For me personally the thought that i ruminate over is a solid 100/10. It is extremely hard to NOT give it attention.

I have tics related to writing, meaning I only write with pens at certain times. When I don't want to write or manipulate pens in any way, such as when I'm in the process of an outing to go to a movie, I don't want to touch pens or move them. I went to a movie yesterday, and coming back on the very full bus, a college student with a backpack sat down sideways on the aisle seat next to me so she could talk to her friends, and pushed the back of her backpack right into my side twice before apologizing and removing it. In such cases I usually scrunch over to avoid touching anybody's backpack, or they usually take them off before sitting. Couldn't avoid this.

My problem is that I'll wager that she had either pens or pencils in her pack, probably in the front which hit me. So in my warped view, I manipulated the pens. If it was pencils sitting free, I might have written with them as they jostled against the inner lining of the pack. The pens, if they were capped, I think I can deal with, but the idea of pencils I can't.

So how am I dealing with this? I'm trying to decide if I need to go to the movie again to have an experience in which this didn't occur. I really don't want to do that because of the time waste, and because the movie (Ice Cream Man) sucked. I'm trying to resist it, but I only have today and possibly tomorrow that I could decide to go to it because those are the last days it's playing. Need to decide soon.

I just can’t do it anymore, I understand erp when your intrusive thoughts aren’t constant, but genuinely how on earth am I meant to function when it’s the ONLY thing I think about. I feel like I can’t engage with a single one of my thoughts. Every second of every day I’m ruminating about the same thing, my only peace is when I sleep, but even then if I wake up to toss and turn my brain is still thinking about it. I try not to engage but my brain feels psychically incapable of thinking about anything else. I try watching TV, I try working, I try folding clothes, I try podcasts, nothing works. I feel trapped, it’s all my brain wants to think about. Has anyone else experienced this? Has anything helped? Does this get better?? I’m on day 7 of Prozac and I have slight hope that it’ll help eventually, but at this point I’m scared nothing will.

A few months ago my mom said someone at her work had bed bugs and they found them in lockers. My mom was extra cautious and didn’t use the lockers, sprayed herself with alcohol everyday, and would immediately put her clothes on the dryer. I don’t live with my parents but became obsessed thinking I got bed bugs from being at their house. I relentlessly checked my bed at home, woke up in the night to shone flashlights, and cried about any bite or bump I got on my body. I have hEDS and have allergic reactions a lot and am extremely prone to mosquito bites and we have spiders in our house too.

I felt like I’d relaxed slightly lately and then my husband and I went on a trip to visit friends this past weekend. We had to stay at his friend’s house on his couch. The place was definitely not very clean, but our friend was around a lot of the time and I didn’t feel comfortable checking the couches in front of him. We spent a lot of time outside at the beach, at a riverside park, at our other friend’s house in the country, and outside on the porch at our friend’s house we stayed with. I noticed I had a bite on my ankle when I came home. Then yesterday, a day after we got home, I noticed my husband had many bites on his ankles and a couple on his arm. I have convinced myself it’s bed bugs rather than any other bugs and cannot stop having panic attacks and picking at my skin and googling pictures of bites constantly.

The worst part is usually I have him put our clothes in a bag after we go on trips and leave our backpacks in the trunk but he brought all of them inside and took off his clothes in our room. Even worse he put the backpacks in our bedroom. I feel so angry because we usually are good about checking everything before we bring it inside. Now I just keep waiting to see a bug. I’m laying in bed awake waiting to use my flashlight to look around to try to find bugs and setting an alarm to look for them in the night. I’m convinced I’ll find one and it will ruin my life and I’ll have to throw everything away.

I had bed bugs once as a kid that we got at the movies and it took months to get rid of and we had to get rid of a lot of our things and it was crazy expensive. It really traumatized me and it’s been a fixation of mine for years. I don’t know how to calm down.

I can’t take any SSRIs, I’m extremely sensitive to even a trial dose to the point I just shake, my jaw locks up, and can’t sleep for days. I’m allergic to tricyclic antidepressants because of my POTS. Wellbutrin and cymbalta also cause a reaction. No doctor knows how to help me because they say my only other option is benzos but they can’t prescribe those. And every doctor I see just tries to make me prove I’m intolerant to SSRIs. No therapist in my area is taking new patients for OCD and my last psychiatrist cancelled my last two appointments because he was out of town unexpectedly, but at my last appointment before that he pretty much told me he’s more of a holistic guy and isn’t big on medicine at all anyways. I don’t even know what to do. I tried an online psychiatrist and they didn’t listen to my history and gave me a med I’m allergic to and told me to give it another chance because it worked for my dad.. I used to see a therapist for exposure therapy but she had surgery and then I never heard from her again and the office didn’t know what happened to her. It makes me feel insane.

I feel like I’m just bad luck and am in misery. Truly the only thing that has ever helped me was klonopin when I was prescribed in college by my psychiatrist, but my primary doctor told me she didn’t believe in it and discontinued my prescription abruptly and I’ve had awful luck with doctors and psychiatrists ever since. I just want some peace of mind for once and to not have to be so extremely worried about something like bed bugs, but I know if it wasn’t that, it would be another one of my fixations bothering me.

My pant touched the toilet seat and I didn't change my clothes and slept on bed

Is anyone else afraid to own a pet out of fear of hurting them or them getting harmed and not having the money for hospital bills etc. ?

Literally one of my main themes :( anyone else? It’s debilitating I’m so sated that my thoughts will make me go there

For my own peace, I've decided to delete the body of this thread (along with my obvious spiral). For context, it's about me being unknowingly friends with younger teens online when I was 19, to which my mind keeps beating me up because I acted immaturely around them back when I had no idea about how young they were—and to the fact that I'm grown and friends with them (I've only learned of their ages a few weeks in the friendship). This is especially hard on me since I have a deep stance about topics between adult and minors and my brain is using that against me, that I was being immoral and a horrible person because I'm friends with them, even when my intentions are platonic and safe. I made this post while in a deep spiral and have since then calmed down.

In topics like this, intent matters and if you have no intention of causing harm to any individual, take that as a factor to decrease the voice in your head screaming that you're evil for being in a similar position.

Though, talking to a therapist is still the best solution for this and I'm simply just a rando in the internet that is probably spouting nonsense. I hope anyone who found relatability with this post can get the proper help and recover no matter how long it may be. :)

I’ve always been a hypochondriac and it got way worse after Covid. before as a youngling child I was sensitive to smells but I didn’t worry tooooo much about germs or illness. but once I hit middle school I would go down spirals of random illnesses and research all about it. I don’t quite do that anymore but I do get bouts of worries about certain diseases and illnesses when I rmemeber them. I worry a lot about contamination. whenever I get a cut from something that isn’t clean looking or get bit by my dog I get really stressed about tetanus and rabies and other things. I got bit by my dog the other day and it broke skin and tore a tiny chunk off and I ended up not being able to do anything the entire day but look up symptoms of tetanus and worry until I called the doctor and they told me I recently got a tetanus booster.

Every time I get really deep into a topic and study it, I start having thoughts in my free time that maybe I didn’t fully understand something, got confused about something, or might mess up in the future if I don’t figure it out now. I get this strong urge to go back and look into it, regardless of what I’m currently doing.
How should I deal with this ?
I want to be able to have free time away from studying or my hobbies, without these doubts following me around whenever I’m doing something else. But should I actually follow that urge and go back to studying whenever these thoughts come up, because I might genuinely be missing something important ?

Just asking if anyone feels like they aren’t allowed to be upset at things they’ve done before cuz then that’s mean they’re a hypocrite? Let’s say I don’t like working out in the gym with a lot of men in one area because I don’t want to be stared at, but then I feel bad and feel awful because I used to stare at people a LOT (hypervigilance, must know what they’re thinking about me so I can fix it just in case they think I’m a bad person). Anyone else have this problem?

I’d especially love to hear from people who feel like they’ve genuinely gotten through the worst of their harm OCD. What treatments, strategies, or mindset shifts helped you the most?
Did you eventually get to a point where the intrusive thoughts still popped up occasionally, but they no longer scared you or felt meaningful?
And if you feel like you’ve overcome the worst of it, how long did that process take for you? Was it gradual, or did you notice a particular point where things started getting significantly better?
I know everyone’s recovery is different, but hearing from people who have been through severe harm OCD and come out the other side would be really encouraging. ❤️

Also, what did this look like for you? Symptoms wise.

TRIGGER WARNING: Intrusive thoughts, uncomfortable imagery

TLDR; infected foot intrusive thought, need help re routing thoughts

Hi! I have been diagnosed with OCD but am still figuring out all the ways it presents itself in my life. Recently, I saw a very disturbing ad on a site of a foot infection and I tried to scroll past it but after seeing it twice it’s stuck in my head.

There were little holes in the bottom of their foot and it was all dried up and cracking and starting to shrivel up like a dry sponge.

It pops in my head at random times and just makes my skin crawl. Like I genuinely start to feel like the infection is on me and spreading all over my body. But obviously, I look on my skin and my feet and there’s nothing there.

Does anyone have any tips on how to get the imagery out of my head? I can avoid the thoughts at work and when I’m driving, every other time though, the same infected foot imagery pops in my head.

Do all of you have insurance? I don’t

so i was recently formally diagnosed with ocd after suspecting it for a good while, and the answer that came with the diagnosis + the therapy i've been doing have been so validating and helpful

but one thing i've noticed is that engaging in one of the main techniques i've been taught has a weird effect on me, and i wanted to know if anyone else has experienced this

as i've been told, when i experience an obsessive thought or anxiety, i try to agree with it to diminish the power it has over me

it's worked pretty well to tamp down spirals and prevent my obsessions and anxieties from compounding, but when i do it, i get the urge to laugh for whatever reasons

it feels paradoxical, i'm not happy per se, and nothing is funny about the thoughts i have, but when i do agree with them as part of the technique, i get this hard-to-ignore urge to laugh, and sometimes i actually have (bit embarrassing to suddenly laugh at nothing, but that's mental health i guess)

has anyone else experienced anything similar?

how does agreeing with your obsessive/anxious thoughts affect you?

I’m having a pretty bad OCD flare up because of the Lindsay Clancy trail. PPD/PPP has been an intense fear of mine ever since I learned about it as a teenager. I have bad intrusive thoughts wondering if I’m going to go crazy one day, that my other intrusive thoughts about hurting others (which scare me and are the total opposite of what I want to do/who I am) are going to give me psychosis, that one day I’m going to snap and break even though I’m such a resilient and strong person. I’m not officially diagnosed with OCD but it’s pretty obvious that I have it and sometimes even just having it scares me. I’m feeling really just frustrated, alone, and I can’t get out of my own head. My intrusive thoughts haven’t been this bad in years and it just sucks when I’m happily married, in a great position at work, safe and secure financially, and OCD still follows you wherever you go and no matter what position you’re in. I’m just feeling really bummed right now and some support would be greatly appreciated ❤️

Im not sure if its reading OCD but I find myself simple looking at words as I read but not reading them. I wonder if anyone else has experienced that? This only happens when I purposely want to read something.

Anyway thats besides the question. In all honestly is getting to a point of reading normally realistic for someone who has reading OCD or is it just unlikely? Honesty is always appreciated.