[lovelylovely]

Before I state my piece I would just like to say that I have not been officially diagnosed with Ocd, I don't know if I have the full illness, because I don't suffer with excessive compulsions but I do suffer with excessive, distressing obsessions. Sometimes they are worse than others and I don't get them all at the same time, one obsession will go and be relaced by another. My way of dealing with the awful thoughts are avoidance, either by leaving the room, self harming, emotionally battering myself or trying to force the thoughts away which is incredibly hard. I have struggled with obsessive thoughts in various forms. They started when I was about 9 or 10. When I was a kid, I was obsessed with symetry, I would be walking up the road and the tips of my feet would have to be perfectly aligned with the yellow stripes on the road to the lines on the brick walls. In fact every step had to be perfectly aligned with some object. Over time, innapropriate sexual, violent thoughts came to the point, I could not have a conversation with anyone without thinking horrible things, my eye contact is poor. I have had thoughts about behaving innapropriatly in public, swearing, pushing strangers over, going into a bank and making threats to rob it. When I'm at the traffic lights and see someone's bag, I feel an urge to pickpocket, though I don't want to. I get paranoid in supermarkets, I'm tempted to steal and start feeling nervous even though I havn't done anything, the security guards look at me suspiciously. I've recently started wasting money on clothes that I rarely wear, just because when I wear clothes that I have bought before and even though I am clean, I feel dirty wearing anything unless it is brand new. A few years ago, I was compulsively hoarding stuff, anything like broken bits of jewellry, bits of paper which meant nothing but I just couldn't throw them away because I was scared that I would be saying goodbye to them forever, they held sentimental value even though they were complete bits of rubbish. When I blowdry my hair, if I tip my head down, I think there is a guilotine above my head that is going to behead me. Toilet checking, fear of using toilets, worried that people could hear me using them. Obsessed with catching HIV using a toilet. Dislike using taps in public toilets because they are usually moist and smeary. I refuse to go out unless my outfit is perfectly co-ordinated, if one thing sticks out, i have to change my whole outfit. When I leave my house, I check my bag over and over to see if i have not forgotten my keys. When I'm walking down the road, I'm terrified a driver is going to lose his control behind the wheel and drive straight into me. I hate people touching my stuff as it is then in a state of disarray in my eyes even though it is just a piece of paper out of place, I get extremely irate. The list goes on and on with the types of obsessions I have had and I have had them for too long. BTW I don't get all the obsessions at the same time, there are times when they are minimal and there are times when they out of control. I cannot act on certain one's because it is one thing thinking about it and another actually doing it. They usually come on in times of stress and the reason for this is because I feel more secure and safe when performing certain rituals because when I am stressed, I feel under threat.

Just to say at the end, I am relatively stable at the moment, the thoughts are still but like I said, I use avoidance tactics. The one's that could potentially get me into trouble, like stealing, I manage to control. I don't know how but I do it, but I avoid being too near to someone for fear of losing control. So you could say any potential compulsions are well under control apart from checking and contamination. But then again, I dont know what my next obsession would be.

Hi there, I really shouldn't diagnose, but I'd say you probably have OCD. You sound A LOT like me. I have what people call "Pure O"...OCD that mostly only contains obsessions, hardly any compulsions. When one obsession goes away, it's replaced by another.

I greatly recommend that you obtain professional help...my therapist has helped me so much in learning how to cope with my obsessive thoughts. He taught me not to avoid, because avoiding your thoughts is one of the WORST things someone can do.

It's great that you're on the right track...at first I just assumed that I was a bad person, and all these thoughts would come true. However, everybody has these types of thoughts, but people with OCD just take them more seriously and ruminate over them. This turns into guilt, avoidance, and shame.

If you ever want to chat, feel free to send me a message. Please update on how you're doing, best of luck to you.

[coko27]

Originally Posted by lovelylovely

Before I state my piece I would just like to say that I have not been officially diagnosed with Ocd, I don't know if I have the full illness, because I don't suffer with excessive compulsions but I do suffer with excessive, distressing obsessions. Sometimes they are worse than others and I don't get them all at the same time, one obsession will go and be relaced by another. My way of dealing with the awful thoughts are avoidance, either by leaving the room, self harming, emotionally battering myself or trying to force the thoughts away which is incredibly hard. I have struggled with obsessive thoughts in various forms. They started when I was about 9 or 10. When I was a kid, I was obsessed with symetry, I would be walking up the road and the tips of my feet would have to be perfectly aligned with the yellow stripes on the road to the lines on the brick walls. In fact every step had to be perfectly aligned with some object. Over time, innapropriate sexual, violent thoughts came to the point, I could not have a conversation with anyone without thinking horrible things, my eye contact is poor. I have had thoughts about behaving innapropriatly in public, swearing, pushing strangers over, going into a bank and making threats to rob it. When I'm at the traffic lights and see someone's bag, I feel an urge to pickpocket, though I don't want to. I get paranoid in supermarkets, I'm tempted to steal and start feeling nervous even though I havn't done anything, the security guards look at me suspiciously. I've recently started wasting money on clothes that I rarely wear, just because when I wear clothes that I have bought before and even though I am clean, I feel dirty wearing anything unless it is brand new. A few years ago, I was compulsively hoarding stuff, anything like broken bits of jewellry, bits of paper which meant nothing but I just couldn't throw them away because I was scared that I would be saying goodbye to them forever, they held sentimental value even though they were complete bits of rubbish. When I blowdry my hair, if I tip my head down, I think there is a guilotine above my head that is going to behead me. Toilet checking, fear of using toilets, worried that people could hear me using them. Obsessed with catching HIV using a toilet. Dislike using taps in public toilets because they are usually moist and smeary. I refuse to go out unless my outfit is perfectly co-ordinated, if one thing sticks out, i have to change my whole outfit. When I leave my house, I check my bag over and over to see if i have not forgotten my keys. When I'm walking down the road, I'm terrified a driver is going to lose his control behind the wheel and drive straight into me. I hate people touching my stuff as it is then in a state of disarray in my eyes even though it is just a piece of paper out of place, I get extremely irate. The list goes on and on with the types of obsessions I have had and I have had them for too long. BTW I don't get all the obsessions at the same time, there are times when they are minimal and there are times when they out of control. I cannot act on certain one's because it is one thing thinking about it and another actually doing it. They usually come on in times of stress and the reason for this is because I feel more secure and safe when performing certain rituals because when I am stressed, I feel under threat.

Just to say at the end, I am relatively stable at the moment, the thoughts are still but like I said, I use avoidance tactics. The one's that could potentially get me into trouble, like stealing, I manage to control. I don't know how but I do it, but I avoid being too near to someone for fear of losing control. So you could say any potential compulsions are well under control apart from checking and contamination. But then again, I dont know what my next obsession would be.

yeah you have ocd so I would go to a dr and get a dx so the thoughts will leave good luck I also suffers from ocd but I got the thoughts and germ phobia