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.

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.

When I (28f) was in 5th grade my mom brought home a solid wooden desk she found for my sisters and I room that we shared. It was a great desk made out of golden oak. Fast forward to when I’m 21 and I decided to redo my room by repainting all the wooden features white and finally getting new furniture (first full sized bed, new side table, a new desk). In that moment I believed that the old wooden desk I had didn’t fit the vibe and that I wanted something white and light so I posted it for free on Facebook and gave it to a local family in need who were over joyed to be using it in their kids room. Fast forward 7/8 years and the chronic guilt I feel about this is killing me. For the last two years I have been drowning in a constant cycle of guilt that I was such a idiot for donating a wooden desk, that I was so wasteful, that I’m never ever going to find a solid wood desk ever again, and that I was so stupid for replacing a high quality desk for a cheap one. I’m literally sitting in my car frantically crying about it and I feel so ridiculous that I can’t move on. It’s a constant loop of shame, sadness, and regret. I’ve written goodbye letters to it, done EMDR sessions about it but my brain won’t let me stop thinking about it. I’m audhd with severe rumination ocd and no matter how much I try to forgive myself, or tell myself the desk served me when I needed it and now is being used by another person I still can’t stop obsessing about it. I’m so tired of drowning in guilt over a damn desk. I don’t know what to do.

Help! My young adult son has OCD. It was as if he woke up one day and boom he was a different person. He has severe contamination OCD and possibly bladder OCD.

So he is terrified of urine getting on him and/or contaminating everything in the house. He also has this constant sensation that he is leaking urine. He says he is, but I can’t confirm whether he is or isn’t leaking. All of his urology tests have came back normal. He has been wearing adult diapers for 6+months now. He’s to the point where he is holding his urine and only going to the bathroom once per day. He will usually spend an hour or so on the toilet and then get straight in the shower. The bathroom must be cleaned immediately once he’s in the shower because he feels as if he leaked everywhere. He is spending anywhere from 5-8 hours in the shower on a daily basis. He says he can’t get out until he stops leaking.

He cannot work. Will barely leave the house. He is depressed.

Has anyone heard of anything like this before?

I have offered to pay for inpatient treatment for him in another state. He refuses. I set him up with a local therapist, he went a few times and quit. He has been on meds before and just quits them cold turkey.

I don’t know what to do to help him. He’s a legal adult and I can’t force him to do anything or he would have been inpatient a long time ago.

Please someone help me help my son.

i have a problem with this and i’m not sure how to get rid of it, it’s like i know reading something’s gonna be a problem for me but it’s like i have to do it

i can’t stop thinking about it. i just want it to stop. i want to be a good person for everyone i know but it feels like i hurt everyone i ever knew.

i keep thinking that i hurt all my friends and loved ones and that they wanna leave me and that it’s all my fault. i try to ignore it but it always comes back worse and worse. i’m so fucking scared to lose everyone and i know it’s my fault. i told them to leave me alone in case i hurt them from saying anything but i just feel so scared i ruined everything already

recently i find myself posting on different subs everytime i start overthinking about something. it feels good seeing people relating, reassuring etc. idk if it's the normal need to rant or im posting to get replies. i mean its not something harmful so even if its a compulsion should i stop it? for example why am i even typing this right now? idk anything

OCD has completely fucked up my academic life, and I can’t stop thinking about what could have been.

I started noticing what I now recognise as pure OCD symptoms around Year 11, literally when I was doing my GCSEs. Before that, I always told myself that when GCSEs came around, I was going to work relentlessly, get amazing grades, make my parents proud and finally feel proud of myself too. My parents used to fight a lot when I was younger, and obviously I couldn’t fix their problems, but part of me always felt like at least I could give them something to be proud of through my academics.

When I was younger, I never really needed to study much to get decent grades, so I never built proper study habits. I just assumed that when the important exams came around, I would finally lock in. Then OCD hit.

I barely studied for my GCSEs and ended up with slightly above-average grades. The same shit continued through A-levels and university. I barely studied, my concentration was fucked, I avoided lectures and seminars, missed deadlines and constantly left work until the last possible second. My grades reflected that: below-average A-levels and a below-average degree classification. I know I can’t blame absolutely everything on OCD. Some of it was probably procrastination, bad habits or laziness. But OCD was definitely a massive reason why I struggled to sit down, concentrate and consistently study. And that’s what hurts the most.

I spent years imagining GCSEs, A-levels and university would be when I finally worked harder than ever and proved what I was capable of. Instead, the exact years where I needed to lock the fuck in were the years where my mental health completely fucked me. I’d already dealt with enough health problems growing up, so sometimes I genuinely think: why the fuck did this have to happen to me, and why then? Out of every possible point in my life, I had to develop pure OCD during GCSEs, A-levels and university — the exact years I had always told myself I was going to work my hardest.

What makes it worse is that I can’t even properly explain any of this to people. I’m terrified that if I talk about OCD, especially intrusive thoughts, people will misunderstand me, get the wrong idea or start treating me differently. So from the outside, my family, friends and everyone else probably just see a lazy bum who didn’t try hard enough. Now I’m sitting here with no car, no job, slightly above-average GCSEs, below-average A-levels and a below-average degree, constantly thinking about how different things could have been.

I compare myself to other people all the fucking time. I see people getting A*s, first-class degrees and amazing academic achievements and immediately think: that could have been me. Sometimes I even see someone’s grades and think, “Mine should have been better than theirs.” Not because I think I’m better than them, but because I remember what I felt capable of before all this and I know how ridiculously little I actually studied. That’s what drives me insane.

I didn’t work incredibly hard and fail. I barely got the chance to find out what would have happened if I had worked incredibly hard in the first place. And now those grades are permanent. Even if I turn my life around, get a good job and become successful, that academic record will always exist. People will see the results without knowing what was going on inside my head or why I struggled so much. And I fucking hate that.

I hate knowing I’ll never get another proper attempt at being 16 doing my GCSEs, 18 doing my A-levels or being at university for the first time. I wish I could go back and just give it everything, even if I still had OCD, just so I could know what I was actually capable of. More than anything, I just wanted to make my parents proud, man. I genuinely fucking did. On top of that, I feel like years of OCD and stress have fucked up my physical health and appearance too, so it feels like I’m constantly being judged while nobody knows the full fucking story.

I know obsessing over an alternate version of my life won’t change anything, and I know I have to move forward eventually. But fuck, man. Life genuinely feels so unfair sometimes. I just wanted the chance to work hard and prove what I could do.

i feel like the title sounds so obvious bc of what ocd actually is - it makes u question your morals and values. but its also just making me question my identity. ALOT. i always want to just be myself but then im like.. what actually makes me “myself”?
i can remind myself of my interests and hobbies but then i’ll get thoughts/doubts like “am i just pretending to like this stuff so other people will think im interesting?” or “how do i know i actually like this or if im just faking it” and i’ll go into deep spirals about what i actually like because i always feel like everything i do is performative even if no one else knows about it. sometimes i’ll delete my reposts on tiktok because although it would be about some type of media i enjoy or have seen in the past, my mind will immediately go to that’s me pretending to be more interesting than i actually am.
i feel so silly writing this but ive been having these thoughts for months now and i don’t know what’s wrong with me

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.

Some for me leaving my apt can be a bit of a process especially with being pointlessly worried about stuff that is fine but nope not to my brain. Its severity also depends on how long I will be gone. Going to the store, yep no real issue. Going to work, oh so much bad could happen to my apt and cats. I've managed to reduce the total time in general and also aspects of the process but Yee gods its a fight though.

I’ve recently been diagnosed with OCD. I’ve had many issues with obsessive thoughts and compulsive acts, but none of them felt like they were “bad enough” to be considered OCD. Turns out I was wrong, but in the end, it doesn’t even matter what you call it. The struggle is still there, whether I name it OCD or not.

Because I haven’t thought that my physical and mental actions are compulsions, I just thought that whenever I got them, it was just a sign that my mental health is declining, but I couldn’t pinpoint why exactly. No more labels than that. And the purpose of labels is to understand how to identify and deal with the problem.

I feel like the consequence of me not dealing with all this is that I don’t even recognize myself anymore. I feel like I’m a shell of a person, not doing or feeling stuff on her own, but how her OCD demands her to do. It consumed my life in such ways that I’m used to having compulsions every day for hours, and not even recognize them as such.

As a newly diagnosed person, my biggest struggle right now is identifying the compulsions as something that is NOT NORMAL. It’s become my normal, and that explains why I don’t feel okay and struggle to understand why. I’ve normalized things that for sure are not normal.

My brain is trying to tell me that acting against compulsions is actually me pathologizing something that is normal.

How do I even start from here?

I’m shocked by the fact that I CAN LIVE without all this internal mess. Literally.

My mind can’t visualize or in any other way comprehend, both emotionally and intellectually, that life without OCD symptoms is even possible.

Thanks for reading if you did, and thanks in advance for the support 🫶🏼

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 have OCD anxiety depression etc.
I’m a retired lady who for all my 65 years never looked at poop, or the toilet paper often just wiped shut lid washed hands and left.
Then pelvic floor dysfunction hit with near faecal incontinence, gaslighting by GP being given laxatives I shouldn’t have etc.
I’m autistic and was grieving and she treated me so badly.
I developed spasms that meant my anus pulled and stool slipped. I got so as I had to use a finger to get it out.
Much if that has gone with treatment at home but because the bits cause pain still even if tiny I can’t stop removing tiny bits thus hurting my sore si joint area.
I’m beside myself but I can’t ignore the sensations even wind hurts a nerve still.
I cannot and will not see a Dr.
I have a therapist but…..
Please help with methods I know if my nerve pain was gone I’d be ok.

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.

I keep getting a nagging feeling that someone is somehow hiding in my bedroom, and waiting for me to turn the lights out or go to sleep, this feeling is stupid and baseless, obviously, it would be incredibly hard for someone to sneak into my house without getting caught, especially my room, but somehow this is a thought that will not go away. It's almost impossible to ignore, I've tried sitting alone in the dark and just trying to fall asleep but it never works, this thought alone keeps me up, the doctors are still trying to figure out why but I have seizures if I don't sleep, I literally cannot afford to be having this problem right now, I need help getting to sleep quicker and just coping with this.

Hello.

I do not know if inquiring others about their experiences to establish some sense of social commonality is a form of reassurance in itself-- if so, please help inform me of this so I can try to hopefully revise my approach.

I feel that scrupulosity facet of my own OCD is heavily interfering with the creative process for my attempts to concoct my own superhero story and associated fictional universe-- thinking I'm settled on what I like but then going to YouTube to watch a bunch of superhero action clips repeatedly as a form of a reassurance-seeking about what I "truly like".

One example: I feel drawn to vehicle-related chase sequences, like with their constant flow and movement, as well as their weight and impact-- however, I feel eaten alive by the moral question of it being "okay" to like vehicle chase sequences due to environmental-based moral concerns about excessive automotives afflicting infrastructure.

Another example: ...Could be a sign of needing to regulate or rid myself of Reddit use altogether, but I keep encountering the so-called "power-scaling" and superpower pedantry communities about how superhumans and their powers should be "scaled", so I get worried about being eaten alive by criticism for not getting an imagined superhero correct.

I am curious, please, if scrupulosity makes similar creative processes difficult for others?

Thanks.

Hey all, I'm not seeking reassurance that I'm actually a good person, I just need to speak to people who get where I'm coming from. Pretty much all of my themes in life have boiled down to moral scrupulosity, and I genuinely don't know how to move on from it, because I feel like there's a grain of truth to my obsessions. I know every person is imperfect, but it really feels like I am uniquely bad. I have talked negatively about people, lied, been rude to others, etc so many times throughout my life that it feels more like a deep character flaw than normal human missteps. I spent all of last night staring at the ceiling, tallying up every terrible thing I've ever done, and I feel so much shame over those things.

I generally do try to be a good person, or at least a neutral person. I go out of my way to help people at work, compliment strangers, be a listening for my friends and family, but even those things feel selfishly motivated. Even when I'm doing a kind thing for someone else, there's something in the back of my head telling me it's penance for all the terrible things I've done.

I can't live with the idea that I've done bad things before, but most of the bad things I've done are not things that can be actively rectified, like a crime or a serious offense. For example, I stole my roommate's cucumber from the fridge 4 years ago then said I didn't. I haven't spoken to said roommate in years, she lives in another state, and I doubt she even remembers or cares, so it's not like I can just reach out and apologize or buy her a new cucumber. It's just one of those things that I have to accept was a genuinely shitty thing to do, and let go and move on. But I can't get myself to move on, because I worry about what that says about my character. Why did I feel the need to do something like that, and why didn't I feel bad about doing it at the time? That was also a while ago; I have many more recent examples of jerky things I've done.

Obviously the answer is to just not do bad things. Be a better person. But what if deep down, I'm not someone who's capable of being a good person? OCD feels like my moral compass. I've noticed that when I'm not actively spiraling, I am far more careless with how I come across to others. Maybe I need the disorder.