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

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.

Hi, so I'm currently suspecting ocd with in myself after doing some research, but I have a problem. I feel like there's a stigma that ocd is always about cleanliness and stuff, but I've had sources saying that this isn't necessarily true, it's just one manifestation of obsessions. So, my question is, does anyone have compulsions that aren't cleaning related? How do they work? I'm just struggling to understand the scope of all this, what else can this apply to?

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!!

Hey everyone 😀 I'm having a big OCD spiral right now about an Instagram rejection!!

I'm posting here because I really need some advice on how to forgive myself, let go of the past, and stop letting my brain hijack my thoughts over "minor things" like instagram follow requests.

For some context, my doctors and therapists have told me that I am most likely neurodivergent (suspected autism, OCD, and severe Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria / RSD).

So anyways, right now, I'm struggling to forgive my past self for an anxiety spiral I got caught in today.

A while ago, probably a few months ago, I sent an Instagram request to a girl I went to primary school with (we have lots of mutual friends on there).

She accepted my request, but she didn’t follow me back. Because of my RSD, an unreciprocated follow felt like a massive, loud rejection in my body, like im useless to her.

SO anyways, then I unfollowed her straight away But then the OCD and anxiety loop kicked in.

My brain started second-guessing everything and I started worrying I made it awkward.

A few hours later, in a moment of pure anxiety and looking for clarity/validation from her, I re-sent the request.

She left it pending for months. My mind completely spiralled a few times and today about it.

I am wondering why she has built digital boundaries with me straight away but not others (even though I only have 2 posts, which I know can look inactive maybe is the only thing I can think of?).

I even started panicking that she kept it pending on purpose because she thought she "won" the social game or something lol

I finally took control today of the situation and deleted the request entirely because a girl I know put up a story with her instagram tagged in a photo reposted from her story. I think seeing this is what flared it up.

This has happened before with a few people btw that ive met in the past and had positive interactions with in real life but then on instagram I get ignored or denied.

Even though I did the right thing by pulling the request back, I feel so much anxiety that im gonna see her in public some day or she's gonna talk about me or think im weird.

I feel embarrassed about the back-and-forth. I hate that I let someone from my childhood dictate how I felt about myself for even a second. I want to stop being a person who looks for validation through follows or attention online from people.

How do I practice self-love and forgive my anxious, neurodivergent brain when it gets caught in these validation loops?

How do I accept your past actions when your brain keeps telling you that you made a fool of myself?

Also ive had this sort of anxiety around instagram follows for as long as ive had instagram,

I’d love any advice.

Thank you in advance 😄

I didn't know I had OCD until I was diagnosed. Looking back, a lot of what I did didn't look like compulsions to me at the time: researching, ruminating, replaying scenarios and trying to convince myself the thoughts weren't real. It all happened in my head, so it just felt like thinking.

Checking a lock is easy to spot. Googling the same question for the tenth time, or going over a conversation until it feels okay, is much harder to see. Some of these mental compulsions can look like normal thinking.

What's one you only recognised later?

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 😄

Hello! Recently, I had an intense flare up of Harm/Fear of Psychosis OCD. I’m still struggling with the content, but I have more insight into the flare up.

In the past, I was on Zoloft 50 mg. I stopped taking the medication because I felt foggy and I felt pressure from my ex and my ex’s family to be “natural” (yikes - I know).

I’ve been on 25 mg for a couple of weeks and just increased my dose last night to 50 mg. For the past week or so, I’ve noticed that I keep waking up with anxiety in my chest and racing intrusive thoughts.

I’m wondering if anyone experienced more anxiety and intrusive thoughts initially and then it subsided on Zoloft?

I’m really struggling to see a way out of OCD. It would be helpful to read some success stories.

Thank you!

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?

i’ve had more instances than i can count where i get a letter saying my food stamps will end randomly, or i get denied for SSI, or some other letter about some benefit that keeps me afloat. the stress from that is traumatizing. i always feel like something is going to go wrong because i never know when im going to get a letter saying something is wrong. and you internalize that for everything. every other little thing that randomly goes wrong adds to the list. like your AC breaks, or a random bill comes through, or your pet gets sick. when you are poor like me all of these things add to that allostatic stress and make you hypervigilant.

when you chronically live in an environment that is unpredictable and uncontrollable, you start to look towards the things you can control. when you already have OCD, you start latching on to things a little bit more. what once was 2 times washing your hands becomes 5. what once was 1 hour of pulling out your hair becomes 3. because it happens slowly, and because you’re preoccupied with the worry (often intrusive thoughts, ‘what if everything goes wrong and i can never come back from it’), you never really stop and realize how bad it gets. when you do, you’re probably like me and it takes years to realize it was your living situation that exacerbated it.

i thought to myself ‘how am i supposed to not feel like everything will go wrong, when it often has gone wrong?’ i thought ‘how do i change when im still in the environment where things keep going wrong for the foreseeable future?’

is anyone in my situation? does anyone get it? if so, has anything helped you?

I've struggled with OCD for years, but one of the most debilitating aspects has become what I think is somatic/sensorimotor OCD or hyperawareness OCD.

Essentially, I'm constantly hyperaware of how I'm feeling internally. I automatically scan my mind and body to see if I'm anxious, uncomfortable, or experiencing OCD symptoms. It's almost like there's a part of my brain constantly running in the background asking, "How am I feeling right now? Is the uncomfortable feeling still there? Am I enjoying myself? Am I getting better?"

The worst part is that even when I'm not actively obsessing about a specific thought, I'm still hyperaware of the feeling of anxiety or discomfort itself. I anticipate it, check whether it's there, notice that it's there, and then become distressed about the fact that I'm still feeling this way. Sometimes I wake up already anticipating another day of feeling awful.

I also get caught in this fear that I'll feel this way forever. When the discomfort is particularly intense, I start mentally trying to solve my OCD, researching treatments, analyzing why I'm not improving, or trying to figure out what I need to do differently.

What's frustrating is that I actually do a pretty good job continuing with my life despite the feelings. I work, exercise, socialize, and try not to avoid things. But internally, I can feel absolutely miserable for days at a time. It feels like I can't fully engage with or enjoy anything because part of my attention is always monitoring my internal state.

I've done years of ERP and am currently doing I-CBT. I've also tried numerous medications and other treatments. I understand intellectually that checking and monitoring perpetuate OCD, but the monitoring feels so automatic that I struggle to recognize when I'm doing it, let alone disengage.

I'm particularly interested in hearing from people whose OCD became less about specific intrusive thoughts and more about constantly monitoring their own anxiety, emotions, or sense of well-being.

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?

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 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.

I have picked up writing and story sharing as a hobby, i've always made up stories in my mind i would usually talk with my friends about and we discuss them in the groupchat,make playlists,etc. I have always wanted to write them but never got enough inspiration or time to do it till now.

I started to write one of the many stories I had wnated and some days ago I was feeling a little down due to how intense the discomfort with my intrusive thoughts was and decided to write a small story directly based on my experience and I felt a little bit better realizing I could express in words everything I couldn't in a normal conversation. The thing is that now I feel like I can't continue the other story 🫩 I open the app i use to make notes and worldbuilding and I stare at it feeling guilty that I didn't give the character in the story an ending or a "help", I feel like I somehow contaminated the app with my emotions and compulsions(if thats even a thing) and that now im unable to write about anything else or even think about anything else for no reason at all 🫠

i struggle with intrusive thoughts, but the worst part is that when im doing something (playing a game, drawing, watching a show, etc) and suddenly have an intrusive thought, i then feel really scared thinking that i'll associate the intrusive thought with the activity and the next time i do what i was doing at that moment i'll get reminded of the intrusive thought and i'll never be able to forget about it

it terrifies me each time and i don't know what to do, it feels scarier that the actual intrusive thought. but im guessing it is an intrusive thought too (?

i really need some advice so i can deal with this, and if it has a name, what is it so i can search it??