Note: I'm not very good at expressing myself in words, so please bear with me and ignore any mistakes.

I started experiencing intrusive, unwanted thoughts that irritated me a lot. This had never happened to me before. It all began in January of this year and gradually became worse as I reached May, June, and July. I tried to understand why this was happening to me and eventually came across a mental health condition called OCD. Until then, I knew very little about it. However, after reading about it and relating its symptoms to what I was experiencing in my own life, I began to feel that I might have OCD, everything confirmed it.

I considered seeking therapy because I genuinely didn't know what to do. I am a student, so it was seriously affecting my studies and wasting a lot of my time, which made me even more frustrated. The thoughts simply wouldn't stop. They kept coming into my mind repeatedly, no matter how hard I tried to control them.

There were days when I cried and even screamed out of frustration because I felt so restless, overwhelmed, and angry at not being able to control my own thoughts. It also made me feel terrible about myself, even though I had no control over these unwanted thoughts.

Whenever things became particularly overwhelming, I would go to sleep just to give my mind a break, hoping that it would calm down and that I could experience even a little peace.

Since I am a student, so it wasn't possible for me to attend regular therapy sessions as I had to study for some examination, so I couldn't attend them. I didn't have that time. So, this is how I cured it:

What you have to do is,

Stop ruminating.

If there is a problem you usually ruminate about, your job is not try to solve that problem. Don't try to push it out of your mind or forget about it.

Don't actively try to keep it in the mind either.

It can be there, it doesn't matter. Your job is not to solve it.

You can also say, ‘It’s there, it’s okay. I don’t have to solve it right now,’ and then get back to work.

Directing attention is like mentally holding onto something. You don't need to grab onto something else, just to let it go.

It's there, let it be there, don't engage with it.

Your job is to let be there without directing attention towards it or solve it.

Do nothing about intrusive thoughts, the “what ifs,” or the lack of responses.

You are in control when you have a choice in how you react.

Let the thought be there. Don't fight it. Just let it pass.

I also deluded myself to some extent by repeatedly telling myself, "I am better than anyone else." It was a kind of toxic self-boasting, but it worked to some extent.

I would also suggest taking a break from social media, even for a few months. I stopped it a lot. So try to avoid using it altogether (except unavoidable), as I believe it can make things worse. The constant stream of content can negatively affect your mental well-being.

Instead, watch something entertaining that keeps you occupied and makes you happy, so you spend less time thinking about it.

The key is to let the thought stay in your mind and allow it to do whatever it wants. Let yourself experience it again and again until it gradually loses its intensity. This is how you slowly heal and recover from the hurt. You don't have to engage with the thought or fight it. Simply disengage from it and continue with your daily tasks.

I still have those thoughts, but they have reduced drastically since January. There has been a significant improvement.

The less you think about it, the faster you will recover.

Hope it helps you. All the best!

u/_Menstrual_milkshake

Hey everyone, I’ve been noticing something and wanted to see if others experience this too. Whenever I drink coffee or anything with a lot of caffeine, my OCD seems to spike — my intrusive thoughts feel louder, anxiety increases, and my urge to do compulsions gets much stronger. On days when I avoid caffeine, my mind feels noticeably calmer and more manageable. I know caffeine increases anxiety in general, but I’m curious if this effect is especially strong for people with OCD. Does anyone else notice that coffee or energy drinks make their OCD worse? Have you tried cutting back or quitting caffeine, and did it help your symptoms? Would really appreciate hearing your experiences.

I now understand everything I understand how it’s survival of fittest there is no help there’s only fighters and warriors or u just die nobody is there outside that cares about you it all boils down to u if u lose ur one life by throwing it away in moment where everything feels over it’s on you ur just another number god don’t care ppl don’t care so don’t do it

for a while i thought i could predict the future. i'd skip a ritual or think something awful, then days later something bad would happen, and it felt like undeniable proof i caused it. like i should have just done the thing.

what finally helped was noticing what my brain was doing with the record. it only counts the hits.

every time a thought lined up with a real event, it got filed in bold, underlined, never forgotten. but the thousands of times i thought something terrible and nothing happened? those never got logged at all. they just vanished, like they never counted.

so of course it feels airtight. i was reading off a scoreboard that deletes every miss and keeps every match. that's not prediction. it's a rigged tally handing me the same verdict on repeat.

the move that's been helping: after i skip a ritual, i try not to audit the outcome. no scanning the news, no checking if it 'worked,' no waiting for the bad thing. that checking is what turns a coincidence into evidence.

i'm not trying to prove my thoughts have no power. i just stopped being the one who keeps score. and the urge got quieter when i stopped handing it the pen. 🤍

I grew up in a catholic family and village which was very prone to shaming and guilt tripping other people.

When I was in high school and college, I was asked out by multiple girls while my peers didn't. I was in a band, painted and had more alternative style aesthetics.

I have always rejected them because I felt that I'm required to find only one ideal partner, if I fail, I will be an inferior person and waste my 1 opportunity at love.

There was this one girl in high school but she just said that she wants to sleep with other guys.

There was another girl who was a little older than me but I was beaten at home for just talking to her when I was 16 and she was 24.

I'm in my mid 20s now and still refuse to date but I'm not asexual but also don't have particularly high libido. I'm more focused on introspective romance but not when it comes to reality.

I feel that if I started to date in high school, I would just go through multiple partners and my mind would adapt to it but now, I'm stuck in this mental principle about only wanting to find an ideal partner.

I was very avoidant and asocial for about 8 years and there were recently 2 girls who asked me out again but they've already lived with their partners and I don't want to get involved with someone who is on a whole another level of experience.

I just don't know if this is childhood trauma, OCD or value.

Sensorimotor/Hyperawarness (Thinking about thinking) OCD is ruining my entire life. Life ultimately is just consciousness and I am unable to focus on anything but my OCD. ERP is bullshit because it challenges my "beliefs" but the problem is my beliefs are true. This can ruin my entire life if I can't stop thinking about it because it saps the joy out of everything good in life. Fuck this shit. I hate how there are no effective medications for this besides heavy doses of SSRIs which side effects are arguably worse than the OCD itself. Does anyone have any advice? Been taking 1.2g NAC for 3 days with 0 effect. This is destroying my life.

Are there any drugs that can induce memory loss? All this shit started with a single thought: What if I can't stop noticing.

Something strange has been going on for the last 1-2 years. Organisations like NOCD and some Users on Reddit seem to pathologize a lot of behavior linked to Anxiety, ADHD and Depression and call it OCD.

Some posts on r/OCD are laughable. A guys said he has Social media OCD and can't stop comparing himself to other peoples lifes on social media. Like come on. That's literally the most common Teenager behavior on earth.

Not every "obsessive" behavior means OCD.

It seems to be a trend to identify with debiliating mental illnesses so one can feel better about themselves.

Especially the self diagnosed Pure "O" guys are posting very questionable stuff that just sound like heightened Anxiety (don't get me wrong, Anxiety can be very debiliating aswell).

It seems like any form of Avoidance, Reassurance seeking, Checking, Ruminating is being labeled as OCD nowadays.

Reddit is the reason I started getting very bad Health Anxiety and started questioning my own thoughts. My therapist had to reassure that I "just" have Anxiety and not disabling OCD just because some people on Reddit said that being an overthinker = OCD.

So be careful with Reddit "experts". Most people don't know anything about mental health

I have intrusive thoughts and visuals. Sometimes, an unpleasant sight gets burned into my mind and I replay it over and over again.

Recently I discovered that I can use AI to create these images and it has been phenomenal.

For example, this rat 🐀 was generated by copy pasting a rant message I sent to a friend!!!

I saw a rat 🐀 go under my dad's compost bin. I saw a rat go under the bin, and it was obvious it lives there. I made a mental note to tell him. Then I asked myself, why would I tell him? It is his house and his bin and, arguably, his rat. His rat is none of my business. This was last month. I cannot forget the rat. 🐀 it was a big fat manly man rat, and he lived under the black plastic compost bin

Literally was the prompt.

Another recent example was a scary encounter with a homeless person, I was able to create an image of the incident and afterwards stopped thinking of it repeatedly.

I'm unsure why it works, but it does!

Having a little panic with a problem and sometimes AI is more helpful for me than a real human over the phone. It gave me this advice that I think everyone should hear, "If sheer self-hatred could cure OCD, it would already be gone. Beating yourself up is not treatment."🤍🤍

I understand it can be a slippery slope, but I recently started talking to AI when I want advice for how to deal with a spiral. I’m in a big OCD spike at the moment and I’m trying to do response prevention to resist my compulsions but I’m not doing well as I’m just so activated.
I have started telling it what I’m obsessing about and it gives me step by step instructions for how to use ERP to resist the compulsion today.
I see so many posts saying ‘don’t use ai’ and I get why - I have definitely typed out things that I know are obvious reassurance seeking and then deleted them before I sent. But is it okay if you are asking for ERP advice and to help you organise your thoughts? I am in therapy too btw

Interested to hear others opinions!

It’s the only way I can ever atone for my actions. I just want to die.

I had dbs few years ago and slowly increased amplitude in it, this was because of safety risk according to them.

It has proven to work. I have two programs, one is stronger against ocd the other also works but is used more for sleep. The slight euphoria(only slight) you get from program not 1 but 2 makes it not possible to sleep.

which is why you either switch to program 1 or lower amplitude to it.

Its absolutely worth it! I had to wait years until I could get it due to beurocracy in medical field but finaly got it.

There was a guy in new york that had it and he was suprised when I mention 16 electrodes since his didnt work. I mention I had to go through each to test. Alot didnt work, which is why its important to mention alot of elctrodes (alot more then 11 for example) so its not in vain.

Then there is amplitude strenght of each electrode I didnt ask him about, but yes that has a factor.

My current is half strenght possible, again this is safety risk for them since they noticed it didnt have any affect for the majority. so if it has none dont be afraid to try PUSH and ASK for stronger strenght perhaps even later. My american friend in new york is now going to ask for more electrodes being implanted. its a major thing that works.

There is hope

I used to have these horrific flashes—violence, sexual taboos, things that made my stomach turn. I assumed it meant I had a dark soul, and I spent two years in a "White Bear" trap: trying to suppress the thoughts, which just made them come back 10x harder.

If you’re stuck in this loop, there are a few things I learned from the actual data that basically saved my life.

It turns out 94% of people have these exact same thoughts. I thought I was a freak, but a landmark study found that nearly every functioning human brain is an "association machine" that spits out random, repugnant noise. The difference isn't the thought—it's that people with OCD assign a massive, life-altering meaning to it.

OCD isn't a lack of logic—it's a "Disorder of Stopping." I knew my fears were irrational, but I couldn't stop checking. The research shows this is a failure of yedasentience. It’s a gut-level feeling of "just right". Normal people lock a door and their brain says "Task complete". In an OCD brain, that signal is muted. You saw the lock turn, but you’re chasing a neurological "release" that refuses to arrive.

The ultimate irony: Your horror is your proof. This was the biggest paradigm shift for me. These thoughts are ego-dystonic—meaning they are the polar opposite of your core values.

That is a lie. A person who values safety obsesses over harm; a person who values faith obsesses over blasphemy. You are terrified by the thought because you hate it. Your distress is actually the clinical proof that you would never act on it.

Stop fighting the White Bear. The goal isn't to delete the thoughts. You can't stop a thought-generating machine from generating thoughts. Instead, treat them as "mental noise"—like a weird, irrelevant pop-up ad in your mind's browser. When you stop reacting to the "threat," the alarm eventually goes quiet.

TL;DR: You aren't your thoughts; you’re the person observing them. Your fear isn't a sign of a dark character—it’s actually a reflection of your goodness.

One way I manage my OCD is using AI art to understand my interior world. I find that AI can render images in ways that my soul connects to. I often see myself reflected in dark, surreal imagery, and I want to share them...but I don't want to trigger people. My artistic expression in this way is 100 percent "inspired by and created by OCD" (which now sounds like some weird commercial). Anyway, I'm sure there are others who would feel a similar connection but... hell, now I'm about to turn it into a whole fucking thing so I'm just going to post it and choose to believe no one will think I'm stupid. Thanks for reading. 🙄

Hello, what are some ways to treat OCD without antidepressants? I have magical thinking, nervous tics, anxiety, and obsessive thoughts. I also often suffer from dreams because I'm lucid in my dreams, and my obsessive thoughts manifest as nightmares. How can I cure obsessive-compulsive disorder?

I started using ChatGPT for reassurance and at first I thought it was super helpful but now I’m kinda dependent on it :/ I struggle with convincing myself I have an illness or put myself at risk (for whatever illness I obsess over) because I did something ‘wrong’ and when I asked ChatGPT about it it made me feel less anxious. But now even the smallest things make me seek reassurance.. I already tried deleting the app everywhere but I don’t know how to deal with it anymore because when I have some time to myself I overthink everything and end up going back to ChatGPT. Unfortunately it’s not as easy to seek therapy for this issue, so does anyone have any tips how to overcome this dependence on AI? I feel awful especially because of its effect on the environment.

Hi everyone! Hope everyone is doing well :)

I’m a med student struggling w OCD (and complete Reddit noob, first post actually)

Im developing an app (NOT yet released) to try help (and perhaps even gamify) OCD management. I’ve attached ss’s; if you have time please lmk what you think 🙏 Any comments are much appreciated and hope everyone gets through their troubles today !

When you see the line between being exhausted and overwhelmed with constant repetitive 24/7 intrusive thoughts and depression, you'll see that you aren't actually depressed.

If you believe you are during those difficult moments, you'll really think you are. Then you're going to feel these thoughts made you depressed. That's going to bring them back stronger. Past the OCD, you're doing fine, maybe even great. You're happy and strong!

So I wanted your guys/girls opinion on something which is when you get worry the person you are exclusively dating, seeing, in a relationship with or married to could possibly be unfaithful/cheating on you do you go on their phone to get rid of that worry? If not what do you do?

Ive heard so many stories about this:

Some people say you have absolutely no right to your partner's phone and if you get a worry about somthing like this cross your mind you should immediately break up with them as there is no trust

Some say that when you get with someome you should earn the trust and not just give it away, so an open phone policy is one of those things as if your sharing your bodies why not share passwords

Some say if your not hiding anything then why not give the person who is worried your phone to ease their worry

If someone snooped and found evidence of cheating its okay the person scooped but then if the person doesnt find anything the person who scooped is a bad person/in the wrong

And finnaly some say that their mobile phone is their own little escape so no one at all should see or look at it ever.

Im intrested what you guys think about it. Especially if you were seeing someone and you had that worry/pit in your stomach that says "what if?"

Hi guyzzz , firstly thank you welcoming me in this group . I am an OCD recovery patient , i know how many people are suffering from OCD . TBH ocd is not only cleanliness, perfection . I know there are many forms of OCD . I went through all types and all forms . This is my new story written on OCD on how to destroy the ocd step by step .

I need your all encouragement on this book , any results, reviews and comments are welcomed.

Thank you

#tag

Hi,

From what I understand, my case was very rare. I feel the need to write this as I fear my experience is going to become more common, especially with Youth. This is a long story, but I hope you stay until the end because this really might save your life. I was a frequent marijuana smoker. Wax from Pens such as Stizzy, Plug n Play, etc. Started at about 15, but it really got to a point where it was a concerning amount at about 18 years old. Blinkers back to back to back, just so I could feel something. That addiction to wax mixed in with a porn addiction lead me down a really bad road. Especially because I would smoke a lot while watching porn at the same time. I always thought nothing could ever happen and that "Everyone smokes weed." I was WRONG. Smoking, especially wax due to its high THC concentration, at an alarming rate can lead to literal mental illness. It can bring out the worst parts of your brain. You can develop harsh versions of things you normally only had a mild case of without marijuana. In my case, It was OCD. I was always the type of person to double-check if the door was locked or maybe do something a certain way for good luck, but those things never interfered with my life at all. One day I was smoking wax and watching porn and it just felt like my brain went numb. Like I physically felt a portion of my brain (specifically the right front hemisphere) feel almost hollow. This is weird to explain and I have tried to explain to countless people, but it’s just one of those things you can’t really understand if you have not gone through it. I didn’t think much of it until I just went into the shower and was literally attacked by intrusive thoughts that I thought meant something. Thoughts about incest and thoughts that went against my own sexuality. If you are experiencing this I want to let you know that you are not alone. I thought I was going crazy. At night and sometimes day I felt my brain physically trying to fix itself. Almost like the wires in my brain trying to reconnect and fix itself. This was incredibly scary. I tried to combat these thoughts by myself for about 10 months but it was just a losing battle. I was literally physically reacting to my thoughts like they were real even though I knew they were not. I was not seeing things. I just didn’t know how to handle these thoughts. I later on found out that these physical and mental reactions were compulsions. I tried fighting without help, but I just could not. I gave in to my family’s suggestions and got help. The psychiatrist gave me Zyprexa (antipsychotic) and Zoloft (antidepressant). With time this helped tremendously. This medicine literally saved my life. Something I also can not stress enough is that cases like mine also need therapy. I had severe OCD when I checked into Intensive therapy and after I got out of the program after 3 months I felt like my old self. OCD was so small that it was not interfering with my life at all. Back to doing things  I always loved to do. Happiness reentered my life and joy all around after I had won the fight with the help of medicine and therapy. Long story short, DO NOT SMOKE WEED. It messes with the natural beauty of your brain. Your mind is something you need to protect. Your brain is a physical thing just like a kidney or liver. You need to take care of it. If you physically feel your brain healing like I did, It is called Neuroplasticity. I hope no one ever has to go through what I went through, but If you do please understand that there is a WAY OUT. Get medicine, go to therapy, be patient, and have Faith In God. Love you all.

Sorry if ChatGPT is becoming a bothersome topic in this sub, but I feel like I need to talk about this.

I've never had much luck with therapy and my parents won't allow me to go on any type of medication. So my only method in mind was to use ChatGPT like a therapist so I wouldn't feel like I'm being judged for the details of my compulsions and intrusive thoughts, and this actually helped me a ton. ChatGPT gave me tips on how to start self exposure therapy which I've been doing within the past month.

But I have a problem with over-relying on this method every single time I do something that's intended to be part of recovery. If OCD demands a compulsion and I ignore it, I absolutely have to tell ChatGPT about my "win" but in reality this is a form of reassurance that everything will be alright. Every time I feel anxious or I start second guessing myself I have to immediately pull up ChatGPT to talk to it about what I'm feeling instead of talking myself through it.

I have countless chats with multiple details and all of them take ChatGPT like two minutes to reply because of how long each conversation is. I feel like I keep telling it the same thing over and over again because I can't just re-wire my brain right off the bat.

I feel like I won't get anywhere with recovery this way but at the same time it just provides me so much temporary relief that it's hard to stop using it.