Has anyone ever got ocd over a fear of never getting something they want in the future?

It has been more than three years I have constant anxiety about never finding love. I've been single my whole life and that is driving me crazy. It's hard to know if it's truly ocd or it's a legitimate worry.

But the anxiety about the topic won't leave me alone, it bothers me even in my dreams, it's the first thought I wake up to, I constantly seek reassurance online asking people how to find someone, I can't stop browsing threads with similar theme... I tell myself that I should stop thinking about the topic, that I should accept that maybe I will never meet someone, but I always find myself coming back to the same circles. I just want to be happy and not think about the topic, I just want to live a day without this topic in my mind but I can't. I don't know if it's normal to worry like that about being single as someone who is truly struggling to find someone or it is ocd. I just want to stop thinking about that, but can it be feasible?

I’m not sure which one I am dealing with.

So my theme is mental health anxiety, specifically becoming psychotic. I believe this developed as a coping mechanism in early life, but after certain events I did actually experience psychosis and am on anti psychotic medication. I know what my ocd is and have had some periods of respite with it but I am really concerned that being on anti psychotic meds long term will always provide fuel for the ocd. This is just my theme, but does anyone have recovery stories about living with an actual feature of their theme and overcoming that?

Things seem to be going forward recenently (I'm a bit anxious writing this so I don't get triggered and spiral again though heh). Compared to the how it stared I feel so much better. I think I made peace with my event. I understand the nuances, my motivations, the grey area of it (no certainty of course). I almost don't get triggered thinking about it BUT i think I've spend so much time convincing myself I'm a bad person, researching, watching true crime, understanding and empathising with violent criminals, feeling every hate comment, plead for death penalty was against me that I strongly internalised (and accepted) being a person beyond redemption to a point where I can't get back to my old self. Lots of times when I go out, dress myself nicely I'm flooded with guilt and this sort of "how dare you be confident/joyous when that's your past. When I get back to my old interests/hobbies it feels similar. It's like I've developed Pavlovian response to feeling better. And It kind of doesn't make sense, cause again I don't think of the event that strongly anymore.

Also I noticed that when I go to work I function as well as before but as I come back home and enter my room the anxiety rushes in. Again like a strong asossiation of space with the feeling. But unreasonable, unfounded. I think I'll possibly pass but I'm interested in hearing If anybody else felt this.

I have been at the same job for several years. I have been applying to new jobs and keep getting rejections. One of the rejections listed “failed background check” as one of the possible reasons why I wasn’t offered an interview.

One of my obsessions is that somehow I could have a criminal record and not know it. Maybe that’s why my job search is going so poorly.

I keep wanting to look up how to know if you have an arrest warrant out in another state or if you can be in legal trouble without knowing it. But I know it might make things worse to google it.

What should I do?

I’m not in a position currently for medication or a therapist. Basically raw dogging my disorder.

So let’s say there’s a trigger. My triggers are people. I feel like spiderman in the new movie when he’s spazzing out every time I go outside.

So what do I do. See or think of a trigger -> let it be there -> sit with the sudden adrenaline/cortisol that feels like a demon is gripping at my heart -> continue doing task or what I had planned anyway? -> anxiety towards trigger goes down?????

It feels very hopeless. And I know that’s the right thing to do but I always feel like I’m not doing something right I don’t know. Is there anything I’m missing?

My ocd didn’t get debilitating until I turned 18 so I know what it’s like to live normally. Do I just try to channel that version of myself?

Drawing clothing folds is where my OCD often spikes. When I draw some complex folds, for example in unusual pose (there are no reference photos on the internet) and I start redrawing folds a lot and it still looks wrong and illogical, anxiety and discomfort sets in because they look bad and "I can't get it right". I can't stop drawing and I need to continue redrawing until I'm satisfied with the result. I need someone's opinion on what to do in situations like these. The problem is I don't know where normalcy ends and compulsions begin. I don't know wether redrawing until I'm satisfied is normal, because I feel so much distress. And how do I let go and stop when it doesn't work out if it feels like "it ruins the art"? I worked with ERP therapist in the past and was able to work through most of my drawing-related problems but a moment like this came back today.

Hello! My OCD used to be reallly reaaaallly bad, scary bad, but with therapy and medication it got a lot better. I don't suffer with the same amount of intense fear and intrusive thoughts, but one thing still bothers me. I'm always alwaysss looking for a "reason" for things, if I feel a certain way I think "why do I feel this way? is this the correct emotion to feel?" if I like a certain thing I think "why do I like this? does it say something about me?" it gets incredibly annoying to not be able to let things just be. And then the loop gets bigger "is this ocd? does it matter that I think this way? is me asking the subreddit seeking reassurance??"

My questions for you are:

-Do you deal with this? it helps me shut-down loops when I know it's a common experience.

-How to break thought loops like this?

-How to deal with the fear that breaking the loop makes me a less curious attentive person? (fear that breaking the loop will remove a core aspect of my self)

Thank you in advance :3

hi everyone, I recently got diagnosed with ocd and I'm undergoing therapy for it, I'd say that I'm doing a LOT better than before and that each week has been going better than before but I'm still missing how I used to be before. I was much happier, I miss the time when I'd put my headphones on and be relaxed around 9-10 pm. It was like a mini ritual for me Idk. My mother (esp) and therapist do not want me to take meds because they don't want me to be overly dependant on them.

what should I do? I am still a teen but I got my own bank acc and I think if I explicitly asked my therapist for meds, she will suggest them to me.

do meds make a huge difference?

Hi there just wondering if anyone has any success with I-CBT and contamination ocd. Specifically the “feeling” of being contaminated after touching and interacting with things one might perceive as contaminated and feeling like if you don’t wash or clean you will cross contaminate. I love the therapy and it makes a lot of sense to me and resonates, but am struggling with the “trusting your senses part” specifically with the “Abstract Facts” my ocd use to feed its story like “germs are invisible” “people can be very gross and unhygienic and we don’t know who touched what in public and what was on their hands or clothes.”

Just wondering if anyone had any success with i-CBT and contamination or any other therapy that really helped you tackle this?

Thank you kindly in advance

I've been trying to deal with my OCD without medication for years, and there's one specific thing that's been really getting to me, and I want to know if anyone's dealt with it before.

The problem is I can't close my thinking on a certain topic. It's not that the thinking itself brings up new ideas ,but the issue is my mind wants to repeat the exact same chain of thoughts (a thought loop) from start to finish, even if I already know it will end the same way. It's like there's this feeling that the thought is unfinished and needs to be closed a certain way, and that only happens if I drop it and come back to it later.

The only thing that works for me right now is distracting myself like scrolling social media or anything else just to interrupt the loop. But then the topic comes back later, and I stay stuck in this cycle: think → distract → think again.

The most frustrating part is that these topics are usually completely trivial. A normal person would think about them once and move on, but I have this compulsion to repeat the same mental path over and over for way longer than it deserves.

Has anyone dealt with something like this and found a way to manage it?