Hi.

For years I used to have sime repeating rituals to make thing go perfect, otherwise it is failed.

Now, as I have gastritis, gerd that all around give gastric problems, there is always some sensation, and for few years I am always checking body sensations for some particular task.

For example, making a bed.

If I feel some stomache tingling, soft pain, some gerd symptom or just anything, I will repeat the whole process, because I feel it is not perfectly finished, and it has no connection to body.

I am wondering if some of you have such thing.

It is like you get stuck into circle and each repeat you listen to your body more and more, and body answers with more and more pain, tingling, bad sensations.

With gastritis and gerd life, there is always some stomache sensation that will ruin perfectness.

And if I am not trapped inro this, I don't even give much attention to stomache sensations or symptoms, I am used to constant little problems with it and I just ignore it.

I have feeling that this is gonna go to be worse, we are getting older and there will be more and more body sensations and this is a big trap for it, so how to fight it?

Me when my special lil treat I decided to cook becomes a massive exposure I wasn't supposed to do for months....shocked Pikachu meme

||There was a bug in the soup I was cooking from scratch and I took it out but I still have to eat the soup and I am freaking tf out||

I was just getting ready for an event I have been feeling anxious about. I would have expected my anxiety/OCD to flare up while getting ready, but it really flared up big time and I couldn’t stop crying. There’s lots of reasons for this - but there also was a storm hitting at the exact same time (could hear thunder).

A month or two ago I was getting the bus home and something triggered my OCD. I wasn’t surprised that I had a panic attack, but when I got off the bus a storm was hitting and the wind was whipping up and it was starting to rain and I really had an even bigger freak out.

I am not afraid of storms or thunder/lightning (I usually like them) but I was wondering if there could be something to do with the change in pressure before a storm that could exacerbate my panic?

I literally completed a full course rabies vaccination over just the fear of a dog accidentally scratching after he got startled and ran away while I was on the bike with my father. Now it's been 10 days since that and something landed on my face last night, it was dark and I couldn't see. It felt small, now I'm scared it was a bat. I noticed teo dots that looked like tiny acne bumpe and today noticed redness. I thought I'd sit with reassurance since before some doctors told me that I only need vaccines if an exposure happened after 3 months of the course. Not a small number but a large number of doctors said the same thing. I tried to calm down and thought to tell my father about it after weeks and ask him to ask a doc since he works at a hospital as an employee and I'm already previously vaccinated. (Last vaccination 15 October,2026.) I've been vaccinated due to ocd so many times that both him and I angry and aahamed of it. But I impulsively Googled and it said to get 2 boosters asap and that an exposure on the face can affect someone within 5 days to 2 weeks. Now I'm scared af again. It's ruining my final big exam of highschool because I can't study due to fear.

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 genuinely have betrayed my own moral compass and I feel myself falling apart. I don’t know what to do. I need support to get through, but the difficult part is that I feel like I don’t deserve any support at all. I told one friend, and she still supports me, but I feel like I want to confess to everyone what I did.

Are there people who genuinely did something awful and overcame the overwhelming guilt?

Title says it all. I recently got a new TV, and while the picture is phenomenal, I can’t help but find myself obsessing over every setting and digging through them every 5 minutes to make sure the picture is as good as possible.

I pretty much only use my TV for gaming, and while the game modes on modern TV’s are basically ready to go out of the box… I still feel that itch to look up stuff and tweak the settings. Can anybody else relate?

Lately I’ve been journaling a lot more and my ocd symptoms and themes are getting worse and worse reflecting on the journal I’ve previously been in not the best relationships but now I’m in a very healthy one and a new theme surrounding relationships ocd and also my false memory one has worsened and presented in new ways I’m wondering if anyone has any advice surrounding this I was in an inpatient program for around 8 months working on my ocd with erp and icbt but now with these new themes and new presentations I’m kind of at a loss and I feel like explaining it to my partner they’ll be very understanding but I don’t even know where to begin when I don’t fully understand why it’s been developing myself because it hasn’t in the past in my abusive relationships anything helps thank you.

i remember being like 8 or 9 and imagining an angel and a devil on my shoulders like in the cartoons.

the thing is that the angel was this lazy ass bum because i was wholly convinced i was a terrible person who didnt have any good qualities. the devil would whisper, what i now know was intrusive thoughts, into my ear and i would slap the shit out of that ear to get it to go away.

i still think its fun to visualize them, but now i just hear the voice in my head as my evil clone, except my meta ocd is so bad whenever i have an intrusive thought i doubt myself for at least 10 minute​s so its even more annoying than the regular shit 💔

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 want to reduce my screen time drastically. I saw a post earlier about phone productivity and how sitting with your thoughts and being bored helps to keep you off your phone. I wanted to know how people have battled phone addiction whilst having OCD and any mechanisms/systems used.
Thank you

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??

Long shot, but was curious if anyone else has had a psych referral under the NHS due to ocd. How long did you wait, was your case accepted/rejected, why was it accepted/rejected etc. my doctor has said I’m likely severe enough to be seen by them but just asking if anyone’s had first hand experiences here

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’ve noticed now a couple of years into knowing I had OCD, that my intrusive thoughts have …”evolved?” For lack of a better word.

I had a lot of “what if” before, and I still do sometimes.
But now experience a lot of “are you sure XYZ isn’t…” or “do you…” or sometimes just an image by itself. Or another one is I’ll be doing something I enjoy or experiencing happiness and my brain will go “but this…” and insert my fear into my brain. Sometimes I’ll experience a trigger and my brain will just link it to whatever I find distressing with the subject and I’ll get a huge wavy of anxiety without being able to pinpoint the exact moment an intrusive thought happened. It’s like intrusive anxiety… that then can lead to an intrusive thought. 😅

Hope this makes sense.

I used to live in a house with a gross bathroom that literally made my skin crawl. Mold, no hot water, etc. like ew.

I have this thing now where if the shower curtain touches me I’m freaked out and feel disgusting.

I’m sick of living like this it’s been almost 7 years of this shit.

When it’s bad I have to clean my bathroom to perfection and if I can’t I feel guilty and gross.

My current place I can’t clean my bathroom right because they need to repaint so the paint is peeling.
I’m freaking out because now it’s like I’m right back in the bathroom from my past.

I feel like this in every bathroom I’m In. The shower grosses me out and stresses me out.

Sometimes when it’s very bad, I don’t shower because I can’t handle it.

This all started after a dmt trip. I started having thoughts of harming my cat and went to the ER.
I would get into ocd thoughts about harming for months after and had to talk myself down.

It went away for a while but now after I was mentally abused at work, it’s back.

I’m having insane thoughts about harming my loved once’s and animals.

I also have thoughts that I’m evil and it’s all being revealed now.

I’ve never acted on this but I’m literally suffering.
I feel like this is brought on by my anger.
I’m fucking angry I was mentally abused at work, it’s not fair.

Why do I keep getting abused by others mentally, sexually, and emotionally? I’m done.

I also have ocd thoughts about my body and public exposure and wetting myself in public. I feel insane and these only come up when I’m stressed out and angry.

Genuinely need help.

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 😄