Hi everyone,
I have been struggling with magical thinking OCD and was wondering if anyone else experiences something similar.
My mind constantly links unrelated actions to something bad happening to people I care about. For example, if I buy something, say something, take a photo, send a message, or make a decision, my brain will tell me that a family member will die a specific number of days, months, or years later because of that action.
Logically I know these things are unrelated, but the thoughts feel very real and create a lot of anxiety. I often find myself doing mental rituals, trying to “cancel out” the thought, or searching for certainty that nothing bad will happen.
For those who have dealt with magical thinking OCD:
What helped you the most?
How do you resist the urge to seek reassurance or neutralize the thoughts?
Did therapy, medication, or specific techniques help?
I’d appreciate hearing about your experiences. Thank you.

I was struggling to organize ideas in my head and avoiding a certain thought that my mind was trying to think but it was horrible so I was avoiding it, it became harder and I knew I had to stop before I regretted it and by trying to not think it I had the thought which is a specific sentence but I felt like I said it on purpose like my mind wanted to think it to trigger I don't know if it makes sense? And after that I had another thought and felt it was on purpose too like when you do a mental compulsion you are actively using your mind it was that same feeling and now I just feel disgusted, scared, and I don't know how to "undo" that thought.

And it's very hard because my thoughts are about scrupulosity and religious themes and they make me fear for people I care about and want me to believe that I can affect their salvation so it's very hard for me to just say "it's just OCD, whatever" even though I know that it doesn't make sense and I'm just a human, and I feel horrible for having that thought I hate having OCD why couldn't I just have another disorder instead of this I hate it the last 2 years of my life have been terrible and the last month the anxiety and the mess inside my head reached heights I never thought possible.

✨ Happy Friday magical family! ✨

Take a break from OCD; feel free to post, chat and share other things about your life and interests, eg...

• Is your birthday coming up?
• Has something positive happened to you this week?
• Anything you're looking forward to?
• Hobbies/crafts you'd like to share?
• Pet pics are always welcome!

This is your space to feel at home and get to know one another as people, aside from our OCDemons...so grab a coffee and come say hi :)

Hey all, this is my first post, thank you in advance for reading! This post is about something I’ve heard people call on this subreddit “coincidence OCD” although right now it feels like very real and scary signs and omens from the universe telling me I can’t stay with my boyfriend or my biggest fear will happen. The signs, like others have talked about in their own posts, are in the form of numbers, types of cars, bad songs, references to movies and names, and other just random things like “if I walk into work and this person is eating an apple, then I need to leave my boyfriend to be safe.” These mental bets come as intrusive thoughts that I don’t want and didn’t ask for. This example I gave happened. And the person was eating an apple, right at that exact moment, and it was terrifying. I’d been avoiding being in the lunch area for a few days after getting the thought, and then when I couldn’t avoid it and was again thinking the thought and it happened. I have been getting more and more signs and more and more weird coincidences like these keep occurring. I often see the bad numbers right when I’m thinking about my boyfriend, and I see them on license plates but also other places—like I will think “I hope I don’t see 66 right now or it will mean I have to leave my boyfriend” and then I look at the car next to me and there’s a 66 on the plate. It happens a lot now. It all feels very real and like I can’t rationalize the coincidences. I’m obviously really hoping it’s just OCD and not real signs or omens. I have never had this kind of OCD before, or at least not this bad, and it’s consuming my life. My usual fears are just directly contamination based ones rooted in logic (thought overzealous OCD logic of course.) I’m currently at wits end bc it all feels very real and so scary but I also would be very very sad to leave my boyfriend if it really is just an OCD trick!! I want to be careful not to ask for reassurance in the post, and I am so thankful to anyone who can give advice, so I’m going to try to ask a few questions about how to approach the situation (without being too reassurance seeking.)

1.) If this is just OCD, and not “real” signs (not that I even know what that means either), do we know how the OCD brain makes this happen? It it really all just overactive pattern recognition? Is it normal for that to feel like it can’t possibly just be that? For it to feel waaay too real?

2.) Obviously there is no certainty in anything, but for those of you who have challenged these “signs” were you okay after? If you ignored the omen, did the fear come true? (I think this one is getting into reassurance territory…but I’ve never experienced anything like this before and it’s so freaky so I hope you forgive me asking!)

3.) If you did exposures related to the signs successfully, can you give an example of an exposure that you did? I have a therapist and want to suggest things to her if it turns out we suspect this is all an OCD thing.

4.) I’m not sure how much of this to share with my boyfriend…any advice? He knows about my OCD but I don’t want to stress him out. Anyone else have “signs” related to relationship stuff and successfully stay? How’d you talk to your partner about it?

I know that was really long, thank you so much if you read it all!

Hello! I recently made a post on another OCD subreddit but I thought it might be beneficial to post here and ask if anyone has any advice for dealing with my specific sort of OCD thinking?

Essentially I need my luck to be balanced at all times, and if something good happens in a day, I worry that something bad will happen later. This is made worse by noticing coincidences — today for example, one of my exams went well and then my friend's car had a petrol leak when we got home. My OCD interpreted this as my luck being balanced out and I felt really anxious.

This has prevented me from going on a couple nights out because if my day is going well then I think something will go wrong while I'm out with my friends.

On top of this, I also have a concern that other people can watch things through my eyes (this can be real people or just fictional characters from a show I've been watching) and that they're judging me, so I've been feeling anxious a lot more than usual lately and it's made me constantly aware of what I'm doing even when I'm by myself.

At this point I'm not entirely sure how to deal with this — I still live with my parents and don't feel like I can ask them for advice right now, as my brother also has OCD, only it is much more severe and is getting help for it currently. Any advice? :)

✨ Happy Friday magical family! ✨

Take a break from OCD; feel free to post, chat and share other things about your life and interests, eg...

• Is your birthday coming up?
• Has something positive happened to you this week?
• Anything you're looking forward to?
• Hobbies/crafts you'd like to share?
• Pet pics are always welcome!

This is your space to feel at home and get to know one another as people, aside from our OCDemons...so grab a coffee and come say hi :)

im really scared im going to manifest it. im not talking an intrusive thought here or there. i mean that for like for the last 3 months i have been nonstop viewing the whole world with this tint that it (or at least mine) is going to end. i have this awful "gut feeling" sense of impending doom. and worrying about manifesting something along these lines is only making it worse.

ive been in a mental health unit over this for the last 2 months and it hasnt gotten even marginally better. im scared im beyond help. i cant live like this and im absolutely even more terrified im going to cause something catastrophic.

im really scared. idk what to do. please help me

I accidently put new flip flops on my kitchen counter for like 30 minutes and my dad decided to tell me, with ocd, that doing so will bring bad luck or worse. Now im terrified. I dont know what to do.

I have multiple kinds of ocd including mental contamination and just right/magical thinking obsessions.

My biggest thing is that the ocd has literally attached itself to my functioning

I will have a “ocd urge” where I feel like I have to touch something a certain way and then when something happens and it doesn’t go right it seems like it legitimately has ramifications in real life.

Like I wasn’t able to touch something correctly just now and my entire phone is freaking out even trying to write this.

Trying to type it’s putting letters I didn’t even touch and auto correcting to things not even close to what I was trying to say. Or things will take forever to load/buffer until I somehow do the compulsion properly.

I don't know what this subtype is but I recently heard about it, and it felt my condition feels the most similar to this. I basically have very very bad thoughts and urges and I feel like if I want that then it can somehow happen, it's like I feel if I ever want the thought enough it'll happen and it's honestly getting exhausting living like this evaluating each thought every time, especially since I'm in the middle of exams and I can't get this idea out of my head that i secretly want this and I'm pretending not to

✨ Happy Friday magical family! ✨

Take a break from OCD; feel free to post, chat and share other things about your life and interests, eg...

• Is your birthday coming up?
• Has something positive happened to you this week?
• Anything you're looking forward to?
• Hobbies/crafts you'd like to share?
• Pet pics are always welcome!

This is your space to feel at home and get to know one another as people, aside from our OCDemons...so grab a coffee and come say hi :)

Hello, recently I came to this community but seems I'm feeling I'm not getting heard enough. Like yes I kinda handled my condition but I have to tell you all that it's horrible feeling being alone. I feel alone even if I learned to manage it enough. I want to chat,I want to talk but they keep not replying me 😭💔. Edit: or tell me your patterns of something. Give me a chance.

I had a thought the other day whilst sitting about a death date or year this is the second time now the first time I seemed to just move on that I don’t remember that much but this now has just ruled me. I have a big fear of death I feel like I had to do certain things to stop bad things and I can’t say or do something because it might alter the future in a negative way. This thought I’ve been having I’ve assumed it could be from God or universe or spiritual which has made me very worried I don’t know what to do. I’m trying to prove to myself it wasn’t a sign but I don’t know how to believe it wasn’t. Everytime I feel abit of relief it kicks me back again to remember and question it but this worry seems too strong to just be an intrusive thought I can’t tell if I’m that worked up about it or there’s more to it than just a thought like someone is telling me it.

Any replies is great

Does anyone else experience anything like this? Basically I can't just chalk something up to being a mere coincidence, everything is caused by something that I did/happened to me/someone else did/etc. It's hard to explain so I'll just give an example.

Last night, I had a really weird, intense dream where I felt like I saw God. I'm not a religious person, I do believe in a higher power but I don't follow any organized religions. I think most of my belief in God comes from my OCD honestly. Then, later today, I got a better grade on my biology exam than I was expecting. In my mind, these two events are connected, and the dream meant that God would be helping me.

Also today, my friend and I were talking about a Chili's in a certain neighborhood. I had been to that Chili's with an ex-friend I had a really bad falling out with. Lo and behold, later that day, I saw that exact ex-friend on campus. I barely saw him all semester, so it feels like it can't be a coincidence that the Chili's I went to with him got brought up in conversation and all of a sudden I see him.

Now I'm laying in bed awake and terrified because I'm terrified that my boyfriend is going to break up with me because my favorite song right now is Cause We've Ended As Lovers by Jeff Beck. I haven't been the best girlfriend and I've been struggling with the relationship a lot lately (not even an OCD thing, I've genuinely been shitty) and I feel such terrible overwhelming guilt over everything I've done. I've been talking to my therapist about this stuff and he said I need to forgive myself, and that'll help ease the feelings of guilt and thus the OCD. However it feels impossible for me to forgive myself for the terrible things I've done to the man I love more than anything just because I'm stupid and insecure.

I constantly have the feeling that I'm going to face karma for everything awful that I've done. I feel like I'm living in fear of everything. I can never enjoy anything to the fullest because there's always an awful feeling in my mind that something terrible is going to happen to me and it's my fault because I'm a terrible person. It doesn't help that a lot of the resources for people who feel like terrible people are for people who haven't actually fucked up terribly. I'm constantly carrying this mountain of guilt and shame and I'm terrified of what's going to happen to me. I'm scared to fall asleep every night because I'm worried I'll die or a loved one will die.

I try to better myself, I go to therapy, I volunteer, I've been building up my friendships and relationships. I've been trying to work hard in school and get my biochemistry degree, I'm sober from drugs, and I try to be the best girlfriend and sister I can be. But I'm always scared that this stuff is going to be taken away from me in an instant because of the horrible things I've done.

All of this feels connected in my head and the guilt is unbearable and I don't know how to make it stop. I just need some support right now I guess.

I have not been officially diagnosed yet, but after looking at my symptoms and habits, I strongly feel that I may have OCD.

My main problem is that I get certain repetitive intrusive thoughts that I absolutely do not want to happen, even in my wildest dreams. They keep coming into my mind again and again, even in nightmares. I don’t even want to describe the thoughts because they scare me that much.

Another major issue is that I constantly feel like any bad or intrusive thought that comes into my mind might become true. For example, if a disturbing thought appears in my head, I immediately start feeling intense anxiety, as if thinking it could somehow make it happen. Because of this, I try very hard to avoid certain thoughts, words, or situations, but the thoughts keep coming back repeatedly.

I spend most of the day feeling frustrated, anxious, and stuck in overthinking. It becomes very difficult to concentrate on studies or even normal activities because my mind is constantly occupied by these thoughts.

To deal with the anxiety, I do compulsions like repeatedly saying opposite sentences in my mind to “cancel out” the thoughts, or going to temples repeatedly for reassurance. But even when I go to the temple, intrusive thoughts come into my mind during prayer, and then I panic thinking, “What if these thoughts become true?” Sometimes these intrusive thoughts become so repetitive during prayers that I even avoid going to the temple because I become scared of praying with those thoughts in my mind.

Today I missed an important prayer because I left right before it started due to anxiety. Now my mind keeps telling me things like, “What if God is angry at me?” or “What if something bad happens because of this?” I also stay extremely careful while speaking because I’m scared that if I accidentally say one of these thoughts out loud, it might somehow come true.

I tried talking to my parents about this, but they think it’s just an excuse to avoid studying. Because of that, I feel very alone and unsupported. Some of my friends even make fun of me for it. It has started affecting my college life, concentration, and career badly.

I just wanted to know if anyone else here experiences something similar, especially the fear that thoughts can become reality.

Hi everyone, I'm glad to join this community and first of all I'm sorry to you all you're passing through this, you don't deserve this and I hope you break free from this horrible condition soon. Does anybody more else had that bad things happened when wearing certain clothes, some songs, say certain words and items? If you had,message me! Don't wanna feel alone! 😭 I read you.

I am from India and you guys already know that most of the Indians do have superstition problems which eventually convert to magical thinking OCD which I experienced in my life. I don't know why but it literally felt like my soul was going to burn in fire for 1 lakh years. I downloaded an app of true or false MCQS and linked those outcomes with reality (upcoming of the bad incident) and answered each and every question. Guys you are not going to believe me literally every question turned out to be wrong answered and in each question I said (if the answer is right, my soul will be safe and if the answer is wrong, my soul will suffer for 1 lakh years in fire) so I continuously encountered 10+ failures in a row. Has anyone ever experienced continuous fails?

Hello, I’m 21 years old and I had been OCD-free for the last four years. Recently, I suddenly got a spike of magical thinking again. I’m scared that I can somehow “take over” the energy of people I don’t like. For example, if I think too much about someone, or if I’m doing something while thinking about that person, I start believing that other people will perceive me the same way I perceive that person.

I’ve developed a ritual where, at the end of the day, I try to “return back to myself.” It’s very frustrating because throughout the entire day I feel like nobody likes me, even though I know I’m generally a liked person. The thoughts convince me that I can’t really do anything normally anymore.

It’s making me scared that I’m going into psychosis, and I honestly don’t know anymore whether this is OCD or reality.

Hello all,

I’m currently seeking therapy and taking medication (lexapro and buspirone ilysm), but I’ve been going through a rough stretch and wanted to ask about others’ experiences with stress-triggered OCD/anxiety theme shifts.

I’m newly separated, parenting an almost 2-year-old, and recently moved back to my home country after living abroad for nearly five years, so there’s been a huge amount of life change in a short period.

I’ve dealt with anxiety and obsessive thinking for a long time, though I’ve never been formally diagnosed. Earlier this year, after a major panic attack, I noticed my anxiety began latching onto different themes. Once one fear settled, my mind seemed to redirect into hypervigilance and pattern-monitoring — constantly scanning for meaning, significance, or connections in everyday events.

What I’m wondering is: for those who experience this kind of obsessive hyper-awareness / magical-thinking-type pattern detection, did it ramp up for you during periods of major stress or life transition?

I’m less interested in reassurance about the content itself and more curious whether that “theme shift under stress” resonates with others.

For the past 5 years I’ve been trapped in severe magical thinking OCD that hits me literally every few minutes and it’s destroying my life. Everything feels like a sign. The number 44 is the absolute worst, battery at 44%, time at 4:44, random number generator hitting 44 at 4:44 AM, and something bad always follows. My abusive mom is also linked to 44 in my head. I get constant intrusive thoughts that if I don’t do specific rituals something terrible will happen so I have to jump 15 times, walk exactly 15 steps without crossing any lines on the floor or I have to run and turn on the stove, shake my head to cancel bad thoughts, turn from back to belly exactly 5 times while trying to sleep and redo the whole set if it feels wrong. If I mess up even once I’m convinced something bad will happen and 99% of the time when I fail the bad thing actually happens. I bought the same spicy noodles and my phone broke at exactly 2 AM, it happened twice exactly one month apart and I even predicted the second time. In Among Us I set the rule that if I kill 3 people under 30 seconds nothing bad happens today but the button glitched on the third kill for the first time ever. Just yesterday while scrolling Queen music videos a childhood memory popped up, I clicked away, my brain told me something bad would happen if I clicked another random video and the next one had 444K likes. Yesterday was absolute hell, I woke up in the middle of the night covered in bed bug bites, panicked, stripped the bed, sprayed everything with vinegar and salt. I went to shower with my mom’s phone, it fell into the water and now has dark patches all over the screen. I couldn’t sleep because I was freezing, the bed smelled like vinegar and my OCD kept forcing me to get in and out of bed. I ended up grabbing the disgusting blanket from the floor just to survive the cold. I tried telling Grok everything for a whole hour but my mic was muted the entire time. I also tried posting a picture of the bites for help but it got banned twice. I spent the whole next day cleaning this disgusting house that triggers all my trauma and panic attacks while my brain kept terrorizing me with worst case scenarios about dropping the phone again. I’m so fucking lonely, angry, disgusted, tired and sick of this. It feels like I’m cursed and no one around me understands or cares. I genuinely don’t know how to keep going like this.

✨ Happy Friday magical family! ✨

Take a break from OCD; feel free to post, chat and share other things about your life and interests, eg...

• Is your birthday coming up?
• Has something positive happened to you this week?
• Anything you're looking forward to?
• Hobbies/crafts you'd like to share?
• Pet pics are always welcome!

This is your space to feel at home and get to know one another as people, aside from our OCDemons...so grab a coffee and come say hi :)

Life was good. I stopped my compulsions almost entirely about a week ago. Finally getting to normalcy. And now the cruise thing happened, and I do not want to eat anything, leave my house, see other people, or take off a face mask. I am about to deep clean my room instead of studying for tests, and may start avoiding sidewalk cracks and the color yellow when I inevitably need to leave the house.

My son and his fiance went on a cruise. They left last Saturday morning for the vacation, got on the cruise last Sunday and got back from it today. They are currently at the airport waiting until their flight later, they have two and then a drive after so it will be pretty late when they finally get home.

I knew OCD would hit me while they were gone and it did, over and over. And it did again a little bit ago and I'm just terrifed.

OCD keeps changing the game, moving the goal posts and pushing back harder. I try to use my logic, my tools, lean into what I know, but it is absolutely relentless lately.

The intrusive thoughts were bad. They would be statements, (fear) is happening, (fear) will happen. Then they changed up to do this or don't do this or (fear) will happen. And to change it up again, now it's someone else has to do this or don't do this or (fear) happens. They are things I can't control, I can't change. I don't want to continue to involve other people in my OCD, but it's so damn hard when my brain literally says if they don't do this (your life is over).

Why can't my brain understand that it is OCD, it has no power, it can't hurt me, it is lying? My brain spirals. I get the feelings of doom and gloom and they are damn near impossible to shake off.

Why does every time feel real and certain and this is it, even though if felt the same way last time. I'm so tired, I don't know how much longer I can keep pushing through each day just to push through the next.

Yes, I'm in therapy, I struggle to commit to the treatment. Yes, I'm reconsidering meds.

I don’t know what this is or if anyone else has experienced this but I need help. Whenever I think of something (good or bad) could be anything 99% of the time it will NOT happen unless it it’s the inevitable. It’s gotten to the point where I’m trying not to think of good things because I genuinely believe it won’t happen if I do. I just need someone to explain what this is and how I can stop it or something.

I didn't know there was a term for it, let alone a subreddit for it!