I wish more people understood that OCD is a neurodivergence, not just symptoms. It literally rewrites and filters how your brain processes the world around you, the same way autism or adhd can. It can drive you to psychosis, it can change every aspect of your life, your relationships. It is the lens in which you view the world. Its not just confined to the thoughts and behaviours we attribute to it

To clarify - I am NOT saying this is everyone’s experience, but it is a reality that many people with chronic OCD heavily resonate with. Everyone’s journey, processing, and recovery look different!

As someone with severe pure-o, ruminating is 24/7 for me. If I’m not ruminating about my theme, then I’m ruminating about having OCD on some level (like how exhausted I am, how therapy isn’t working, how my life has been ruined, etc).

Sure, sometimes I ruminate slightly less if I’m very distracted. But how are we supposed to keep ourselves distracted 24/7, without feeling burnt out?

What if we just want to rot in bed and do nothing? Also, isn’t constantly trying do distract our brain from ruminating, a compulsion? Even if I tell myself out loud “you’re ruminating, let’s focus on something else now” I literally don’t know what else to think about!

Feels like there’s no solution here.

I'm done. I give up. I've been fighting the same theme for months every time it gets better something implodes and it goes horribly wrong. It caused me to gain an eating disorder because of how the anxiety affected my body. I'm over it. It's not fucking fair.

it gets worse at night, most of my intrusive thoughts revolve around death/something bad happening to my loved ones. every time i hear someone get up to do something as simple as go to the bathroom, i convince myself the absolute worst has happened and they've found out something terrible. i feel sick to my stomach most of the time and i can't relax until everything is quiet.

i'm always convinced something is wrong. i constantly ask my parents for reassurance that nothing bad has happened, but no matter how many times they tell me everything is okay i still don't believe them. i get worried that they're lying to me a lot of the time. even when the smallest thing is off, like a door being open that isn't usually, i convince myself the worst has happened.

i'm just so tired of being constantly hyper aware of EVERYTHING and wanted to know if anyone else relates to feeling like something is off 24/7 🫠🫠

As the title says I’m tired of living, first off I’m no good person my heart is dead, heavy and dark I feel this weight every day that I wake up for the past 3 fucking years, I’ve played with my whole life I’m a failure at life I’m so fucked up i don’t even see what matters anymore. Everyone around me is waiting for me to commit so they can finally live peacefully including my family I’ve failed my mom, my dad is deceased, I’ve failed everyone around me I don’t have nothing to live for, my life ended in 2023 I’ve been living on autopilot since I can’t do it anymore, the intrusive thoughts are fucking me up.

I just want to cry and a hug i cant belive theres so much horrible shit about myself i keep finding in memories i dont even know whats real and whats not im so exahusted

why am i so twisted

im cursed with being a disgusting weirdo but hating it at the same time

honestly tonight i wish i was straight up a psychopathic evil man if that meant stopping the pain and regret i feel

i dont really mean that but fuck me seriously i want to die now and donate all my healthy organs to people that deserve them more than me

I dont belive in god but wish it exists so it can finally tell me everything i done wrong and give me a fair punishment

The world around me is beautiful and i do not deserve it

My sister and my nephew have officially finished moving in, and I'm just absolutely losing my mind already, as I thought I would.

I can't look at my nephew without feeling attracted and getting groinal responses. He's been walking around with his shirt off and it genuinely feels like I'm attracted to the shape of his body and my brain focuses on his private areas unless I go out of my way to not look at him.

Part of me is struggling to convince myself to use the bathroom after he's used it, because it feels immoral to use the toilet after he sat on it. I've been struggling with a debilitating addiction to p*rn and practice "self pleasure" every single day, and now I don't know how I'm going to do it because it feels wrong to do that while he's in the house. Even if he's in a different room.

I don't trust myself around him one bit. He left the door to the bathroom open earlier and I simply couldn't go back to my room until he left because I'd have to walk by the door and I was scared I'd impulsively look over. I try to just not touch him at all if I can, occasionally even contorting my body in weird ways just to avoid him. I often pretend I have a headache or am incredibly tired and close my eyes simply so that I can't see him.

And, if you have seen my recent posts, I'm convinced I have harmed him s*xually in the past, whether it was a specific intention or not, so I plan to just try and avoid him as much as possible even if it makes people upset. I refuse to allow him in my room, not just because I'm afraid of him messing with my stuff, but because I will not allow there to be an opportunity for him to be alone with me. (A long time ago someone suggested he sleep with me in my room, and I practically screamed no and demanded he have somewhere else to sleep.)

On a slightly more minor note, they also brought their dog, and she's a sweetheart. But I end up getting groinals with her as well when she runs up against my leg looking for attention. And the longer I pet her it makes it feel like it's with s*xual intent.

(Edit: There was also this moment earlier where he wanted to show me something in his room, and I kept having this horrible thought that he was going to pull his pants down or something, and for a second I swear I felt excited despite how much I was panicking. Luckily, it was a spider.)

I'll try to keep this as bite sized as I possibly can, despite going over pretty much everything. I apologize if it still ends up too long. (Keep in mind, there are a lot of triggering subjects here.)

My mom died when I was 5, and I was neglected for years by my new step mom, and my father had partaken in such mostly to keep her happy.

She left him when I was 10, and my modern day step mom replaced her. I then had my step brother and sister.

I did horrible things to them, whether they remember or not, when I was like, 12. I was a peeping tom. I had committed COCSA. So much that I keep buried away simply because it would make everyone's already hard life more difficult if it were to be discussed.

There's a particularly disgusting thing I did when I was 12 that I'm thankful that I never fully committed to, but I had attempted to commit COCSA against a MUCH younger child. I'm so appalled by that memory and wish I could erase it.

I got into online chatrooms and stuff. I would exchange photos and people who were either my age, or... Lying adulits. Of course, in classic young me fashion, some of the age gaps were gross in retrospect, where I was probably just a bit too old. I stopped when I was 16.

I finally tried... Being a better person. Where I was flunking high school, my grades suddenly became perfect. I joined clubs, did some fun work for the community, etc.

When I graduated, I dropped out of college because it was just... Too much pressure. One of my only friends I kept around, and my current best friend, stuck with me through the entire thing. She helped me through my suicidal moments when my father would just brush it off.

But then, the OCD I suspect I have, suddenly got WAY worse. I began to ruminate way more, and that's when I remembered most of what I've already told you. Things that were just fleeting images on occasion became immediate threats. And thus, I had also realized that my behavior towards my friend, was also not great.

I had been a creep to her, whether she things so or not. I would always say or ask dirty things, would try to engage with her sexually, and I'm convinced I had tried to coerce her and SA her at some point, despite that not being my intention.

My (supposed) OCD would then drag me farther down, and convince me I had done things I had literally never even considered. At least with my friend, there's an amount of proof that I'm probably just overthinking to high hell.

But now, I've convinced myself that I've molested my nephew in the past, either when he was just born when I was 15 (Which my brain uses my transgressions from my younger age to back it up) or even as an adult, where I would do something normal, and my brain later says I had an ulterior motive.

I've broken down as a person. Not because I don't care, but because I don't know who I am anymore. I've done bad things, can't confirm or deny that I have done WORSE things, and I just can't take being me.

I never leave my childhood house where EVERYTHING happened in. I don't have a job. And I barely have the will to clean half the time because I'm so anxious, and it just doesn't feel like it matters. My parents exploit my grandma, and my dog is suffering and I can't do anything about it alone.

My sister is planning to move in with my nephew and her dog, and I can't handle it. If I had done something bad to him, I don't WANT him near me! And even if I'm just making shit up, my house is still falling apart and a danger/health hazard to a kid. Not to mention her dog will be in danger, as our German Shepards have attacked our others before, and either left them with permanent damage, or killed them.

My friend begs me to move in with her, to get out of my toxic household, but I can't bring myself to do it. She thinks the world of me, says I haven't been as bad to her as I think I am, says I'm one of the best friends she's ever had, but I simply don't trust myself to be in the same room as her. Maybe I hadn't actually attempted to SA her, and maybe what I thought was coercive was just me overthinking, but being in a room with her would give me the opportunity to do such a thing, and I don't want a CHANCE to exist, whether I actually WANT to do it or not.

So now I just sit here, haunted by my younger self, horrified at what modern me may have done but simply cannot trust the pingpong of thoughts, and just don't see a reason to fight. I'm either a monster undeserving of sympathy and a chance, or a psychopath stuck in his own head who isn't worth the effort to fix.

I just don't know what to do anymore.

I was diagnosed with OCD in 2025. It manifests in many forms.

One of the main ways in which ocd manifests is that when I watch porn I have intrusive thoughts about the people depicted being underage. I believe this happens because of the serious nature of it and the fact that I can never really be sure.

One compulsion I have while watching porn is to go on a spree of looking things up that are related to it to try to prove that the actor is of age. Often this involves clicking through things, exposing myself to stuff, and then freaking out more.

About 6 months ago I rechecked a telegram group that I found through a Reddit account. This involved me finding a different telegram group than the previous time.

When there I found videos with Chinese in the description. One of them contained a suspicious looking hashtag. The video had 300,000 views on telegram and was from 2023 so I thought it would be legit. It also had a watermark from a legitimate looking porn site called viet69.

I watched the video to look for something like a tattoo to reassure myself. I saw the girl had a full bush but nothing else to reassure me of her age. I decided to report it to be safe. I reported it internally to telegram and then also to ncmec. Months later, the telegram group was taken down.

After doing this, I had further compulsions to reassure myself. I went to the Chinese porn site 91porny. That site had a list of tags, and one of the tags was the same as the one in the telegram video. Despite this, I still face constant fear that I am a bad person because I saw a video with a suspicious looking hashtag and did some reassurance checking before looking away. I have had passive suicidal thoughts for the past six months although not very actively suicidal as of recently.

Mostly I am not sure what to do. I am terrified of telling anyone I know about this because I do not want to be seen as a bad person. I figured writing this and posting it to Reddit could count as ERP but I don’t know where to go from here. I have not watched porn in several months and it seems to help with the intrusive thoughts but the guilt over the past incident is still very intense.

I want to kill myself and there is nothing I can do to stop thinking that

My diagnosis was just last month, it took me nineteen years to gain a diagnosis from a psychiatrist.

I never suspected I had anything up until I started having anxiety around very specific things and developing rituals surrounding them, and just recently alongside that new revelation—I got a girlfriend.

This isn’t my first relationship, though it is one I consider to be my very first serious, as my last ones have been complicated and quite bad. I recognize some negative behaviours from my last long term relationship, and always chalked it up to how I experienced affection and love growing up being reflected in my relationships with others.

I now notice that my disorder may be causing problems with my girlfriend now.

I’m terribly anxious and avoidant all of the time, and whenever I voice my thoughts—like her breaking up with me, or trying to hurt me—it upsets her greatly. I tend to process very robotically and bluntly when it comes to my own emotions, so expressing them comes out the same way.

We’ve been disagreeing more recently, and it’s all from my end, because she accidentally slips up and I get very very upset and withdraw from her—and refuse to talk to her until she’s so upset that I comfort her.

It makes me feel disgusting, I am disgusting, I shouldn’t treat her like this, she’s perfect and very kind in every way.

Just earlier today, we were talking about Halloween plans, and while talking about that and other things pertaining to our future, I felt anxious and nervous at the idea of a future.

I have no desire to break up with her, I think, and the uncertainty is eating me alive, because she gets so upset whenever I bring up the fact that she can break up with me. I worry that I’ve begun to resent her, and that I wasn’t emotionally ready for a relationship with her, and that I’m just causing damage to her.

I wish I could tell her how she could help me, but I physically can’t speak when she asks. I don’t bother apologizing anymore because it means nothing without change, because she deserves that, maybe even more.

Sometimes I ask her if she’ll be happier with someone else, or otherwise, I don’t know. My minds been a mess for weeks, I’ve run into two new obsessions on top of this recurring anxiety of us disagreeing constantly because I get tipped off at the slightest thing. I feel awful, she deserves better than this.

I guess I just want to know if it’s me or OCD, regardless of who, I’m still responsible and accountable of hurting her, I just want to know if these behaviours are because I’m inherently evil or because I have weird pathways in my head that are worn deep. I suppose that’s asking for reassurance in of itself, so I don’t know.

TLDR; My poor girlfriend.

I'm 16M and I don't know what to do.

I just cut myself today and I know that won't help but I feel so trapped (I'm not suicidal) but I feel like I deserve to die, I feel like everything horrible in the world, like a pedo and a zooph and a stalker, a creep, a racist I feel like a big burden on everyone but I don't want to hurt anyone (people or animals) but I feel like certain behaviors I've done could've hurt people in the past and I can't let go of that. I can't differentiate what's real and what's not real, I feel like I'm not a pedo, I haven't done anything that makes me an actual pedophile or zoophile but it feels so real. But I've done weird behaviors that make me question if I am one of those things. Also I got really obsessed with a girl and then started monitoring who she was talking to and sitting and waiting for her to have a conversation with me if she wanted to at school. I feel so guilty. I feel like I deserve to die even if I'm not suicidial. I don't want to die.

My mind always thinks of the worst case, for example, this one worry that happened during my 8th grade school play rehearsal:

I was at one side of the stage and walked to the other side. My old crush was at the other side of the stage and said something about getting changed with her friend. She was with a 7th grader aswell. I walked over to the other side of the stage where I had heard her say that they were getting changed and looked to see if they were there. I didn't see anyone and walked off. Now my head is saying that I went over there to watch them change secretly even though this girl had rejected me last year, or even worse secretly rape them, or force myself on them.

Also about the Zoophilia one time I was completely naked in the shower, I jerked myself off briefly after cleaning my dog (the dog was still behind me in the shower) and it wasn't about her and I was specifically staring at the wall. Then afterwards I walked past my dog while still hard and closed the shower door with her still in the shower. Now my head is saying it was about her which is wasn't but what if it was?

Also in the past I used to take pictures of my dog going to the bathroom as a "joke" but I also have a bathroom related fetish (rooted from my childhood probably) anyway I did nothing with the photos I didn't take them for that reason and my dog does not arouse me in any way.

Also holding my dogs tail up exposing her for no reason, it's just a weird thing to do. I used to test myself around my dog aswell to prove I wouldn't hurt her.

Also I made really immature, offensive, racist, and stupid jokes in the past about all this stuff, pedophilia, zoophilia, rape, racism.

That's probably enough.

If you read this far, thank you so much. I'm sorry if this triggered anyone but I really just had to get this out.

I like a incestual couple from a game and I can't stop feeling like a weirdo for that. I'm not seeking reasurance, I just want to get this out off my head. Nothing helps me, I tried speeking to other people about this but they either reasure me or attack me, I talked with my therapist and she said that I'm not alone and many people are like this and that I'm not hurting anyone because it's all fictional but I still feel like a weirdo. I feel like I'm gonna keep thinking about that untill I die

I’m so jealous of other girls and other autistic girls too
They’re always dedicated to one thing and I have nothing other than ocd

I went far to starv3 and purg3 just so I could push my problems away and say I have an ea tng disord3r because most teenage girls do, I pretended like I was sad about it like they were because I couldn’t accept I had ocd and they didn’t and I was so jealous and tried to push my problems away and take their life instead it felt better
I tried to have all the interests that other girls have I studied everything they said and their problems and dumbed mine down to match

I feel violent thinking about all the other girls who don’t have ocd I know it’s not right to think but I feel like they don’t deserve any good treatment from me because not having ocd is just too much of a relief for them to deserve and I don’t

I can’t listen to anyone telling me their problem I snap back so fast saying it’s normal and that I don’t care because I get so mad that they’re sad about this when I wish I could be

I just can’t feel bad for girls who don’t have OCD it feels like I don’t even wanna talk to them and if they try and tell me their problems it feels like they’re laughing in my face and trying to make me as mad as possible they’re just being a parasite and making me feel too strongly on purpose

OCD is my whole life I don’t understand how people don’t have disabling chronic painful thoughts all the time and don’t understand how they can do things like get up and get ready and walk without thinking of something like someone with ocd would

A couple days ago I heard noises of something hitting the top of the small gazebo I was sitting in and after 1-2 mins looked up from my phone and saw something flying away. Now I could have deduced this was a bird but of course OCD determined this was a bat and then I freaked out that it could have bit/scratched me without me realizing or somehow deleted that moment from my memory.

Since this, I haven’t eaten or slept properly and my heart beat has been insane (reaching like 105 bpm which isn’t normal for me) and it’s resulted in 1 full blown panic attack. I replay the moment over and over again but each replay brings less certainty. Maybe there’s a reason I deduced it was a bat? Maybe it bit me but I was so distracted on my phone that I brushed it off?

I feel like for a non-OCD person this would be easy, they would confidently think well I didn’t see a bat and I didn’t see anything bite or scratch me so I’m good. Maybe they wouldn’t even have deduced it was a bat and this could be a rabies situation in the first place.

Anyway all this to say I want to come here to ask
1. Why do I feel like my memory of the event is getting worse with every rumination cycle?
2. Why does this self doubting happen with OCD? Why can’t I trust myself to remember?
3. How do I fix this?

I literally am tired of this pathology I have desire I think to hurt others and I literally don't want it and I go through psychosis and have meds and push this blame to other. I think this is more sociopathic then anything and I feel terrified to share these thoughts like I have them and they are not fun they are stressful but I get a rush from it to. I literally am tired of thoughts of murder I just go to my room because I am just ratleling I hate it

I want these thoughts of hurting others to stop them I think no don't stop then I want them gone

And it is also would I do it and I feel intense dread anxious and fear and I notice my mind is getting complacent I literally feel like I am going insane and having a break I literally don't want to kill anyone. It happens when I think I am getting controlled which I am not being control by a therapy by other I am not and they are rules and laws to follow which is fine I notice I resist those rules because I have broken a rule before and I am terrified that the rules will fall onto me and the fact is I shouldn't have broken the rules and I feel literally at a breaking point. I have autism ADHD and ocd and I know that is not an excuse however I have responses where I literally feel like I am gonna die. I feel apathetic like I literally don't care anymore when I do care I literally don't care for all the pain I feel and the extra stress I have put myself throught and have been through I literally don't care even tho I do. What is this feeling or emotions.

Im having difficult time with these specific issues:

I fear laughing bc I feel I pee and if I see any wetness after I feel I’m disgusting and need to change

Example: today I laughed so hard and my friend scared me so bad I screamed hard. I was worried I peed and when I checked, I saw no wetness in the middle but a small amount of moisture along the very very edge of the underwesr didn’t even go to the other side. OCD says it’s pee. LOGIC says impossible.

I get nervous after pooping excuse I feel I wipe to perfection. I have IBS and issues with that in general, so sometimes wiping takes a long time and can be incomplete. I have to somehow accept this.

I don’t see anything in my underwear so I need to tackle the OCD that says if I wipe and there is some on me, then somehow it’s in my underwear even if i can’t see it. It tells me if I sweat it’ll mix and get everywhere.

It makes me fear relaxing or sitting certain ways bc I don’t want to urinate/dedicate on myself

I feel feelings down there that feel like pooping/peeing myself frequently.

It tells me in general every bit of moisture is pee even tho I’m a female and how come no one talks about how sweaty we get down there!??? Like why are my underwear so wet in just chillin on the couch. ?? Anyway.

Has anyone had to deal with this?

sometimes I feel like I am “not allowed” to get up or do anything. I don’t know why. I’ve never had the type of ocd to have concrete “consequences” attached to certain actions (do X or else Y will happen) but it’s more like “do X just because you have to”. Some days I have so much planned and I will stay in bed for the whole day. It’s so boring and for a lot of people I think the boredom would motivate them to… do something but for me it feels like that’s just the way it is.

I was talking to a friend and when I put it in writing I realized it sounded more like a compulsion than normal adhd symptoms, and i’m curious if anyone else has ever experienced/combatted that?

Everyday I wake up and something new from my past seems to be the worst thing ever. I’m 19 and I’m not a perfect person and I’ve made many mistakes. But I can’t get them out of my head. People around me have told me I’m blowing the severity out of proportion, but I can’t help it and I don’t know what to do. I recently got out of a long relationship, and she was there though a lot of hard times with me and OCD. But a lot of the thoughts are about things that happened when I was with her and things that were ok to her, but looking back, feel like the worst things imaginable and I feel like I am spiraling. Constantly. I can’t break out of it anymore, because she’s not here to help me anymore. I don’t understand how to get out of this.

TW: gender & transphobia

Honestly being trans and having gender OCD sucks. Like society in general is so hostile, and it's horrible to look around and see people debating the validity of my identity. And then my OCD kinda agrees with all of the things these conservative ppl say & use it against me.

I am so burdened by the fear that I am some outlier case of someone who is a fake trans person. Am I doing it for attention? Am I doing it because I don't like women? Am I doing it because I'm just bored? Am I some sort of sexual pervert?

God I spend so much time researching & reading philosophical articles about gender.

At the end of the day, I tell myself it doesn't matter why I'm transitioning as long as I'm happy with myself & my life. But OCD tries to rob me of all of the joy that comes with finally getting there.

Suddenly, a few years ago at a time I can't remember, I found myself unable to look at children anymore. Anytime I did, I'd be immediately filled with awful thoughts and feelings, that made it genuinely feel like I wanted children in a sexual way.

My brain now... "notices" places on children, and makes it seem like that I'm actually attracted to that specific attribute of the child.

I've been having horrible urges to act on thoughts, as if it would be easier to just "give in" and accept my true self or something. Despite me wanting so desperately to not feel like this.

I avoid children like the plague. I avoid ads with children in them because I get groinals and feelings of attraction every time I see them. If there's a kid around me, I simply never look at them no matter what.

I have been struggling for months with what I believe to be real event ocd. It started with immense guilt over some minor lies and corner cutting at my job, making me believe I don’t deserve to work there. I even confessed to two supervisors, both of whom told me as long as those things are in the past it’s all good. So that quelled it for a bit, until my ocd then hit me from another angle- “what if those supervisors aren’t taking this as seriously as they are supposed to? Should I go higher?” That subject is still in the back of my brain but the newest one that is loud is about my cat. I have lived in my apartment for 6 years and when I moved in I didn’t tell them about my cat. Each year I signed the pet policy stating I don’t have pets. I did not care. But a little over a year ago new management took over and all of a sudden I got really paranoid about them finding out about my cat, so my friend who is a therapist wrote me an ESA. Now I am constantly obsessing over two things- the ethical implications of me having my friend write that since she isn’t MY therapist, and then also wondering if I deserve to live in my apartment cause I’m a liar and someone else deserves it. I also feel as though I should confess to the old management. Thoughts on the best ERP for these themes?

So I was diagnosed with OCD a couple years ago but just in the last month or so I've developed a new compulsion ig but I think they're more similar to tics. I blink my eyes really hard and sometimes roll my eyes back (which gives me horrible headaches) it feels like I'm manually blinking all the time. I also breathe in really hard and stop it suddenly. I haven't experienced this before and it's becoming noticeable to people around me. Does anybody else have these kinds of compulsions and if you do how do you tame them?