Thanks for making this! Amazing! One of OCD's biggest tricks is to convince someone that what they are experiencing is not OCD. Because it means you are your thoughts or feelings. OCD is a big fat liar! 😂

I really want to just give up, this is no joke. Probably the worst thing I've ever felt.

Anyone else struggling with the fact that whatever you’re fear of, the urge that you get can make you think as if whatever thought you have it can happen right now or that you can make it happen?? It’s such a disease this disorder and it’s so exhausting, I wish this can just disappear from my life 😔.

Even watching this video I feel like I'm the only one that is lying 😂 Edit: Apr 2024. To anybody reading this, I'm so much better than when I made this comment. It is possible to get better, you just have to put the work in and take and this fine ladies advice 👍

I’m not sure if this will help anyone but I started writing my own story about intrusive thoughts. It’s honestly been helping me feel less alone. Maybe if your struggling try writing about your experiences or a story about it

I can’t begin to explain to you how much finding your videos had helped me. I absolutely hate that anyone has to deal with this, but thankful for the ones like you that share your story and show us we aren’t alone. God bless you!

I just noticed the moving bird decoration on your wall! So cute!! Thank you so much for this video. I am really really happy I found your instagram and your youtube channel today

Everything you say is exactly what I’m feeling this is perfect

Amazing video Chrissie, thank you as always. Also... bad landscaping job 🤣🤣 Thank you for making us laugh with the pain too:) xx

OMG now that's a rabbit hole! Have you heard Stuart of OCD Stories' interview with Steven Hayes? He calls it a self-amplifying cycle, like when there's a feedback loop between a mic and a speaker. You gotta unplug the mic.

Thanks for this. I also liked the book "30 Days to Stop Obsessing" by Harper.

Thank you so much. Your videos help me a lot!

Id love to have a chat with you for just 10 minutes. I feel i need to talk to someone who understands and will listen. Ive never experience this "feeling of wrong doing before" but its convinced me that I have.

You are a godsend Chrissy

A thought I had while watching this: It's so hard to not reassure yourself. One of my major compulsions is reassurance seeking and I thought I had nipped it in the bud. But I didn't realize that I was still reassuring myself every time I had a thought.

Hey Chrissie Hodges I like all your content you provide great topics of your videos. I was wondering if you were able to make a video about IF this is OCD or is it repressed traumatic memories on how to differentiate the difference.

Love your work! Do you have any videos or plan to make any videos based on existential ocd?

Can you do a video on how to sleep easier with intrusive thoughts like how to calmly react to intrusive thoughts dreams and how to calmly react to intrusive thoughts when you first wake up and your mind is just wandering

😭😭💜💜 the last minute got me.

Thank you Chrissie!!!!😌😌😌

I used to have magical thinking ocd working under the assumption that if these things are possible even just by 1% then I need to address them. But here's the thing, you can be 99% confident and safely round it off. If I turn off this light switch will someone I know die as a direct result? I think I can safely assume that won't happen. Can I be 100% sure every time? No, but I can choose to have confidence to the point of certainty that it won't

I’m just going to rant and put this out there because I’m not feeling well and and have no one to turn to. maybe someone can relate and know they’re not alone. I’m 19 and started dealing with pretty bad ocd last year around July/august. Gosh it’s really hard especially when you’re not diagnosed. I remember the first thought I had back in may was, “what if I am a pedophile, I don’t deserve to be here.” I just want to be normal and live life like I use to but then I remember that I have always been like this but decided to push it to the back of my mind since I actually had things to do and a life to live and friends to catch up with. Ever since quarantine started I completely isolated myself and fell into a depression. I feel like I’m in my own world and I forget things easily. I have neglected my relationship with family members and friends and feel horrible because of it. My past trauma haunts me and I feel like ocd tells me I am not worth it because of it. I have irrational fears that I’m going to become a terrible person because of it or that I already am a terrible person. I don’t know what to do at this point. I don’t want to feel like this for the rest of my life.

I've been dealing with what I think is OCD for about 2 months now. I believe it was triggered by a nightmare, but I had signs of it wayyy before, just that now it's severe. My doctor believes that it's trauma, I have PTSD & she says a lot of symptoms of those 2 overlap, but as of now we're trying to figure out what's happening. I feel like I've been stuck in a nightmare for all these weeks, & the worst part is that Covid is exacerbating everything, and making access to mental health care much more difficult. I do obsess now about whether or not this is OCD, & I definitely do that to sort of neutralize my fear about it, especially because I don't really know if I truly have it. Although I'm not diagnosed, I really really think it is.

For me its feelings that have thrown me off and im in a stage where im not chronic and living somewhat normally i guess but the doubt is always there regardless of reassurance

Thankyou Chrissie xx :)

Chrissie, you explain to a tee what my brain does. It made me laugh 😂 because it’s so hilarious in a way but so sad on the other hand because it creates a lot of strain on the mind. But I still doubt that I have Scupocd🥺

There is something that I've learned while going through an unbearable existential ocd period, which I doubted even logic and reality itself.. We don't need Certainty, all we need is Confidence, aswell as confidence in ourselves in dealing with the the worse case scenario and with being wrong. Certainty is impossible, but confidence, and even belief, is enough, we can and we will work with things if things are proven otherwise.

A good book for OCD is "30 Days to Stop Obsessing" by Harper Daniels.

Hi Chrissie. Is it normal to develop Pure O OCD w/ the development of GAD as well? Or vice versa. Can GAD exacerbate my pure o ocd intrusive thoughts?

Oh noooo I just had my second appointment with a therapist and she said ‘see this is where ocd comes in’ and I was immediately desperate for ‘so this is ocd?? I’m not what I fear??’ .... I didn’t even realize I was looking for reassurance

Can pure OCD also be obsessing over it possibly not being OCD and it being something more severe and constantly thinking about your traits in order to prove/disprove that I have OCD?

What if you had these thoughts before OCD? This always gives me anxiety

Is it possible to experience somatic symptoms in the body when having health OCD when afraid of a specific illness. Also is it possible for OCD to plant paranoias when have psychosis OCD?

I don't know what to do anyone, i just want to have a normal sex life, all i do is worry, all i get are intrusive thoughts that drive me away from the moment, i can't be present im in my mind all the time. It just feels like a develop an obsesion over an obsesion, im starting to think ill never have an easy sex life, everything its gonna take twice the effort for me, and honestly i don't think ill even get there anyway

It doesn't really pop into my head personally, but maybe that's because I've had OCD for so long without knowing it until now.

do u also replace the intrusive thoughts with other bad thoughts thinking it will be gone? i tried it which made me feel more miserable, it was intentional, willing im scared

what is acceptance commitment therapy?

Please Dr. Chrissie can you talk about how we can focus on work or any task despite the negative feelings and sensations and the racing thoughts.. because whenever I get into that state, I lose motivation to do anything. I just hate myself and go to sleep. And because of that I am very unproductive and I am a university student so it really affects my studies. How can we go beyond the negative feelings and the intrusive thoughts and not feel powerless because of them? Thank you very much!!

How do you join the peer support?

My ocd feels like there is sth in my brain telling me that its aboslutely true.. Like a kind that gives you certainty.. And it makes it look so so so so real that i have no argument left to say its not real.. And it brings in a thought and immediately distorts it of type and makes its look so real again.. Does it happens to anyof you ?? Please help.. I feel like im different..

my mind keeps attacking me with most of that but i dont believe the thoughts

Hey all pls help me......one day I felt a very bad thought and got a very bad feeling...then suddenly I thought to not think it ..then it suddenly went but I felt soo much anxious that I felt like I thought on purpose ....I felt so ok anxious and my heartbeat increased ....I am scared now😪😪😪😪😓😓😓😓if I am a bad person

This made me laugh 😆 even though I knew this was common it still feels so isolating to experience it. when I first got diagnosed I had severe ocd. It was really bad 10/10 anxiety intrusive thoughts all day. Compulsions every 5-10 mins. I was elated when my therapist told me we were going to talk about ocd and erp at our next apt and get started. Elated! I wasn’t my thoughts!!!! Yeaaaaaa…. It lasted less than two hours. I cried myself to sleep logically convincing myself I was misdiagnosed. I spent the next few weeks writing all of my thoughts down to “confess” them so I could get properly diagnosed. i would be so irritated at how uninterested my therapist seemed at them! I poked and prodded about symptoms I was experiencing I couldn’t find on the internet to see if it was ocd. Or if it was if MY experience with them was ocd and got maybe maybe not in response. I fought it looking for certainty that doing erp would be safe. That not fighting wouldn’t collapse my world and I couldn’t get it. I’m telling u it added months to my recovery but I needed to learn it the hard way. You can’t out-logic ocd. It will find that .00000000000000000000001% of uncertainty and just tear it open if u let it. The only way I started to get better was to say “maybe it’s not ocd. But I gonna disregard anyways.” It wasn’t easy. It felt like jumping off a cliff without a parachute. But it didn’t take me long to see that every time I did that my anxiety would get better and better. And even though I’m doing so much better and continue to live by my values I still get moments of doubt too.

Is the same thinking maybe is not ocd or believing I'm creating the thoughts and they are not intrusive?

I say it again and again I’m not gay I’m not gay I’m not gay my brain doesn’t stop I hate this

I actually do not know what is OCD or anymore.. certain things are obvious, but the obvious OCD I wonder if it is a tip of an iceberg. Because so much shit tortures me and I don't consider it OCD but maybe it is. Its certainly obsessive

Ive had a feeling/thought of me doing something so taboo that was actually triggered by an actual event. This happened and then I had my first ever panic attack all in the same day. The taboo thought i have is saying that i have done something so taboo (not going to say) but I have no memory of it. This wasnt a false memory from months or yesrs ago. This trigger happened and then I worried about it and now its morphed into so much more and what ifs. What if i did this thing and cant remember, what if this is not ocd as all i read about is past memories popping up. Could this be real event ocd? After the panic attach 1 year and half ago everyday after has been of dread, guilt and the fear of loosing everything and everyone based on this thought/feeling im having being true. Im constantly looking over my shoulder because this thought/feeling is so convicing my mind had gone down the rabbit hole and has had me thinking about whats going to happen to me. i.e loosong job, family, friends, children... Everyone and everything. Im actually beliving ive done this horrible thing because why would i have a panic attack and why cant i let this feeling go if it wasnt real. All of this because of a thought/feeling from an actual event. The event itself was not a bad thing but i didnt see it that way and it scared the hell out of me and from there I am where im at today. Sorry to post this on here but i needed to get this out. Does this sound like OCD? Ive troed and tried to recal what i was doing at the time, writting down a time line of where, what i was doing. Looking at times of facebook post, pictures taken etc to map out my life of when the happened. I did this for me thinking i could retrace my steps. I think about this everday and whenever i get halpy about something i.e seeing my daughter happy I get this cloud over me saying "make the most of it" and then ot just brongs me back down. Can anybody relate? Surely if I did this thing my mind is telling me and its really that taboo then wouldnt I know exactly what that was? I only have this thought/feeling of doing this bad thing but i have no detials of it, no memory of it... Nothing. Please anyone help.

im scared i dont want this

Is a fear of having psychosis OCD (or can it be)?

God, I hate to say that this is relatable, but WELP IT IS ahahhaha

Literally. Me. Lol

Same = OCD! That’s all you need to know...

May be HOCD it's new name for being guy cos all symptoms are similar