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Does anyone else get memories suddenly from years ago that goes along with your ocd theme at the current moment and you are shocked how you forgot such a bad memory for years?

im gonna start an ocd support group in the fall (like actually in person) and is it bad that im kinda veiwing it as my dating pool? like a bunch of people that get it and might also have false and real memories ocd like? sounds nice. literally never dated before because i never have time in between these blow out episodes to form a connection or make a date but like i feel like it would be easier with someone who also has ocd because theyd get it.

I (15m)am seeking advice because I believe I may have a false memory OCD. I am worried that I may have sexually harmed people without realizing it, especially my young cousins. I am also concerned that I may be a pdophile as i think im aroused by kids but idk if its kids or the idea of s*x. I believe my exposure to explicit content at a young age may have also given me hypersexuality, which still affects me.I feel guilt too because when i was younger i did cocsa against my younger brother he doesn't remember it but i do and i'm just scared what if i did other bad things like that. I do not want to use this as an excuse for my actions at age 14 when I made sexual advances/jokes towards my friends, causing them discomfort and harm. Some forgave me saying they didn't care about it now, but one friend ended our relationship due to my inappropriate behavior during a game and is scarred/traumatized and doesn't even want to look at me i tried to tell him i'm sorry but he doesn't really want me talking to him ever again. I am filled with guilt and shame for my actions and consider turning myself in as a result. The idea that I may have harmed someone without remembering it terrifies me, and I struggle to forgive myself for the pain I have caused others. I'm scared to even encounter people I hurt. I'm a monster that deserves to be beat up/ publicly hurt as most pdos/ s*x offenders do.

TW: death I've recently been struggling a lot with obsessing over death and the fear that I or my boyfriend are dying, and obsessing over the fact that both of us will eventually die. It's to the point that it is severely affecting my life, I have frequent anxiety attacks about these ideas and can't stop myself from googling every single symptom either one of us experiences because I'm terrified I'll miss something and my boyfriend will die. If I manage to move past it for a bit or calm down I just end up with intrusive thoughts reminding me of it and spiral into another anxiety attack. Has anyone else experienced this issue and if so what helped you?

I’m tired guys. I’m tired of thinking something is always wrong with my health, tired of letting random symptoms/ sensations take over my brain and make me think something is horribly wrong. Tired of thinking I need to go to the doctors to get X & Y looked at. I’m tired of always assuming worst case scenario. I’m tired of constantly thinking if something is unethical/ immoral if I don’t do something, tired of always thinking I’m offending a religious higher being, tired of thinking I’m a bad/ disgusting person for my thoughts. I’ve had OCD ruin so many things for me that should have been fun. It’s ruined intercourse/ intimacy because of religious thoughts, or I keep thinking about STDs/ infections. I’ve been having panic attacks lately, something I’ve never experienced, because of life changes and it’s all gotten in the way of my structured life and it’s been very uncomfortable. Lately I’ve been feeling like I’m in danger, or nothing is real. Right now I’m fearing the most that I’m losing my mind, who I am, and I’m just so scared of my mental health getting worse and going manic or developing a dangerous mental illness. My mental health has NEVER been this bad. This is all new and it’s so scary. I was just fine a few months ago, sure I was dealing with other OCD stuff, the intrusive thoughts, the fears, the repetitive actions just to make sure something is the way I want it/ brings me comfort. But ever since my structure was changed/ ruined, it’s all been downhill. I just finished an EMT program, and that messed with me. Saw/ experienced things I’ve never done before and man, it’s really messed with me. Working on getting a new job in healthcare but still don’t have insurance so getting a new OCD specialized therapist has been difficult. Can someone relate just so I don’t feel like I’m crazy?..

Having a recurring intrusive thought that im evil bc when i was 14 i was dog sitting and I was told by the owner to tug on the dogs leash when he would stop walking to keep him moving. Well I did that and he was very stubborn so I remember tugging harder than I should have out of impatience which makes me hate myself so much. The problem is I can’t remember the specifics of the memory like how hard it was or if he was hurt. I do remember him coughing which is terrifying. Like half a year later he passed away and I’m always scared that I hurt him. He was old and I hate myself for being so impatient. I just wish I could remember correctly. How do I live with myself?

When I was 14, I experimented with a friend because he lied and said that it wasnt a homosexual act (when it clearly was) he tried to get me to do it several times and I eventually caved... after 30 seconds of it I went in the rest room and gagged and had a panic attack... my hocd is saying im in denial because of these events...

Today i remembered something from 2 years ago that i did. I don’t know if i can talk about it in detail, i guess I know everyone would hate me for it. I didn’t do anything DIRECTLY to anyone, it’s more about what I didn’t do really. I just feel like I allowed something terrible to happen cause I didn’t wanna be involved. I did what I thought was the best thing to do at the time, but was it? I haven’t thought about it in a while, but today it came out of no where and I just kept thinking about it. I know I should try to be less hard on myself and try to learn some self forgiveness but at the same time…it’s hard to feel good about anything.

I dont have ocd. I really dont. It feels like im actually a lesbian. I dont feel anything for guys. I dont know how to describe my feelings. It feels like i cant escape my body or my mind. I feel stuck. It feels real. It must be real. But i cant imagine that its real. But it feels so real like im actually a lesbian. I dont want to be. Today i had urges to come out. I feel depressed. I dont wanna live. I cant escape. I just have to accept that im a lesbian.

I have pocd and am dealing with a real event situation with it. I did something really really odd when I was 18, like really weird. It kinda involved a child but no one was hurt and nothing s*xual really happened. What I did tho was really weird and although I’m kinder to myself and not calling myself a p*do anymore I still can’t shake how weird what I did was. Im not talking something cute and quirky weird like im talking weird weird and strange like mentally not with it. I feel like I’ve ruined everything and base my life on this thing I did. How do I stop feeling like this when I feel like I deserve to be put in an asylum.

I want to share some thoughts that might resonate with those of you grappling with intrusive thoughts or lingering regrets from the past. First and foremost, it's essential to remember that our thoughts are not definitive representations of who we are. They often stem from random electrical impulses in our brains and can feel overwhelming at times. It’s important to acknowledge that these thoughts do not define us. Instead, they are just passing moments that we can observe without judgment. Secondly, it’s crucial to realize that past events would have unfolded regardless of our actions. We often believe we are the main cause of certain outcomes, but many events occur independently of our choices. Think of your life as a storybook; while you can read and reflect on the pages, you did not write the narrative that led to those moments. This perspective can help alleviate feelings of guilt and self-blame. Lastly, let’s remember that we are all human, and making mistakes is part of the experience. It’s vital to forgive ourselves for past errors and recognize that these experiences contribute to our growth. The mere act of reflecting on our mistakes shows that we have learned and evolved. To foster healing and personal growth, consider incorporating some positive habits into your daily routine: Get Outside: Aim for daily walks in the sunlight. Nature has a remarkable way of uplifting our spirits. Pursue Hobbies: Engage in activities that bring you joy and fulfillment. This can help redirect your focus and energy. Volunteer: Offering guidance to others who may be facing similar challenges can be incredibly rewarding. It not only helps them but also reinforces your own lessons learned. By taking these steps, you can create a meaningful path toward moral repentance and personal development, freeing yourself from the burdens of the past. Remember, healing is a journey, and every small step counts. Embrace it with kindness and patience towards yourself. Have a great day all 😊

My whole life I’ve found reasons to not like myself. Whether I thought I was weird or ugly or overweight. Because of this, I’ve always sought the acceptance of others which sometimes made me do things, that looking back, wasn't who I really wanted to be (drinking, being intimate with someone, saying I like things that I don't, not standing up for myself, etc.). OCD hasn’t made liking myself any easier. The awful thoughts and false memories have made me dislike myself more because they’ve made me feel like a disgusting monster. They’ve made me feel like I don’t even know who I am, which is extra scary because even without OCD, I’ve struggled with that as mentioned above. OCD has tried filling in the gaps and has preyed upon my insecurities and it's terrifying. Now that I’m taking the steps to learn to love myself, OCD is gripping on even harder. It tells me I don’t deserve love because maybe my false memories are true or I don’t deserve love because of the horrible thoughts I have. It's really hard honestly, but I know I need to keep trying. I also wonder had I loved myself before, would I have even had an OCD problem? Because maybe if I loved myself and knew what a good person I was, the thoughts would have never gripped on? I don't know. Be kind to yourselves. It certainly is a journey.

I don’t even know where to begin but I’m just desperate for answers or at least some support. It’s gotten so debilitating that I’m literally scared of myself. I live in this constant state of overthinking things to the point where I feel like I’m going to literally scream and I lose complete sight of reality. I rethink things that happened and tell myself that what I did wasn’t normal and that I’m actually insane and I start feeling insane and start spiraling into this thing where I feel like I’m this insane person and I need to isolate myself because I’m insane…and I know that rationally it’s not true because I come across normal but sometimes I feel like I’ve completely lost all social skills and forgot how to be normal and my overthinking is literally what causes this? Idk how to explain…

I have a lot stress factors weighing in me, and I've already been in the midst of an OCD flare up so I'm struggling pretty hard right now. My brain is digging so deep to think of anything bad or gross I did when I was younger and I don't know how to handle it. I want to tell it all to my gf but I don't want her to look at me different over weird thoughts when I was younger, but my brain is telling me I'm hiding it and I'm a horrible person. I don't know what to do, I haven't spiraled like this in a long time and I can't get out of my own head going deeper into past thoughts and memories and actions I'm deeply ashamed of.

By going through life having no or little OCD symptoms, to having it daily now, it's my belief that OCD is fundamentally a HABIT. Yes, this is simplifying it a lot, but I think that's what it is. Which is why ERP seems to be effective (although I've never done ERP). Like any habit, you have triggers, rewards, cycles, etc. Something triggers an alcoholic to drink, they get rewarded by the high, then they get hangovers, then they get negative effects, etc. Going through this myself -- Years ago, I literally GENERATED my own OCD. I remember how and when. I basically wanted to "come clean" to my girlfriend. Me and her had both done some somewhat shady things in the relationship, and this was me "confessing." Ok so here's what happened and here's what started it all -- so what started out as "confessing," absolutely went it to HYPER CONFESSING, day by day. I would scour my brain, trying to remember EVERYTHING AND ANYTHING I'd ever done "wrong" in the relationship -- however trivial or maybe some weren't as trivial. But the point is, the habit HAD BEEN SET. What started out as good-intentioned "confessing" to "have integrity" in the relationship, grew day by day into my brain interpreting that as "oh this is something you NEED to be doing every day. You NEED to be ruminating. You NEED to be "checking." AND IF YOU DON'T, you will feel SHAME and GUILT. And guess what it? It hasn't stopped since. What happened was it just moved the target. So, what started out as "did I do anything 'wrong' in the relationship" checking, it switched to "did I do anything 'wrong' in life." So that's where I'm at today. Stuck in that loop. Fun times.

I think I just need to vent about this and hopefully I’ll feel better. When I was a teen (somewhere between 12 and 18, fuzzy about when exactly) I found some weird fetish porn. I didn’t even know what I was doing because my sex ed was terrible, but I ended up getting off to it. I remember being confused, scared, and VERY secretive. I ended up being funneled into a community that ultimately was very harmful for me as a young teen, one that I don’t think I would have been anywhere near if I hadn’t stumbled onto it. Now that I’m in my late 20s, I recognize that this was not a good situation. I think I was into it because it was paired with things I do like, because of the secrecy and anxiety, and just sheer exposure. But that doesn’t stop me from every once in a while being absolutely terrified that I secretly like it. It’s nerve wracking, because I wonder if I just convinced myself I didn’t like it because I assigned moral value to it. I had friends that thought it was disgusting. But at the end of the day, I didn’t stop because of other people, I stopped because I found myself not wanting it anymore. I just stopped wanting it. Now, I don’t want it. Even though I’ve done my best to remove the moral quantity to it, I just don’t want to do it and the thought makes me uncomfortable and icked out. So… yeah. I’ve talked to my therapist before. It was the first time I ever cried in therapy. I think I need to talk through it more. I’m comforted knowing I don’t want to act on any of the intrusive thoughts I get about it, but knowing that I did things when I was a teen makes it hard. I just have to remind myself I was a child, I know what was happening. But it’s hard

I'm going off to college tomorrow and I'm dreading it, I'm dreading everything. Though I didn't fully realize it, what I'm now almost certain is real event/pure-o OCD has been making my life feel completely miserable. From when I wake up to when I fall asleep, especially as of recent, I'm just constantly scared, anxious, guilty, and sad. I genuinely have not felt relaxed or happy in months, and it feels like there's no escape. When I'm taking a walk, hanging with family/friends, my mind is just racing and I can't live in the moment. Physically speaking it affects me too, my heart rate is high, short breath, sweaty, all how you would feel when you're nervous, but just all the time. This exact theme happened to me before in the past and latched on for a bit before fading, so I assumed that I grew out of it, and it hadn't hit me again for over a year until March. But now that it's on again and I actually recognized that I'm dealing likely with a mental disorder it just makes it feel so hopeless and unending, like this will forever be my life. The worst part is the nature of my OCDs, even if I know what I did isn't a big deal, is that it makes me guilty around anyone. Like I'm hiding something from everyone I talk to, and it makes me feel like I've lost all my innocence and I've lost the bright, happy, ambitious person I was before this all came back. All of this makes college so scary because all I can think about is how if I keep feeling like this I'll never be happy there, It's so hard to think optimistically or positively and this is just killing me day by day. I don't want reassurance because I know that just makes it worse, but is there anyone out there who's been in this sort of situation? If so, what did you do to manage, how did recovery look, what's your life like now? Any help would be appreciated so much.

I’ve done many things in my past that I regret heavily, and I can’t get over it.. I really can’t no matter what.. One being that when I was 14, I was making inappropriate comments and jokes to my friends/partners who were 1-2 years younger than me, and I feel so disgusted that I did this, why did I do this, I’m a horrible person, I don’t deserve anything…. Important to note: yes, at the time I didn’t know any better, I really didn’t, i remember it being really normalized, NOT an excuse but an explanation.. but, I regret being that way so badly, because it’s so gross I can’t believe I was so stupid… and I still see kids nowadays make jokes and comments to their friends/partners like this?? Why is it still normalized…

I genuinely don’t know what to do anymore. I keep getting weird coincidences and I will sit through the uncertainty of them but it will just be one after another. Like I work at a summer camp and we were on the bus and I was listening to a song and thought like what if this song accidentally played out loud and people heard it and literally right after my coworker started singing it. It’s not a super popular song either. I have a theme like what if people are reading my mind or messing with me or whatever and it just felt like blatant. I also had a dream about a knife in csgo and the next day both of my friends get csgo knives, which is rare asf. Like it feels like I can’t trust people anymore. Idk what to do. Stuff also keeps happening right at 12:12. Like my friend texted me at 12:12 and literally the next day I text him on accident at 12:12. Then 3 days in a row my brother comes and talks to me out of nowhere at 12:12. Then at 12:12 I see “real life Truman show” on YouTube . Like wtf. I also have a fear of schizophrenia so it’s not a great mix. Thought I was making progress but this one is just absurd. wtf .

I recently had a bunch of life changes in the past 4 months: selling my home after a flood scare, moving to a new state, ending a year long romantic situationship with a coworker, finding a new job because I couldn’t stand interacting with them anymore (I start Monday), and then one of my best friends has pulled away immensely and I feel like our friendship is over. I also had a support system with two older women at work but I feel like I lost that now too because I left. I think because of all this I am having one of the worst OCD flare up’s of my life. I’m typically very social and outgoing. But I’m in my new apartment and feel like I can’t leave my room, I don’t want to explore my new neighborhood, or do anything. I just feel paralyzed inside my brain. Either I’m ruminating about one of the above situations and convincing myself I’m a bad person who doesn’t deserve stability in life, and that my life is bound to be a cycle of always starting over and pain. Or I have horrible intrusive thoughts (I imagined trimming my cat’s whiskers and then accidentally cutting his head off with scissors). I feel really hopeless because I had taken leave from my previous job for 8 weeks and now start a new job Monday but I’m panicking I’m never going to be functioning well again and I’m bound to fail at this new job. I can’t stop crying because I just want my old life back, or at least my old self back where I felt like this was a small part of my life. Right now I’m consumed by my OCD. I tried ERP when I first moved and had a complete meltdown (crying non-stop, feeling hopeless) which resulted in me taking leave from work. At this point I was working remote because I moved to a new state vs working in office everyday but still struggled even digitally interacting with my coworker I had been involved with. Leave helped a lot and I was able to have some better days, interview and find a new job, but the impending start of the new job has snapped something in me. I also just am paranoid I’ve messed up my whole life by moving, or by finding a new job, or by ever being involved with a coworker that I just keep analyzing everything but feeling scared that my life is ruined. I keep imagining everyone at work talking about me being crazy or weak for not being able to work with my coworker but every time i had interacted with him it caused horrible OCD spirals of rumination and awful instructive thoughts. I’ve found when romantic things end for me I need complete separation in order to move on but I think my bosses are disappointed in me for not being able to push through. I also am so hurt because my best friend of 7 years had lived in the house I owned and was supportive originally about me selling it after a flood scare. But as time went on she got distant and cold. And I think she was resentful I was leaving and she needed to find a new place. She also tried to have her new boyfriend’s family buy the house but unfortunately their offer wasn’t the highest one but I think she was mad I didn’t just take their offer. We had been friends for so long and i had always been there for her when things in her life fell apart. For me, I feel like this was the first major time I needed support past just a heart to heart but consistent support and I feel like she abandoned me. My other friends really stepped up and check in on me frequently and talk me through things but we’ve barely spoken since I’ve moved and I’m so hurt. In the end I had to pack up all of our shared stuff and sort it without her because she refused to help. It was so hurtful because I was just already heartbroken, and feeling alone, and scared about my future for work. Idk I think I just need hope that things will get better because I feel really alone and scared rn