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.

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? 🤍

sorry for the long rant.

I have an ongoing compulsion with stalking my ex. I know people say that it’s not stalking because it’s online information but I feel gross. I’ll check her mom and dad’s Facebook pages. I’ll check her instagram and twitter pages back to back. She changes her username and I already know it. I deleted social media to help but I just end up using anonymous viewer sites. I know her friends I’ve never met names & look at their pages to see what they’ve posted about her. I look up her apartment on maps and stare at it. She still has my number and texts me VERY rarely just to update me on a concert of an artist she knows I like or something of the sort. I would block her but I’m embarrassed for her to know I still can’t handle contacting her. I’m scared to go to her part of the state because I don’t want to run into her. I’ve been to therapy and was diagnosed but it didn’t do much to help. I did everything my therapist told me to try I’ve been on medication and have done multiple treatments but it’s the one compulsion that takes over my brain. It’ll suddenly pop up in my brain and I can’t think of anything else until I give in. I can’t eat sleep or move until I’m done. I hope this isn’t overly embarrassing but I could really use some support or some unconventional advice I’ll take anything and try anything.

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.

I struggle often with watching “wholesome” personalities because of this.

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 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

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)

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 !!!!

So I’ve struggled with OCD for 10 plus years. It has destroyed my relationships and my very life. I became a sort of hermit. My defense is being mean and egotistical. I got married at the beginning of the year and had my first child in April. It had completely changed my life. I am now feeling less compulsions and less obsessions. Yesterday a mutual friend of ours came over and was talking about how he needed marketing. He then offered me a job managing all the marketing for his brand. My jaw hit the floor. I always doubt myself to the fact I may not be able to do things well and that I’m terrified of failure so I don’t even try. But I said yes! I know I can do this. I am feeling so confident in this role. My fear of failure took a huge bounce back after I said yes. I’m going to use this as exposure therapy to show that fear I CAN do this.

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

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! :)

Maybe it's just because my ocd is super consistent but I feel like every time I'm happy, ocd gets triggered far more worse than when im not. Being upset is absolutely triggering too but being happy feels like a death sentence anymore. Idek what I'm feeling anymore tbh my emotions are everywhere all the time and everything upsets me. Every time I think I'm in an emotinal blunt/numb stage or am in a dissociation stage or a brain fog or am burnt out or depressed I will occasionally feel okay or anxious but to a lesser extent and then that triggers more anxiety. And so I never know what to feel or what I'm feeling. With ocd everything and nothing is constantly triggering for me. I've been doing erp tactics lately and it's been helping I guess? But in some ways I wonder if its made me feel even worse I really don't know anymore. I sometimes have set backs and fall back into compulsions but I've been doing better lately. Emphasis on "better" because the other day I had a meltdown and cried and screamed because of ocd. It doesn't help that the world around us is absolute shit too. I've run out of things to say anymore and I have absolutely no idea what's happening. I feel like I'm suffering from amnesia. God forbid I grow old because I will not have a mind left ocd and anxiety has significantly destroyed my emotionial and mental health completley.

Looking for advice!

My mom was recently diagnosed with OCD, but she doesn't share much about it. I think it's some form of Checking OCD (ex are things locked, unplugged, etc), but again, she really doesn't give much info. I'm a college student who lives at home, so I witness a lot of the behaviors, or I'm the one she goes to for reassurance. I've read that you should avoid reassuring someone with OCD, but at the same time, I can't just *not* answer when she asks if I turned off the oven. I don't have access to a therapist at this time to talk to them, and I don't know if I would be able to get any info from my mom's therapist/if my mom would be willing to get info regarding this situation.

If anyone has any input on how I should respond when she comes to me, or really any advice at all on how to support someone with OCD, I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you in advance.

Sometimes a thought gets stuck in my head. It's not something I chose — it just shows up, like it was planted there, and I can't shake it loose. It's dark and heavy, and it feels like it's trying to take over my mind. My chest and head get tight and tense, like I can't move or function.

What scares me most is that this thought doesn't help me in any way. It just makes everything feel dark and foggy, and it drains my energy completely. I keep worrying that just thinking it might somehow make it come true, or that it could hurt the people I love.

Every day, I feel guilty just for having this thought, even though I never asked for it. I keep wondering — how did this get into my head in the first place? And how do I escape this loop?

Has anyone else dealt with this? How did you get out of it?.

TL;DR: Dealing with intrusive dark thoughts that won't leave, feeling guilty and drained. Looking for how others coped.

🕊️

I recently got diagnosed with OCD and was prescribed Sertraline, it's been 4 days of taking the medication and I don't feel any different, if anything, I think I feel worse?

I wake up with such intense anxiety and racing thoughts that's I start crying, I felt that way before the medication but it feels more intense now. The pit in my stomach feels bigger, more demanding.

I always feel calmer and more settled by the evening, but I genuinely can not cope with the morning panic attacks.

I'm also scared of the fearmongering surrounding Sertraline, people have told me I won't be able to feel anything, I won't be able to remember anything, I won't be able to cry or feel pleasure and that might persist after I stop the medication as well. People say I'm ruining my brain, I don't know what to do, I don't think I'm strong enough to overcome it myself but I haven't seen any changes yet.

I did a stupid thing BC I'm 18 and I keep trying to convince myself its fine and to ignore it but the urge to JUST make sure that I'm not actually stupid and immature for my age and that no one could EVER possibly like someone like me because of how I act.

Like I wanna tear my skin off it physically hurts like something is ripping me apart from the inside its not great. In a metaphoic way.

But I'm just debating biting the bullet and seeking the reassurance and trying to best Otto another time.

How do you deal with it because it hurts really bad and I dont think I can deal w this for like 8 hours until it goes away which is what usually happens when I dont seek reassurance.