r/OCD

Tw: self harm

Hi hello. I’ve been suffering from intense ROCD for the past two months, a week after me and my girlfriend got together.

The rumination has been awful. I feel like my normal daily routine has been messed up and my brain can’t even function like it used to. The relationship has, i feel as if, done more harm than good despite how healthy our genuine relationship has been. Yesterday, I committed self harm for once the first time… it helped me feel ‘grounded’ and as if I could focus again. I am not proud of that and today, with a relatively calmer mind, thought to myself that I should not be in a relationship if I have to physically harm myself to feel grounded.

I don’t bring anything related to my rocd to the relationship. Not a single mention, not a single action and don’t let it influence how I act/behave with her. I know it is true that the relationship is not the cause and the root issue lies with me in the end. But… I was so much healthier before we got together and our dynamic as friends was so much easier on my mind.

But I don’t want to leave her. There is not a single person I find as much attractive as her or more. There is not a single person I want to love as much as I love her. But my feelings make me a severely unstable person emotionally. I have no access to therapy and have exhausted whatever tips I could find online. Everything leads me back to where I was in the worst possible scenario of my rumination. I have just never had enough healthy relationships, friendships or connections in my life to even know what one looks like.

I’m 18 years old, I have to deal with moving out for uni, new environments, academics, finals and so much more. I think I can’t handle so much stuff at once especially at my age either. But I want to keep trying, she’s what I’ve ever wanted in a person and more. But also… I am tired. I am very very very very tired. I have never self harmed in my life except yesterday and I ended up almost breaking down on call with her last night (but held back). She loves me SO much and I have no doubts that I am a great partner to her and that she is very happy since she has expressed her willingness to stay with me ‘forever’ a million times. But sigh…. Really, I am tired. I am tired of everything. I don’t want a relationship that would feel like this:(.

Any advice or tips would be greatly appreciated! I don’t have a hard-to-ignore urge to breakup but it is what I have been considering for sure 😔 I really need some advice or support? I feel incredibly lonely. Maybe even a virtual hug would be nice 😔

Idk if this is a vent or me just trying to make sense of my own brain but I’ve been having a really rough time lately and OCD feels like it’s taking over everything.

I feel like people hear OCD and immediately think hand washing or arranging stuff neatly but mine feels way more weird and honestly exhausting to explain. Like rn because it’s raining, wet floors and shiny surfaces are driving me insane. Tiles, ceramics, glass, wet roads, that weird sheen on smooth surfaces... I genuinely hate it. It’s not just “ew I don’t like it” either. It makes me feel physically disgusted, irritated, nauseous, like my skin is crawling and I wanna crawl out of my own body. Even seeing it sometimes feels overwhelming. Sometimes bare human skin gives me that exact same disgust feeling too which sounds insane typing out loud. Meanwhile dogs, cats or animals don’t trigger that at all for me, I can pet them fine. But then people act like I’m contradicting myself or faking it because “how are animals okay but humans aren’t?” and honestly idk how to explain it either.

Then there’s the anxiety side of things. My brain feels loud all the time. Like painfully loud. So many thoughts, worries, random spirals and I can’t shut it off. There are so many things I wanna talk about but it feels impossible to explain because half the time I don’t even know how to put it into words in a way people will actually understand. Sometimes I get hyper aware of breathing too and suddenly it feels heavy or weird, like I know logically I’m breathing okay and nothing is wrong but it still feels suffocating somehow and then I start focusing on it more and make myself anxious again.

And honestly it gets lonely. Some days it gets mentally exhausting enough that those dark kms thoughts show up, not in a “I’m gonna do something” way, more in a “I’m tired of being stuck in my own head and I want this to stop for a while” type way. Therapy, meds, psychiatrist etc yes I’m already doing all that before anyone says it, and there are practical limitations to those things in my life that I don’t really wanna get into here. I’m not looking for “go get help” comments. I’m more wondering if anyone here actually relates to this kind of OCD, especially the disgust/sensory side of it, and if anything practical helped make day to day life even a little easier because rn it feels really lonely and exhausting living like this.

Last year, I did something that was undoubtedly bad, where I should have been more responsible and more mature as an adult in my early twenties. Unfortunately I was succumb by anger and resentment.

Ever since then I have thought about it, and even after a year I think about it constantly. I was rightfully punished for this, and am nearly completely isolated.

However since January, I keep thinking about other things I have done wrong previously all the way from when I was a teenager until my 20’s. It never stops, how I have hurt people, how my morality failed and how I didn’t seem to notice or made excuses for myself.

I can’t move on, I never will. If everything I have ever done is revealed it would be complete social death, and I would deserve it.

I don’t know what to do, I want to both be held accountable that maybe then finally once the result has hit I can feel peace knowing I have had my punishment, but also I just want to be forgotten. I hate not knowing, I hate who I am. I am a monster, the worst of the worst.

My family are worried sick about me, I can see how me barely being able to eat. Losing a lot of weight in a short amount of time, Vomiting, crying, not showering.

In that sense I haven’t stopped hurting people at all, I recognize now what I have is OCD. I can even think of other parts of my life where it has affected me and I was unaware, especially regarding magical thinking.

I just want to vanish or have an answer, I wish I could either go back in time, maybe then I can have a chance. I keep seeing images of myself as a child, and keep thinking how I failed her.

recently i realised that i have a handful of compulsions i’ve stopped or minimised doing and just sit with the discomfort because i’m just so sick of performing them again and again.

i used to wipe my phone down soooo many times when i got home and now i just do it about twice and call it a day because i’m exhausted physically + mentally.

Just got home from watching the new horror movie "Obsession" which is getting very popular at the moment. I love horror movies and was expecting an intense experience based on what I had heard, but nothing could have prepared me for how I feel now. The movie was so horrifically pertinent to things I've struggled with in OCD, especially regarding my relationships with people in my life. It took deeply personally affecting concepts and triggers and took them to an almost soul-shattering extent, I'm feeling very on edge and I'm worried it's going to have a lasting impact. Hopefully I will get to sleep eventually lol.

I think the film is an allegory surrounding mental illness within relationships, so it makes sense. Plus, the title is literally Obsession. A friend I saw it with similarly observed their own experience with (non-OCD) mental illness in the film. That being said, the film in itself was beautiful and did a brilliant job at doing what it was trying to do.

I'm so curious if anyone has had a similar experience with this film, or any film I suppose? Let me know!!

So ive been watching this anime ep which is 25 min long for like 1 hour because i constantly get random questions in my head that i have to search on google immediately. How to fix this, any advice? (Anime is link click if anyones wondering)

I'm curious if others with OCD have any unique 'rituals' you do. Not just counting by threes or excessively washing hands. I mean things that youre pretty certain others without OCD would think youre crazy if they knew. Mine is a bit strange and has a backstory.

Back in highschool, I went through rough times with dating. My OCD began to peak around then as my anxiety was high. I developed a 'quirk' of doing certain things in order to "decide my fate". If something was worrying me, Id swallow to "avoid the bad thing from happening". If i wanted something to happen, id say i was safe and my luck was safe and then say a random word I felt I didnt say often - as to avoid saying it when I dont want something to happen, and the word I chose was "quilt". (I know its weird, thats why im looking for others with weird rituals/quirks). After saying the word in my head/out loud, id swallow. In my mind the swallow cancelled out the thing i was thinking about so saying a word before that meant the swallow wasn't associated with the thing i wanted to happen...

I know this definitely sounds like crazy nonsense but its been years and I still do it everyday to this day. OCD makes our minds a little kooky 😂

Im a 19 year old with pure O ocd. I have been dealing with this one for 7 or 8 years at least. The basic version is that when someone looks at me with a visible emotion or I hear people laughing and it could be a logical response to the things I am thinking the spiralling starts There are 3 parts about it that I that the most.

The first is that I know its irrational and illogical and I have disproved it using rational and logic and tests numerous times, but its persistence just makes me feel stupid.

The second is the fact that when I have this thought running through my head I am thinking what is the worst thought I could think. This worsened the "you are a racist" thoughts and began the "you are a pedophile" thoughts.

The third was the most physically debilitating when I was in a spiral like this, or when I am (about a third of my time while in public, as much as two thirds on a bad day, and about 10% of any given hour today, now diagnosed and medicated) is that i would have these long scripts i would have to run through about my possible condition ot sating all my thoughts aloud and that I think the worst thoughts in order to observe people's reactions to see if i was, bu then from thinking about it too much the thoughts are telling me I am. This made incredibly difficult to focus or be productive while around people and made trying to think a minefield with one weird thought amd one moment of someone simply looking at me sending me into a 2-5 minute long internal rant where I couldn't do anything else.

Obviously because I know its not real or tue I dont need reassurance, im just wondering if anyone else has gone through this

I had OCD for a long time and when it got really bad recently I researched on how ERP works and tried it myself without a therapist. Each time an intrusive thought comes I try to not engage with it. It's been 4 months, what I did notice is that I spend less time on ruminating and more time on things that really matter. However, it's tough. I'm in pretty shitty OCD days now and not engaging with the terrifying thoughts make me feel guilty all day long (with breaks when I'm busy ofc). I don't know if I'm doing this right, should it be this hard?

TW: Mentions of suicide

Im a teen but basically when I was 14-15 I stumbled upon this really cool fanfic (18+) and thought it was nice so I read it a few times. It was about my fav character getting yknow by another character. The second character is a robot or virtual figure soo I didn't pay much attention. But around that time I found out that the virtual figure was created when my fav character was js a kid so its practically seen them grow up. I was obviously against that idea completely, from 13 ive always known it was bad for adults to date kids they have seen grow up even though they are now adults. Anyways I was not very horrified but I was like okay Im not gonna read it ever again.

But now I don't know. Cause I remember fantasising about that fanfic many times after. Not the exact fanfic, just the setup and the specific physical acts. Without the backstory stuff thats for sure. But now I keep doubting myself like what if I did continue fantasising after I found out the real lore. If I did then it would mean I support illegal stuff.

So from like I don't know the past few days I have been going through my account trying to find when I last read it and if it was recent. But I can't find anything. Its driving me insane. So then I deduced that meant I read it before I started my account which makes sense cause it would be before the lore drop but how do I know that for sure??? I just don't know what to do. I feel like a horrible person. My brain keeps saying, "You better tell your family and friends this...they should know they are secretly talking to a creep." Or "You deserve to die for ever doing this, what were you even thinking. You must have secretly loved these dynamics or you would have never even read the fanfic in the first place."

How do I stop this? I just know if this doubt ends there is gonna be another one just waiting. And I'll probably get stuck in that for a few more days nefore it shifts again. Im so fed up, I feel like shit. I feel like I deserve to die most of the time.

I keep catching myself having heated debates with imaginary people. Like, last night I made popcorn and my sister and I were sharing it. I was watching something on my phone and she had a book open. I had the thought that she might be annoyed at the sounds from my phone and for like two minutes straight I was arguing with her in my head about it. But of course, in reality, she didn’t say anything.

And it isn’t just conflicts. Today, I was walking through my grandparents’ yard and remembered they had a mole trap. Cue long scenario where I got my leg stuck in it and had to call 911 to come help me that I kept imagining even after I was safely inside the house.

It keeps happening and it’s so annoying! I don’t want to have to imagine every possible outcome. The worst part is, I’m not even knowingly doing it, I just catch myself when I’m halfway through the argument. Has anyone else experienced this?

Was feeling a little dizzy earlier today so naturally I spent the next 30 or 40 minutes curled up in bed trying to convince myself I wasn’t going to die in my sleep. How do I shorten the freakout period for such episodes in the future?

[REPOST BECAUSE MY OTHER POST WONT LET ME SEE COMMENTS]

Before I start, I’m in therapy and trying medications.

I have had severe OCD for over a year now that currently revolves around rabies and bats. I CONSTANTLY think a bat bit me. For example, today alone I kicked a sock in my room without looking and thought what if I hit a bat and the sock just happened to also be there, heard leaves rustling I walked by and thought a bat was there and definitely got me, and when leaving a restaurant felt something hit my arm or wind move my shirt or idk and I’m CONVINCED a bat flew into my arm, bit me and flew off before I had time to assess or look to see it (was leaving a work lunch so couldn’t look around for a bat in the plants right next to the door without looking crazy).

My OCD boils down to a fear of dying from something totally preventable due to me not acting on it and/or me not noticing. I wish I was just afraid of bats outside but I’m convinced they are EVERYWHERE, in my house, in my office, in every bush, etc. and anytime I feel ANYTHING I think it was a bat. People tell me I’d feel or see a bat so just need to trust myself but I can’t trust what I feel or see because I CONSTANTLY convince myself I saw or felt something. I’ve been bit by a bat at least 37 times today in my mind and I’ll create the feeling and scenario for each.

My therapist says I have to accept the unknown but I’m really struggling on that. I wish I was back on my old OCD theme that was leaving the burner on or water running and destroying my house because I can’t figure out how to get over this one when the reality is, if I get something wrong I simply die which feels like a huge problem

What are the most ridiculous things your OCD made you do? Just curious. Mine was destroying my personal devices like smartphones

To get the big thing out first, very frequently lately I have become absolutely and utterly convinced that I have committed a crime that I blocked out from my memory or overlooked and that I am on the run and being looked for. The most common of these fears is that I ran someone over and kept going and that there is blood all over my car and that the car behind me surely slowed down because they can’t believe I didn’t stop and they are recording my plate, that when I was backing out of my parking spot I hit the car behind me and left and am actively doing a hit and run, that I somehow messed with the money in the safe at work or left the doors unlocked and they are actively being robbed or I must have accidentally robbed it myself, that I accidentally must have stumbled upon something or messaged something on my phone that has me flagged or on some sort of list somewhere and I just don’t remember, that all of these scam texts and phone calls are legitimate and my license really is about to get suspended or something stupid like I’ve missed a court date and have a fee to pay or else. I could really go on and on and on about these situations that sound so ridiculous but I am in absolute confident fear that I somehow did. I had one (the first) incident, where I was convinced I did a hit a run on accident and tapped a car in a parking lot even though I felt nothing and there was absolutely no damage on either car - so much so I drove 30 minutes back to the parking lot only to see a ton of police cars in a semi adjacent area (… sort of close) and a hit and run marker on the crime website and absolutely spiraled and didn’t sleep for 4 days and apologized to every member of my family because I was convinced they were going to come to their door looking for me because it’s the address on my license. I freaked out my partner, and at my graduate school interview rhe next morning some part of my brain really thought there might be a possibility cops would be waiting for me at the doors. This was months ago and nothing happened, I still get scared about it. Yesterday I went to the movies and was convinced I hit someone and parked like nothing happened and was digging my nails into my palm the whole movie thinking my theater was going to be searched. It feels so suffocating, I’ve tried not getting reassurance by constantly checking but it somehow doesn’t make it better because my brain thinks about all the things that might be there since I didn’t look. I drive back to work in the middle of the night to circle the building because I’m so paranoid I did something wrong and am going to be fired.

I (24F) have noticed a huge shift in how I think and feel and live within the last year. I’ve always had terrible anxiety and it’s been largely joked about my whole life, very shy and antsy and a long bout with an eating disorder in my teenage years, but after a series of reallllyyyy bad events in my life that happened in such a short amount of time (cheated on, being kicked out, new city I didn’t want to move to with no friends no money, forced to go into a leadership role, living alone for the first time) I feel like something in my brain literally shifted. I don’t know if this is something that has been overlooked my whole life and I’ve always had it and this just skyrocketed it to the surface, but it began with basic compulsions like making sure everything is unplugged and the door is locked, then to getting cameras for inside and outside my apartment so I can consistently check if my cats are okay and alive and recheck if I locked the door. Then I started not trusting myself in the videos of me locking my door, as if I somehow am lying about yanking on the door knob multiple times and saying it’s locked directly to the camera, and I would drive all the way back to check again or to go inside and check that everuthing is safe for my cats. I feel so embarrassed talking about this to anyone in my life and I have this insane cloud of guilt and fear following me everywhere and I don’t know what to do about it. I also somehow feel like a fraud. I can’t explain. I’m starting a masters degree soon for mental health counseling and it feels sort of like a comedic joke that I would be in a position like that. Like I mentioned before, I’ve been attempting lately to stop seeking reassurance and checking but it is proving to be very difficult and it’s causing a spike in my fears. Any advice? Has anyone experienced persistent thoughts like these?

I was continuing on arguing w my head again with these taboo thoughts, but then it through something out there, and then my head went that it’s “sound logic”, I DONT WANT MY HEAD AGREEEING WITH THEM!? It’s been feeling like my heads been trying to justify these bad things and it worries me. I need to know if this is natural, or if it’s me.

I’ve been on about 10+ combinations of meds for chronic ocd, anxiety, and depression. usually my treatment plan is changed and I’m put on a new medication if I get to a point of crisis + end up in the hospital/in some other kind of emergency psych consult, or if my ocd becomes so bad that I stop my meds compulsively and I have to restart from nothing.

I’ve noticed I’m just really depressed lately and struggling lots with ocd and I’m wondering if it’s best to catch it before it escalates to me either stopping my meds or needing emergency interventions. I’m currently on 20mg lexapro, 300mg Wellbutrin, seroquel for sleep, and Ativan as PRN.

I guess I’m having trouble identifying warning sides in the earlier stages of crisis. how do you know that you need to switch meds? what are the warning signs for you that what you’re taking is no longer working?

Basically I used an old gmail account in a computer of a copycenter last week. Then this week (the evening from monday to tuesday) I receive a critical security alert from Google. Google said they blocked the log-in attempt. From what happened I'm guessing I was victim of a keylogger from the copycenter computer (that's the only explanation, I basically don't use this gmail account and it is used only when I have to log-in to public machines, but I haven't logged-in on it in a different computer for about 7 months).

I've been talking a lot to Google AI (not gemini, but the AI mode from Google search) about this and they say nothing happened, that Google blocked the account. But I feel my personal phone and computer VERY DIRTY and I'm really afraid of attackers invading my machines and stealing my money and everything. I almost fainted, almost threw up.

To make things worse, the names of my WhatsApp contacts started disappearing. It took me long hours to find out this happened because I logged out the gmail acount from my phone. I didn't know contacts may be linked to the account. So for some hours I freaked the fuck out thinking they took control over my phone, but gladly this wasn't the issue.

The scenario is so bad that at some point the Google AI started recommending me the helplines, and when it scared me was when they said the name of my city and recommended me to go to a health unit.

and he told me wanting to get treatment for my ocd was a cop out and that my other reasons were “stupid.” he also said it was impulsive and he wouldn’t let me stop therapy then and that i had to do two more sessions. i feel so confused because we’ve worked together for 3 years and i feel like every time i’ve tried to move on to a different therapist he convinces me not to.

Haven’t dealt with this in around 2-3 years but wanted to make this post because I’ve just been genuinely curious wondering if anyone else has ever had a similar experience.

Around 2-3 years ago, I had an OCD obsession around human faces/bodies (mostly faces). I would frequently be thinking about the general composition of human faces to the point that they would become abstract to me and even grotesque, almost. It even got to the point where it would even disturb me to look at people in the face.

I’ve seen a lot of posts regarding peoples’ obsessions with appearances of themselves/others, but I don’t think I’ve seen anyone open up about it in a way quite as abstract as this. Can anyone relate?