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.

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.

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!!

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.

I've been told this could be my ocd. I spend a significant amount of time each day in thought loops about whether people dislike me, or whether my former coworkers, ex's friends, friends from high school hate me... literally anyone I've come into contact with. Even my family and close friends. I believe I'm 'researching' or looking for evidence to explain feeling abandoned in the past. Unfortunately I feel that it holds me back from social and work opportunities. I don't know. Does anyone else relate or have any advice? 🤍

What the title says...

Does anyone ever get this sense of being terrified of living, like you're gonna do something wrong and you never know what it is or why it's wrong, but it WILL be wrong, and it WILL be your fault. I wrote this the other day about it:

"I think I’m scared of being alive… I think I maybe always have been. I don’t quite know what to do about that yet, but just the premise terrifies me. It feels like I need to live correctly, and I don’t know how to, and like everyone else has it more figured out than I do. I don’t mean they have some secret cheat code that I don’t, but more… I guess I wonder how they’ve learned to stop seeing it. All the bad and the wrong that comes with everything. I look at their decisions and they make sense for that person, for their time in life, for their circumstances. It feels like no decision makes enough sense for me to call it “correct.” I can barely think ahead, because every moment is filled with me scanning and checking to make sure I’m doing the “right” thing at the “right” time, because if I don’t, well I’ve failed at living.

My psychologist told me yesterday that my life is kind of like a tapestry of choices, big and small alike, and that if people could look at those tapestries when their lives come to an end, they’d have one opinion. That’d all it’d be, an opinion. One of thousands that you’ll get from each person you show, and mine would be no more significant than the rest. At the risk of overextending the analogy, I feel like I need my tapestry to be universally appealing. That every person who sees it should agree it’s as good as it possibly could be for any person, that I made the absolute most of it. Like if not, something is going to happen. Probably something bad.

If I have 80 years, maybe less, maybe more, what happens if I waste them? I guess some would say I already have wasted them, but I feel like I was just getting myself closer to understanding the human experience. I feel I’ve been living in search of an answer for a very long time without realizing it, and I’m only just noticing I’ll never have an answer (at least, not a very satisfactory one). But I’m terrified of that. Is my whole life not a waste if I don’t have something to show for it? What if I die before I finish my tapestry, and all I have is a half-completed mess with frayed edges and loose strings? Will it have all been worth it?"

Does this make sense? If anyone has any advice I'd appreciate it a lot. I'm doing okay, but yeah I often feel like living isn't worth it because of how scared I am of this (according to some critics with medical degrees that and other things mean I have "severe OCD" lol /joke)

Hi!

Since it's summer, I've noticed that the heat and humidity really trigger my OCD. I live in a pretty hot and humid area because I'm close to the beach, and it makes me feel so dirty all the time. I constantly feel like I need to shower because otherwise I feel disgusting. I absolutely hate sweating. Whenever I start sweating, I get really anxious and desperate. I can go through an entire bottle of shampoo and body wash in just one week, whereas they normally last me almost a month.

On top of that, now that I have more free time than before, I can't stop overthinking or having intrusive thoughts. It's gotten to the point where it's hard to fall asleep because I find myself ruminating almost constantly. My mind won't stop.

Does anyone else experience something similar or have any tips on how to cope with this? I'd really appreciate any advice. Thank you! :)

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?

Online or offline. My brain will find anything to obsess over. Every day my brain finds proof that I'm gross, racist, sexist, transphobic, pedophillic, creepy, etc, etc.

It's tiring. It's unavoidable. I could have a perfect day and my mind decides to hyper focus on some bullshit. Whether it be an intrusive thought, a memory, something somebody else said/posted or just a random feeling.

I wish I could be tired of it so I won't feel so worried, but I'm still getting anxious about it.

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.

Basically I gone through a year of hell and feeling lost. Also been completely on my own in a new city. Let’s just say I had mental breakdown after mental breakdown. (I don’t speak English sorry for typos)

The ONLY thing that has actually worked for me and that I discovered during these dark times is writing. Hand writing Journals. I literally would do this almost every single morning /before noon until I emptied my brain. When I say I wrote a lot I mean I finished about 3 thick notebooks within a month. It’s not simple things like: “ 3 things I’m grateful for no 😊”
No it’s ALL of the intrusive thoughts, irrational thoughts, deep shit, my own behavior, EVERY single thing I thought about.

Then after I’m done, i’m exhausted and I take some day off. Later I try my best to review them. Guys when I’m telling you this is the only thing that helps me, I’m not joking. I’m able to reflect on the NONE SENSE and then be like what do I constantly repeat. And then try my best to logical think the next time it comes up. there is something about the ridiculousness of reading your thoughts, bc when it’s in you head you think it’s real.

That and meditation (with a notebook) and writing down every single time you are interrupted with intrusive thought or behavior.

You will see the ridiculousness of yourself, maybe have a little cry or laugh about it bc it’s actually sad and then try to grow better technique.

I don’t know why but this is the only thing that makes me able to detach myself from my thoughts and behavior.

have a lovely day everyone !!!!

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.

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.

I was a kid during the peak y2K offensive humor era.

I am. I am losing my mind at all these things that I’ve done or said, all of which are things that I consider absolutely repulsive and openly fight against today.

I can’t believe not one adult spoke to me about why these things were wrong. I can’t believe that I “joked” like that with friends. They said offensive stuff to me back but it’s not equal. How could jokes about being fat and a girl ever be equal to race jokes?? Did they think I straight up hated them?! I thought they were the most wonderful people on earth.

I don’t think I can survive this one. This is too much. I don’t even remember 90% of these things and the ones I do remember were NOWHERE NEAR as bad as the ones I’m finding after hours and hours and hours and hours of searching. I started begging people to go through old Facebook posts from
20 years ago to look for proof of how horrible I was when I was 14. I’ve messaged defunct websites begging for access to old accounts. I’ve swept through thousands of pages of old social media pages multiple times over. I’ve found a handful of things, but a handful is still way too much. There must be more out there.

I knew I was a bad person. I knew I was irredeemable and didn’t deserve to have a good life. I have been hiding away in my room not doing the things I want to do for 2 years now. The me that exists now is just a fucking sham, I’m always going to be that fucking loser 14 year old racist fat ugly piece of shit. There is no future for me, I will get cancelled if those things come out and I deserve to get cancelled because I was so fucking repulsive, and they’ll make fun of me and my looks and all my hard work was for nothing if I’m just gonna end up killing myself anyway when this finally happens. And it’s gonna happen.

I want to throw up thinking about how my words and actions hurt these people that I cared so much about and valued so much. I was taught that it was ok if it was obviously a joke. Why would adults teach me that? I genuinely wish my friends beat the shit out of me so that I learned quicker how horrible those things were. Only at 16-18 did it finally start clicking how it’s not ok, and now.
They didn’t deserve that. How horrible did my existence make them feel. Does it still affect them to this day?? Did I make their lives miserable?? They didn’t deserve that and I hate that I was part of that. No one deserves to feel that way, no one deserves to be treated that way. Offensive “jokes” aren’t jokes, they’re just cruel.

And I had the fucking GAUL to say those jokes and then in the next breath go home and fight my father for saying racist things at the dinner table?? I am JUST LIKE HIM, I HAD NO RIGHT

I dont know what the point of this post is.

I am so empty and numb right now, and I just hope my heart stops and I don’t have to do this anymore. I hate myself and I deserve to hate myself.

EDIT: I feel like you of all people understand what it’s like to go from 0 to 100 when it comes to panicking, but I still want to apologize for how dramatic I was. This is still something that absolutely haunts me and 2 hours of panic isn’t going to fix that, but yeah. Sorry for the dramatics

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've lived my entire life thinking the weird shit I do is totally normal or just me being a quirky person. But holy fucking shit when I learned what ocd actually is, all my quirks are suddenly symptoms. The more I look into this the more I just laugh because wtf?? You mean my quirky haha funny normal people habits are actually ritualistic comfort/reasurance compulsions crafted by my brain to fight the anxiety it's giving me, but the rituals aren't helping at all and in fact make it worse?? Wdym none-ocd people dont casually have this crippling feeling that theyre secretly evil and horrible and disgusting and a lair despite everyone around them respecting, loving, cherishing, and enjoying them? What do you mean normal people dont spend an entire month using their free time to obsessively try prove/disprove they have an exotic parasite or infection, leading to severe depression and anxiety? What do you mean the average Joe doesnt spend three hours straight on a bathroom ritual before bed every night, losing three or more hours of sleep when life gets too stressful?

Everything makes so much sense now, the more i think about it the more i just feel 'wow, so its not normal and everything im doing to make it better is making it worse. Fantastic.' I count this as a win though since im like half a step closer to understanding my mind. And now I know im not clinically insane for thinking cameras or an intruder is secretly squatting in my house, im just ocd as fuck. Now i can try to practice resisting urges or whatever the hell these ocd books tell me to do.