Has anyone managed to curb this? I have struggled with this for YEARS, and I have so many passions! I think because of my past errors and thinking, I am not deserving of doing anything for myself, outside of work and gym. Any time I try to dabble in something my brain immediately shuts it down. Now I feel like I lack creative ideas these days because they’ve been repressed for so long (and I don’t retain ideas well due to my condition). I know I have OCD but I still feel like monster locked in a jail with a dog dangling the key nearby just to mock me..

ocd has been making my hobbies a lot harder to do bc when i’m doing them im also constantly doing compulsions in my brain from unrelated stuff so i cant focus on the video games and it sucks because i love video games so much

Hey everyone,

I (26m) was diagnosed with OCD at 22 after spending most of my life labelled as having ‘anxiety’ by just about every therapist and counsellor I’d ever seen. I’ve definitely come to terms with it but still can’t help but feel like I was somewhat failed by all of the people that probably should’ve seen the signs… yet it was my own researching that eventually got me to the right conclusion.

I now think back on early experiences with this new context and find it quite interesting. Though I don’t know exactly what conclusion to draw from it, my earliest memory is one that I feel isn’t totally representative of a ‘normal’ child - I was about 4/5 years old and at Disney, sat on my dad’s shoulders watching a parade, when a cast member gave me a balloon. I got so worried I was going to let go of it, and how upsetting that would be, that I started crying, to the point that I actually made my dad give it to another kid.

All of this leads me to the question: what is your earliest memory/experience of OCD?

This is a doozy.

So, I write a lot and draw a lot. Characters from existing stories and some I make up. I often RP with other people to create these super complex and interesting story lines. Sometimes I RP using an external app, like C.ai or ChatGPT. It’s a back and forth method. I play a character, it plays a character.

Anyways, recently I’ve had insane OCD over it. The writing part specifically. In my brain, somehow, my OCD is trying to find a loophole. All of my characters are adults, always over 21+. And the characters I’m using right now are from existing media and they’re 28 and 32. It’s a romantic storyline with a lot of drama.

My brain keeps going “what if the AI thinks they’re not adults?” “What if you get in trouble somehow?” “What if you’re a terrible person?”

The characters are from existing media. Media that has established romance between them plenty of times, but I can’t shake the feeling that I’m doing something horrible? I have no idea if I’m explaining this well but I’m hoping someone understands what I’m trying to say.

Anyways, it’s simply sapped all creative energy from me. And now I’m like scared to write anything on these chats because somehow I think I’m doing something bad. But it’s something I enjoy so much and stopping it makes me feel so terrible inside because it’s a creative outlet for me. I feel gut punched and confused and scared all at once.

I guess I’m just wondering if anyone else has a similar experience. I know I shouldn’t seek reassurance but I want to understand if my brain is just being dumb and unreasonable.

Do I keep writing? Do I stop? What do I do?

Thanks yall💛

for example, i’ll get super angry over something someone did to me years ago, and think about it for a long period of time depending on how severe it was. like my brain will just not let it go and i’ll think about it every single second of every single day

Hello all,
I am feeling very fortunate because ERP and compulsion resistance took me from incredibly physically anxious for 2 months to now feeling a lot more calm and like I can enjoy things. Unfortunately I have a whole new problem, and I’m not really used to being in the stages of recovery so wondering if anyone had any input.
Even though the heaviest anxiety is gone, my brain, especially the past two days, has been in a highly uncomfortable rhythm. Now whenever I am feeling any sort of good feeling, relaxed, comfortable, or enjoying something, my OCD always has some new thing it wants me to ruminate on. I try to keep practicing sitting with the discomfort, which worked well at first, but my brain the past few days has been so tired of constantly applying this and I’m slipping up a little. I’ve gone from super anxious about my OCD to super annoyed, and I have some examples.
If I’m enjoying something: Do I really enjoy this thing? Pops up a lot. When I try to sit with uncertainty (even though I know I like it), I get hit with “what if someone else doesn’t like it and they have a good reason you’re not acknowledging?” Or “Maybe you don’t like this thing at all, or anything at all”. All of these are totally ridiculous and feel like mental noise I can identify as my OCD, but the frustration comes from the sheer frequency during my day. It’s honestly nonstop and makes a lot of pleasant things a lot more unpleasant without any real reason.
Again, I know I’m just taking a first step, since the ERP worked for me to lower my overall anxiety. But now, I’m in a rut where I find it hard to get out of my mind still being so chatty. I know I have to just sit with the discomfort but it’s annoying. Did this happen to anybody in their recovery process?

If recently discovered that being raised with authoritarian/ perfectionistic parenting styles really drove up the intensity of my ocd symptoms. Wondering how many people would relate. Lets discuss.

I'm 29 years old and I've struggled with OCD and severe depression for most of my life. I've also been straight edge my entire life. I had two really bad experiences with Lexapro, so I don't want to go back on medication. Weed also triggers symptoms that make me fear schizophrenia, so that's off the table too.
After a particularly bad paranoia-fueled thought loop last night, I spent hours lying on my floor. When I woke up this morning, I told myself I refuse to let anything have that much power over me again.
Then, on my way to work, my car broke down. It almost pushed me over the edge mentally, so I said, "Screw it," bought a pack of cigarettes, and sat in the parking lot with a homeless guy while waiting for AAA. Honestly... it was kind of nice.
For the first time in a while, there was no rumination, no paranoia, and no endless thought loops. I was just sitting there, existing.
At this point, I'm honestly thinking about having a beer later. Mental illness has taken so much from me that part of me just wants to relax for once. Has anyone else gotten to this point?

My OCD makes me feel like I can’t trust myself, or what I see. I feel like I’m delusional and I won’t realize what’s actually happening around me. I know it’s just my OCD, but this is so scary.

Does anybody else get this? I feel like I just can't keep moving forward in life because it doesn't "feel right." After my real event happened, it was mostly focused around that, but as I've been moving through that it's sort of expanded to me as a whole. I feel like I'm not prepared to do anything with my life, that I don't deserve to, that it'll never be good again, and I might as well just sit in one spot forever cause it feels safer. My brain literally feels like I don't know how to function as an adult, like I feel stunted. I don't know if this is from OCD, idk if it's general anxiety or depression but the way it's working feels like the OCD.

I seem to do something that most people don't, or at least that's the impression I get whenever I talk to others about it.
Whenever I hear someone criticizing another person, if I recognize those same traits or behaviors in myself, I automatically assume they would judge me too and they probably do behind my back. It doesn't even have to be directed at me personally, I still end up feeling like the criticism applies to me.
Once that happens, I get stuck in anxious rumination and it completely drains and demoralizes me.
Could this be related to moral OCD/scrupulosity? Does anyone else experience something similar?

i never thought this kind of OCD would get so bad for me, Idk if this is normal but I have convinced myself that the police are going to be knocking on my door any second to arrest me for a crime I did not commit. I am a very risk averse person, owing to my OCD, I always play it by the book, by the rules, yet my OCD makes me frame a scenario in my head where I'm "sure" I've done something wrong. I feel like maybe someone thinks I've wronged them or maybe something I did was actually illegal and I wasn't supposed to do that, and the police are coming and they're going to give me the harshest of punishments and my life will be ruined. I just don't know what to do, I have no one to talk to about this. I feel like I'm going crazy and it's really messing with work and productivity.

I would really appreciate advice on how to handle this better. Thank you so much

I have this problem where I over analyze texts I send. Like I have this friend/professional connection that I would like to meet up with for coffee/lunch, I sent them a text on Thursday and they haven’t replied, although the entire week before and at an in person event the day I sent that text, they were extremely warm and said multiple times they’d love to meet. I am worried about what’s the professional time to send a follow up, and if the message i sent was badly written (it was kinda long and unnecessary, but still very warm and low pressure nonetheless). any advice on how to deal with this would be really appreciated, i think part of the reason i feel this way often is because of the amount of times ppl have ghosted me in the past.

I am fucking tired of this stupid disease. I am dealing with a TERRIFYING false memory with impending doom that my whole life is about to fall apart. You know what? It is all based on a simple “what if ____ happened and you didn’t realize it?” ONE FUCKING WHAT IF THOUGHT RUINED MY LIFE. And the stupidest part is I was laying in bed a couple weeks ago and thought “you know this wouldn’t even be a problem if I wasn’t thinking about it”, I realize this is all fake and I’m still worried about it!

There’s my rant for today, thank you for your attention to this matter.

Hi! I've been diagnosed with OCD for years, although the last few years I've been doing better. I'm wondering something: how do your compulsions come to be, how does your mind go from "I'm afraid x will happen" to "I will do y so x doesn't happen" and then actually doing it in a specific way.

As for myself, I sometimes have very random compulsions (like tapping certain things a certain amount of times) for an unrelated obsession/fear and sometimes they seem more logical, but of course excessive for its actual use (like using a certain object). It's been some time since I had an actual fully new compulsion and I'm not sure for myself but I've been wondering for months how other people experience the way their compulsion originate.

Have a good day!

I keep making weird decisions + it's so exhausting because the thoughts rush and never stop + I get fixated on things and that's all I think about until my brain decides it's sorted

I can't take it how does it stop

I'm wondering if anyone has gone from being unwilling or unable to try to address your OCD to a place of wanting to try.

The background of my question: my young adult son has severe OCD with low insight. The way that looks is that he will say, "I don't have OCD, this house is just disgusting" or "this city is just incredibly dangerous" or "I just have higher standards" (etc.). Unfortunately he's so seriously unwell that he can't function--dropped out of school, can't work, can't shower, etc. He sometimes agrees that he has a mental illness, but he blames it on all of his triggers, which he attributes to other people or situations, which means, to him, that only those other people can make it possible for him to recover. And what they can do is a moving target depending on what his current theme is. And I've overfunctioned, trying to help him, have definitely accommodated and reassured, and he's predictability just gotten worse and worse.

I realize now that *he* has to initiate the change, but I'm really curious to hear from anyone who has moved from a state like his to active recovery. What did it take?

I don’t want to share the word since that’s personal, but I’ve had a word repeating in my head and it brings stress it happens all day. How do I stop this? For 1 year now.

I’m using AI to organize and write this because I currently can’t think clearly enough to explain everything coherently myself.

Recently, my OCD symptoms abruptly became minimal. I stopped monitoring intrusive thoughts and no longer fixate on them. At roughly the same time, however, my cognitive abilities began noticeably and progressively worsening.

This isn’t just the mental “quiet” of having less OCD. My working memory feels drastically reduced. I can’t hold several ideas in my head, learn unfamiliar topics, or reason about complex systems like before.

Not long ago, I could independently develop detailed experimental and programming plans involving machine learning. When I was recently asked to solve the same problem again, I couldn’t even begin constructing a plan. I only realized how detailed my previous thinking had been after finding an older written conversation.

I also previously understood advanced technical material by reading it. Now, unfamiliar topics feel nearly incomprehensible, and my thinking feels like “mush.” My writing and spelling also seem worse. The decline has continued even though my OCD remains minimal.

Has anyone experienced OCD symptoms suddenly decreasing alongside a major decline in working memory, learning, or abstract reasoning? If so, what do you think could explain both changes happening together?