and when I get the thought I took something I start to feel “weird” like my body starts reacting and I automatically think “I’m dying” so I call 911 and I feel like I HAVE to call or else something horrible is gonna happen if I don’t my whole perspective on life is miserable and scary because of this I wanna feel like myself again and not get these scary thoughts it’s literally ruining everything for me I don’t like hearing ppl talk abt drugs or anything that has to do with it or I start telling myself it’s happening to me or that I took something
I read many articles about this, cause i dont know how to accept thoughts, and i hear "just let it come in, let it make you feel bad, let it make you feel anxious or depressed. So in my entire life, everytime i will have a negative thought, intrusive thought or disturbing thought, i let it make me feel how it wants. Im in a depressive season right now, i have many disturbing thoughts, i have to accept all of them to come in my mind and im acknowledging every thought and letting them make me feel how they want? Poeple are angry here that i ask this many times but i dont see any progression there...I tried to do that and gave me a huge depressive feeling and i started to panic. Now im overthinking if that depression means something deeply about me or not... and also if i find some thought patterns, should i change them? Or just dont engage in them? Also not engaging for me sounds like avoidance,.cause i avoid to engage in it. This "sit with it, accept them, work through them" doesnt make sense to me. When should i say this is an ocd thought in dont have to figure it out or this is something that i have to think about?
My ocd has progressively gotten worse throughout my life. When I was about 10 years old I started to have these intrusive thoughts that would tell me I was awkward and embarrassing to be around so I would ruminate about every social interaction I had and hyperfixate on how other people reacted to me that would give proof for the intrusive thoughts that I was these things. So I started to isolate myself in my room for most of my life and dissociate because of how strong these thoughts are and the unimaginable shame they make me feel until I developed harm ocd. I'm 18 now and I dissociate every time I go outside because I feel like people are staring at me or want to hurt me in some way. I still feel like people think I'm awkward or retarded (hate using that word but that's how the intrusive thoughts make me feel) Does anyone else experience this or know what might help me get through it? It would help to know I'm not alone at least. Thank you for reading ❤️
it’s my sisters wedding tomorrow and i’ve arrived at the venue, i am struggling to enjoy the moment due to my intrusive thoughts, it feels as if i am drowning in my mind and i don’t deserve to be here, does anyone have any tips so i can enjoy myself. i just want to be normal i’m only 16
Please send positive energy. Our son has been struggling for quite some time. He’s done in-patient, PHP & IOP as well as meds and doing ERP for about 5 months. Fighting very hard to resist compulsions but still falters, which is to be expected, but those days are horrible for all of us, as the confessions and reassurance seeking is constant. The intrusive thoughts are there all day, every day, torturing him. Please tell us your success stories so we can remain hopeful. Thank you & much love to all💕
A few months back, I was struggling with intrusive thoughts about my Dad. I was having thoughts like he was looking at me inappropriately, like he was going to hurt me, etc. But now, I don't even know if its OCD anymore. He says stuff like he's going to k1ll me, and he's going to punch me. I flinch around him, and I don't feel safe in a conclusion. At first, I didn't blame it on him, said it was my fault I'm feeling this uncomfortable way, and he would never do that. And I have a feeling he wouldn't, but he still makes me uncomfortable. Its also that he doesn't respect my boundaries. I have this thing about people looking at me for a long time. It makes me incredibly anxious and uncomfortable. I know its a strong request, but i just mean constant looking at me for long periods of time. So in order to feel more comfortable, i spook out about it to my family. To say the least my sister is the only one who understands and respect that. My mom try's to, but at least I don't get uncomfortable from her stare. My dad doesn't even care. He says "your my fucking daughter, I can look at you if i want" And when i tell him it makes me uncomfortable he says "I'm not looking at you inappropriately??" but it feels like he is sometimes. And i hate it. Cause i feel like its all my fault. I feel like its all just my paranoia and my OCD telling me he's looking at me like that. Cause then i tried checking. (ik, i shouldn't be, but I'm a day or two compulsion free so :DD) But i tried seeing if he looked at other people the same way. And he does, he looks at my mom, my sister the same way. But when he looks at them in that way, it doesn't feel creepy, and it does when he looks at me. I have a feeling this is all just OCD, its the effects of struggling with intrusive thoughts. it scarred me and now my brain cant undo it. Idk..
So I’ve been having a lot of mental obsessions recently and my OCD has mainly focused there instead of physically. It kinda just switched up which is odd and I’m not sure what that means. But it’s getting pretty bad. The ones I’ve noticed so far is ruminating and not being able to let things go. Whenever I get anxious about something I’ll go back and think about it over and over and my mind will keep bugging me about it until I can properly reassure myself. No matter what it is something will bug me and I’ll go on and on for hours thinking about it even just waking up from sleeping. I just recently opened up to my mom about something not exactly bad or crazy but just personal to me because it’s a more softer side of me, and now my mind keeps eating at me and bugging me that it’ll affect something or maybe I said the wrong thing. My mind is just now fixated on a certain part of what I said and keeps bugging me about it and it’s actually pretty stressful. I’ve never dealt with this amount of Pure OCD (I’m not diagnosed yet but that’s what it seems like from what I’ve researched), and it’s getting worse. Another part that is bugging me is not being able to let go of it, no matter how much I reassure myself my mind won’t let it go. I have to constantly get reassurance either from my partner or myself and sometimes that’s stressful because then I’m anxious that I’m being annoying or too much. I honestly have no idea what to do and it’s becoming a lot for me. Can anyone help?
I ignore the thoughts and keep trying to do my uni work, sitting with the anxiety and not listening to the thought, why is it not going away? Is that the same as sitting with the thought? Am I doing erp on the thought by ignoring it and continuing with what I do? Im freaking out I don’t have ocd
I’ve been dealing with this harm theme for almost four months now, and well obviously life hasn’t been the best for me, the thoughts really circulate on hurting others, why couldn’t they just been about me instead? (I apologize to those currently suffering from self harm ocd) it’s gotten to the point where I don’t know if my thoughts are really intrusive now, and it doesn’t help that I get urges to act on these thoughts. Why have I been cursed with such vile thoughts why me why now. The only good news so far is that I’m finally going to see if this is ocd or not and get diagnosed by a psychiatrist once I start college here in a few weeks(Thank gatos for my college has mental health resources) but honestly it just doesn’t really feel like ocd. I don’t know if I feel anxiety because it’s not the typical anxiety I feel. While my compulsions are mental it’s just wierd. Like I’m worried that ERP wouldn’t work for me. Sometimes I get thoughts like, how do people live without these thoughts? And how do they occupy their time? I know I used to be like other people, yk where I wasn’t worried or concerned because of these thoughts, like yeah I’ve had intrusive thoughts before in the past and they absolutely scared me, but I was just able to get over them. So why now does it feel like i can’t shake them off? Why do they have to show up everyday? And why have I become so apathetic? Like my empathy and sympathy feel like they’ve disappeared? And it’s so bad that sometimes I feel like if someone close to me just passed away I would feel nothing. Like when I heard my abuelo had skin cancer I just felt nothing and I was obsessing over the fact that I didn’t. Has anyone ever felt this way? Is it just ocd or something worse?
about a month ago i experienced an intrusive thoight about becoming a murderer and it completely shocked me i panicked and began searching things up and came across intrusive thoughts and ever since discovering them i have them all the time and they are on my mind 24/7 i’m paranoid that i’m going to become a murderer and revently i’ve been afriad that it’s not ocd and it’s just who i am and what i have become and i’m a physco i live with a constant guilt tjay i am looking at people the wrong way and my mind is convincing me i’m evil but i would never hurt anyone but even typing this my mind is telling me i’m lying i have such a headache, i have had anxiety issues before
Me and my boyfriend spend a lot of time together. Especially since we were long distance on and off for a long while, we spend as much time together as we can when he's not working. This is also due to my social OCD, which has made it very very difficult to be able to spend time without him among friends or in public. We've now been together for over 2 1/2 years and I'm so so grateful for all the help he's provided me with mentally and emotionally in these last 3 months we've been living together. It hasn't been easy, but he's been so patient with me. He continues to be patient with me every day, but he's not a machine either. Sometimes I hate myself for the ways that my OCD, ADHD, PTSD trauma and cannabis dependency can jump out in ways that not only hurt him, but our relationship too. Sometimes I'll say things or feel things that feel like they authentically come from me as a person, only to realize it was some OCD thought spiral or obsession or checking compulsion... IT'S SO FRUSTRATING!!! I can come off as crass, unconcerned, narrow minded, pushy and rude. None of these things represent me, I know they don't. I feel like I constantly have to explain that to myself and him to not feel like a shitty ass person. My obsessions can be so persistent that they ignore him trying to communicate to me that I'm not in the right headspace and that I should take a breather. It feels like there's so much standing in the way of me being able to meet both of our needs sometimes, especially because I don't exactly feel like I can trust myself. I need a break from how hard this disorder can be, he needs a break, we're both tired of it. I'm blessed that each other's presence is already such a big gift to one another, and none of this negates the fact that we are still falling in love with each other over and over again. I'm beyond blessed to have someone like him through the good times and the hard times, the hard times can just be so hard on the both of us and I wish it would stop. Any advice would be appreciated <3
Hi fellow OCDers. I've struggled with OCD for the last 7 years and have cycled through therapists who for years did not diagnose me with OCD (eventually I found someone who did). I've been on several different medications and I've tried different therapy techniques (I'm familiar with CBT, ERP, and ACT). I'm lucky enough to have found a therapist who understands OCD and does not provide any reassurance. And I found the right medication that helped me stabilize which I am no longer on. I think one of my key turning points has been becoming more aware of my OCD thoughts through reading and therapy -- as well as doing exposure therapy. Exposure therapy is a weird concept to me. The trouble is that OCD can be deceptive. I found that I'd be too calm and I'd write a script for ERP that wouldn't elicit any anxiety. Or I'd skip ERP because subconsciously I didn't want to heighten my anxiety. But I've found that its impact has begun to be life-changing. By writing down my fears and reading a script or recording and replaying my fears to myself, eventually, the anxiety diminishes. The anxiety starts to subside and I realize the absurdity of my OCD. I'm reading the OCD Workbook, by Bruce Hyman which has been a great resource, but I find that taking the time to think through what exercises to do and setting aside time every day is an obstacle. I'd like to know what people have tried, what they have found helpful, and how they have stayed organized. What I'm curious to know: What has your treatment journey been like? What methods have you tried, and what do you find effective? How do you track your progress if at all? Do you also find doing ERP difficult? Why? Where do you organize your ERP exercises? In a Google Doc like me? An app? Or on paper? How often do you do ERP? How often would you like to do it? How much time do you spend on doing ERP?
Yesterday me and my bf were gaming and he had a glitch in the game and raged at it because he died because of the glitch which was out of his control and I ended up being startled and left the call on impulse. My ocd always expects an answer in my favour and when an answer is not what my Ocd expects it goes WILD. My ocd expected “I’m so sorry I made you startled my love it will never happen again ” after I told him why I left the call, but he gave me a completely different answer to the positive reassuring answer it wanted. He said we both overreacted and it’s not a big deal he was just letting out some anger because he couldn’t fix a glitch that caused him to lose the game we were playing while mine was working normally. He wasn’t mad at anyone, just the game because he died from a reason he couldn’t control. He couldn’t understand why I reacted the way I did so he couldn’t exactly feel sad about it, just confused. I think my ocd has reacted so badly to this situation because I am used to asking more questions after the initial response my ocd didn’t like, so I can get a positive answer to balance it out and be reassured, but it reacted badly because my bf stood his ground and said he needs to stop reassuring me/babying me in some situations because it’s just catering towards my OCD and I need a positive answer constantly and I somewhat agree because I see how my ocd trying to twist it to be positive is reassurance seeking. It can’t cope with an answer it doesn’t want to hear. If there is an answer that my ocd hates, it paints my boyfriend out to be a bad person like in this situation, a “narcissist with no empathy” ,when actually he admits/realises when he is wrong, he was just standing his ground with an answer and not catering to my ocd being like “awwww it’s okay I’m sorry” and he decided to be honest this time that he was extremely confused with how I reacted in that situation so he couldn’t feel anything. He said he would have possibly reacted differently if I hadn’t of left the call which confused him/stressed him a little and I could of have just said “I need a few minutes” and muted to calm down. He also might of reacted differently if he heard how I was on call if I didn’t leave. I have realised maybe it’s me being sort of toxic with the way I think and I need to get out of this thing where I hear an answer I don’t like and then ask questions until it changes to be reassured. Is it better to learn to sit with the uncomfortableness/ uncertainty of having a negative answer and not getting out of it by trying to “cancel it out” with a positive answer? Do I need to fight my OCD back when it’s being like “oh my god he’s so horrible we didn’t get the answer we wanted to hear! Let’s ask questions until it changes to something we want to hear!” Does anyone else have where their ocd goes wild because you expect a certain answer always and you don’t get it and it’s distressing and you feel like you need to find a positive to make it stop?
I’m having a really rough morning. I woke up around 2 am and since then (it’s 10 now) it’s been one obsession after another. I’ve been doing compulsions but now I’m trying to sit in the discomfort. I wanted to talk about one of the themes though. I feel I can do this because it doesn’t make me anxious to think about not doing it, so I don’t think it’s a compulsion for me. I’m thinking about being on social media and wondering if I ever talked to somebody, followed somebody, allowed somebody to follow me, etc., that was underage, or even 18, 19, 20. I have incredibly bad POCD. I’m 23 now and have no interest having any sort of romantic, sexual, or platonic relationship with anyone under 21, but I worry about little things I end up doing not being okay, and I worry about crossing a line. But being on social media, I’m bound to come across people who are basically children. If it’s apparent to me someone’s young, I try to avoid it, but there’s no way I can possibly always know that. I also didn’t keep track when I was younger so seeing a video from a 15/16 year old when I was 20 didn’t phase me, but I feel like it should’ve. There’s only so much I can do to avoid this. I can put an age limit in my bio, private my accounts, try to clear out anybody I suspect is underage or just everybody I don’t know and who doesn’t have an age in their bio, but it seems easier to just avoid social media all together. This seems logical, I don’t want to communicate with minors or anyone under 21 that I don’t know. But I wonder what people that are famous on tiktok or YouTube do. I don’t think they think they’re pedophiles, but I seriously feel like one and I feel like no matter what, I’m gonna do something wrong with kids in my life. It’s wrong to look at them, think of them, talk about them. I feel disgusting and I’m really suffering. And I think some of this is an overreaction and just OCD but then I’ll see something online that reinforces some of what my brain is telling me and I wanna throw up. I understand a lot of what people say is crossing a line and I would never want to do that, but something feels off and I can’t find balance and I’m terrified.
When I get a new theme the previous theme completely disappears/seems unimportant until there is a trigger for it. Is circling themes a very obvious sign its ocd? If it’s something actually serious in the relationship wouldn’t I get a worse feeling than just “omg this is bad I need to ruminate and search and seek reassurance” There is always one theme in control and my main focus until a new/ returning theme takes its place and the other theme is shoved away in the back of my mind like nothing until it circles around again. Even if the theme I’m currently having seems like an actual problem/super serious a different trigger/theme can occur and the “serious” theme that i was panicking over thinking “is my bf a bad person” can be wiped away and replaced with another theme. Is the constant thinking something is super serious but then it can easily be replaced with another worry a big sign it’s ocd?
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