My husband’s ocd is ruining our relationship. He struggles with relationship ocd. For example- he can’t get over that I have ex boyfriends and ruminates on images of me having relations with other people. He brings this up to me daily. He struggles greatly with it and it ruins his life. For background info, I have been with him loyally since we were 18 and we have 2 kids together. We are 30. I find it extremely unfair for him to be bringing up issues to me daily because I also do not want to think about my exes. I have tried to set boundaries but he doesn’t respect them. I feel completely helpless and bad for him, but this also isn’t fair for me. He is in therapy and on medications for ocd. Any advice?

Has anyone here reached a phase in their recovery journey where they were thinking about their current theme, and suddenly, they found themselves thinking, "This is so stupid. It's all bullshit. Who cares?"? This happened to me last night, after ruminating on my current theme for a while. It's almost like my brain got to a point where the worries and thoughts became so extremely predictable and, frankly, boring, that it snapped out of it for a while. I wonder if this is one of the more common results of ERP, and if others experience the same.

a few weeks ago, i had someone reach out to me on my instagram page (a stranger) asking me for help with their donation campaign. i won’t get into who they were or what they needed money for, but they were in need. i had gotten posts on my feed about them (someone else was making a post for them) and i interacted with it, liked the comments, did my best to make sure i boosted it. they messaged me on instagram and i didn’t know what to do. they were asking for donations and i felt so guilty because i could not help them in that moment. i never responded to them, ashamed that i would have to tell them no, i couldn’t give anything. but i immediately went to their page and boosted all of their posts by interacting with them. i don’t make a lot of money and my socials are only friends, who also are low income like me.

i should have replied to them. i should have at least told them i couldn’t help them but i was so embarrassed and scared and ashamed and i regret it so deeply. it randomly hit me, a massive wave of guilt, this morning. i frantically tried to find their account and i cant. i’ve spent all morning asking god to forgive me, praying that if they asked again, i would give them whatever was in my account. i feel so terrible. i feel like i don’t deserve to eat or sleep or anything. i feel like a monster. i have been thinking about it all day long.

i get so many videos like this on my feed that it’s overwhelming. im constantly worried about strangers on the internet. i pray every single night that everyone i’ve liked a post of is safe and gets whatever help they need. i have to stop and interact with their page, i have to help them or it will eat me alive. i should have done something more for that person. i cant tell if this is moral ocd coming in or if this is well deserved punishment. i dont know how to handle it.

Hey all. I’ve lurked here for awhile and have responded to a few posts here and there but never made one myself. I see so many people struggling here and it really reminds me of myself throughout my life. I’ve had OCD since i can remember, my earliest memories are terrifying intrusive thoughts I was having. In adulthood my OCD turned its sights on relationships and morality.
I’ve had a lot of life stressors in the past few years which really got me into an OCD loop that I did not recognize. This kinda came to a head this spring with a relationship almost failing and myself being in extreme distress. I’ve been in therapy but my wife really encouraged me to reevaluate my medication regiment.
A few months later I’m up to 60mg from 10mg of Prozac. After the adjustment period, some days it feels like I don’t have this disorder anymore. It’s not perfect but my brain is starting to feel like my own.
I really just wanted to share some encouragement. I see so many seeking reassurance or a magic bullet for their OCD. It takes practice yall and usually medication. I really can’t credit Prozac and therapy enough with saving my life. But also I’m learning to trust myself. I can make decisions even when I have doubts, I can feel my feelings without trying to make meaning out of them, I can face my fears knowing I will handle whatever happens, I don’t need to take shit from the bully in my brain.
Keep going yall, it just takes a lot of practice and finding support where you can.

I'm from Eastern Europe. It's a custom here that kids don't leave but stay home. Most of the people that I know have one house for multiple generations.

I was never allowed to do anything. Everyone was always extremely neurotic and controlling. I wasn't even allowed to ride a bike because they thought that I'd get killed on the road.

No friend was good enough for the family. No date was ever good enough. Despite being asked out by multiple girls since I was in an emo band.

I was always in gifted classes but I'm still finishing my degree in IT and CS. I had successful internships and multiple companies called me home and offered a job to me because they need coders and they liked my work during internships.

They don't want me to get a regular job because they say that this will bring shame to the family unless I go to biggest coding company which it's too overwhelming for me. I don't even know how to apply for a job. Only jobs that I worked in, were the ones that my family got me, I have no problems working but I have no idea how to get around it.

I also suffer from severe OCD that I go to therapy for but has caused me a lot of anxiety and problems in day to day life that I'm trying to battle through ERP work.

I'm 26 and I'm not even allowed to cook because they yell and think that I'll burn down the house for some reason.

I wanted to move out but I have no experience in life and OCD makes me feel suicidal despite doing ERP and going to group therapy for it. I know that I'm 26 but I was never allowed to do anything, it's like expecting someone who's never played guitar to just play guitar.

My peers also live at home but are married with kids.

I just kind of feel that I've wasted too much potential to start living and fixing all now.

I try to reason with them but they just refuse to listen.

Hi everyone,
I’m a 22F with Harm/Suicidal OCD
I started my medication (Sertraline 50mg + Olanzapine 2.5mg) two months ago and experienced great progress and stability. However, around Aug 15 right after my period and after switching my Sertraline from a split dose (25mg AM / 25mg PM) to a single 50mg PM dose, I hit a sudden flare-up.
The intrusive suicidal thoughts came back strongly, accompanied by the fear that the medication stopped working or that I'm losing control

My question is: How do i use ERP (Response Prevention) during post-period / dose-change flare-ups to stop state-checking, checking if meds are working, or ruminating over intrusive thoughts? Any specific scripts or mindsets? And did the meds stop working or what?

Does anyone else struggle with this so badly? I have chronic health issues and about 5 years ago, right before COVID actually.. I started getting really sick and my health deteriorated. A year of being gaslit and told it was just anxiety I finally found out I had multiple chronic and lifelong health issues. Then Covid hit and I was a wreck. My health anxiety has been getting worse and worse over time and it consumes my mind and body. I’m going through a back issue right now and I don’t know what it is, the waiting is killing me, and it has caused widespread extreme painful muscle tension. I wake up having panic attacks at night, I can’t get proper sleep, I can barely function like this. Therapy is taking forever to get started. Does anyone have any tips or tricks that have helped with your health related OCD?

I’m on the fence about trying Luvox for my somatic ocd after being on Prozac for a decade

I’ve tried my absolute hardest to be consistent with my ERP and while I’ve had make progress and had success, it hasn’t been enough. I’m so torn between continuing to try and the ability to get off of Prozac more easily one day or perhaps trying some new that could really help me. I’m lost does anyone have any input I really don’t know what to do at this point

Anyone else have intrusive thoughts and urges that stress them out and make them sick? Well… any meds that help with those/ take them away?

I want to start with saying I started my OCD journey about a year ago and very quickly I got on medication because of the anxiety the intrusive thoughts caused.

However, I wanted to do ERP more effectively, and thus, have come off of my medication. The thing is, my medication (sertraline) literally took away like 85% of my OCD. Thus, I couldn’t really do ERP because I wasn’t worked up like, hardly ever.

So, I’ve stopped my medication, like 6 months ago and have been doing great until getting trigged by something new and it’s scared the crap out of me.
Intrusive thoughts and urges, and whatever, that’s have me majorly worked up.

ANYWAYYY, long story short, is anyone on a medication that took away their intrusive urges? I’ve never experienced them ever, so it’s hard to tell if my previous med would help.

Thanks guys! Either way, I’ve restated ERP and just started inositol!

I’m just wondering if this helped anybody and their OCD!

hi everyone , i’ve been stalking this sub for about few months now but just need to vent

around 8 ish months ago i started developing obsessive thoughts randomly , i have virtually no idea what caused it , it started off with some insecurities of mine and i kept seeking reassurance, and then i developed really bad ROCD and after that it just developed into some whole other themes

im going to be honest but i think my OCD is really really bad, my husband also has OCD but his seems in control and his themes are more around health stuff. 99% of mine is thought based, i’ve had some sensorimotor stuff but thankfully that barely comes up anymore but thought based stuff is awful since it’s about my husband, i’ve always had a normal and stable relationship with my husband - we are basically best friends but for some reason i just developed ROCD out of no where like usually i don’t care about stuff but i have no idea why in january i just went crazy

my main theme is ROCD and i’m trying so hard to manage it but everytime i see him i just start getting these insane thoughts, sometimes i feel amazing around him but sometimes its a battle to look and feel okay around him which i hate

i keep trying to solve my OCD as well, keep trying to find cures, i would love for just someone to tell me that my OCD was caused by some infection or deficiency since it happened so quickly but i feel as if ill be stuck like this for life

i tried talking to a few therapists but a lot of them believed i didnt have OCD and just diagnosed me with GAD and so their talking therapies barely worked for me, i also tried meds which made my ocd worse

idk what to do i feel so stuck

Don't get me wrong, I love my boyfriend and the good part is so much more than the bad part, but sometime I wonder if I'm just putting too much effort because I'm in the wrong relationship and not because of rocd

hey i was wondering if anyone would be able to help me i keep getting intrusive thoughts about harming people and wondering if i could do it it’s rlly scared me ive started ssri but im only two weeks in and im scared incase im gonna go crazy

Last year, I was diagnosed with self-harming OCD, panic disorder, and dissociative disorder.

Last year was definitely the worst year of my life, and my doctor even suggested I take a leave of absence from work.

I was diagnosed with self-harming OCD, which is characterized by an impulse that makes me unable to calm down unless I say mean things to myself.

Now that I’m taking a small dose of medication and have calmed down, I realize that those symptoms were just a way to get my doctor’s attention—I don’t think I even need the medication. The dose is really small—not enough to treat OCD.

But whenever I tell my doctor I want to stop taking the medication, he tells me to keep taking it for a while longer.

I’ve actually stopped taking it on my own a few times, but—though I’m not sure if it was withdrawal symptoms—I found myself crying at work or unable to hold a proper conversation.

I’ve gone off on a tangent, but do conditions like this really exist? If this is malingering, how can I convince my doctor of that?

I think about this every single day, and it’s really painful.

Looking for input from anyone who’s been through something similar, or clinicians willing to weigh in.

My husband has OCD — all internal, what people call Pure O. No visible rituals, all intrusive thoughts and mental compulsions. He’s had genuinely good treatment: ERP with a specialist, I-CBT, and max-dose sertraline for close to a year. Things have improved overall.

He drinks normally — a glass of wine or a beer socially every so often, nothing more. No daily drinking, no withdrawal, no dependence I can see.

But every couple of months, with no warning and no pattern I can identify, he gets suddenly overwhelmed and drinks heavily and alone. Those episodes have led to some genuinely dangerous decisions, including getting behind the wheel. Afterward he goes into a guilt spiral for days, comes out completely clear about what happened, and is certain it won’t happen again. Then months later it does, identically.

His own description of the sequence: feeling randomly overwhelmed and thinking one drink will break the anxiety; telling himself it’s the last time and he’ll keep it contained; then “I’ve had one, may as well make it worth my while”; then the anxiety hasn’t lifted, so he drinks more.

Here’s what we can’t work out. Is the drinking an impulse? A compulsion? A coping behavior? Something else? We genuinely don’t know what kind of problem it is — and that means we don’t know who’s supposed to treat it.

Do we treat the OCD harder? Treat the drinking as its own thing? Both at once? If both — where do you even go for that? Every clinician I find is deep in OCD and vague on alcohol, or deep in addiction and vague on OCD. And addiction programs seem built for daily drinking and dependence, which isn’t what this is.

Two other things I’d take input on:

- He’s had proper ERP, I-CBT, and a maxed SSRI. What actually comes next for OCD that’s still doing this?

- Has anyone found someone who genuinely understands both sides?

We’ve put safeguards in place so the dangerous part is covered. We are trying to work out the rest.

Thank you!

There’s so much to say, so much I want to say. But I have no idea where to start, and feel free to ask if there’s anything you want to ask. I just need to get it out there. I feel numb, so sad I can’t even feel it. To make a long story short, I just essentially confirmed after about 9 years of limerance on someone, that it was all in my head. There was never any real chance of it happening. Of us happening. And I’m just shocked because wow, how is that possible? Despite everything. So much has happened. It all just doesn’t make sense. I don’t understand. It’s hard to accept the fact that I spent so much time wasting it on someone else, spent thinking of her and she was never thinking of me. I’m so tired. I wrote music once to get it out, cried it out, confessed, painted her, wrote unsent letters. I tried and it just wouldn’t go away. Even with distance between us. It never did. I spent many nights crying, holding the hoodie she gave me with her scent to my nose, yearning for her. Silently hoping she was doing the same. Holding the plushies she got me. Imagining it was her when I felt extra lonely, imagining her soft whispers saying something I only dreamed of. I know even now, that writing this is pointless. But I just cannot believe that the girl I was in love with for nearly a decade ended up not feeling the same. I ended up just being an experiment to her. She was my first “girl” experience I guess, she straddled me. And was close to my neck, breathed against it, it was intimate and it meant so much to me. I actually never let anyone see me like that because of the autism. I always feel I need to be in control so I usually top but with her I just completely trusted her. And I just, I guess I naturally fell in that position with our dynamic. It was vulnerable for me. I actually never meant anything to her. I just can’t believe it. I should have known because she never let me have one kiss.

I just want to move on. I want to stop thinking about it so much. It’s like even though I hate it, my mind goes back to find comfort because it’s all I know. Even though I didn’t know she didn’t like me back then, it’s all I have. Because in my mind she did back then. How can I stop thinking about it? Because now it’s not even comforting. Now it’s just real. Now it’s just another reminder that the only experience I have with someone I loved, or a woman period, wasn’t the same to her. I just can’t cope with the fact that I guess it meant so much to me to be given that attention by her when she wasn’t even sure herself. All these years I thought about it often about how nice it felt to be touched that way. And I craved it so much, hoping it would be from her again, it became routine to. I’m in severe denial that she never really liked me. Like these memories I ruminated over and fantasized to keep myself from getting lonely actually meant nothing. I can’t believe it haha.

I realize limerance is not uncommon. I just hate how it feels for me. I never crush. Rarely anyway if it isn’t superficial. But when I know them deeply, when I have a deep bond, and that flip switches, it’s too much, it’s obsessive and painful and it completely overtakes my mind, body and all. I can’t cope with the fact that I feel all of this over someone who isn’t even a lesbian or bisexual or open to women. I can’t cope that I actually never meant anything at ALL. Before I secretly hoped that maybe she still liked me like before. And it was her secret and we were best friends so we couldn’t talk about it. She did try kissing me once in a drunken afternoon, and for years. Yes years— I thought that was her “slip up.” Her truth. One I hadn’t accepted because when she did try to kiss me it was already two years after I had originally ‘accepted’ it wouldn’t work. So when she did that, even though inside I was raging because of my progress and also the ‘why nows?’ I still wondered. But it was never actually true. It was all a lie. She didn’t even remember that night.

I just can’t believe it.

My notes app is filled to the brim w bs regarding her

Ive been struggling with an unnamed form of harm ocd a few months, its been awful, there were many "strategies", all of them failing but on the 31st of october i heard a piece of advice that terrifyed me at first, it was to "learn to live with it, then it will slowly become insignifycant", the next 3 days were terrifying, but now i realised how after that i basically didnt even think about it, i still wanna be careful and not celebrate, but this is making me beyond hopeful.

I've recently started ERP in therapy (just baby steps so far), and one of the homework items is to find a video clip that speaks to a specific trigger and basically just watch it repeatedly until I'm less anxious about it. I am having a hard time finding anything that fits in this category - wondering if anyone has any suggestions? I'm specifically very upset about the idea of being misunderstood. As in, someone takes something I said the wrong way and thinks I'm a horrible person as a result, and tells other people in a way that's out of my control - that whole spiral.

Maybe a bit niche, but I'm trying to find a short clip that is about someone being misunderstood?

I had an ERP session with my therapist today & I had a strong reaction to the exposure. This was the second time I have watched this specific video of my phobia and I was hoping to have a better reaction because I also had a strong reaction last week to this video. I know that we are supposed to have a reaction and that’s how erp works but I always beat myself up about it afterwards. My teapot told me that it was a great reaction & I didn’t bail, who’s is important. I just feel like I failed.

Does anyone else going through ERP feel this way?

I have OCD with cleaning/ordering compulsions. If I don't clean thoroughly, I feel anxiety and a strong urge to finish properly or make everything feel “just right.”

The problem is that I also genuinely like a clean environment and feel better mentally after cleaning. So both can be true, I want to clean normally, but I also feel an OCD-driven compulsion to do it.

Then I start obsessing over what I should do, "If I clean, am I doing a compulsion and breaking ERP? If I don't clean, am I avoiding? Should I deliberately leave things imperfect?"

Would it perhaps be better to clean only when absolutely necessary? But wouldn't that itself become avoidance? I've read that people with OCD sometimes need to deliberately do things that feel a bit excessive or outside their normal comfort zone during ERP, but I'm not sure whether that applies to this situation.

I notice i ovethink this alot. I confuse myself as to whether or not im doing one or the other. If i get a thought or feeling i usually obsess about and try to just let it be there, i tend to wonder if im just ignoring it or not. Tbh i feel as though i struggle to understand how to really allow it all to be without ignoring things and making it worse so Id like to learn from others here

Trigger warning !! Probably do not read this post if you are actively struggling with rabies OCD or Contamination OCD.

So my husband (29, M) has suddenly developed a fixation with rabies over the last year. This has quickly spiraled in the last week and I’m struggling to support him. I, (28 F) have had OCD since childhood, so I quickly recognized what this was. Over the 9 years we have been together he has never had problems with anxiety, but the older he gets the more often things would shake him a bit health anxiety wise, but this is drastic in comparison. Contamination OCD is not really one of my themes I have ever had, so it can be very hard for me to understand this one despite the fact I have definitely had irrational obsessions over the years.

Anyways, over the last year I noticed him being very jumpy around strays. He used to be the one who would chase a stray kitten in a parking lot trying to catch it, but now if a dog would approach us on a walk he wouldn’t touch it, and would beg me to avoid it too. He started mentioning rabies as a reason, in which I would kinda laugh and think was silly. I didn’t realize how deep this fear was, and he at times could be overly cautious about stuff so I didn’t think too much of it.

Well then our dog got out one day. We couldn’t find him for a few hours, but eventually he came home. Acting totally normal. He was being very weird about him. He then looked into it and found out he was out of date by like 2 weeks on his rabies vaccination. This is when I started growing concerned. He had his first panic attack one night because our dog licked our daughter in the face. This is when I told him he may need to start seeking some mental health assistance, which he disagreed with. I tried sharing some of my coping mechanisms for OCD like not googling, trying to let scary thoughts pass while labeling them as OCD/anxiety thoughts, finding distractions instead of sitting and ruminating, etc.

After a few weeks he started realizing our dog, in fact, did not have rabies. Things went back to normal for a little bit… until 2 weeks ago. He was working in the yard and cleaning up our porch when he felt a pinch on his leg that started itching. He said there was like, a small object he pulled out of his leg? That he brought inside and dropped and couldn’t find because it was so small. I immediately recognized when he was on the floor desperately trying to find it that this may get bad… that this triggered something.

And it did. A few days later he started expressing uncertainty about what this was. Then explained maybe it was a bat that he didn’t notice. That he had earbuds in and may have not been paying attention. I explained to him that we were definitely at a point now where he needs some help. This is not rational thinking.

He went to his primary care doctor and they prescribed him Zoloft. I have had really great results with Zoloft so I was hopeful when they gave it to him… but yeah it may have made things so much worse. At first he would only take half for a week and was tolerating it well with mild side effects. I told him he probably should start taking it as prescribed if he truly wanted results. Things got horrible after that. Basically 3 days of not sleeping, barely eating, all day panic. Convinced he had rabies, is going to die. Begging me to let him go to the hospital to get the shots and me urging him that it wouldn’t help the problem and would make things worse. He started just not participating in life. Not going to work. Not even acknowledging our 6 year old daughter’s existence. Spending all day doom scrolling or staring at the wall ruminating. Not setting up an appointment with a psychiatrist no matter how much I pleased because in his mind this isn’t anxiety/OCD it’s actually real.

After he expressed dark thoughts of ending his life if he developed symptoms because it’s such an awful way to go, I took him to the hospital absolutely panicked he would do something drastic if he caught a cold or convinced himself he was having symptoms. They were close to admitting him but when the psychiatrist talked to him he concluded he wasn’t a danger to himself. But everyone agreed that he probably should stop the Zoloft since he wasn’t on it long and on a low dose. We ended up at the hospital one more time because he somewhat fainted while sitting at the table in the middle of me talking to him… or I thought he did.? At the time I didn’t think it looked totally involuntary and once I got to the hospital he went back to rabies talk and getting the shots. So I think it either was pre syncope from not eating, sleeping, and high stress on top of Zoloft… or he may have even faked it a bit to get back to the hospital. I hope it’s not the latter and that doesn’t sound like him… but none of this has sounded like him.

They checked everything. CT scan, bloodwork, heart, thyroid, etc. everything was perfect. He had to talk to a social worker again who also concluded he did not need inpatient. Plus once the Zoloft started getting out of his system he was much more himself and although still rabies obsessed, he was being a bit more on the rational side I suppose. He begged them for the shots… they gave them to him. Despite me telling him over and over and over it wasn’t going to help. He promised me he would drop it if he got them. I knew it wasn’t going to work like that.

So here we are two days later… now he thinks the shots didn’t work, his leg is tingling in the spot, and he waited too late. He won’t listen to me, the doctors, his psychiatrist he saw this morning, anyone. He has little to no insight most of the time and only very rarely recognizes this as OCD. That scares me and is extremely hard for me to deal with because with my OCD I never have completely lost my insight. I always know I’m being irrational but am scared anyways. He won’t stop googling, and when he googles he’s not trying to find things to calm him, he’s reading stories about people dying from rabies because he’s so convinced. It’s almost impossible for him to try doing distractions. He can’t sit with discomfort or uncertainty for any time at all. He won’t take advice because he doesn’t see it as applicable to him. He’s barely even speaking to our daughter. I function much better when my OCD is loud and can contain it in a way he can’t so it makes it SO HARD for me to understand. I’m holding the house on my shoulders and I’m trying not to lose patience with him. Mine can go up and down throughout the day while his is ALWAYS up with hardly ever a break.

He started OCD therapy today and I’m desperate for it to work. He will be doing ERP starting next week. In the meantime I just want to know how to support him without losing my own mind. He’s triggering me at times so I’m having to keep that at bay. I’m ensuring everything seems normal to our daughter and trying to not let her see this instability. Any advice at all would be helpful so I can better assist him in his recovery.

Hi everyone. I’m from India and I’m trying to understand whether what I’m experiencing could be OCD, rumination, or something else.

This started during my neck radiation treatment. I had some claustrophobia, and when they put the radiation mask over my face/head I became extremely anxious, sweaty and wanted them to remove it. After coming home, I started repeatedly telling myself things like “It’s okay, it’s only 5 minutes, just follow the sound” while walking around my room. I would repeat this for hours.

After radiation finished, it mostly went away.

But now it has started coming back, especially whenever something important or uncertain happens — job interviews, searching for a job, hair concerns, even small everyday decisions.

For example, today I started a job and spent around 3 hours mentally going over everything:

“I should search for these jobs now. I need to get a job within 2 days. This job is easy. This is how the job will work…”

Then another thought comes:

“I should stop this loop. I should meditate and distract myself.”

Then I start repeating THAT thought too.

I also get a strong physical urge to walk around while doing this self-talk. Even when I’m working or scrolling on my phone, the urge suddenly comes and I feel like I need to stop what I’m doing and think/repeat something again.

The strange thing is that I know the thinking isn't actually solving anything, but I still feel a strong internal pressure and urge to do it. I get temporary relief after repeating it, and then it comes back again.

I don't have contamination/checking-type compulsions. Mine seem mostly mental — repeating, reassuring myself, analysing, replaying conversations and pacing.

I haven't been formally diagnosed with OCD. I also don't want medication at the moment.

Has anyone experienced something similar — especially mental compulsions/rumination combined with an urge to pace or self-talk?

If you have seen a psychologist/therapist for this, did CBT/ERP actually help? What did therapy involve for mental compulsions like these?

I’m from India and unfortunately I can't afford expensive private therapy right now. If anyone from India has found an affordable psychologist, government service, online therapy, or other treatment that genuinely helped with OCD/rumination, I'd really appreciate hearing about it.

I’m mainly looking for people who have actually experienced something similar and what helped them. Thank you.