I feel like learning about ocd has made me put together so many dots about why I acted certain ways. I don’t think my ocd was as bad when I was younger but I think I’ve had it at least to some degree for a very long time.

I didn't even understand that there was a difference between OCD and OCPD. I wasn't even aware that this was a thing until recently. So someone explain the difference for me? I have standard OCD, and I have a lot of anxiety, intrusive thoughts, and compulsions. I'm driven mad by these intrusive thoughts, and it makes me want to basically just stay drunk 24/27.

Now, I'm going to make an attempt to understand OCPD. OCPD people are basically like the controlling director who's making a movie right? Everything has to be just right, just in place, and this goes for not one small detail should go overlooked. They are regimented, logical, and there's only one right way to do something: there can't be 2 correct ways.

They come off like a regimented military Drill Sargent who is constantly completing tasks and is making sure the floor is scrubbed to perfection. When, they are bored, they clean just for sport. They are constantly cleaning, washing, and scrubbing everything, and they must be control at all times, or nothing will be done right.

Are these basically the main differences?

When your OCD is so severe and the theme is so egodystonic and you spend years where your consciousness is marinated in and only in obsession and compulsion and avoidance against your will and then learning to completely disregard a thought - my brain can't hold a thread of thoughts the way it used to. I had to manually to teach it to disengage in a way that now it defaults to out of over-coping. This is a part of it. The body-wide response at all times to nonstop ocd and the torture I'm convinced have physically scarred parts of my brain and damaged it to the point I feel like it must be early onset dementia if I wasn't so young.

i could really use some tips/advice on how to stop googling things. i have reminders that go off daily that just says hey don’t look anything up you’re fine but it doesn’t really work anymore. it also sucks a lot too because i genuinely enjoy learning about diseases and stuff like that but i know i shouldn’t look things up :( anything would be appreciated!

Does anyone else ruminate heavily about how they were when in their teens? I’m 21 now, but I made some really bad decisions in my teens and was very mentally ill. My relationship with my parents is forever damaged. I’m more sane now. But every single moment of every day has kept me occupied with rumination. I’m in college and am doing decently well academics wise. But I genuinely struggle to understand the point of my life. My parents are great and don’t really bring up things from my past - but ik they have not forgiven me.

It’s funny because my guilt grow worse and worse with time, and I can’t believe I have to live the rest of my life with this guilt. It eats me alive.

Anyone else go through this? Pls share ur experiences or advice or anything. I feel so alone :/

Like why was i about to rip out my hair and cry because the distribution of hair in my towel wasnt even? Ive been doing the exposure thing where you just sit with the anxiety and its so stressful and intense in the moment but later I genuinely cant help but laugh. Baby it was not that deep but at the same time it 100% is. I survived the resistance btw im genuinely proud of myself.

i (19f) feel like i've been battling this spiral for months now with very few glimpses of hope. at this point i've stopped expecting it all together. my ocd has made me withdraw socially since middle school and i haven't been able to recover since. i spent my teen years majorly depressed and missed out on so many "normal" life experiences to the point where i feel like im starting from the ground up when my life has barely started. i've been in and out of therapy for years and i feel like my medication is only a temporary solution.

i've put in the work, i've tried to be mindful, but each day is turning into a blur and its making me miserable.

my question is, how do you cope with it? i want to love myself and lead a fufilling life but my brain is my worst enemy. how can some of you find love and meaningful friendships without letting this tear you apart from the inside anymore?

20, F. Has anyone experienced this and is there a reason? Basically like a year or 6 months ago I had instrusive thoughts, scary and creepy but they passed by and my mind literally forgot them for like 6 months without remembering them, getting scared, ruminating about how scary it was, like it was nothing. In that era, I was bed ridden, with extreme depression and anxiety, didn't shower, didn't eat, didn't manage to do anything. My whole body hurted of the amount of trauma I had in it.

Now, 2 months later, all by myself, I reconstructed my life like crazy without any help, I wake up early, I sleep 8 hours, eat super healthy, shower everyday, I do hobbies, I do exercise, I clean the house, I organize, healthy screen time, I made a detox and only watch content of self growth... I even got out of my comfort zone and after 4 years at home scared to walk one centimeter out of it, I take the bus, go to the center of the city, spend more than four hours, I do appointments with my mom there and all that, I do everything that nurtures my mind and body.... aaaaaaand my fears have kicked in worse than ever. Like suddenly, I was super euphoric because of the fact I was living life for the first time and suddenly... boom.

I saw that little by little these fears were appearing and started to saturate me, but literally almost from one day to another, I went from how grateful I am to live this life finally omg this is amazing to absolute pure OCD anxiety at it's max, dissociation and as always in this disorder, fear as the center of everything.

Genuinely why? Fear of losing what I achieved? Because deep down my brain is scared of experiencing something terrible and getting that miserable in life again or even worse? It's attacking that? Or like pressure of staying good? I find some reasons but I don't know.

All my instrusive thoughts are related to morality, harm and SPECIALLY, loss of control, to the point where my anxiety is so high and I ruminate that so bad that I start to believe it, I start to believe I can't tell the difference from reality anymore even though deep down I know I can. Sometimes just sometimes, when I get distracted without me knowing, I find that that feeling have disappeared almost almost completely.

This is my biggest mental compulsion right now. It’s causing me to stay inside the house. I finally went out for drinks with a date Saturday and ever since then I’ve been bed ridden with the fear I was recorded and now I’m on the internet somewhere. Its been over a year of this persistent thought. It’s fueled by the things I have done while drinking. Alcohol is the only thing that gives me relief from my thoughts but then it is far far worse after. I also take Xanax to help with the anxiety and the combination obviously leads to memory loss which causes me to torture myself with scenarios. I’m rambling at this point but I feel like going through this cycle over and over has made me feel so defeated. Im in therapy and have been off and on meds throughout the years. I have an appointment today for an IOP type of treatment plan I hope this will be all over soon

I was I guess officially diagnosed with OCD last year when I started therapy because I was dealing with postpartum anxiety. I feel like I’ve always had it and it was just dormant, but nothing near to what I do now. I just remember in elementary school I had a little phrase I had to think in my mind but also say out loud like I had to. Even if it meant whispering it in class. I hated thinking I was gonna be stuck saying it forever. It eventually stopped. But now postpartum I’m struggling with it so much more. It’s like it’s awoken and can’t be stopped. I don’t really know what is and isn’t apart of it. I have scary intrusive thoughts daily. For example one day I had the windows down in the car and I thought “what if someone threw a grande in here right now” and then my mind played out different scenarios until I was finally able to stop the thought. All these intrusive thoughts usually my baby girl. She’s 16 months old and my anxiety has been at an all time high since she was born and I know this is what triggered my OCD. But I feel like the things i feel like I have to do are so small but so annoying and sometimes agonizing but since they’re just “little” I do them anyways because what if something bad happens to her? It’s always what if something happens to her. Recently if I’m trying to fight an urge to do something like touch the light switch a few times to make sure it really is off so the house doesn’t burn down - I’ll tell myself it’s ok if something bad happens to me it’ll happen to me not her. My biggest one is right before I go to sleep I have an entire routine with locking up and checking the temperature in her room and checking how long she’s been asleep (most times clicking in and out of the time) then making sure the house is armed and finally checking the owlet app to check her oxygen and bpm. That one takes the longest I have to swipe up but can still see the app open and then click out and repeat so many times until it feels right then I have to lock my phone and make sure that feels right too. This part is the worst to me. I’m usually so tired and want to just go to sleep but I can’t. Sometimes it physically pains me in a way and I get stuck in a loop and can’t get out of it, I feel like I’m not OCD “enough” to even complain. I’m on no medication for this nor any medication for anxiety. I’m not sure what I was hoping to gain from this other than maybe venting. Maybe to be educated more on it all. Thanks for reading.

I can’t have an ordinary moment without being drug into my identity theme. Every hobby, every interest, every life goal gets put under a microscope. I feel like I’m not allowed to enjoy things. I’m so tired, I don’t know what to do. I’ve done ERP but for me the anxiety never went down, instead my nervous system felt overwhelmed. I’m at a loss :(

Even though I’m not religious anymore and I’ve managed my OCD so well, I don’t know why I keep running into people saying things that I care about with this phrase. It triggers me badly.

First ever reddit post, bare with me here.

I’ve had intrusive thoughts and have been browsing reddit for years about hobbies, somehow I’ve never thought to look up mental illnesses to find other people who experience stuff similar to what I do, my themes have revolved mostly over harming closes ones, and I’m sitting here crying because I’m not alone.

I feel like an imposter since I just have a generalized anxiety disorder diagnosis but I’m currently waiting for further therapy for intrusive thoughts. Still wanted to thank all the kind and brave souls who post their story here.

I have noticed myself falling back into this spiral of dissociation. I’m not sure if I’m having major life changes moving, going back to school and what not.

I moved back into my old house where my ocd originally began and now i just feel weird. If that makes sense. I constantly wake up and feel confused and out of it like I’m just here.

Does anyone ever experience this with new change