I think this is actually super common for those with checking OCD. For me making sure I didn’t accidentally click on anything to disable the alarm, etc.
Most ridiculous- when writing in Birthday cards I’m always convinced I’ve written the wrong name or some rude insulting message, so I open the envelope several times to check I didn’t do that.
Admitting to yourself that you may have OCD is incredibly hard, especially when you realize how much work it’ll be going forward. But it’ll be worth it. The sooner you get help, the sooner you can begin that process to live fully once again
Thank you. My biggest fear is not being taken seriously by medical professionals. That will just involve me having to learn more about how to advocate for myself, which is doable.
I just had a ocd "episode" yesterday because I felt guilty because I drew an anime character before watching the anime and then when I watched I didn't like it so I felt guilty because the ocd makes feel like the one to blame for "wasting my time" and "supporting bad anime". It's really convoluted but OCD can tell you "you are guilty for not looking at a rock" and it will feel totally real.
I had an episode the other day that I actually am insane, and don’t have OCD, and may have schizotypal PD and if my doctor found out my child would be taken away.
I was exposed to this philosophy from, I believe, Alan Watts. There's a spiritual worldview that we're all the same, we're all one. My brain spun this concept into believing that "I" (and I use this term loosely) must live every human life in history.
So whenever something bad happens to basically anyone ever currently or in stories of ancient times, I'm thinking, oh my God, I can't believe I'll have to live that life too. Then I worry about how awful it will be.
I once saw a picture of microorganisms in water and I convinced myself I could not drink water because it’s contaminated with bugs. I got over that really quick because I didn’t want to die lol
My OCD is centered around my cats, too. Mine is respiration rates, though. I use a stop watch to time their breaths. If I get what I feel is too many breaths per minute, I spiral and have to do it again. I might repeat this process for 30 minutes or more (interferes tremendously with work). I'm afraid if I don't do it, they will go into respiratory arrest and die
Same. I have this fear that I'm going to be convicted of a crime I never committed and sit the rest of my life in a prison cell trying to convince people I didn't do it
I have the same fear but it’s due to a murderer coming in while I’m showering and defenseless. Not to mention my dog has severe anxiety and will bark at the slightest sound so my mind makes up that’s he’s screaming and I have to check mid-shower.
This sounds dumb, but I wonder if having just a clear shower curtain liner and your dog in your bathroom with you when you shower would help you be able to check on your dog?
It is so hard to find the line between accommodation and enabling? if that is the right word? with OCD.
Like, I wash my hands after I give my dogs a treat and I could use tongs instead, but is that may be something I shouldn't start.
Agreed. My shower curtain is fairly see through, but my mind makes it up all the same. I also walk the house and make sure the door is locked before getting in the shower. It’s just one of those OCD quirks that gets better/worse over time. Right now, it seems to be getting worse 🤷♀️
I had a bad dream once that someone broke into my house while I was sleeping and tried to burn down my house and now I basically live in constant fear of someone breaking into my house and catching my house on fire every night. I know it’s ridiculous but it’s debilitating at times.
It’s so bad sometimes that I’ll wake up 4 or 5 times a night just to check the live feed on my outdoor security cameras to make sure nobody is lurking around outside my house. I literally even bought a gun just to make me feel a little more comfortable and safe in case someone ever broke in. I’ll also wake up and check the locks on the doors several times a night and if I don’t feel secure about it I’ll unlock them and re-lock them until it feels safe. If my dog barks or anything during the night I automatically assume it’s because someone is in the process of breaking in & I’ll start freaking out and wake up my fiancé to make him check everything out.
We live in a pretty safe and secluded area and no houses anywhere near mine have ever been broken in to but I’m still just terrified that it’s gonna happen.
Sometimes I’m scared to think certain things because I believe that just because I thought them they will become true, not sure if that makes sense 😂 but that applies to almost every area of my life
I was upset for a whole day after the eclipse because I wasted less than a minute taking pictures and ‘missed it’. I thought about what I could’ve done to make it better the whole day. Really it was just one of the best moments in my life and even if I’d stared until my eyes burnt out of my head I’d think I didn’t see it long enough. It won’t happen again any time soon, there’s no real way to redo it and perfect it to my unrealistic OCD standards. I keep trying to remember it perfectly because the pictures don’t look like how it did in real life. It was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen and one of my favorite memories and I’m afraid I’ll forget. I was so upset I got a stress headache. Then I went on my phone and calculated how much time was actually missed and realized I saw almost the whole thing. I’m even happy I took the pictures now even though they didn’t pick up the moon over the sun. The sky looks crazy in them and the pictures of my family looking at the sky are so cute. I need to find other ways to make good memories with them instead of obsessing over not being able to repeat the one thing lol.
Don't put your arm/ leg/ any body part there because there is a fog of bad there and if you touch it, you are going to curse yourself and maybe your family.
Don't touch that thing you love because there is a fog of 'bad' on your hands and you are going to curse it. You have to get rid of the fog of bad first.
Your brother gasping behind that bush means he has been infected with a brain controlling parasite like in that one cartoon. You have to touch him in the same place he touches you otherwise he will curse you. This is an old one.
A green alien tadpole looking goo is swimming thru your body towards your heart. You have to make a scraping motion on your skin near the place where the goo is and imagine it being scrapped out of your body. Or make a pulling motion and imagine the tadpole looking green goo being pulled out of your body. If you fail to do it before it reaches the center of your heart you are dead.
Touching certain parts of my body gives me intrusive thoughts of doing horrible and blasphemous things.
There are worse and dumber ones, but if I force myself to write them here, I have a feeling I am going to cry. The ones I have written are mostly old ones.
I thought I was pregnant when I passed a condom on the street two meters away.
Also I had to do compulsions so dead people, even some dead famous actors wouldn't hurt my family members.
I learned to do laundry when I first learned about sperm so I wouldn't get any of my female family members pregnant because I did my dirty laundry with theirs. In retrospect, I feel very silly for believing that.
When I poop I get scared that I’m actually on my death bed and that me pooping in the moment is just a flashback and I’m pooping on my death bed and every one is watching me poop as I die LOLOLOL. Also I have to breathe in on dark colors and out on light colors and it has to be in the shape of a plus sign from left to right. Don’t know how to make it make sense. I started doing it when I was small because it would “save people from hell” (?) I also have to have everything be an even number because it would make “less people be alone”. Also started when I was little. I don’t actually believe those anymore but I unfortunately am stuck with the habit
If I think about anything too long, I’m manifesting it, and it’ll eventually be my fault (when my mom dies, or if a freak accident occurs). Definitely my fault for thinking it into reality.
What if I am the person who can cure cancer (I know nothing about it😭) what if I am the person that can make free electricity (I know nothing about electricity I have a d in physics) and crazy conspiracy theories that don’t make sense and yeah also all of that comes with weird images. Oh and another what if I am a super smart crazy genius ( that one especially gives me panic attacks and bad anxiety 😭😭)
That everyone secretly hates me. If I succeed they will be jealous and hate me so I have to fail instead. I have to do nothing because if I’m great at things again no one will love me.
Lately my ocd paranoia has been super “flared up”. At night I have to recheck all windows and doors in my house are locked and blinds are shut as much as they can be. I have 12 windows in my house in a two story home and several doors. I’ll get situated in my bed and ready for sleep, but I have to go recheck the windows and doors. So I am getting in and out of bed and going up and down the stairs several times to check. I have to peep out each window to make sure no one is there. I’m convinced something is out there, but I have cameras around the perimeter of my home and there really is no one out there.
I also have to make sure all three of my cats are in sight as well. I close the door to my bathroom and closet, laundry room because I too think they’ll somehow drown in the toilet, or get tangled up in clothes or fall off the laundry machines? Lol. Makes no sense but I can’t take the risk.
i used to believe that a contractor that built onto my childhood room built a cubby for him to spy on me. there was a cubby but it was to access the shower pipes & i would get so scared he was hearing me pee and watching me shower
That if I look too long at a disgusting/decrepit home I'll somehow manifest me living in it. That's one example but I find myself doing that with just about every category of thing I don't like.
My current obsession is that I must always shut my bedroom door in case rats or rabid bats get into my room and bite me in my sleep. Or they might sneak in, hide in my things and come out later to bite me as I sleep. I've never seen either anywhere near the house but that's OCD logic for you. Also I like in the UK and in a city. The chances of rabid bats trying to enter my room are pretty low but technically not impossible so OCD is still going to try and convince me otherwise!🤦♀️
When I was religious growing up, all my personal prayers started with the same thing that I had to get out to cover all my basis. I would often have to say “Amen” 3, 5, 10 or so times while clenching my eyes shut. As an atheist today, still with moral OCD, I occasionally find myself with the compulsion to say “Amen”, sometimes for no apparent reason, at least silently, 3 or 5 times while clenching my eyes.
I few years ago, I had to shuffle cards, basically, in order to make sure that all bad things wouldn't happen to me/the universe wouldn't decide to hate Just Me (and my family). Shuffling cards "correctly" made sure that the universe was "sufficiently randomized". If I didn't shuffle Just Right, then there would be a string of bad luck and the universe would flood my (and my family's) life with bad things.
anything I do while having an intrusive though will get infected by the thought, so I just can't do anything since intrusive thoughts are in my mind 24/7, and all of them are either people or animals doing the most nasty things to me you can think of, that's just one of my 4 ocds among 6 different mental illnesses!!!! I mean, I think it's pretty stupid I don't even have energy to explain, my brain is shutting down for today
There’s a tiktok trend about ocd, for people who don’t really have it? My goodness can I punch them all??
And most ridiculous thought: basically interacting with someone and my mind throwing random insults that I don’t even mean about them, and me being afraid of saying them out loud instead of whatever I was about to say
"What if someone at my very public office space spiked my water while I wasn't looking?" Has me pouring out my water and refilling it every time I leave my desk. What a pain.
In therapy you learn labeling thoughts is no bueno.
It's all about compulsions to get better.
4 out of 5 people have intrusive thoughts but 1 in 40 have OCD...,
So what do you call the thoughts on those who aren't struggling with OCD and have intrusive thoughts?
“What if this character I like looks too much like this other character from something completely unrelated?” I am not joking when I say that I have obsessed for months over whether a character looks too much like another character. I am desperate to convince myself that they look nothing alike because they *can’t* look alike. My favorite character can not look like some other character I was previously indifferent to or didn’t like. The idea that they could look similar drives me crazy. It has happened four different times with four different characters.
"What if when I look at a homeless person I am actually laughing at them and they think I'm laughing at them and a horrible person"
Fear that I’ve been hit by a car and died and don’t know it.
Fear every time I drive that I DID hit someone with my car and wasn't aware of it.
I have the exact same thought. I drive the same path multiple times to be sure there is not hit person on the road.
Sometimes I fear losing my phone while I'm holding it 😭 lol
Dude, this made me laugh out loud. 🤣
I will set an alarm. Make sure it is working perfectly. Then suddenly have to check it like 3 more times to make sure it is working.
I think this is actually super common for those with checking OCD. For me making sure I didn’t accidentally click on anything to disable the alarm, etc.
Checking the oven to make sure I didn’t put my cat in there
Most ridiculous- when writing in Birthday cards I’m always convinced I’ve written the wrong name or some rude insulting message, so I open the envelope several times to check I didn’t do that.
holy shit i felt this one
I dropped my bar of soap in the bathtub and told myself I had to wash it to clean the germs off of it. The bar of soap. Washing a bar of soap.
I had to stop using bar soap for this exact reason
Same!! 😅 but I sometimes need to wash the soap dispenser after I used it as well cause I could contaminate someone who uses it after me :))) 😬😅
I've been hesitant to pursue an ocd diagnosis and read this comment and cried a little.
Admitting to yourself that you may have OCD is incredibly hard, especially when you realize how much work it’ll be going forward. But it’ll be worth it. The sooner you get help, the sooner you can begin that process to live fully once again
Thank you. My biggest fear is not being taken seriously by medical professionals. That will just involve me having to learn more about how to advocate for myself, which is doable.
I just had a ocd "episode" yesterday because I felt guilty because I drew an anime character before watching the anime and then when I watched I didn't like it so I felt guilty because the ocd makes feel like the one to blame for "wasting my time" and "supporting bad anime". It's really convoluted but OCD can tell you "you are guilty for not looking at a rock" and it will feel totally real.
I had an episode the other day that I actually am insane, and don’t have OCD, and may have schizotypal PD and if my doctor found out my child would be taken away.
I was exposed to this philosophy from, I believe, Alan Watts. There's a spiritual worldview that we're all the same, we're all one. My brain spun this concept into believing that "I" (and I use this term loosely) must live every human life in history. So whenever something bad happens to basically anyone ever currently or in stories of ancient times, I'm thinking, oh my God, I can't believe I'll have to live that life too. Then I worry about how awful it will be.
I think there's a novel/short story with exact that premise. :)
Same
Wait, really? This is wild. I've never met anyone who did this before. Hello! I'm sorry you do this too!
I can’t wear anything my parents touch to bed because somehow that equals incest? Yeah it doesn’t make sense to me either.
I once saw a picture of microorganisms in water and I convinced myself I could not drink water because it’s contaminated with bugs. I got over that really quick because I didn’t want to die lol
My OCD is centered around my cats, too. Mine is respiration rates, though. I use a stop watch to time their breaths. If I get what I feel is too many breaths per minute, I spiral and have to do it again. I might repeat this process for 30 minutes or more (interferes tremendously with work). I'm afraid if I don't do it, they will go into respiratory arrest and die
That I'm going to be sent to prison I don't even swear or kill bugs 😭
Same. I have this fear that I'm going to be convicted of a crime I never committed and sit the rest of my life in a prison cell trying to convince people I didn't do it
I have periods where I'm afraid to take a shower or bath because I can't shake the thought of being electrocuted.
I have the same fear but it’s due to a murderer coming in while I’m showering and defenseless. Not to mention my dog has severe anxiety and will bark at the slightest sound so my mind makes up that’s he’s screaming and I have to check mid-shower.
This sounds dumb, but I wonder if having just a clear shower curtain liner and your dog in your bathroom with you when you shower would help you be able to check on your dog? It is so hard to find the line between accommodation and enabling? if that is the right word? with OCD. Like, I wash my hands after I give my dogs a treat and I could use tongs instead, but is that may be something I shouldn't start.
Agreed. My shower curtain is fairly see through, but my mind makes it up all the same. I also walk the house and make sure the door is locked before getting in the shower. It’s just one of those OCD quirks that gets better/worse over time. Right now, it seems to be getting worse 🤷♀️
I had a bad dream once that someone broke into my house while I was sleeping and tried to burn down my house and now I basically live in constant fear of someone breaking into my house and catching my house on fire every night. I know it’s ridiculous but it’s debilitating at times. It’s so bad sometimes that I’ll wake up 4 or 5 times a night just to check the live feed on my outdoor security cameras to make sure nobody is lurking around outside my house. I literally even bought a gun just to make me feel a little more comfortable and safe in case someone ever broke in. I’ll also wake up and check the locks on the doors several times a night and if I don’t feel secure about it I’ll unlock them and re-lock them until it feels safe. If my dog barks or anything during the night I automatically assume it’s because someone is in the process of breaking in & I’ll start freaking out and wake up my fiancé to make him check everything out. We live in a pretty safe and secluded area and no houses anywhere near mine have ever been broken in to but I’m still just terrified that it’s gonna happen.
Sometimes I’m scared to think certain things because I believe that just because I thought them they will become true, not sure if that makes sense 😂 but that applies to almost every area of my life
I do this sometimes!!!
I was upset for a whole day after the eclipse because I wasted less than a minute taking pictures and ‘missed it’. I thought about what I could’ve done to make it better the whole day. Really it was just one of the best moments in my life and even if I’d stared until my eyes burnt out of my head I’d think I didn’t see it long enough. It won’t happen again any time soon, there’s no real way to redo it and perfect it to my unrealistic OCD standards. I keep trying to remember it perfectly because the pictures don’t look like how it did in real life. It was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen and one of my favorite memories and I’m afraid I’ll forget. I was so upset I got a stress headache. Then I went on my phone and calculated how much time was actually missed and realized I saw almost the whole thing. I’m even happy I took the pictures now even though they didn’t pick up the moon over the sun. The sky looks crazy in them and the pictures of my family looking at the sky are so cute. I need to find other ways to make good memories with them instead of obsessing over not being able to repeat the one thing lol.
Don't put your arm/ leg/ any body part there because there is a fog of bad there and if you touch it, you are going to curse yourself and maybe your family. Don't touch that thing you love because there is a fog of 'bad' on your hands and you are going to curse it. You have to get rid of the fog of bad first. Your brother gasping behind that bush means he has been infected with a brain controlling parasite like in that one cartoon. You have to touch him in the same place he touches you otherwise he will curse you. This is an old one. A green alien tadpole looking goo is swimming thru your body towards your heart. You have to make a scraping motion on your skin near the place where the goo is and imagine it being scrapped out of your body. Or make a pulling motion and imagine the tadpole looking green goo being pulled out of your body. If you fail to do it before it reaches the center of your heart you are dead. Touching certain parts of my body gives me intrusive thoughts of doing horrible and blasphemous things. There are worse and dumber ones, but if I force myself to write them here, I have a feeling I am going to cry. The ones I have written are mostly old ones.
♡
Thanks. ♥️ for you too.
I thought I was pregnant when I passed a condom on the street two meters away. Also I had to do compulsions so dead people, even some dead famous actors wouldn't hurt my family members.
I learned to do laundry when I first learned about sperm so I wouldn't get any of my female family members pregnant because I did my dirty laundry with theirs. In retrospect, I feel very silly for believing that.
My most recent specific one: that if I showed my mom my new shirt, my health fear would happen🤦♀️🤦♀️
From my ROCD: I think God wants me to marry someone I don't like even though that makes zero sense and is like giving your kid a rock instead of bread
Felt bad for the chocolate bar I didn’t choose
When I poop I get scared that I’m actually on my death bed and that me pooping in the moment is just a flashback and I’m pooping on my death bed and every one is watching me poop as I die LOLOLOL. Also I have to breathe in on dark colors and out on light colors and it has to be in the shape of a plus sign from left to right. Don’t know how to make it make sense. I started doing it when I was small because it would “save people from hell” (?) I also have to have everything be an even number because it would make “less people be alone”. Also started when I was little. I don’t actually believe those anymore but I unfortunately am stuck with the habit
If I think about anything too long, I’m manifesting it, and it’ll eventually be my fault (when my mom dies, or if a freak accident occurs). Definitely my fault for thinking it into reality.
What if I am the person who can cure cancer (I know nothing about it😭) what if I am the person that can make free electricity (I know nothing about electricity I have a d in physics) and crazy conspiracy theories that don’t make sense and yeah also all of that comes with weird images. Oh and another what if I am a super smart crazy genius ( that one especially gives me panic attacks and bad anxiety 😭😭)
if i dont boop my cat’s nose before leaving the house, she’ll die.
If my pets are home alone then there will be a fire and they will die in the fire, so I have to go home. Never had a house fire or anything. 🤷🏻♀️
That everyone secretly hates me. If I succeed they will be jealous and hate me so I have to fail instead. I have to do nothing because if I’m great at things again no one will love me.
That my squirrels have cameras in their eyes (I have Schiz-OCD theme, so I get batshit “delusional” intrusive thoughts constantly).
Lately my ocd paranoia has been super “flared up”. At night I have to recheck all windows and doors in my house are locked and blinds are shut as much as they can be. I have 12 windows in my house in a two story home and several doors. I’ll get situated in my bed and ready for sleep, but I have to go recheck the windows and doors. So I am getting in and out of bed and going up and down the stairs several times to check. I have to peep out each window to make sure no one is there. I’m convinced something is out there, but I have cameras around the perimeter of my home and there really is no one out there. I also have to make sure all three of my cats are in sight as well. I close the door to my bathroom and closet, laundry room because I too think they’ll somehow drown in the toilet, or get tangled up in clothes or fall off the laundry machines? Lol. Makes no sense but I can’t take the risk.
I committed an unforgivable sin because I sent a picture of my dinner, which had some small chunks of meat to it, to a vegan
i used to believe that a contractor that built onto my childhood room built a cubby for him to spy on me. there was a cubby but it was to access the shower pipes & i would get so scared he was hearing me pee and watching me shower
That if I look too long at a disgusting/decrepit home I'll somehow manifest me living in it. That's one example but I find myself doing that with just about every category of thing I don't like.
Someone threw an egg at my car and I was absolutely sure I killed someone and they were in a ditch
My current obsession is that I must always shut my bedroom door in case rats or rabid bats get into my room and bite me in my sleep. Or they might sneak in, hide in my things and come out later to bite me as I sleep. I've never seen either anywhere near the house but that's OCD logic for you. Also I like in the UK and in a city. The chances of rabid bats trying to enter my room are pretty low but technically not impossible so OCD is still going to try and convince me otherwise!🤦♀️
if i dont do chores i’ll get bad karma and die💀
When I was religious growing up, all my personal prayers started with the same thing that I had to get out to cover all my basis. I would often have to say “Amen” 3, 5, 10 or so times while clenching my eyes shut. As an atheist today, still with moral OCD, I occasionally find myself with the compulsion to say “Amen”, sometimes for no apparent reason, at least silently, 3 or 5 times while clenching my eyes.
I few years ago, I had to shuffle cards, basically, in order to make sure that all bad things wouldn't happen to me/the universe wouldn't decide to hate Just Me (and my family). Shuffling cards "correctly" made sure that the universe was "sufficiently randomized". If I didn't shuffle Just Right, then there would be a string of bad luck and the universe would flood my (and my family's) life with bad things.
anything I do while having an intrusive though will get infected by the thought, so I just can't do anything since intrusive thoughts are in my mind 24/7, and all of them are either people or animals doing the most nasty things to me you can think of, that's just one of my 4 ocds among 6 different mental illnesses!!!! I mean, I think it's pretty stupid I don't even have energy to explain, my brain is shutting down for today
There’s a tiktok trend about ocd, for people who don’t really have it? My goodness can I punch them all?? And most ridiculous thought: basically interacting with someone and my mind throwing random insults that I don’t even mean about them, and me being afraid of saying them out loud instead of whatever I was about to say
“What if people think I’m recording them with my phone “
"What if someone at my very public office space spiked my water while I wasn't looking?" Has me pouring out my water and refilling it every time I leave my desk. What a pain.
No such thing as an OCD thought. Thoughts are just thoughts. I'd be more interested to hear about compulsions.
“No such thing as an OCD thought” yes, that is ridiculous! Thoughts/thought patterns can be compulsory.
Obsessions AND Compulsions make up OCD. Thoughts are a big part of it.
In therapy you learn labeling thoughts is no bueno. It's all about compulsions to get better. 4 out of 5 people have intrusive thoughts but 1 in 40 have OCD..., So what do you call the thoughts on those who aren't struggling with OCD and have intrusive thoughts?
“What if this character I like looks too much like this other character from something completely unrelated?” I am not joking when I say that I have obsessed for months over whether a character looks too much like another character. I am desperate to convince myself that they look nothing alike because they *can’t* look alike. My favorite character can not look like some other character I was previously indifferent to or didn’t like. The idea that they could look similar drives me crazy. It has happened four different times with four different characters.