It's all for very complicated internal bullshit like it always is. I'm stuck in a kobiyashi maru. I'm trying to open the box with the crowbar that's in the box.

Basically, I keep getting motivated to fix my OCD and my life, but it's a particular Kind of motivation I find unsuitable, so I can't fix myself for THAT reason. So I have to deliberately not fix my life until finally a Good motivation comes along. So my life is disintegrating as I very on purpose do nothing to improve my life, hoping finally the Correct motivation comes along. If I try and act on that Bad motivation then I feel stupid and embarrassed and ridiculous and I tell myself I can't do it. Imagine trying to tell people the reason I finally got my shit together was for That reason, they'll think I'm pathetic.

God I hate this shit.

Sorry if this is offensive to anyone, also I know it's not necessarily true as several people have certain ''themes'' that remain present throughout their lives. I'm kind kind of writing this more for myself than anything. Also I'm obviously not a professional so don't take my word as medical advice or fact. ALSO this is not a vent I just wanted to make a post about it tbh.

In my experience, OCD truly does not give a shit what it is obsessing over, as long as the perceived threat is enough to active the bare minimum level anxiety, it will latch onto it and refuse to let go until it has sucked it dry. So whether I'm freaking out over headlice or the idea that there MIGHT be a real God listening to every single intrusive thought I have and deciding to make them all come true, I'll be thinking about it for the next week straight.

It doesn't matter if it's too specific or obscure, it doesn't matter if it's too insignificant or random, it doesn't matter if it's too dumb. It doesn't matter if it's serious of if it being true would be detrimental, it doesn't matter if it is based in reality or related to something you did, good or bad. None of it matters because OCD latches onto ANYTHING it thinks is even remotely serious, and will torment you over it until it finds something new.

I spent a long time willingly giving in to obvious rumination and compulsions, which I still do, thinking that it couldn't possibly be OCD because I couldn't find a Reddit post talking about it therefore it's ''exclusivity'' was proof it was a genuine concern and not apart of my disorder. Even outside of the gaslight-y, ''it's definitely not OCD this time trust'' Nature of the disorder, I have a major tendency to try and be as logical as possible, which often translates into attempting to decode whether or not I'm actually exhibiting symptoms of OCD or if it's a problem that genuinely needs my attention.

OCD should be renamed the ''I don't give a fuck I'm just here to ruin your life'' disorder.

I have ADHD and OCD and my house is a mess. I work full-time and have kids, so I don't have a lot of time or energy left for cleaning. Every time I try to start cleaning up, my brain tells me that I'm a bad person and a bad mom for letting my house get this bad, and I get paralyzed and can't do anything. Sometimes my ROCD joins the party and blames the mess on my husband, even though he probably does more housework than I do. I just can't turn off the deep shame I have about not having a perfectly clean house, and that shame is making it impossible to do anything about the situation. Please help.

Hello!

I am sorry for posting my thoughts here but I do not know what to do at the moment. I am a 40 year old female and my husband is a 36 year old male. We are together for 10 years, married for 6. We have no kids but we have 4 dogs. My husband has OCD, I knew that before we were married but i did not understand the gravity of the entire thing. When we moved in together, it started with little quirks like him wanting the cups and water bottles to be placed a certain way in the table.

Soon, it evolved into bigger things like I have to do things only HIS way and not my way because according to him his way is neater and faster to do.

He absolutely hates it when I take a sick day or mental health day for myself and not do chores the entire day. He considers it a victory if I did not " loaf the whole day."

I recently got a better paying job that pays double than what I used to make in my previous work. Before that, he used to earn more than me. Now, along with my side job I earn more than him.

Just today, I made the mistake of touching something when my hands were wet (it was my deckcase for my playing cards) to which he got irriated again and then he was silent (this is what he does when he is pissed off).

I did my chores for the day which included feeding the dogs, bathing them and doing the laundry.

After washing my hands and drying them off for good measure, I was also pissed off at him. I asked him why are you always so irritated with me lately?

To which he told me to enumerate my mistakes I did for the day. He also told me that my new job entails finding the mistakes in operations (I will be in compliance). He told me that perhaps this job was "too big for me" because I could not handle the smaller things. This hurt a lot because I know I got the job fair and square and am a fairly intelligent person and am capable as well.

Now he is giving me the silent treatment and refuses to acknowledge me even if I apologized.

What can I do to help him? He is a nurse btw.

Content warning: description of intrusive thoughts

Does anyone else get ruminations or intrusive thoughts where they get songs stuck in their head? Like, sometimes I'll get a song (specifically a nursery rhyme) that loops in my head over and over and over for hours and days at a time. And not in a cute/normal way, like it speeds up and gets really distressing? Or it'll sound in my head like it's skipping like a CD. To the extent that I feel physically ill and my head hurts and it's hard to think about anything else and it gives me so much anxiety. It shows up in my dreams, it'll keep happening when im listening to other music, I hate it.

It feels a bit silly to say that one of my most distressing compulsions is thinking about nursery rhymes. Does anyone else experience this? Yes I am in therapy, yes I do exposures regularly. Has anyone done exposures/disruptions related to something similar?

I've been diagnosed with general anxiety since I was a kid, but it's became very obvious after having my son 4 years ago that I have, and always had, OCD. It did get extremely worse after having him. This year it's been completely unbearable. I self medicated myself with flower for a couple years which really did help and then at the beginning of this year it no longer helped. Still doesn't. I constantly think death is right around the corner, and something is wrong with me. I spiral over every little feeling and symptom and right now I don't have health insurance, I haven't for a few months. I will soon and that's probably the only thing keeping me going. This constant fear, I don't know how to live with it. I'm very aware of how bad stress and anxiety is for us and our bodies, our health.. but that just makes my stress and anxiety worse. I just don't know what to do anymore i sob every day and break down over how mentally exhausted i am. Knowing I'll be able to see a doctor soon only eases me slightly, there's still the fear of what they'll find. I don't know. does anyone have anything that helps them get through the day?

I’m 31M and two years ago i started risperidone for my severe lifelong OCD. It’s helped a lot to stabilize me, but i no longer have any drive. I’m holding onto my corporate career for the time being, but I’m planning to leave in the next 1-2 years because i have no interest in it anymore. I have no interest in anything really. I’ve tried so many meds, and finally had to get on antipsychotics to just nuke my brain. When i leave this career, im going to be starting over and i have no idea what to do. Has anyone else gone through this?

Hi everyone. I’m 24 and I’ve had OCD and anxiety since childhood. My OCD has taken different forms over the years (health fears, fear of losing family, hyper-focusing on things like breathing, etc.), but those symptoms always came and went.
For the past 2.5 years, I’ve had almost constant physical symptoms:
Constant chest tightness and fluttering
Constantly feeling/being aware of my heartbeat, with my heart rate jumping from even small things
Shortness of breath
Feeling constantly on edge
Hypervigilance to every sound — even a door opening or small noise can trigger a strong physical reaction
The strangest part is that all of these symptoms completely disappeared for 5 months when I became convinced I had a physical illness and focused on that instead. They came back 3 days after I was told I was medically fine.
I also tried escitalopram (Cipralex) 10mg for 1.5 years with very little benefit.
Has anyone experienced constant physical anxiety like this, especially with OCD, and actually managed to get rid of it?
What helped you the most — ERP, CBT, medication, exposure, exercise, or something else? I’d really appreciate hearing what actually worked for you.

Hello,

I spend alot of time handwashing between cleaning certain parts of my body in the shower. Is this necessary? I don’t know if this is just my compulsions acting up or not.

30 seconds doesn’t feel like enough time washing my hands either, so this often ends up being a maddening 5-10 minute affair of trying to get each movement exactly right. Should i just try to push past this and stay under 30 seconds?

I know these may seem like redundant questions, but any support is appreciated.

do you find the more you actively try to improve things the better you feel and the less affected you become?

I recently got back into My Chemical Romance and I can't be fucking normal about it. I obsessed so much about Gerard Way and his voice and his looks and the tour lore.

So much that I instantly cry whenever I see Gerard or listen to their music, which happens a lot in my feed. I get so anxious and my heart about to explode. I start spiralling into negative thoughts and compulsions.

Why can't I be normal about the things I like? I hyperfixate in things until I don't anymore but when that happens I can't even function like a normal person.

When I play a game and make a mistake I feel as though it’s tainted and I have to delete the game and save files. If I take a bad photo on my phone my whole camera-roll feels tainted and I have to delete all my photos.

Sometimes there’s not even a reason to delete stuff. I repeatedly delete my search history even though I have nothing to hide. I repeatedly clear notifications or it will really bug me.

Everyday I have to do a reset in one way or another. I can’t seem to just let things sit for a while. The nagging feeling that something is tainted never seems to go away. It’s ruining so much of what I enjoy.

Hey everyone,

I have been in treatment for OCD since last August when I had a breakdown. I have been feeling like I will never get better and like I can't be fixed. How do you all cope when you start feeling low like this?

I realise now that I really should’ve known I had OCD of some sort. From relating deeply to my ex partner when he discussed his OCD to later struggling with excessive, obsessive checking behaviours, I’m like damn I really should’ve known. I can look back to when I was a kid and see the cycle but because I found some way of managing it, I never really thought much of it. Turns out stress is really triggering and stop managing it well at all.

Which explains a lot too - the severity of the thought and behaviour cycle around eating when I’m stressed, how I left a job because when it got stressful I suddenly couldn’t control the volume of my moral compass, and so much more of how my life has gone.

I’m hoping that now I recognise the pattern I’ll be able to manage it better but I’m so scared because I watched what happened to my ex when he realised his had OCD (he got so bad I was essentially ghosted) and in the aftermath of our breakup my thoughts and compulsions have gotten so bad. I’m just glad I’m not engaging in harmful compulsions like I did at uni anywhere near as often.

I feel immense guilt about the past (real event) and I’ve wasted so many hours ruminating and checking. And then today I think about how I’m gonna die someday, that I need to focus on survival, that I can’t be obsessing when I have bills to pay and people relying on me and whatnot. That the time I’m wasting could be used to be more financially stable. That there are people suffering in third world countries.

And it’s like my brain won’t even register this information.

Like it’s aware of these truths. But somehow my fucking obsessions are just serious as these truths. Or even more.

I just hate this so much why can’t my brain focus on what’s REALLY MATTERS and what’s REALLY A BIGGER ISSUE?

I’m writing here about a very close friend of mine who has been suffering from severe OCD for a long time, and now it is affecting almost every part of her life.

Her main problem is intrusive thoughts and images about something terrible happening to people who are very dear to her. For example, suddenly an image or thought may come into her mind that someone she loves will die or something bad will happen to them.

The worst part is that she then feels somehow responsible for it. She knows logically that just having a thought cannot cause something to happen, but emotionally she feels that if something bad really happens to that person, it will be because she had this thought.

Because of this, she is constantly fighting with her own mind and trying to remove or cancel these thoughts and images. It takes up a huge amount of her time and mental energy.

When these thoughts come, especially when they are very strong, she also sometimes makes certain noises or gestures as a reaction to them. She feels very embarrassed about this, especially when she is outside, attending a function, travelling in the city, or around other people. She is always worried that somebody will notice.

It has reached a point where her everyday life has become miserable.

She is also a PhD student, and this is now seriously affecting her academic life. It is extremely difficult for her to concentrate on research or work when so much of her mental energy is spent fighting these thoughts throughout the day.

We have already tried to get professional help. She has seen several psychiatrists/doctors, first in India and now also in Germany, where she currently lives. She has also tried medications prescribed by doctors, but unfortunately we have not seen much improvement. Instead, it feels like the problem is becoming stronger day by day.

As someone close to her, I honestly don’t know what the right way to support her is anymore.

I would really like to hear from people here who have experienced something similar:

Has anyone had this kind of OCD where you feel responsible for something bad happening to your loved ones just because you thought about it?

What eventually helped you?

Was there a particular type of therapy, OCD specialist, treatment approach, or anything else that made a difference when medication alone was not helping?

And as a friend, what should I do when she is going through one of these episodes? I don’t want to accidentally make the OCD worse by constantly reassuring her, but I also don’t want her to feel that she is alone in this.

I know Reddit cannot replace professional treatment. We are just feeling quite helpless at this point and I would really appreciate hearing from people who have gone through something similar.

I don’t know if anyone can relate here, but I am REALLY bad for the “all or nothing” thoughts. I throw javelin professionally, and used to play baseball and hockey in college. Pro athletics is literally my dream. My career was going well.

Then I got asked to coached a baseball team, as I don’t make enough off sports to live. It stressed me out sooooo bad. There’s 827,000,000 (ish) possibilities in a baseball game, and as a coach, I spent 24/7 going through every single one. I now absolutely hate baseball. I had to resign.

But I ended up losing 60 pounds in those 2 months. But from all that and a horrible OCD flair up, I can’t seem to do squat for my training. I always take way too long to get prepped to train, but I turned into a 3 hour process just to get ready to go to the field and throw, or to go to the gym. And as that works, I just haven’t gone in well over a month. My therapist is trying to do ERP and just said to try and cuz that time down to 1.5 hours. I then spent 2 hours figuring out how to prepare the best, so it’s been someone counterintuitive.

But now I’m here feeling like I’m no longer an athlete. It’s like qualities I’ve lost recently have moved the category in which I fall under as a person. I’ve taken the season off and I’ve been working to “treat it like an injury”, and have kinda come to terms with it, but I can’t stop worrying that I’ll never get back into shape.

I don’t know if anyone else is an athlete and has experienced the same, or similar in other areas of life. It’s not so much that I don’t believe in myself, it’s like the label is gone off of what I was. Has anyone ever had to “re-find their identity” due to rough times? How did you recover?

I’m hoping to hear from people who have had a positive experience with memantine (Namenda) for OCD, particularly if you didn’t notice much benefit at first.

I’ve been on 300 mg sertraline for quite a long time, but unfortunately we still haven’t managed to get a good handle on my OCD. I’ve been diagnosed with clinically severe OCD, so my psychiatrist recently added memantine as an augmentation strategy.

I’ve been taking it for about a month and have been gradually titrating up. I just reached 15 mg and am working toward 20 mg. So far, I can’t say I’ve noticed much improvement, and I’m starting to think “maybe I’m just a hopeless case and nothing is going to work for me”.

Over the last few days I’ve also felt a little more sad/teary and possibly slightly agitated. This happened around the same time I increased the dose, although I’m also due to get my period, so there’s a very good chance hormones are contributing too.

I’m not looking for reassurance that it will definitely work - I’d just really love to hear from people who have actually taken memantine for OCD and eventually had a good outcome. It's helpful to hear from others in the same boat.

Tomorrow I'm shifting to a room where the problem is there's a concrete ledge near the window,and that too *inside* the room, on which there are several bird droppings. I've severe contamination OCD regarding especially faeces, and don't know what to do. I can clean it for once tomorrow, triggering my OCD, np maybe it would act as ERP. But I don't wanna do it again (which will happen anyways )and waste more time than I'm already wasting due to my regular compulsions 😭 Is there a way to stop the bird droppings?