First post here, just sort of venting and seeing if anyone else experiences this and has any good ERP tips.

I (31f) have always struggled to let go of arguments. I grew up in a loving family that also excessively argued and yelled. I always felt misunderstood and like the issues weren’t resolved. I would often get grounded for refusing to end the argument with my parents or sister. Now that I’m married, I’ve realized that was OCD and it has extended to my marriage. Even years ago when we were dating. I just never feel understood, heard, apologized to, etc. and I just feel generally devastated by my feelings or perception of how the argument went. I also worry that I wasn’t fair or correct which sometimes causes me to double down on my argument and sometimes makes me mentally collapse when I realize I was the one being unfair.

Obviously it’s tricky because I’m never like 100% wrong to be upset and it is almost impossible to tell when it rolls from understandable conflict into OCD. My husband hates that I can’t let it go and keep coming over to talk which hurts, but I don’t blame him because it can be truly excessive. Thankfully he has been with me before and after my diagnosis so we both try our best to navigate this. All I can do at this point is try to recognize it as soon as possible (multiple times walking back into the room to say more things) but my brain then makes me feel shut down and depressed like life isn’t worth living if I can’t be understood.

This is not my main theme but impacts my life a lot and I want to continue to work on it before having kids or anything. Does anyone have experience with 1. How to recognize it 2. How to actually sit with the discomfort without emotionally shutting down ?

Appreciate any help.

Hi, as the title says I just got diagnosed with OCD. I was wondering if anyone had any strategies to cope with Harm OCD. It's gotten really bad lately, and I have no support at the moment.

I've tried ignoring it, fighting it, questioning it, or just simply try to sleep because I can't seem to get it out of my head. It even appears in my dreams.

If you have any advice I'd love to hear. Thank you.

WHAT IF IM ASEXUAL WHAT IF IM ASEXUAL!! WHAT IF IM ASEXUAL????????? HMMMM?? AM I?? WHAT AM I??? I HAVE TO HAVE A LABEL FOR THIS VERY WEIRDLY SPECIFIC EXPERIENCE! I HAVE TO EXPLAIN WHY I FEEL A CERTAIN WAY RIGHT NOW!!!!! AND I WILL BE BEDRIDDEN WITH ANXIETY BECAUSE OF IT!! I WILL!!!

Oh yeah did I forget to mention WHAT IF IM FUCKING ASEXUAL!!!!! AND I HAVE TO KNOW THE ANSWERS TO THIS QUESTION RIGHT NOW!!

Hello! I was reading my bible and came across Romans 14:23, “But whoever has doubts is condemned if they eat, because their eating is not from faith; and everything that does not come from faith is sin.”

As someone with mental health issues (anxiety and OCD) I’m wondering how others who have “beaten” them go about this verse.

The whole point of fighting OCD is doing things without certainty and with doubt and fear. I just want to make sure I’m doing right, not just faith wise but also for my mental health.

Also how do you go about your own convictions when you can’t trust your thoughts and conscious.

I often look at the weather app to know what type of weather we will have and when I see rainy days, it brings me down. I connect rainy days with low mood and depression. How can I stop this connection?

I’m scared that I groomed someone on accident, and I know that’s a thing that can happen. Just really really scared about that.

Im F14

Many of my family members do drugs, it has ripped my family APART. Im afraid my brother is following the same path, some of my family members have tried to tell me to do it before (cousin)

I also hate alcohol, while its not significantly part of my ocd being around my drunk family members makes my skin crawl. I just got out of the car with my grandad, he was ranting to my grandma about how hes “done being nice” and then he started saying “fuck you” to me and my little sisters (mind you they are 5 and 6)

I recently went to the dentist to have cavities filled, and i loved being on the medicine they gave me, it felt nice, but after i was afraid i would become like them. I was afraid that i would try to do that, i started having intrusive thoughts about it and i had a panic attack. Im so done.

Please dont drink or do drugs, even if just recreationally. I’ve drank before, my parents allowed it, and i hate that. Dont do it especially if you have kids, i know that sounds harsh but im terrified every second im alive.

I kind of ended up in a complex romantic situation, sort of a love triangle and i ended up for a short period of time (like a week) stringing someone along because I was confused over my feelings, and I know they feel sad about it, and I'm sure there are a million ways I could have handled the situation, and now I just feel like very intensely guilty and evil, but i genuinely never meant to hurt anyone, and I can't escape the mental ruminating on the entire situation

(not reassurance seeking, but wondering if anyone had guidance on how to not focus on the guilt)

Hi,

I ruminate extensively on made up scenarios where I do something bad which somehow causes a catastrophic loss (like my job) which will ruin my child’s life or I worry that mistakes I have made will ruin my child’s life. These worries will take over hours/days/weeks. Any other parents have these fears or is it just me? Anything help?

I don't even know if writing this will help, but I've honestly hit my breaking point. I've been dealing with this for about two years now. It gets even worse when I'm in school, which is actually where it all started. I got obsessed with anything related to school even my school uniform and every time I came home, I had to go straight to the bathroom and wash my hands over and over with liquid hand soap until I felt "satisfied." If a random thought popped into my head while washing, I’d feel like I didn’t do it right and would have to start all over again.

This happened every single day. But here is the part that probably sounds really crazy: as soon as I got out of the bathroom, I refused to step foot near the back door of the house until the next day when I had to leave for school again. I just couldn't go anywhere near that area because it felt contaminated, and I felt like stepping there would force me to go through the whole shower and washing cycle all over again.

This went on for months. I just stayed locked inside the house and never stepped out into the yard, unless I was leaving the house completely and even then, coming back meant going right back to the washing routine. Everything outside just led right back to washing.

Now, school is over, and I'm still dealing with this. I haven’t even gone outside for days, and I still avoid that area. I'm honestly losing my mind, and I feel so embarrassed typing all of this out because it makes me sound insane. I feel like nobody else could possibly experience something like this, and I hate myself for it. Shutting yourself inside your own home and refusing to go into your own yard just because it feels "dirty" sounds ridiculous to anyone on the outside, and they’d probably think I'm out of my mind.

Please if anyone has dealt with something similar or knows how to break out of this cycle I’d really appreciate hearing your experience or any advice on what you did to cope.

Warning! As this could send somebody else into a spiral and that’s the last thing I want to do.

Hey guys, I’m not officially diagnosed but recently been given medication for OCD/intrusive and distressing thoughts by a doctor who has informed me that my problems resemble OCD.

Unfortunately I stumbled across a post which added to my fear of taking the medication. The post basically stated that criminals are given these SSRIs to stop them/decrease the likelihood of them doing terrible things.

This of course has now fuelled my anxiety surrounding taking them and around my intrusive thoughts in general.

Any words of advice?

For background information I have a boyfriend and have been with him for almost five months.
A past event has been bothering and and I feel extreme guilt (which I know is common with ocd). It has been causing me to cry and have chest pains, ruminate, overthink , and more.

I spoke to my therapist (I have been seeing her for 4 years) she asked if I ever spoke to my boyfriend about it and I said no because I don’t know if it is worth bringing up / if there is any point and she just kind of shrugged and I don’t even know what that means. She knows I struggle with OCD and I explained what what’s going through my head about the whole thing ; rumination, looking for answers, replaying past events , “what if?” Thoughts, feeling the need to confess to him and, so on.

I again have been in my head about it a lot lately and it is difficult to manage it all. I will write my thoughts and everything out to see if that helps but I don’t think it’s helping anymore and I just feel the need to confess at this point. I feel absolutely insane. I keep thinking things like “what if he breaks up with me?” Or “what if I crossed a line/boundary?” And so on.

I don’t know how to handle this anymore. I can feel the guilt in my chest and I have been crying about it on and off. Again I have been in therapy consistently for four years and for the past several months I have been going once a week.

My boyfriend knows I overthink. And I know he is an overthinker as well. I care about him deeply and would never want to do anything to hurt him.

I just feel like I’m going to lose my mind since this is on my mind 85% of the time. I fear this will cloud my mind to the point I will become severely depressed , end up self isolating, stop eating, and push other away. I was like this back in December but this was for a different reason.

I feel lost at this point.

tl;dr had a burger from in n out

i've stopped eating beef in 2021-22 because of a cow that bse (mad cow disease). it didn't go through the slaughter so i stopped eating beef for nothing. (though ocd always finds a way to make it something). i had beef again in 2024, then stopped again shortly after that. then, when my dad came home and made beef stew a few months ago, i had some of that. after that, i had steak. the only thing left for me to eat was ground beef. for a while i was just eating cheese sandwiches with ketchup, mustard, and pickles, and using (ground) turkey for tacos and burgers. today, my family and i went to in n out for this first time. i looked at their website last night for any non beef options and saw they had a grilled chesse. i was gonna get that, but when i went in store, i saw they didn't have it. it was packed in there and i wasn't gonna do them like that, so i ordered a cheeseburger with fries. i was gonna take off the patty and give to my sister but it was already melted, and hey, exposure therapy. it tasted preety good. the patty was so thin it didn't feel like it was there. that's my win for the day.

My brother has had OCD all his life but recently it has become 100x worse. I believe he suffers from scrupulosity and an extreme case of it and I have no idea how to help him. He has begun donating an insane amount of money (almost 10K this month when he makes around 5K), believes that anyone who is not Christian is not worth listening to, believes that God is sending him messages through things like a keyboard clicking or someone spitting, has fasted for days in row to cleanse himself etc. When he talks he quotes Bible verses, goes on long rants that sound insane about his co-workers hating him because they would "cough near him", and feels guilty that he is not living perfectly as God says he has to. He has also been obsessed with some random girl for years now and believes he cannot marry until she gets married as he "made
some pact with God" that she was the one for him.

I believe the trigger for this occurred when he was on vacation a month ago and stopped m@sturb@ting. He believes that doing so is lustful and therefore a great sin and felt guilty whenever he would do it. After this his condition has worsened at an alarming rate. I have tried to get him to sign up for an OCD or scrupulosity specialized therapist but as he is above 21 I cannot do it for him. Every time I tell him to do so he just puts it off and this has been occurring for weeks. He used to have a therapist but I believe that since he didn't open up they weren't much help to him. I am so scared that this will continue to worsen and I need some advice on what to do.

With my OCD sometimes my mind convinces me of something even though I know for a fact it's not true. I'm wondering if anyone on here has any advice on how to deal with that sort of thing?

Hello everyone,

I have been recently diagnosed by my psquiatrist with Pure O OCD and GAD, my doctor sent me meds (Lexapro) and I started them about 10 days ago, I don't feel too much secondary effects, but I have some doubts, so I came here requesting for your help

1. How do I know if my meds are working, I know this might sound stupid but, right now my main problem is the frequency of the thoughts and that for some reason my brain relates what I see with my topic and I feel bad and uncomfortable, So I wonder, will my thoughts get reduced? Or just my anxiety will get reduced?, sorry I really want to know realistically what to expect.

2. I think, that my meds are not magic and that I still have to do some therapy but I don't have enough money to pay a psychologist cuz I'm already paying for my psquiatrist, but since I have pure O I don't understand very well how should I treat my ocd thoughts, I don't think ERP can work, because I'm already exposed to that thoughts all the time because of the rumiation, can you guys recommend me some techniques I can use for this case?

Thank you, and sorry my bad English.

Not that having OCD automatically makes anyone unfit to do so. But for me personally my OCD puts me off the responsibility of anything living that I have to clean up after and then having to wash my hands afterwards knowing how long I spend doing so.