r/PureOCD

I have a dog and my siblings both own cats. When I was 5-6 I’d choke the cat we had back then, I’m not sure why , I know I was diagnosed with adhd. Not sure if that played into it in any way but it’s definitely not an excuse. I stopped doing that and I’m not sure if it was more than once since I was pretty young, I’m 17 now and am dealing with mistakes I’ve made in the past- this is probably the biggest one. I know I was a kid and perhaps shouldn’t be worrying about it now that I’m about to enter adulthood soon, but I can’t help but think about it. I feel like a monster because of it and I feel horrible. It ruins whenever I want to spend time with my pets, not cause I think I’d do it ever again because I know I wouldn’t. But because I feel like I don’t deserve to live with it. I feel an insane amount of guilt for doing this as a child and I’m not sure how I can get over it. I love my pets and have grown to have much empathy for both humans and animals and even insects. But that doesn’t erase what I did as a child. reading about this online definitely didn’t help either as people just said this could be “signs” of a child growing up to be antisocial/a serial killer🫩🫩. Im sorry if this made anyone uncomfortable to read. I just feel desperate

I have been struggling with a fear of mental association. For example:

“what if I do this hobby and I am constantly thinking about an intrusive thought, or reminded of a situation”

It to me sounds a little like mental contamination, but also maybe just a fear of obsessive intrusive thoughts.

Does anyone have experience combating this? What did you do?

I’m too the point where I have that fear about anything I do, workout, read, meditate. It’s like there’s no escape from it and am having a hard time accepting the thought.

Hey guys , can anyone give me any help or tips to help with my boyfriend who has OCD and ROCD

I understand a bit about it and I have researched some about it

How can I help him when he is spiraling or his thoughts are telling him that he is doing stuff wrong or anything like that

Any help is much appreciated thank you ;)

I worry too much of what’s considered normal…

For example in my childhood I was obsessed with moshi monsters and had over 500 of them, gold, silver, glow in the darks, minis and all of them you can think of. It was a big part of my childhood and thinking of it now as a 21 year old adult makes me full of joy and want to collect them again, I’ve ordered 100 of them because I want to re collect but my ocd clings onto this saying “that’s wired, no one does that” and twists why I wanna collect them etc. does anyone else relate to this?

So basically I’m now spiralling and crying thinking this makes me a bad person and not normal. I know it sounds crazy but this is what ocd does. I’m having a full mental break down about this.

This happened 5 years ago when I was 18 but for some reason it popped back into my mind again and I am spiralling out of control. For context, I have very bad OCD and anxiety.

I used to watch a YouTube channel that posted spankings from old movies (it’s a bit embarrassing to admit that I got off to people being spanked in movies from decades ago but whatever). It didn’t matter to me whether it was a man or woman being spanked, as I was attracted to the act of spanking, not the actual people.

Anyway, one time I watched a video of a 1920s movie scene from a silent movie with a man spanking what I thought was a grown woman. I looked the movie up afterwards and I felt absolutely sick. Apparently the girl was 14 when the movie came out, so she was probably about 13 when filming. I felt like an absolute monster, even though I had absolutely NO idea that she was underage. I was certain she was around 20 or maybe a bit older.

I went through a massive dip where I hardly slept or ate. After a few weeks I got a bit better. But recently for some reason that memory has came back to me in full swing, and I feel evil.

I am panicking so much. Has anyone gone through something similar? Please help.

Like when i was relegious we had to take a shower after semen comes out, i was 15 year old, the relegious text says that you have to cover every simgle part of your body with water and don't leave a space not even the size of a hair that's not covered by water, so i would go to the shower, most of relegious people and my family do this in just 5 to 10 minutes, i take 2 hours, and even after 2 hours of just washing i would still be scared that i did it wrong, ot made me very distressed, i asked my parents for help, and i even told them that I'm willing to cut off my genetalia if it means i can stop taking these showers, i was 16 or 15 at the time, so i kept taking those showers that were very distressing, and then at some point i just gave up, i stopped going to the showers, i stopped praying (because you can't pray if you don't take the shower) , and then i felt really horrible because I'm not being a good relegious person, i then went into college,i used to think that i know internet pop culture very well, but in college i discovered there are other students who know much more than me,i know this is weird but it made me feel really inferior,so i spent 8 hours a day just trying to know more memes play more video games,listen to more music,not because i like them,but so that I'm not the guy that doesn't know,i even bought a pc just for this ,i don't know what this was but it continued for a year,and i saw that some students were athiests, i didn't talk with them, but i already knew the idea before, then i went through a weird process where i discovered determinsim, and that made me leave relegion because i concluded that it's not possible for god to punish people if the world is determined, the relegious people i told this too told me it's fine because the past life decides this life so not just random determimsim, but i discovered that thier argument is just infinite regress (what decided the past life?) , after that like a year, i started obsessing about the famous debates between liberals and conservatives about abortion and lgbtq, and I'm on conservatives sides kinda, probably because of my relegious background and me living in a conservative country were both lgbtq and abortion are illegal, but i spend a lot of time thinking about these topics, especially lgbtq, i go to lgbt sub Reddits and just read the arguments they make, they are good arguments, they make me feel horrible, but they don't change me, so i keep just thinking about it, i feel really bad when i see a pride flag or a gay couple or a trans, but I'm fine if i see lgbtq porn, but interestingly if the porn video has a pride flag on the wall of the place, i feel horrible too, i feel like I'm a bad person because I'm against lgbtq, but at the same time i feel really bad when i see lgbtq being just accepted, i spend around 7 hours a day just looking at lgbtq and thinking about it and it's history and arguments and the pop evolutionary theories and i don't know but sometimes i ask myself, why am i spending time on Reddit being against lgbtq, and knowing that I'll just be called a hateful bigot and everyone would just reject me? I personally don't know the answer to that question, lgbtq say they live rent free in my head, and that's absolutely true, and it's making me feel horrible, they say I'm on the wrong side if history, and they are probably right, they say the world is moving toward accepting them, and they are probably right, they say it's just a matter of time before we bigots just Dissapear, and they are probably right. But this doesn't stop me from feeling horrible when i see a gay couple or a pride flag, and it doesn't change my mind.

Mod or mods, if you want to ban me, i would appreciate it if you also tell me if i just should delete Reddit forever, because if i get banned here then this would be the fourth sub Reddit where i just get permanently banned from posting, and that doesn't feel good

Hi I’m looking to see if anyone else has experienced this form of ocd. Although I’m ashamed to admit it, I uncontrollably look at breast. I don’t want to and get no sexual satisfaction out of it. It happens with everyone no matter who they are or what they look like, even family members. I am completely horrified and don’t know how to stop it. I have done lots of research and believe I’m suffering from ocd although I’ve never had a formal diagnosis because I’m too embarrassed to bring it up with any mental health professional. This randomly started a couple of years ago and has completely ruined my life and relationships. I have completely isolated myself and avoid everyone in fear I will make others uncomfortable. As a woman this has been heartbreaking to me because I know what it’s like to feel objectified and hate that I’ve made others feel that way against my will. No matter what I do my eyes automatically dart to the chest area, it feels like a tic. I feel so hopeless for the trajectory of my life due to this ailment. I’m terrified of being labeled a creep and fear I already have been. I don’t know how I can work or have relationships due to my issue. I guess I’m making this post to see if anyone else has dealt with this and if it will ever get better. I’m currently looking for a therapist to help manage this but I don’t even know how to bring it up and have not much faith they could even help me. It is completely debilitating and makes me no longer want to live. Please be kind.

I’m slowly upping Zoloft up to 200 mg, abilify 5mg, pregabaline 225 mg and propranolol.

I really want to date and want to be in a relationship and have good sex life. I love sex. I read if partner asks again if you say no then that coercion and if I even want to agree that’s rape. i want to stop thinking like this and I read all the internet and it’s such a compulsive behavior like I can’t stop. I don’t work.

I’ve been having ocd for 20 years now but it has never been so long lasting. meds are not working as they used to even though I tried many.

Usually that bad periods lasted like a month but not it’s been a year. I’m exhausted!

what should I do? I use ChatGPT as a therapist. I go to talk therapy though yesterday I felt so bad I didn’t go.

hi all!!!

I've been suffering from GAD and health-related obsessions (some signs of OCD, like needing everything to be sterilised and cleaned, but mostly exhausting, life-sucking pure O) for a while now. for the past year, ive been on Paxil (paroxetine), but the dose that is effective for my anxiety and obsessions paradoxically makes me depressed :/ has anyone had experience with both paxil and Zoloft (sertraline) to compare, before I ask the doctor to switch?

Hey guys, 39m/Canada here. I used to have horrible health anxiety. Thought I had aids, brain tumours, etc but now I’m focused on ALS. Weird feeling in my feet on and off and hands. A weird feeling in the tongue as well. Terrified of the doctors. I’m thinkin it’s just my OCD that are possibly creating these symptoms. I know I should go to the doctors but just looking for some advice here. If I drop something I think, YUP ALS!!!!!!! any pain, yup ALS and I’m going to die a horrible death lol. Not really sure what I’m

Looking for here, but thanks anyways!

Does anybody else have this, where you are never sure in any philosophical/religious/political opinion you have, or any conclusion you make? My mind keeps coming back on certain topics that I already "resolved", but then I ask myself the same thing again and I just cant for the life of me remember how I answered it before.

Im never sure in my opinions, and whenever someone criticizes me or contradicts me my mind immediatly "accepts" it, and then it causes me anxiety.

I've never seen anyone complain about something like this before. I don't think I have a history of OCD, but after I turned 20 it just hit me HARD. I've had transgender OCD, homosexual OCD, this too... its too much to deal with almost.

earlier, I had unfortunately watched a porn video, i know, its bad and I need to stop. but regardless, the person in the video stated in their bio that she was 25, i took her word for it because I always check the ages of these actors before I actually do anything, there was a second girl in the video who i didn't recognize whatsoever and now I feel guilty for not double checking her age before doing anything. have I done something wrong? is this a stupid thing to overthink

PS: im sorry for posting smthn like this and being a minor its just that i cant tell anyone I know irl about my problems and compulsions so I come here.

Hi all. I was diagnosed with ocd a few weeks ago, have started ERP and Prozac.

I’m curious how one should separate ocd thoughts from normal anxiety. For example, so far today these things have popped in my head and feel “sticky”: I have my brother’s graduation in a month which will require me to travel. I can’t get the idea of dying in a plane crash or a car crash out of my head. I get thoughts of there being a mass sh**ting happening , or of dying in my sleep the day of the ceremony (I am not diagnosed with sleep apnea). I even worry about drinking too much water before the ceremony and having an accident mid ceremony as dumb as it sounds. I also have therapy tomorrow, and I can’t shake off the thought of dying in a car crash, or being stabbed on the bus. All these thoughts create a strong urge to cancel therapy and plans to attend my bros graduation.

Is this just normal every day anxiety? Or part of it

Thank you for any input/insight

hi everyone!! i’m on day 6 of 75mg after a few weeks of 50mg. i’ll be increasing my dose to 100mg on day 8.

unfortunately, i have had very minimal relief from my ocd, but that’s to be expected as it hasn’t been a very long time. i’m hopeful that 100mg will help.

does anyone here take zoloft for pure o OCD? if so, has it helped you, and what is your dosage?

i am very new to my ocd diagnosis & am trying to wrap my head around how to use ERP in my case. my ocd is primarily “pure” ocd with severe avoidance and dissociation and rumination as my main symptoms.

i also have adhd and cptsd and personally feel like i have no window of tolerance at all. any slight discomfort and my brain jumps into a phobic avoidance mode & i cannot do anything. this is ruining my life and, even if i can challenge it sometimes, it exhausts me to the point of not being able to do anything even more.

does anyone have any advice? im sick of avoiding everything, even my own thoughts. it is a horrible way to live and i have no clue how to ERP this because i cannot even figure out what is ocd or not because my brain jumps into heavy dissociation.

does anyone have any tips? people say ocd is treatable and I am so desperate to get help, i am working with a specialist but we have just begun pretty recently and we are focusing more on trauma stuff, but the ocd is what makes me waste my entire life! the executive dysfunction is hard to differentiate from the avoidance & i feel like i have no control over anything i do ever.

does anyone have any advice? i want to live again and im so sick of being so trapped

edit to clarify: its like my brain has a phobia of thinking itself, so i have to constantly distract myself or dissociate & i do not seem able to do anything else no matter how badly i want to. it just doesn’t feel in my control at all. so how do you fix it when you cannot control yourself?

I have been suffering with horrid intrusive thoughts. The most recent is a childhood memory which is honestly nothing to even stress over. However, my dad’s wedding is this week and I have been looping since January that I’m going to stand up mid wedding ceremony and say the most unhinged things or announce all my childhood traumas. I have Valium and propranalol but I feel so sick and there is no way I can escape attending the ceremony. I have the same fears around team meetings etc and recently just quit my job for another that doesn’t involve team meetings. I also sat in the toilet at my best friends wedding during her ceremony for the same fear.

What can I do I’m petrified - it’s like I get a huge adrenaline surge and feel I’m going to do it (I never have in the past).

Had anyone else experienced this before - surely there’s a light at the end of this tunnel.

Is it sexual assault? And do you have any advice?

I have been struggling with OCD my entire life. When I was a kid I was scared of bacteria, diseases, excessively washing my hands and touching things a surden amount of times or something bad was gonna happen - you know the “classic” perception of OCD. But as I got older it started shifting into sexual OCD. I would have intrusive thoughts about fetiches I had heard of, but also intrusive thoughts about other people (both people I knew, but also strangers on the street). Very uncomfortable.

In OCD therapy I had learned that it was a good strategy to agree with the thoughts and make it into a joke; to say to your thoughts “yes that is totally something I like “; you know, overdue it, so the thoughts started to sound ridiculous and the thought lost its power and didn’t seem scary anymore. And it actually helped for a while.

And here comes the problem that I have now…

When I had just turned 23 (I am 29 now) I think I was sexually assaulted by a coworker while being blacked out drunk. I had not had sex before and I have not had since.

Before getting blacked out drunk I remember going to the bathroom and him come running behind me saying “wait, wait, wait”. I went to go into the bathroom and he was following me, so I said “no you can go into the other bathroom”. When I was sitting on the toilet he started unlocking the door. I quickly put on my pants and laughed it off.. (I honestly didn’t know how to react). As we got back to the party I remember talking to him, not about what, but I remember saying “we are just friends” (I don’t know why.. I must have felt like something was too much.) Later we went to the club - here I don’t remember much. I remember getting a hand into my pants from behind and I remember trying to get his hand out of my pants but his hand resisted (I don’t know if I ever got it out). I remember him putting himself behind my butt and dry humping me and I remember removing myself from his lab. I remember getting my hand taken and put on his pants where the penis is and I remember removing my hand. Then I remember laying down on the couch at my place and falling asleep, and then I remember him asking “aren’t you going to bed?” and I remember running into my bed with my clothes on, and him turning me around and taking my pants off.

From here I don’t remember what happend

The following year was a living hell for me. I would constantly feel out of control of my own body. I would go on tinder just to be provocative - not because I wanted anything. I got a eating disorder; constantly exercising and monitoring what I ate. I had to feel in control over my body.

Some time after the assault I talked to him about it and asked him what happened. He said he was drunk and didn’t remember much, but now I know that was complete utter bullshit.

I recently got confirmed that I have been talking about my intrusive thoughts while blacked out and that he has been telling others, also at my job where he doesn’t even work… and now it has been 6 years and it is still a talking matter…

I have been sharing my sexual OCD and intrusive thoughts while blacked out which makes sense, since when you are drunk your mouth typically run over with what your head is filled with, and mine is normally filled with sexual OCD about really odd sexual things that I find disgusting; oral sex, foot fetiches, masturbation and weird sexual stuff I have heard of etc. I don’t know how I have delivered these things because I was blacked out drunk, so I am not assuming that I have been clear about it being OCD and intrusive thoughts. Even if I have made that clear, I don’t think a lot of people know what OCD and intrusive thoughts are, except for people who struggles with OCD themselves.

Anyone who has OCD knows what a struggle it is to have intrusive thoughts…then image other people knowing and maybe thinking that it is something you are into?…I know that some of these thoughts are laughable for people who don’t have OCD, but when you have OCD it is a big deal.

It really makes me sick to my stomach that people know about my intrusive thoughts beacuse they are unwanted…I honestly don’t know what to do…

Is it sexual assault when I was that drunk and he clearly wasn’t, since he has been able to tell others about my intrusive thoughts? And has anyone experienced sharing their intrusive thoughts and what did you do about it?

It’s less compulsions as time passes and more just affecting the way you think, how you feel, your desires, your social life. I feel like I can be much better but it keeps degrading me by changing the way I look at things. How do you guys keep your “identity “?

(throwaway for obvious reasons)

for context I just got out of the psych ward today and got diagnosed with schizoaffective bipolar type with psychotic features. (and maybe ocd???) 19m with history of childhood sexual abuse and i used to turn tricks for drug money. I also have high functioning autism (would be considered aspergers if it wasn’t taken off the DSM V as a diagnosis)

i know I’m not a pedo but I have an extreme sexual hang up on power dynamics and age gap relationships. When I was really young (middle school) I found out about shotacon hentai from encyclopedia dramatica and it was the only type of porn I could watch for a long time.

When I was in 4th grade I got molested and it led to bowel related incontinence issues that still bother me to this day. I started abusing stimulants when I was in middle school and started turning tricks to afford drugs, and i eventually left home when I was 15 and started relying on prostitution to get money. This led to a fuckton of really traumatizing sexual encounters that ended up fucking up my relationship with sex for a long time.

im not turned on by children themselves but the taboo of an age gap and my intake of shotacon honestly had me worried I was a straight up pedo up until this last hospitalization.

im going to start making an effort to not watch porn in general anymore just to get my brain to baseline and to kind of Pavlov myself out of this obsessive paranoia. I’m really afraid that if I don’t do it now that I might actually end up being a pedophile.

im on a combination of seroquel and resperidone now and I’ve been sedated enough to help with the intrusive thoughts but the paranoia is still really really bothering me.

has anyone else dealt with this kind of issue?

can someone please give me advice?

I’ve opened up to my mom and my boyfriend about this but honestly it just made the paranoia a million times worse.

i normally would never post about something like this but the paranoia about people finding out and even incarceration is so bad that I dont know where to turn .