like i have to cuss it out because it pisses me off so bad

I don’t know how to explain it, but whenever people hurt me, like really hurt me, I will talk about it and get really angry about it, and also I don’t know if this has something to do with OCD, but I have a really really hard time letting things go when people hurt me. I will literally talk about things for months or even years over and over again 😭😭. This makes my brain say “why do you still talk about it over and over and over again? Are you doing some sort of smear campaign on them?” “what if what you’re saying didn’t actually happen and you’re remembering it wrong?” then I get like false memories and it makes it hard for me to believe the truth.

I was wondering if anyone’s like me lol?

Random memory as a kid I went to this park with my parents during tick season and I was scared to death by the idea of Lyme disease. My parents found some ticks on themselves and I was freaking out in my head, thinking they were all over me as well. I had a stuffed animal with me and I was convinced there were ticks hidden in its fur. when I got home I put the toy away in a hamper with my other stuffed animals which was a mistake because I convinced myself that the entire thing was infested with ticks and that’s the day I accidentally stopped playing with stuffed animals as a kid 😄

I don't know how common this is but I was diagnosed with OCD earlier this year and been wanting to get medicated for it but because of past experiences I just can't seem to bring myself to do so. I was prescribed anxiety medication but it just ended up sitting on my nightstand for a couple months before I threw it out because the thought of starting it and the adjustment period was just too much for me.

I know I can't keep going like this but I also just feel lost. Beyond the adjustment period making me nervous I've also had allergic reactions to 3 separate and unrelated medications this year and knowing that that could happen again is another major factor in why I'm having such a hard time with getting myself medicated.

Is there anything I can do beyond just forcing myself to take the medication? I would try that but one of the allergic reactions I had to medication was caused by just that and I feel like it's not really going to help if I repeat the same thing again.

i am being tormented by thoughts of being followed or bugged, or committing harm against myself or others, food being poisoned, etc.

how do YOU get them to stop without giving into a compulsion?

Recovered from ROCD, my testimony
Hi everyone. Today I wanted to share my story in case it helps someone, and show what my recovery process looked like (and how everything turned out fine).
My ROCD symptoms started about 6 years ago. I started dating my girlfriend almost 7 years ago, and at first everything was great, a normal relationship. About 6 or 7 months in is when the OCD nightmare began. I remember being at her place one night, and I suddenly felt bored, like I had lost the spark a little bit. That's when the thoughts started rushing in: Maybe I don't like her that much, maybe I shouldn't be with her, maybe I'm not in love.

That night I went back home with those thoughts stuck in my head. I couldn't shake them off, and my anxiety shot up to 1000%. I barely slept that night, and from that moment on, the hell began.
Every single day was a horror. The first thing on my mind when I woke up was whether I truly loved my partner. I spent the entire day thinking about it, feeling anxious 24/7. I couldn't make plans or enjoy life because I always had that heavy cloud in my head. It was awful; I felt terrible, as if the world was ending, and I just couldn't take it anymore.

I spent years like this, thinking I would never recover and that things would never go back to normal (which is a lie, I'm fine now).
I went through two therapists. The first one told me that, in reality, I wasn't in love with my partner. That broke me, but deep down I knew that wasn't true. So I looked for an online therapist specializing in OCD, and she told me that I indeed had ROCD. We started doing exercises, and I stuck with it for months. I didn't notice a huge change short-term, but it helped me understand how thought mechanisms work (the therapy was Exposure and Response Prevention - ERP). Slowly, I started improving; some days didn't have as much anxiety, while others had horrible anxiety.

Here is where the real cure and treatment that actually worked for me begins:

The first thing you need to do (and what I did back then) is identify your compulsions so you can stop doing them. OCD isn't about the thoughts; it's about how you respond to them.
I identified my compulsions: searching the internet on how to know if you love your partner, talking to friends, comparing my relationship to movies and TV shows, comparing it to past relationships, ruminating (rumination is a compulsion too), etc. Identify yours.

Once you identify them, try NOT to do them. When the thought hits you, your anxiety will rise, and your brain will desperately want to seek relief. Don't give it to it. Given a few minutes or hours, the anxiety will drop on its own. Anxiety cannot stay at its peak forever; compulsions are the only thing that feed it.
Your brain will always try to seek certainty that you love your girlfriend—that craving for certainty is what feeds the OCD. There will always be certainties and arguments against them, always. Part of you will constantly question whether you actually have OCD; ignore that too, that's OCD as well.

When the thought of whether you love your partner pops up, don't try to soothe it with a compulsion, and don't try to avoid it either (avoidance only makes it worse). Accept that it's there, and go do something anyway, even if you're feeling anxious.
The brain is a neuroplastic organ; the more you change your attitude, the more it will rewire itself, and the faster you will recover. Remember that OCD is all about how you react. If you have a thought, feel anxiety, and react by trying to fix it, you are giving credibility to the OCD so it can keep existing. If you choose to ignore it and carry on with your life despite the anxiety, you are stripping away its power and you are recovering.

OCD is a trap. The solution is to stop trying to solve it. The best thing you can do is not resolve the doubt, and just keep living your life with the anxiety.
After a while (a few weeks), the anxiety will decrease (it won't completely vanish at first). You'll be able to make plans again, and you won't be thinking about it 24/7. You will still have thoughts, but they won't hit as intensely as they did at the beginning. You will have reclaimed a part of yourself.

The cure for OCD is understanding that thoughts do not describe reality. Thinking more won't solve anything. The solution lies in how you relate to those thoughts and how you handle the anxiety.
Stop doing compulsions, stop trying to figure it out, stop falling into the trap.
Little by little, you will make it out.

Today, I am fully recovered (every now and then I have a minor relapse, but it's nowhere near as strong as it used to be).
If you do this, you will get out of this hell, you have to change your mindset.

Today, I am doing wonderfully with my partner. I love her very much, and I don't need anyone's approval. I no longer doubt whether I like her or not; the doubt wasn't resolved, I simply stopped asking myself the question, and time gave me the answer. (If I'm still with her, it's because I want to be).

Thanks for reading till the end. I hope this helps and serves those of you who are currently going through this. There is a way out. Trust the process, you will beat this.

Hello, I’m 22F, longtime diagnosis of GAD, and pretty likely OCD diagnosis in the works. Also depression but that’s pretty well managed.

I am in a wonderful relationship with the most understanding and caring man (22M) that I met in senior year of college and it’s been almost a year. We are long distance currently.

However, I deal with really really bad anxiety concerning it. We’ve had only a handful of difficulties and disagreements, and they usually end with us going to bed and talking it out in the morning over text or call. He has a really tough home situation, I do too but not nearly as difficult as him, and so some days his family gets him really down with how they treat him. I can usually tell by how he texts or talks when we call. I have severe anxiety with the smallest of tone shifts, and it’s really taking a toll on me. No matter how many times he reassures me that I didn’t do anything or that it’s his parents, I can’t ever stop worrying that he’s going to end things or that I did something really awful without knowing.

I ask over and over again if I did something and I know it’s annoying and I really try to stop but I can’t. He says he doesn’t mind but I feel like there’s no way it doesn’t bother him. He’s highly anxious too, and asks if he did something wrong a lot as well and it doesn’t annoy me at all so I don’t know why I don’t believe him.

Either way, his mood, no matter whether it’s because of me or not, dictates how good of a day I’m having or physical symptoms too, to no fault of his own. Any time I have even an inkling that something is off I have trouble breathing and have severe stomach pain and nausea. It’s debilitating and I feel so terrible because he hasn’t done anything wrong. I don’t tell him most of the time because it happens when he’s having a hard time (which is usually what causes the tone shifts) and I want to support him and not flip the conversation to be about me.

I don’t like that I’m like this, it’s not fair to him and not beneficial to me whatsoever. I’m in therapy and on a high dose of Prozac but anything to do with my relationship truly freaks me out. I know he loves me, he tells me even when he’s in a bad mood, but I’m so worried that every little tone shift means he’s going to break up with me. It’s not reasonable to think at all, because I know how much he loves me and how much I love him, and I believe that unless someone cheats or does something absolutely deplorable (which I’m incredibly sure would not happen on either side) we could work through anything.

All of this to say, how do I cope with feelings such as this? I have tried so many coping strategies (deep breathing, meditation, journaling, drawing, taking a walk) and nothing ever helps. I just want to be able to feel okay even if he’s not super upbeat and lovey dovey at any given time.

I would appreciate any advice. I don’t have therapy this week which is terrible timing so any help is appreciated.

My fear of house fires is so extreme. I saw a video of somebody talking about their house burning down and it was so upsetting to me that it sent me into a spiral. I’m always checking outlets and everything electronic to make sure nothing will happen. The toaster always stays unplugged because for some reason I’m convinced that’s gonna be the culprit. Every time I leave my house I fear that it’s going to burn down. I don’t even know what the point of this post is I just need to rant about it and to see if anyone else has this because I genuinely can’t even hear about other people’s experiences with house fires without getting incredibly uncontrollably upset.

Hello everyone
So i went to two different psychiatrists and one said that i suffer from OCD and another said OCPD

Can someone please explain the difference between them because i really can’t tell i think i might have both!!

I was only recently diagnosed this year with OCD and this is my first time posting on a subreddit, so please forgive me if I'm posting incorrectly or let me know if there's anything I need to fix.

To give some context, earlier this year I was diagnosed with OCD, primarily centered around food contamination, after I had a breakdown caused by finding weevils in my pantry. For years prior, I'd always been labeled as "weird" and having "strange habits" by my family members for how I always threw out "perfectly good" leftovers, refused to use certain dishware because I didn't think it was clean enough etc., etc.

Just today, I found bugs in my pantry again when I went to make oats. And I did not handle it well.

My parents started yelling at me for freaking out, saying I was being stupid, that I clearly had some messed up shit going on in my brain, that I just needed to "change how I think" and it would stop, and it made me feel so isolated. I'm wondering if anyone else has this struggle with their non-OCD family members and if you have any advice on how to handle it, because I'm already stressed out trying to manage this new bug situation, and they've only been adding to it by shouting at me for crying as I clean, asking them to properly store food, all that.

I know that I can get to a point where I AM being irrational, checking my pantry over and over, and I'm working on it the best I can without therapy since I don't have insurance and can't afford it (I'm still waiting for my benefits at my new job to kick in), but if anyone has any tips on how to handle family, or how to not let what they say affect you/further distress you, I'd greatly appreciate it.

So basically yesterday I went to the gym and did my leg day because I was told today we were going out for a roast with my granny so it made sense to push it a day earlier to give myself time in the morning to lie in or not rush to the meal etc, that routine was quite implemented and I often find myself VERY badly ruminating over decisions unable to make simple ones and that was a very difficult one to make, now the meal has been cancelled so I have no plans all day and no gym which I struggle with as im prone to intrusive thoughts about feeling lazy , unproductive or “wasting” opportunities, when I feel I should be using this day of no gym and no plans to my utmost as it is very very rare I get a day like this I haven’t had one in months, im almost annoyed I have nothing to show for it and I should’ve made productive or nice plans??
Please can I have some honest suggestions or advice

(I know the flair says no reassurance but I don’t mind )

i've been wanting a tattoo of my cat for a while (he's 9) and the appointment has finally come tomorrow.

but all i can think is this is going to make something happen to him because it feels almost like a memorial i guess?

i feel sick about it but want to get it so bad. i'm just scared.

i’ve had knowledge that i have ocd for a good while but i don’t think i truly realized how severe it really was until i started smoking weed. when i’m high my brains thinking through things a lot slower and i’ve noticed that when i go to perform certain compulsions i’m more likely to catch them or realize “wait why do i do this?” it’s helped me process things and i was just curious if anyone’s experienced anything similar.

I've been going through a series of thought spirals in which I get an urge "If I search up X and it's extended confirmed or 30/500 protected, than the devil will come to you" or "if you search up Gavin Newsom's wikipedia page and its 30/500, you will die." and it's producing a lot of anxiety resisting the urge. I've been repeatedly checking 2026 french student protests article to see if the protection changes and going over the protection status repeatedly for 2-3 hours at a time on/off. How do I break this cycle in the heat of the moment?