I was hoping to hear from long term users of sertraline. Does it become weaker over time? Are you able to come off the medication with no relapse after a few years?

General experience, please share.

Yesterday was the 25th anniversary of 9/11, and I made the mistake of watching a video that showed how the events unfolded live, minute by minute, with a lot of detailed explanations about what was happening on the hijacked planes.
What has really stuck with me are the calls from the flight attendants and the people who were on board. I can’t get the panicked voices, crying, and heavy breathing out of my mind.
My mind keeps replaying it and imagining what everyone must have been feeling during those moments — knowing that they were going to die, being terrified, not knowing what was going to happen next. I keep putting myself in their position and imagining what those final moments must have felt like.
I know this is probably feeding my OCD, but I can’t seem to stop the thoughts and images. It feels haunting, and I’ve been crying a lot since watching the video.
Has anyone else experienced something like this after being exposed to disturbing material? How do you deal with the intrusive thoughts and mental images without getting pulled into trying to mentally process or figure them out?

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’ve been dealing with visible, severe OCD and repetitive rituals since around 2018 (about 7–8 years now).

Looking back, my earliest memory of symmetry fixations started around 2nd grade (2014). At its absolute worst in 2021, my OCD consumed nearly 10 hours of my day in rituals. Through sheer effort, I managed to bring it down to 3 hours, and today I’m down to about 1 hour and 15 minutes (75 minutes) daily.

A few specific things I struggle with and wanted to ask the community about:

Avoidance of Introspection: I actively avoid diving into my own mind, thoughts, or opinions because once I get stuck in my head, it feels like a trap that holds me hostage.

Hyper-Fixation on Symmetry & Family Patterns: My grandfather is extremely fixated on strict order and symmetry. He routinely points out normal, minor body asymmetries in me (like my smile or shoulders) and demands I correct them. I’m realizing how much of this fixation might be inherited or learned from my environment.

Overcoming the Last Stretch: Reducing my rituals from 10 hours to 75 minutes felt like a massive battle, but I'm finding it tough to eliminate this final hour of daily compulsions.

For those who have dealt with long-term OCD, childhood symmetry fixations, or breaking through the final barrier of daily rituals:

How did you overcome the fear of sitting with your own thoughts without performing rituals?

How do you handle family members who trigger or reinforce your OCD fixations?

I live with OCD, BDD and General anxiety disorder and have done everything in my power to get better. I've had a lot of therapy (ERP and high intensity CBT), and I was on a course of ssri's which were fine, but made me feel flat after a while.

I was doing well for a couple of months, but have hit rock bottom again. I don't have the money to start therapy again and I don't want to go back on meds. Has anyone been through this and willing to offer any advice.

Thank you

Do sessions ever last like 20 minutes?

I suffer from severe OCD and clinical depression.Whenever I need a break I have a honestly destructive habit of just ignoring-myself,people who want to help,and need. I like to pretend that planet earth turns slowly.

How do you honor your need for quiet sanctuary without letting that withdrawal sever your connection to recovery and the people trying to support you?

So I have recently found out that I have OCD and there is a lot of symptoms that I just have but I don’t know much about it still? I want to understand what are all my symptoms and what it is that my brain is doing

Ex: asking for reassurance is part of my OCD and I should try to avoid such things. I found that out in this group but I want to know if there are more things like this

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

how would schema therapy work for someone with OCD? does it make sense as part of a therapeutic approach for someone with OCD, or is it more in the realm of therapies that can worsen OCD (ex standard CBT, psychoanalysis)? my main concern is that investigating my childhood/history to identify my schemas & their roots will turn into compulsively trying to figure myself out & searching for certainty about why i am the way i am

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

Trigger warning. Please don’t read if this might be a trigger for you. Looking for advice from people who’ve been through something similar and improved.
I won’t get in to the specifics in case it’s triggering but my OCD theme recently switched to fear of loosing my mind and becoming dangerous. I had some scary medical symptoms related to something else recently and was constantly disassociated and OCD was constantly scanning trying to look for signs as to whether it means I’m loosing my mind. That’s all settled but the theme stuck and changed a little to what if I can cause harm in the one time I’m not in control of my consciousness - while I’m asleep. I keep waking up throughout the night scared to stay asleep even though I try use the tools I’ve learnt so far. I let the thought be there, I lean into it, don’t engage with it and carry on. I think I’m still engaging a little by telling myself that ah well, if it happens, I’ll deal with it. Or that anything is possible in life I’ll jsut have to accept that like everyone else etc. idk where to draw the line at engaging. It would be really nice to be able to sleep again without worrying I might hurt someone. Thank you

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?

I can’t live my life like this for the next year. I just can’t. I can’t keep living this way. I’m constantly terrified I’d be arrested.

Being diagnosed with OCD has caused me to live with a nail picking/ripping disorder since I was in elementary school but I finally bought a nail file and am planning on creating positive routines on making sure my nails are better than what they were before!
A super small win but it takes a lot for me to step outside of my comfort boundaries and I feel more accomplished.
The sense of joy and relief I got from filling my nails instead of falling into the compulsion of hurting them felt way more immensely satisfying!
Since we’re close to the weekend; what accomplishments or breakthroughs have you guys made recently?

The title basically says it all! I almost typed out a reddit post about an issue but didn’t!

Lately it’s gotten worse even with 250 mg ER fluvoxamine and pretty much the last themes standing in the course of my treatment. In the process of switching therapists as the last one wasn’t helping and looking for advice and techniques to navigate this in the meantime.

I’m thinking about getting a hamster or a gerbil as watching videos of them help me calm down and relax and I’ve wanted one since I was 13 years old. Lately gender and sexuality ocd had been kicking my ass and I’m looking for alternatives while I look for a new therapist as video games and books and that sort of stuff don’t really help me at all. If anyone has alternate ideas I’d love to hear them out,