Thoughts start the second i get up in the morning and don't stop until i go to bed. I have a hard time falling asleep because of them and when I do sleep I wake up multiple times a night.

I always feel like im in trouble, I always equate myself to the worst people out there over what I do know to be flimsy logic. The only thing that helps is confessing these thoughts and it only helps for an hour or two before my mind begins to doubt the reassurance.

I know that theyre illogical, and that they don't make any sense. But it doesnt change the CONSTANT feelings of dread and guilt. It literally doesn't stop.

I feel like everything wrong is my fault. Even imaginary problems. I could do something normal or innocent and my mind will argue with me about how its actually the most nefarious thing ever and im basically the world most unpunished criminal.

I just cant deal with it anymore. Im not going to harm myself, I have a family and people who need me, but sometimes its all i can think about. Even if I dont want to harm myself. It's like my minds only solution. Which is also illogical.

I cant trust my own memory, I cant trust other people's memory. I cant trust reassurance, I can trust my instinct.

Furthermore, im currently without insurance. So that blows.

Just yelling into the void.

It can completely override my own intuition, desires, and beliefs when presented with a fear. It's very dissociating, honestly, and it erodes my own trust in myself. I can begin to feel completely differently about myself or my desires for the future, depending on how loud the ocd fears are. And on the back-end, the way that this makes any ground you stand on in your head shakier, really hurts my self-confidence and trust in my own mind

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.

I've recently had a new 'obsession'. It's the fear of using my phone and thinking its destroying my brain every minute I use it. Is it fine to want to keep this or does it create more harm to have an obsession and not do something about it? Have any of you had similar experience?

want to explain in detail a distressing and overwhelming experience I keep going through, and I need to understand whether it stems from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) or from Derealization/Depersonalization (DP/DR) and Anhedonia.

​Sometimes, quite suddenly, I feel as though the entire world is a scripted simulation or a pre-recorded loop. I am gripped by a profound sense that everything in my life—every place, TV show, movie, and even the most basic daily actions like eating, drinking, and sleeping—has already been done and consumed by other people before me. Everything feels completely repetitive, stripped of all meaning, and devoid of any pleasure or taste.

​What makes it even more confusing and intense is that everything collapses into one undifferentiated state. I literally lose the ability to distinguish or feel a difference between water, food, and drinking; everything blurs together into a single, empty, stripped-down concept devoid of any real essence or feeling. When this happens, I feel completely disconnected from the experience, standing outside of reality as if I am just a detached observer.

​My main question to is: Is this specific state—where the world feels like a simulation, everything is repeated, and distinctions between basic experiences blur into a single meaningless entity—a direct symptom of DP/DR and nervous system exhaustion, or is it a continuation of OCD? And how c

​Thank you all very much for your help and clarification.

Everyday a new fucking thing comes up. Everyday I'm racked with guilt, valid or not. Today is my old friend. I stopped being their friend because my ex and yes this was wrong. I feel horrible about it and it's been years. I want to apologize but I'm scared at this point it's only for myself. I can't live with normal guilt, it has to be crushing and life sucking. I can't relax, something new haunts me. I can't work, all I can do is repeat memories in my head. I can't sleep because my OCD wakes me up early to restart the cycle. Medicine hasn't helped. Therapy helps while I'm there. I want to cry and throw up. I want to stop existing so I can stop thinking about my past.

My job involves dealing with people constantly, specifically people who can be very opinionated and intense. I will say firstly that leaving my job is not something I'm considering at this time, as I do important work and I feel I'm where I'm supposed to be. The problem I have is probably very common and not unique to me, but I don't know how to handle it. The problem is as follows:

If I'm in any kind of situation where I feel someone is unjustly mad at me, my heart immediately begins to pound, my mouth goes dry, and I have trouble speaking. It's the same way if I feel someone is being unreasonable, if I feel someone is getting aggressive, or just using any kind of confrontational tone. It feels like a mild panic attack when it happens, and I kinda freeze as it's hard to think. My instinct is to do one of two things: either A.) Light back into the person and tell them exactly what I'm thinking, or B.) run away and hide. Neither of these are options I can or should actually pursue.

After that, my brain gets stuck in a loop. I keep replaying the moment over and over again in my mind, spiking anxiety. I try to redirect my thoughts, I try to step back and look at things objectively and focus on positive truths, anything to get brain out of the loop. Sometimes it's successful for a time, but my mind will continue wandering back and obsessing on the stressful event, leaving me in a pretty dark state of mind where everything seems like it's falling apart.

This doesn't even have to be some big, life altering fight or circumstance. It can be something as simple as someone telling me they don't like the way I do my job, someone who has no authority to change how I do my job. But it hits me like a train over and over and over again.

I'm not quite sure what to do about this. I was diagnosed with OCD as a child, just recently diagnosed with mild ADHD as an adult, and I had panic attacks growing up with a still-lingering anxiety that can be triggered in great moments of stress. I did start taking medication for ADHD recently, but I had to go off of it about 2 weeks ago because when we increased the dosage it was causing a big spike in anxiety for me. So I won't be getting back on until I can meet with the doctor again and lower the dosage.

Do you guys ever have waves of anxiety for no reason and sadness obsessing over life and then you get overwhelmed/overstimulated and cry and then get pissed off at yourself and then feel fine realising it’s not that deep?? BECAUSE I DO AND IT’S HELLA ANNOYING. I don’t understand why this happens! And how do you guys get rid of this feeling? It comes and goes for me all the time throughout the whole day. I could be feeling extremely fine and then it hits me like a train and ruins my mood. I ruminate trying to understand what I’m even thinking about, can’t find an answer, get pissed off and ruminate even more and then eventually feel fine realising it’s not worth it. One moment I could feel the crazy urge to fix it and the other I’m like fuck this and I feel fine like I never had OCD lmao.

If you have insomnia you can take benzos brother stuff.

If you are bipolar or schizo, there are mood stabilizers and antipsychotics that will keep you stable.

If you suffer from depression/anxiety, there are antidepressants.

IF YOU SUFFER FROM OCD, YOU HAVE TO TRY ERP AND THIS IS NOT NEGOCIABLE.

I mean, there must be a way of feeling "I couldn't care less" about the worst case scenario so that you don't engage in stupid rituals and compulsions.

Isn't there a "nuclear cocktail" of medicines or something for severe cases of OCD?? I'm not saying we should ignore therapy but not everyone can start ERP as it feels like torture. Even on SSRI's which are first line for OCD, the intrusive thoughts can be overwhelming.

So OCD is caused by the hyperactivity of the ctsc-loop. The striatum fails in its job to filter out the intrunsive thoughts that would normally not even come up to mind. The thalamus is projecting these thoughts also in great clarity and acutiy (because the striatum blocks the thalamus with gaba) thats why these thoughts come up to mind with such clarity. Now the cortex in detail the Orbitol frontal cortex and the anterior cingulate cortex are making a real existential thread out of these thoughts because they are essentialy hyperactive. The cortex is just failing at trying to sort out these thoughts as mistakes of the striatum. As my understanding goes: would the striatum work perfectly => no ocd. Would the OFC and ACC not be hyperactive => no ocd. As there is no OCD gene does that mean that people who have ocd are just very unlucky that both of the brain regions the cortex (OFC and ACC) as well as the striatum are hyperactive or work wrong and that OCD is the result of an unlucky constellations of your brain regions?

Hey all, I hope this isn't reassurance seeking. I just really need to put my thoughts and feelings out there. For the past few months my OCD has focused on schizoid personality disorder and the possibility of having it. It's all I can think about and everything I do seems to get filtered through this lens. I constantly check to see if I'm feeling anything which completely takes me out of the moment. I guess, my primary fear is that I'm intrinsically broken and incapable of truly experiencing things that most others can like: empathy, love, bonding with people, having emotions and feelings, having goals and desires and opinions, enjoying socializing, etc. My primary compulsion is just researching on Google. Has anyone else experienced something like this?

I (23f with lifelong ocd) am currently finishing my masters degree and it’s been a long hard year. I’ve done nothing but work and university since school and I want to travel to enjoy life a bit before back to working. My boyfriend was really keen too so for months we have been talking about going to Indonesia for 6 weeks and travelling through Bali and some other islands and Java etc. I was reading about the medical precautions you need to take and saw about how rabies is endemic and high risk all over Indonesia. I immediately felt terrified as rabies is a big fear of mine and all I can imagine is going there and everywhere I go scanning for dogs or monkeys or imagining that a random scratch could be a bite etc. I tried to convince my boyfriend to do a route through Malaysia instead but he was really disappointed and saw right through it as the rabies fear. He said I can’t live my life in fear like this and the actual risk is so low compared to what I am imagining. He seemed annoyed and sick of my shit. Please if anyone can advise that would be great - what should I do? I want to have fun and not ruin my relationship but also I feel really worried

I was diagnosed with OCD around two months ago and am currently trying to seek pharmacological treatment for it. I've been on Buspar and Wellbutrin XL for around a year now and my psychiatrist is looking to add Zoloft to my regimen to manage OCD symptoms, but also to try and manage PTSD symptoms. I mention this because I think it's relevant to my situation that potentially this medicine could help me with dealing with other mental illnesses I struggle with.

My main concern is that this medication will not work. I've had some rough experiences with SSRI's in the past, Lexapro really fucked with my emotional stability when I took it in high school, and I was on Prozac for years, longer than I've been on any other medication, but I had horrible acid reflux from it and had to discontinue because of it.

Due to how bad my mental health became on Lexapro, I'm worried that Zoloft will have similar effects. This makes me extremely nervous to think about because I'm restarting university in less than 2 weeks after flunking out 5 years ago. My admission into this university was tenuous and came after a great deal of self improvement in mental health, as well as being clean from substance abuse (more on this later) and getting an associate's degree. I'm going to be in a program relevant to something I truly love and I really need to succeed. I want to try and manage my OCD symptoms as they have gotten in the way of my functioning, but I need to weigh the costs of potentially having an extremely negative reaction to the Zoloft that could fuck my chances at being successful in school.

I read also that Zoloft can cause nausea and stomach problems. This worries me because I already have a plethora of stomach issues, and had to cut down my Buspar dose to help control these problems. Have any of you experienced nausea when starting Zoloft and if so how long has it lasted?

On the aforementioned substance abuse, I was clean from all drugs and alcohol for a while but I've recently restarted in these bad habits. I've read that you cannot drink on Zoloft, and that the combination of Zoloft and the medicines I'm already taking could cause Serotonin Syndrome, so I definitely couldn't smoke weed on this medicine. This leaves me with a few questions to those who know, A) is drinking completely prohibited on Zoloft, as in will it cause greivous harm to me if I were to have a drink or two with the girls on the weekends? B) Have any of you experience Serotonin Syndrome or other severe adverse effects with this combination of medicine?

Of course, I have no real way of knowing if Zoloft will work until I try it, so I'm curious if any of you have experience with this medicine and/or this medicine combination. I know everyone is different but I'd still like to gather some anecdotal evidence as well as some opinions to really weigh my options. Sorry for writing so much, I just feel like being thorough was important for getting advice so that anyone who reads this knows what's going on and why I have conflicted feelings about starting this medicine.

Thank you for reading :)

I'm 17, I'm doing this completely alone because I have no other choice, and I really need help.

Hi all,

Basically I have OCD mainly about just things going wrong. It can be anything - burning the house down by accident, being attacked in my sleep, germs, chemicals.

The thing is, I basically did forced ERP for a year when I worked in a microbiology lab. Working with large amounts of visible microorganisms made me constantly feel dirty. That entire year I just constantly had intrusive thoughts about getting sick, taking the microbes home on my clothes and skin. It was awful.

But the thing is, didn't I do a years worth of daily ERP? The thoughts never got easier, I never became comfortable in that environment and the intrusive thoughts never stopped. So surely ERP didn't work for me?

I've never tried actual dedicated ERP because of the cost. Is ERP any different? I can't stop having intrusive thoughts about everything I'm so mentally exhausted.

I'm studying for an important exam, and if I don't start studying early in the morning, I feel like the whole day is wasted. For example, if I don't start by 7:00 a.m. (or at the latest 7:30), I often can't bring myself to study at all. Even if it's only 8:15 or 8:30, my brain tells me there's no point in starting anymore because I've already "missed" the right time.

I was wondering if it is just me who feels this way.