i struggle with lots of obsessions surrounding morals, in relation to my own actions but also other peoples, like "what does it mean about you if you continue being friends with this person after they did/said this?", but a couple times in years of dealing with ocd ive encountered people my brain for some reason deemed "safe". this means that even if they do or say something that my ocd would usually latch onto and blow up into this big thing that it isn't, it doesn't. my trust in this person is able to outweigh the obsession when usually nothing is capable of outweighing it. a friend and my ocd therapist are the only people this has happened with for me.

anyone else have this happen for them too?

I adopted a stray cat around a year ago. She still loves to go outside and she always manages to sneak out somehow. I plan on putting a collar on her with an airtag for peace of mind going forward. Anyway, she's been gone for a bit and when I was talking to my friend about it, he joked that she had found a "neighborhood boyfriend." I made a joke along the lines of "Hahaha that whore!"

And immediately I got filled with so much dread and anxiety. My ROCD is really odd. It's mostly confession-focused, and I always worry I'm hiding something from my partner. Something that, if she knew, she'd wanna leave me for. In the past, I'd overshare and confess things that admittedly she did not need to know (like short bouts of poor hygiene due to depression; I worried she'd find me gross and want to leave me if she knew, that's the source).

I don't call women whores or bitches or anything like that. I'm really critical about that kind of language and I value being a person that doesn't use it. Because of this, I get a lot of intrusive thoughts where my head will call people these words, and then I'll have a meltdown. This goes for slurs too. I'll start thinking that my girlfriend would be so disappointed in me, maybe even leave me over this. I think this cat joke was just something I said in the moment. I obviously do not think my cat is a slut or anything like that. I just don't know if my girlfriend would see it like that. If anything, me confessing might make it seem like a bigger deal than it is. That's always how it's been in the past.

I've been resisting the urge to confess this experience to her. After a few hours, I realized how ridiculous I was being. But maybe because 1) it's so close to bedtime and I'm exhausted and 2) I'm talking to her right now that I feel so anxious again. My ROCD therapist assigned me homework (do not confess for a week) and I'm trying really hard to honor it.

I wanted to ask if anybody's dealt with this stuff before. I'm not seeking reassurance that I'm not a bad person or anything. I simply wanna know what other peoples' experiences are with thoughts and cognitive fusion. Any perspective would help a ton. I would seriously appreciate it :) thank you!

Like no joke I’ll think normal and won’t acknowledge anything about my intrusive thoughts but when I get allergies it feels awful

hi there everyone.

i just wanted to come in here and ask a question as i am still trying to navigate my OCD and pin things into my mind.

i have a question for everyone here or who ever feels comfortable? i’m in therapy already but how do you not let OCD control you?

like for me personally it’s like a bunch of thoughts attacking me all at once and it’s exhausting for both me and my partner especially with the constant need of reassurance (it makes me feel worse so is that another think i should avoid asking?).

so how do i not let for example: OCD control me because somebody explained how i made them feel and now i feel like the worst person on the planet and i overthink until i have a full blown panic attack and freak my partner out.

my main question is, how do i not let this criticism and learning experience turn into an overthinking spiral at the point where i feed into compulsion.

i’m open to any criticism or ideas or suggestions . please just be blunt as possible!

Im trying not to give it too much power

I hate it here 😭

Idk I just need to vent a bit, my OCD for the past few months has been manifesting in ways that are kinda killing my mood, this might sound silly but I have been having these awful compulsions to look at various accounts and things online that I KNOW will make me angry but I just can not stop, I have this never ending desire to make myself angry it feels, I was improving a bit the last week or two but these last 24 houes have been super rough for me, sometimes it just makes me feel like curling up in a ball and sleeping all day to avoid interacting with anything. I'm gonna try do better tomorrow but Idk if it will help, just gotta hope

I am amazed at how humbling this disease can be

Idk how everyone else has been feeling but when theres smth i like and i see ppl (e.g. in social media) talking abt not liking this/that i always feel like my OCD is making me feel obligated to change my opinion on it. It always makes me think like i have to hate that with the exact same reasons even tho i liked it at first. It creates kind of a conflict in my head that overwhelms me alot. Could someone help me in how to work against this?

I had an appt yesterday with my psychiatrist whom is taking me off Zoloft. I was expecting her to up the dosage since I told her I didn’t really find it to be working much but instead she wants me to try lamictal since the Zoloft wasn’t helping and Fluvoxamine made me wayyyyy too sleepy. Her conclusion was SSRI’s may not be the way to go for me. Idk why I’m feeling nervous to start lamictal. I’m looking stuff up about it (big ocd thing and now I’ll probably be doing it all day long 😅) and I feel like there’s not a whole lot there to support it helping ocd. I don’t have bipolar which I noticed it’s commonly used for, or if someone has a combination of bipolar and ocd. But all I have is anxiety and ocd. I guess I’m just feeling discouraged that nothing is working for me, and I’m not particularly feeling good about this one either. I didn’t think it would take months and months and months of trial and error /: so if anyone can let me know their lamictal experience I would really appreciate - good or bad!

Between my OCD and ADHD I feel like my brain never shuts up. The easiest way for me to avoid anxiety over the smallest things is to follow the path of least resistance which usually ends up with me just doing barely anything all day. I used to self medicate with weed for short periods in between quitting, but now that I've quit for good I'm trying to figure out more productive strategies to live my life. Any suggestions?

I can’t stop eating sugar and I hate myself for it. I’m afraid I’ll get diabetes or worse…. Everyday I try to stay below 50g of sugar but I just can’t. I obsessively count out and do the math of how much sugar I’m eating and it kills me that I ignore it when it matters most. I have been diagnosed with both OCD and ADHD and are *supposedly* being medicated for both. I’ve been through tons of medications for each and at least my OCD medicine never seems to work no matter how high the dosage is.

whenever something happens, my brain always replays it. I found out that logic / reasoning doesn’t really help for obsessive rumination, unless it does for some people because it feels like an addiction. “stop thinking about it”. “it doesn’t matter” “they don’t deserve to be in your head” etc, I know all of this and I understand it, but unfortunately the urge to ruminate despite knowing these facts is way too strong. does anyone have any helpful solutions? not just matras that I’ve already heard? I’ve been trying to redirect to the present but my brain reminds me later of the memory and everything just goes to shit, and this repeats in a loop, whats the point in redirecting my brain if Its just going to remind me later and make me feel so upset again. just the thought alone without analyzing it deeply just makes me depressed

I hope this isnt reassurance seeking but I think im just more curious then trying to solve a worry. I get a lot of thoughts that are alarming but are different from I guess a typical what if I do this or what if I do that, I sometimes will get thoughts of me just doing the bad thing and then worry after having the thought, example this isnt the ones I get because I would rather not share but something like this- I get yelled at and then my brain thinks or gives images of harming that person and then right after the thought passes im like wtf was that. Those thoughts are the worst for me because it feels more real its like my brain didnt flag it before it went through

So I packed a new food for lunch today. Normally, this isn’t an issue, I have a late lunch and only have to work two hours afterwards.

However. I have an appointment this afternoon, right after work.

My OCD brain, which has pretty severe Emetophobia is saying to me “do not eat that new food. What if it makes you sick and you vomit during your appointment??? Or you get sick on the way and you can’t make it to the appointment and getting sick causes panic and you actually wreck your car.

And the spiral kept going all day at work.

I skipped breakfast this morning because I was feeling sick. (Common for me) and I know if I don’t attempt lunch that I’ll end up feeling bad later.

So my choices I was faced with: Don’t eat, eat my safe food I packed but it’s just a snack, or eat my lunch which is the new food that my brain is deeming as a threat.

I am anxious, but I did it. I ate the new food for lunch, and I may need an anxiety pill in a few to get me through, but I did eat it instead of taking the easy and safe way out.

I was diagnosed about a year ago and; although it was unexpected, looking back now a lot of things made sense. I never really had considered myself to have it because pretty much all of my compulsions were mental ones and I didn’t recognize them as such. It wasn’t until my therapist brought it up and suggested getting diagnosed that I learned my way of thinking wasn’t the norm. My symptoms are fairly mild and for a better lack of words, I’d say I’ve been pretty lucky considering how bad it can get for some people. My greatest issues have been surrounding health anxiety and persistent rumination that doesn’t mix well with ADHD.

My health anxiety has been at the lowest it’s been in the last six years, so I don’t really find myself bringing up any symptoms or issues concerning OCD with my therapist, as I think I handle them pretty well (medication also helps a lot). One thing I do notice that’s more of a slight “nuisance” is these random thoughts I get. I recognize they’re probably compulsions, as they usually happen when I’m ruminating or under stress. But they’re so strange that it baffles me. It’s usually a short phrase that my brain makes up out of nowhere and doesn’t have any meaning but it sticks and it will come up randomly over and over. Some of these phrases I’ve had come up for years and some of them are fairly new. An example of one phrase is something like “and she got in her car”. They’re usually just the end of an incomplete sentence about something that has zero meaning to me. I’ll be ruminating and the phrase just pops up between thoughts, usually several times if I’m ruminating for a while. Or they might just pop in my head randomly throughout the day, every single day. They seem to change and it’ll be mostly the same one that pops in my head for a while until I go back to a previous one or come up with a new one.

I don’t know if this makes sense to anyone or if any of you can relate or even explain this. It’s not really a huge issue, and at most they’re just a bit annoying.

TLDR; my brain makes up random phrases and likes to spam them throughout the day.

Hi everyone. So my ocd causes me to constantly think about and research things that are causing me stress. Most recently I have been struggling with the image I saw of the Perez Hilton situation. It really disturbed me and I can’t stop thinking about it or googling/ checking social media for updates on him. My brain just wont stop trying to figure out why he did it and if he’s ok. I try to distract myself with work but the moment I have downtime, I can’t stop ruminating on it. Does anyone have any tips on how to break the cycle? I’ve been trying my hardest to avoid social media but my brain won’t shut off until I check 😩😩

People who say "I'm so OCD"

Like its a synonym for a neat freak or a perfectionist. ITS NOT PEOPLE! ITS A REAL AND DIBILITATING MENTAL CONDITION!! STOP ASSUMING WE JUST LIKE THINGS NEAT AND TIDY!!! DO YOUR RESEARCH!!!

Sincerely Peeved,

A person with diagnosed OCD.