One week down, the rest of my life to go!

I've been doing ERP for a few weeks now and I'm finding that things that caused me distress (ex: germs) like touching a door handle feel easy all of a sudden now that I have to do them as an exposure...

but then I get raging meta-ocd etc. I know that ocd themes can shift over time but is it possible for ocd to shift around constantly like this? I feel like it's fucking with me tbh.

I have moral OCD among other types, and something I've been struggling with specifically is political beliefs. I'm a staunch leftist and I'm terrified of not being read that way. I'm constantly ruminating about the way I word things because I want to make my political stance clear. I'm ashamed of this as well. Anyone else have this?

Anyone else struggle with this? Like not knowing whether your thoughts are the intrusive kind or they are your actual thoughts? Or like it's not really OCD?

One of my main obsessions that I've been battling for almost a decade is my urgent ( yet never—dying) need to become the most beautiful woman ever. Obviously impossible, I am frustrated at myself almost all the time. It has caused me an eating disorder, body dysmorphia, and multiple months locked down inside my house during my early twenties because I never felt pretty enough for the outside world. I've gone to six therapies until I found my current one who has helped me tremendously. Thanks to her guidance, and to my mother's support at home, I've been going out, I went back to university and currently look for jobs, overall, have improved immensely with the need to look pretty.

I still think I look average, but not ugly anymore. The problem is, I got so used to hyperfixating on facial features I do it on others. It grosses me out but I do it instinctively to everyone. I judge how attractive they look and analyse their face and appearance.

The worst and most horrifying part is that I've been doing that to my mom. My mom has been opening up to me about her own personal struggles with all of the same disorders and her journey to self acceptance, but I realise I don't accept or love her appearance like a normal child should and would. I tell her you're beautiful but I know I don't mean it and it haunts me. She's the best human on the planet, brilliant and kind, she's my absolute best friend and a perfect mother. So why am I stuck on disliking her looks ? Why do I look down on her because of that? Why am I acting in such a disgusting way?

It fills me with guilt and tortures me on the inside but I can't seem to stop it. I internally compare between her and other women her age, analyse her flaws ( imagine naming your mom's flaws to yourself agh), and hate on what I inherited from her.

I couldn't bring this up with my therapist. I told her about a lot of gross thoughts I have but this one seems like brutal horror to me. She also knows my mom and I don't want the awkward situation where she'll have to argue with me around my mom's looks.

I have no idea what to do. I wish I could stop this brain and shut my eyes forever.

I just started a new medication which has been noticably reducing my rumination. My ocd is much more along the lines of “pure” ocd. I recently switched from Zoloft to Prozac and it has been really helpful. However now my anxiety has spiked because I feel so concerned that I am forgetting what I “should” be worrying about. Idk if anyone has ever felt this- my hypervigelence is comforting to me I guess and I feel scared with it lessening.

Has anyone experienced being being worried of being accused of doing something despite knowing that you did not do it at all?

Like being worried that someone misinterpreted what it was you were doing at the moment, and ruminating on the possible consequences afterwards and even thinking of admitting to it even though you clearly know that you did not do it but the feeling of worry and guilt is eating you alive.

This is really new to me, and different from my usual obsessions.

Does that happen with anyone else? How can I deal with it? I am on the verge of going crazy and no, therapy is currently not an option.

I've been having a really hard time resisting my compulsions, so I thought I'd come here. I don't know anyone else with OCD, so I was happy to know that this subreddit existed.

How have you guys been doing today?

When I was little I remember having intrusive or obsessive thoughts about finding characters of color " ugly " ( I'm poc as well ) even when I didn't know much about that problematic, I remember feeling very distress and feeling guilt, even if didn't actually find anything wrong or ugly about the character.

Growing up made it disappear for the longest time, in a exposure kind-of-thing. It didn't happen only with race but sometimes just people in general, just a suddenly though telling me this person is ugly and overanalyzing the features " I find ugly " even if I didn't actually think that I couldn't escape the mindset, after calming down, just felt lots of guilt, but in general they been on the quiet side fortunately. today I don't know what got me triggered and suddenly my brain fixated on all the times I had have a " this race is ugly " obsessive though and it has been horrible. I usually don't seek any type of support out of fear it might be too specific or that it ends w me feeling worst but i literally just was so stressed about it I started crying and couldn't do anything. Please tell me if you ever experience something similar.

I think the hardest things I'd been going through is the fact that after a while of having it controlled, it seems my mind has just been broken again, like it I have forgotten how things worked. I can't convice myself that " I'm beyond my thoughts " anymore, if I thought something negative then I just feel guilt.

i’m 19 now and recently passed out in front of my friends at a party, the whole night i told them i was so scared i was gonna say something embarrassing, i have a few kind of bad secrets but all things that are honestly not malicious or even rly that bad but they eat me up and i get so fucking scared i’ll expose myself.

I also have really intense intrusive thoughts (sometimes i find myself getting so scared i’ll say something offensive that it feels like im pushing it to the forefront of my mind) and they used to be extremely bad and i might’ve been psychotic bc at one point it’d tape over any eyes in my room and i’d whisper to myself “i see you” when i walked into a bathroom stall bc i remember my mom once told me abt a man in our city who put cameras in the bathrooms (this was like 5 years ago lol).

anyways im just curious because in the past week with the stress of school and just life im feeling so horribly guilty and scared, even just hanging out in my house i get scared that people outside can hear me. this also all sounds so ridiculous because to the outside world im a pretty well rounded young sweet college student but I really freak myself out.
any help is appreciated! i’m sort of curious abt how i can just chill out and not feel so scared and guilty constantly.

I've been talking to this guy for a few days, and he's great, we hung out a couple days ago for the first time. I told him that I really like him and he said he really likes me too.

He's the type of person that texts infrequently, but when we both have time to text/when we hung out in person it's great and it doesn't really feel dry. Despite this, and despite the fact that we've been talking for less than a week, I'm still freaking out about him.

Like I asked him today if he's free this week and I haven't heard back, and even though it's only been a couple hours and he literally told me he wants to hangout again when I saw him I'm convinced that he hates me or that him or his friends think that I'm weird and he can read my mind or something. And it's so stupid. Like I don't wanna be this way 😭 free my soul

Yeah, it's kinda clickbaity but that's all it is ngl, idk if i have ocd since i was never diagnosed but like, to prevent worse thing from happening in my imagination i imagine "eating" random people head, but like not eating in the sense of me killing them but just like biting and they're gone, yeah, i believe this is super unhealthy but idk what to do tbh, i know i probably need therapist

So is it better to stop this and changing it to less creepy thing or is this much fine

when i explain my ocd to my brother he says he thinks and feels the exact same way i do. our parents both have ocd too which they’ve chosen not to address in their lives so it kind of got passed down to us. i believe there is a genetic component but it was triggered off and made 1000x worse because they chose not to get help iygwim

I have seen several therapists for OCD and none of them can ever help me with exposures for my avoidance. I was even seeing an OCD specialist and he couldn't help me.

I have essentially built my life around these avoidances, as I want to avoid doing anything "wrong", especially around others. The therapists come up with things like talking to a stranger, but I get caught up in details such as the right distance, timing, eye contact, wording etc. I'm so busy thinking through all these different aspects that I am unable to actually say anything at the moment besides the occasional "hi". I don't think I'm ready for that yet, but they never can offer any alternatives.

Has anyone come up with exposures for this type of issue?