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Hi! Does anyone have suggestions on ROCD exposures? Thanks!

I’ve been struggling with intrusive thoughts about pedophilia, I was highly addicted to porn for 2 years or more, I even masturbated a couple times to someone younger but when I did that my ocd didn’t trigger or nothing till months after thinking what if I am a pedophile, after that is when I decided to quit porn indefinitely I realized I was going too far,I always thought I was a decent person, I have never hurt anyone, I always had this idea that I could become someone people can look up to or just become someone everyone respected, I’ve always loved sports, my family and video games, but lately I haven’t been able to enjoy any of that it’s like my ocd is making me think I’ve always been like this and all my actual beliefs weren’t real that I’ve always been this horrible person, at first I would get panic attacks and disgust but now I feel kinda numb and I don’t want to feel like that cause it’s making me think that maybe I am one and my mind is getting used to it, I even feel uncomfortable talking about kids or just being around them and I have never been like that . I am a heavy nicotine and weed smoker (I’ve tried to stop since it seems to make them worse). Now it feels like I am a completely different person, I also have a girlfriend who before this i would love with everything in me, and would be afraid to lose her every time we would argue, I would even think about a child with her in the future, but now I don’t even feel love or any attraction or any of the previous feelings I would feel towards my future and I just feel it makes it even worse cause if I’m not attracted to her and all my previous beliefs feel like lies then what can I believe in? Any advice or tips? I’ll be starting therapy this week so I pray there’s light at the end of the tunnel.

I’ll have a huge wave of thoughts rushing to me all at the same time, leaving me panicked and drained, and I can’t even tell if I like these thoughts or not which scares me even more. Then i’ll come to the conclusion that maybe I don’t have OCD and everything is real, but I don’t want it to be real. I don’t want to be a monster like that. I don’t want to cheat on my partner, be a zphile, a pdphile, a psychopath, all those crazy immoral things. I just want to be a girl living a normal happy life but I feel like i’m being punished by this OCD monster because of past events I regret. Man i’m just so tired, I don’t even know whats real or not anymore, I just want to be set free from this guilt and torment. I feel like a fault in the system, a cog that doesn’t function properly and deserves to be removed from the gift of life incase I hurt any more people around me. Im sorry if this has gotten really depressing, I just needed to rant. I saw a post online differentiating GAD and OCD, and it said that people with OCD preform constant compulsions whereas people with GAD do not, but because i’m actively trying not to engage in compulsions (like searching things up) it made me feel like I don’t actually have OCD which was a big trigger for me and I went into a spiral of feeling like an imposter. Sorry if this is a bit much to read.

I’m literally shaking panicking that I’m paychosis, sometimes I feel so weird very weird feeling and ugh I know it’s ocd but I’m scared of not remembering who my husband is or like acting crazy or having to go to a mental hospital like I don’t want that and like psychosis and ocd have very similar symptoms. I was diagnosed with OCD but I’m scared I have that and I don’t want to I’m like ugh sometimes I feel so out of myself I wake up feeling weird I feel very weird symptoms in my body I wanna be fucking normal I thought I was okay but ugh I feel so horrible right now and it also doesn’t help that I’m on my period but I just saw the word psychosis and decided to search it up and now I’m scared I have it.

I recently got engaged and then two weeks later, my partner told me they were assaulted by one of their friends. My OCD loves to wreck relationships, and I keep having intrusive thoughts that my partner cheated and is covering their tracks with a story of being assaulted. I feel like the worst person possible for having those doubts, because I know it’s highly unlikely that my partner would cheat two weeks after we got engaged. We’ve been together for almost two years with no infidelity and have had each other’s backs through rough times. I know they need my support and love right now, and it’s taking everything I have to resist my compulsions to question them and snoop for evidence of cheating. They want to move forward with planning the wedding and continue on with life, but whenever I try to plan I break down crying. I’ve been yelling at family and hiding from friends because everyone wants to know about the wedding planning. I don’t want to tell them the reason for the delay to protect my partner’s privacy. I have next to no support. I’m afraid to get help because of the risk of breaking my partner’s trust and also that people won’t understand ROCD and think I’m just being a bad person when I feel awful for having these doubts. Has anyone ever had to deal with anything like this? If so, how did you survive?

Hello all. My name is Amanda Frazier. I have ROCD. I always kinda knew that I was an over thinker, but never realized what It was 😂 So the moment that I realized that I had more than just a little tantrum thinking my husband was cheating on me has finally come. I realize now what it is. I have been married to my husband for the last 16 years. On and off I noticed that we would fight about something. Whether it be that I felt like he thought everything I did was annoying, that he deserved better than me and he finally realized it, that he was attacked to and thinking about cheating on me with other women, then finally straight accusing him for the last 3 months of cheating on me. We had gone to a concert in Dallas, and we fussed a little bit during the show, but it passed. Ge fell asleep, but I stayed up because I was still a little annoyed when I noticed his phone on his desk. I have always left his phone alone, but then I felt like I needed to look in it. There were what I thought some odd messages from numbers on it, so I decided to reverse search the number. That was the beginning of the end. For the last 3 months I have gone down the crazy rabbit hole convinced that he is lying to me, and that he has had an affair with a women I found her name on the search Website (they can be wrong) then the final straw was when I blew up and called him a liar, told him he was gaslighting me, took his phone from him, and told him I was leaving with our son and he would never see us again. We both stayed, but neither of us have spoken to each other lately about what happened. I realize now what is really making me think this way, and I am here to understand my ROCD better and learn how to handle the chaos in can cause in your life. Any advice would help out a lot. Thanks 😁

I had gotten a lot better with my OCD, in general I had a real grasp over my relationship ocd and intrusive thoughts, I was able to comfort myself and see them as just thoughts. This is really embarrassing, but I was triggered a week or so ago when my boyfriend told me one of his key rings came from a girl he slept with 1 time but was friends with (this was 6years ago and has nothing to do with me!) This trigger has led to my sexual intrusive thoughts returning, I have this thing where if I’m having a bit of ‘me time’ my brain sends me images of people I don’t want to think about at that moment in time. Two nights ago it was my boyfriend’s stepdad and I’ve felt guilty ever since. If I’m honest with myself, I’ve always had this sort of issue but I convinced myself that if I didn’t climax whilst thinking of them then it didn’t count and I could let the thought go, I didn’t climax over his stepdad but the thought now isn’t leaving me and I just don’t know what to do. I feel really alone in this and like a weirdo, does anybody else experience this sort of thing ever?

I am at the point where te love for my boyfriend feels like my ocd thoughts. Because when i’m with him, i feel good and at ease (i still can have intrusive thoughts about our relationship or wanting to be with someone else). It drives me crazy. Mainly when i feel like it is gettint better, and i get a strange ‘gut’ feeling when i think about him. I think im startint to be afraid that thats gonna be my new theme, and that is why i feel bad. Anyone has tips or the same?

TW for mental health issues, death, ptsd, ED i guess ill just start off by saying that i have struggled since i was young with severe anxiety and panic attacks since i was about five but an onslaught of CPTSD worsened a lot of things for me. i developed an eating disorder in my teens and was hospitalized for it. i’ve been in and out of therapy since i was ten and while i do my best without medication to live my life to the fullest, i often feel like i don’t deserve the successes and support i’ve received in the last few years b/c i feel like i don’t deserve to be happy at all. i saw a video recently of a girl talking about her obsessive hypochondriac thoughts that i resonated with and when i read the comments, a lot of people pointed out that it might be ocd. it hasn’t ever been a thought that crossed my mind and now im wondering if im twisting that video into some sort of self diagnosis for myself. im wondering if it’s just my high anxiety that’s causing these severely intrusive thoughts. for example, i have had a really hard time sleeping recently because the thought that i or my partner might die in my sleep keeps me up. if i have an aneurysm or a heart attack in the middle of the night and die, or worse, if my partner has an aneurysm or heart attack, is it because i don’t deserve to be happy with him? i don’t deserve a wonderful relationship? another thought i have is when i drive with us both in the car, im going to crash and severely injure both of us or kill us both. i have never once crashed my car or gotten into an accident btw, but for some reason i just get this extremely morbid thought that im going to crash and it’ll be the end. i had a weirdly spiritual experience/revelation in 2020/21 about the multiverse and i keep thinking that every night i actually die or that i get into accidents or something morbid happens and im somehow timeline jumping and going to a different multiverse and that’s been my odd way of coping with these thoughts. i guess im just trying to figure out if this is even remotely similar to OCD or if im just over analyzing it bc of my anxiety/hypochondria i guess?? i dont know i just want help. if this isn’t OCD, please tell me and i will delete this post and app and ill sincerely apologize to everyone who actually suffers. 🙏

Hello yall! So… I keep looking through my girlfriend’s phone. We have been together for almost 2 years. However, she was with someone else for a year. She says it was super toxic, but my OCD doesn’t let it go. I have worked so hard to stop looking through her phone. When we first got together, I started looking a ton. More than once a week trying to catch her in a lie, but all it did was end up in fights. I haven’t looked at her phone in months, probably around 4 months. I literally avoid to take her phone near me. Unfortunately, it got the best of me. I was watching my nephew & I didn’t have my phone anywhere. My gf gave me hers, to turn on our TV so he can fall asleep. But after turning on the television, I couldn’t help myself. I’m so angry, mad, embarrassed, guilty. However, my intrusive thoughts are going wild & I feel a compulsion coming on. What do yall recommend? Should I tell her? I don’t want her to leave me, I know she will not, but I’m scared it’s gonna be a final straw for her & our relationship.

It feels so real it's been going on for a month now. I really don't think I love him. I don't feel In love and a lot of the time I'm scared I don't even want to love him again. I want it back I want my feelings back for him he's so perfect and he doesn't deserve this. How do I love him again. Everyone says that the way I act even when I'm deep in a spiral probe I love him but I just don't know. He's only been in my life for a year and it's gone way too fast. I miss how it was and what we were. Every time he's upset I get so scared he's gonna break up with me and then I feel better because I don't want to break up with him and I'm happy I know that. I just don't want to not love him. I'm so so scared. I think I'm js worrying about him going on holiday in q couple of weeks becauwe it's worse when he's not here. How do I love my perfect handsome boy again? I've loved him 5 years and we've been together for almost 1. It's gone too quick. I thought we would be forever. I really want it back and idk whats wrong with me. Help.

Hey all, I was recently diagnosed with OCD and MDD a few months ago. I’ve been experiencing symptoms for the past 11 months though. I used to be a person who would downplay depression, reasoning that if someone is depressed, they should be able to snap out of it. This year has taught me the truth behind how debilitating mental health conditions can be. My OCD has been absolutely tearing my life apart. For the past year, I’ve been coping with excessive guilt over past and recurring mistakes, my anxiety of which has recently been causing me panic attacks and throbbing headaches. I’ve also been coping with feeling unnatural sexual attractions, to those of the same sex and to children, which contradict the values I hold at heart. At one point, even simply shaking someone’s hand would cause sexual arousal, due to my hyper-vigilance surrounding physical contact. My OCD and depression nearly led me to take my life a few months ago. There are no words to describe the amount of pain I’ve had to endure. My thoughts and feelings have been absolutely tearing my life down, bit by bit. I feel like I lost who I was, and like it’s impossible for me to know who I am. This isn’t me. Over the past couple weeks, I’ve been feeling constant sexual arousal, it’s so easily triggered now. I don’t know if it’s because of the OCD, if it’s a result of the SSRI I’m on, or if it’s just a product of me being a young adult—Or maybe a combination of all of the above, but it’s debilitating. How easily I get aroused causes me so much guilt. There is a girl in my life that I love, but it doesn’t help that I get aroused around her because of the simplest of things. It’s not what I want for us. I want to be able to hone in on my self-control. I can’t help but constantly compare who I am now to who I was just over a year ago. My happiness has suffered, and my endurance is draining. I know there is a long road of insight and recovery ahead of me, this is just the beginning. If there’s anyone who can relate to me in any way, feel free to let me know. Comfort begins with feeling understood.

Theres so many effed up things i’ve done or said in the past which still bother me to this day. One day i’ll have one obsession, like ROCD over being scared i’m cheating on my partner, then another day i’ll have POCD because of a past experience with an underaged friend, and im just so burnt out from all the thoughts and overthinking. I feel like the most horrible person each and every single day, a constant urge to confess, a constant feeling like im a traitor, and then thinking im just using OCD as an excuse for everything. Im so SICK OF IT ALL. I can’t catch a break. There’s too much going on in my head, like this constant rumination and analysis and then compulsions to search up these obsessions. However searching up things relating to it is probably the most harmful and worst mistake for me, because then I see stories of allegations e.g like dream being exposed for grooming a minor and people exposing others for other vile acts and it just triggers me so much, because it feels like I BELONG on there but never in my life would i actually want to do such things, and if everyone knew what i did then i feel like everyone would agree i quite literally deserved to be burned at the stake. Should i just get a therapist at this point or can i get through this myself with the use of some mental gymnastics like i’ve been doing the entire time? I feel too much guilt, it’s eating me up alive.

Hi, I just joined this app. I have OCD, I’ve been diagnosed for 7 years. I’m 18 years old, and live with my parents. One of my most prominent compulsions is to confess everything to my mom. We have a very close relationship, which makes it difficult to not confess to her about random things my brain makes me think I need to. It’s not like she makes me tell her everything, it’s my brain that does. That stupid little OCDemon that makes me feel incapable of having any privacy. Anyways what I’m getting to is the fact there are things I don’t want to share with my mom, because I don’t want to scare her. Which brings me to why I’m writing this. I was hanging out with my friends in the back of on of their trucks. We were parked on the side of the road. About a block down there is a strip of city life, but back where we were it was quite dormant, minus a few passerby’s. I should also mention none of us were drinking or smoking, we were just chatting, nothing else. Around midnight this lady walks up to the truck absolutely hammered drunk. My friend, trying to asses the situation says hi. She responds with a “hi” but then pulls her phone out and starts recording us. Again we were literally just talking to each other, nothing else. She begins to creep in closer and that’s when we all disperse and get into my friends car. The whole thing was pretty scary and I was convinced we’d be safe because one of my friend is 6”2 and a man. But it was still an extremely uncomfortable situation. Anyway I’m writing this because I feel this compulsion to tell my mom about this experience, but I don’t feel there is a need to do so, because it would only scare her. Granted, I’ve learned my lesson and will never be in that part of town, at night, outside regardless of who I’m with. So I feel there is no need to tell her, but my OCD makes me feel I have to tell her. What would you do in this situation? Or do you think this is just the OCD talking?

Today I had an icky intrusive thing happen where at work we had this guy dive into water. I thought he was cute and all and handsome, but then…maybe because he’s shirtless and all. That I had what I almost thought was a groinal response to that? I mean I’m attracted to men and he’s attractive and shirtless so there. I don’t think I actually had a real response. I think it was mostly anxiety which I know groinal responses can stem from. I have a boyfriend who I love and have ROCD. I have a terrible time of finding other people attractive so this really bothers me. I’d feel awful if I actually got a groinal response from looking at another attractive man that wasn’t my boyfriend.

Anybody with ROCD question if it’s really ROCD or if you are in a “bad” relationship compared to your friends? ( I know comparison is an exacerbating habit for ocd). I feel great with partner and then maybe remeber any negatives and ignore the positives about our dynamic. I’ll latch onto something he said that hurt my feelings and wonder if I’m in an abusive relationship and spiral. I’ll totally ignore anything nice he’s ever done and convince myself I’m in a mediocre relationship. I’ll assume he should be texting me more and express his feelings towards me more. Anyone else?

Hello everyone. I have posted a couple of times let me explain before I get into it. Two years ago, I started having panic attacks due to the fact I was having major guilt about things I did as a child, sexual things. Completely ashamed of it and now I know as a young adult it was wrong of me. Later on, I started having intrusive thoughts about harming my boyfriend. It literally scared me SO SO bad that’s when I started having panic attacks. Because if I did those things as a kid am I gonna do something bad? Like I completely lost myself, felt like I didn’t know ME anymore and I was so scared. Sometimes I still get like that. During that time, my boyfriend was not sober and it was traumatizing. He’s been a year sober now and we’re doing really great. Last year we moved in with his parents, his parent’s are alcoholic and not that fun kind. There is constantly screaming in the house, a month ago his mom was so trashed that she bashed her head open and I had to call 911 in the middle of the night. This past month, my anxiety has been worse, my thoughts are rambling again, I want to move back to my parents because we cannot afford rent in the area we live right now plus with me paying out of pocket for school. Work has been very stressful, I’m a certified nursing assistant In a nursing home. If you ever worked there you know how it goes, it’s very stressful. I can’t seem to manage my stress, my thoughts. I’m rambling because I feel alone and unsure how to help myself. Im already on medicine and it was working very well for me until a month ago. Any comforting words or tips would forever appreciated it.

so recently i’ve got into a relationship with someone who i love dearly and deeply care about but my OCD has now latched onto consent and boundaries, also i have a massive fear of “what if i pressure her or make her feel pressured” wether unintentionally or intentionally, ive been compulsively asking chat GPT about consent, boundaries and that kind of thing, and im so scared, i would never want my girlfriend to feel uncomfortable, i’ve told her about this and i said how scared i am about it but ive told her that if i ever do please tell me, but what if she doesn’t because she’s worried if i spiral? i’ve told her though if i ever do please let me know, also before our first kiss i keep going over everything that was said or that i did, and im so scared that what if i made her feel pressured or anything, i asked her afterwards and she said not at all but im still scared. I don’t want this to ruin our relationship, also another fear is “what if i miss one of her non verbal cues of her being uncomfortable or something like that. also before we kissed i asked her are you sure like 5 times and she said yes she wanted to, but then i told chatGPT about it and it said i could of pressured her by asking that, i know i shouldn’t if told chatGPT and im trying to stop, but this is so overwhelming for me, like what if i said something that made her feel pressured? obviously i would never intentionally do that, but im really scared to be intimate with her. and even if we are just holding hands or hugging my OCD says im doing something wrong, i truly can’t tell if im overthinking it or not, and, im just posting this to see if anyone can relate or share some advice because im truly stuck and feel like im going to pass out with the stress, guilt and anxiety, im so scared.

I've been dating someone for almost two months and I've recently started to struggle with rocd. It's a new theme for me, as I've never been in a relationship before (or at least not like this). I've been having intrusive thoughts like "what if he doesn't fall for me like I'm falling for him?", "what if he leaves me because of something I do or say, or just because I'm too difficult to deal with?", "what if I'm just a distraction and when he gets bored of me he'll leave me?", "what if he cheats on me?". These thoughts are really giving me a hard time. Everyone tells me to "take it easy" and not to worry but it doesn't help. My worries intensified after a discussion we had about polyamorous relationships and relationships in general. He's not polyamorous, but he has friends who are, and he says he finds the concept fascinating. I told him I do too (and it's true) but I could never be in a polyamorous relationship, not even an open one. We then talked about the seriousness of our relationship, and he said he doesn't think it will ever be too serious (note: we had this discussion like a month ago, and I'm pretty sure our relationship got more serious from then: for example, I met his close friends, he invited me to go to his house the next week, and most of all I had my first time with him; so what I think he meant is that this relationship will not be "too serious" like it's not leading to marriage lol). This led my ocd to make me worry about him not actually liking me, cheating on me because he doesn't really consider ours a "relationship", and all the intrusive thoughts I have described, although I know they are just irrational worries. I'm also dealing with a lot of stress these days so my ocd worries have intensified. I've been thinking about opening up to him about my struggles with ocd (he still doesn't know I have ocd), but I'm scared. Do you have any advice about dealing with rocd? I'm falling in love for maybe the first time, with someone who I genuinely believe likes me a lot and is falling for me too (even though ocd makes me doubt it), and I don't want to ruin everything. Sorry for the long post but I really had to get these thoughts off my chest :')

hi there! so after i got together with my partner, i found out i have rocd :) it's excruciating and new to me, so i really have no idea how to fight it back. i constantly have thought regarding my feelings towards him bc what if i dont love him? what if I've been pretending all this time? what if i'm confusing love for something else? i also have a really hard time processing positive and happy feelings bc i usually get this punch in my gut, as if I'm not supposed to feel that good feeling (idk if you can relate). well that too makes me believe i dont love my partner and it's really really tiring because I can't stop doubting my feelings. yk how ocd is the doubt illness so I'm used to it, but i am so so so sure that i love him, I've never been so sure about something in my life and i literally doubt everything. but what if I'm just avoiding the truth, what if I won't admit to not love him bc i dont wanna hurt him? who knows anyways it's really exhausting and i could really do some advice. thank you in advace :)