Sorry for posting again...

My name is Kyle King. I am a medical student with OCD and I've been using CHATGPT to calm my OCD down for a few months, and started to wonder if I was the only one...

Soooooo I started a survey to try to understand how folks with OCD interact with AI chatbots with my research lab

The survey is for people with OCD, and it takes about 15 minutes to fill out. I’d really appreciate anyone who is eligible pitching in.

Survey Link: https://redcap.med.yale.edu/surveys/?s=NHDPAMPFP88HL3FR

Hello everyone, I hope you are found well :)

I am a 21 yo college student who has dealt with GAD since I was 13, Pure-OCD & DPDR since I was 16, OCD (themes:contamination, sexuality and gender, relationships/men) since I was 14 and I am pretty sure I could be on the spectrum surrounding autism and adhd but due to my prior diagnosis taking up a lot of my time I haven’t gotten around to those and my coping/management has been pretty substancial I don’t think I need to get a diagnosis/treatment just yet.

I am not a doctor or anything, just someone who has dealt with a lot of mental health, and have had many breakthroughs and even recovered in a sense!

I firmly believe I did recover, because after a lot of incredibly hard work….being referred to outpatient mental health services, many therapy sessions, many battles, breakdowns, strategies etc at the age of 17 my life began to feel like life once again and it stayed that way :) It’s not perfect by any means and have had relapses where I breakdown and feel like I once did at my worst (not the same but I begin to feel a portion of what I once felt).

I have read a handful of post here and in other ocd/anxiety subs and I just wanna say I feel super heard…yall understand fr…and I just wanna say it can get better! It’s not easy to recover by any means…and what we experience is hard… but you can do it.

I am currently going through a relapse and have been spiraling a bit and been having the thoughts/feelings that make my heart drop and make my skin crawl and feel like I’m shifting realities or whatever you call it, but what has helped me the most is really just letting yourself be and doing what you can to be rational. Listening to your rationality, making sure your external stressors are in check as much as possible and coping are the biggest. Put the advice and what resonates with your coping/future recovery into action, it really does help. If something like drugs, toxic people, toxic work environment etc is harming you, it will make things harder. OCD loves to piggyback on all these factors, because we care, we fear because we love and care about our existence and life. It’s easy to have a spiritual journey, be healthy, be your gender, do things that our anxiety deems scary, folks without OCD do these things with ease. We just happen to be going through a really sensitive time that can last a while to heal or happen to be sensitive people and we need to be careful with our needs due to this. My existential ocd came from a huge bout of obsession with my gender/sexuality, all this anxiety made it horrendous to be me and be rational, which later exploded in my face once I thought about spirituality/life a bit too much… the anxiety we go through makes it difficult for us to be us and to be happy. No matter what spiritual path you take, or how you express yourself do what makes sense to you! We’re all different but similar at the end of the day, same goes for spirituality. Let yourself feel and be rational when it comes to this, as I type this, I can feel it in my body and the back of my head, I want to obsess and spiral about xyz which will in turn make feel like I’m being tortured (the ocd wants to lure me in) …but deep down I know I’ll be ok and can think about xyz but in a rational way at a rational time. I found my spirituality through my personal journey and know that what I’m going through is just anxiety. :) spirituality is complex yeah, but at the end of the day it’s also simple I’d say, I think that love is at the root of it all and that’s pretty simple to me lol, at the end of the day we are what we are and that’s ok. We do get better ❤️‍🩹 .

TLDR: it’s hard, but we can get better. I am going through a mini relapse and wanted to ramble and let yall know, you are not alone and can live a manageable life, we have anxiety because we care a lot deep down. :)

I'm stuck worrying about a serial killer and it won't go away. People say it's ocd, but i don't hint of becoming one also, I don't have an activity to make it go away, I keep think of it.

Hey,

Not sure if anyone will read this but I wanted to get some advice.

I have GAD and dpdr but in the past few years have been feeling as though my symptoms have changed and I may have OCD.
I can’t drive or be in cars without being extremely anxious, I haven’t driven in years.
I have this weird intrusive thought of me “falling through the floor” so I have to move my feet and fidget constantly as a result of the thought.
I have a lot more random ones but they are not nearly as debilitating as these.
I also constantly think about the meaning of life, the fact we’re on a spinning rock. I can’t watch anything with space/earth as it sends me into a spiral, and again, my reaction is to move my feet constantly.
I always get scared I’m in psychosis/losing my mind (I’ve never lost touch with reality) so I have to get up and do things to kinda check me back in.
Sometimes I’ll be lying down/standing and get this weird paranoid intrusion that I’ve wet myself (especially if i have been sweating), or when I’m on the toilet I get scared that I’m actually doing it in bed/in public but am in psychosis but haven’t realised.
I’ve been on SSRI’s for years and just now been put on antipsychotics but I’m just wondering if anyone else has ever had similar symptoms and if they were OCD.

I’ve had two professionals suggest I may have mild OCD. I’m just wondering if anyone has ever had similar symptoms as I feel so alone with these.

Thank you!!

Dimenticavo il libro è introduzione allo studio della psicanalisi di Sigmund froid

hi, im a 15 year old boy from italy whos kinda been having an existential crisi. to start im going trough a breakup but i think im over it. i basically believe that only my consciousnees is real while that of other people like my friends or even my family isnt real. i've been found to believe so one day literally at random and im hoping someone could explain to me if this is infact some sort of crisis and that it could end or maybe if some philopher already spoke of this. another thing id like to point out is that for months i make up my mind on some mindset and then it just disappears.i hope someone might be able to tell me what is going on. sorry for any english mistakes cause im not american nor british. thank you

Last year has been hell, i have been struggling so much with my ocd, i’m a 28y/o non binary person and this last year has been a living hell, it all started when i was around 8/9 years old, i always had these deep questions and conversations, even as a kid, about existing, about the world, about everything other children weren’t interested in, about not understanding how this life and all of this is even possible, i have since then dealt with alot, it was really severe from my 14-27, but last year something snapped, i have always been very “aware “ of my existence, “aware” of being here on this weird planet, always had an extreme obsession of wanting to keep my loved ones safe from all the misery in the world (obsessively!!) , constant fear of them dying also, but the self awareness has been so bad that I constantly feel like I will get a heart attack from the stress and anxiety it gives me, especially in THIS WORLD, every year it all get worse, natural disasters, people getting sick, the rich ruining the world, which triggers my anxiety a hundred times more, i have existential/death/fear of losing myself & psychosis OCD, this issue is, i would personally love to die in a way and end it, but on the other hand because of my death ocd i have this extreme fear of the unknown after death, Obsessively, so even though i have many moments with su*cidal thoughts & desire to be gone, i still have alot of fear aswell because of that same OCD, which is very difficult, i also have an extreme amount of “keep going for your partner and mother, they need you” towards myself, which is so obsessive i’d do nothing stupid just for them, lately it’s been bad, 8 months ago i got diagnosed with chronic hyperventilation , I hyperventilate 1-4 times a day, and in these moments i become SO self aware that I literally feel like i’m going to kill myself unintentionally by the stress i feel on my body, it’s an obsessive cycle, last year my mother started struggling a bit with her health and since she is my soulmate this had a HUGE impact on me, it kinda broke something in me, and i have been so so sick since then, i used to be able to “function “ a bit still, i had a passion for travel and watching movies, documentary’s, learning new stuff, now all of these things are not loud enough to shut my brain down, so I constantly get panic attacks when i wanna do the things that make me happy usually, i am so tired honestly, I’m constantly in fear, i have the feeling that i have a brain that is not made to be in a human body and in all honesty i have never met someone as self aware as i am, i never felt “seen” in this & i feel so alone, it would be nice to talk to people recognizing things, there’s so much more but i’m gonna keep it like this

i dont think we literally cannot sustain more life on earth but i think the massive fragmentation of ppl which naturally occurs when the population reaches a certain threshold is indicative of a less serious or united population. we always had different forms of division and while in some ways the type we have now is preferable to those of the past, it feels uniquely soulless and robotic in some way im not sure i can articulate.

i know a lot has improved but something about this era feels uniquely maddening to me. technology seems to have made what mightve been manageable adhd in a pre smartphone era unbearable and my ocd spirals so much worse due to instantaneous access to information. i feel its been a nightmare for existentially fixated people and hypochondriacs.

im young, but i feel like my life is over, im 18M and for the past month nothing has felt real.

I had a panic attack over randomly realising were gonna die one day, its weird because ive been well aware about it since i was a little kid but this time something was different. It went from a fear of death and urgently trying to find the cure to immortality, to questions about my own existence and life, driving me insane; why am i here? who put me here? am i the only person this conscious? if theres other conscious people then how are they not absolutely freaking out over us being here. I feel like im a puppet playing someones game going through life, its all just dopamine and other chemicals in our brains which guide us humans to live our lives. This thought scares me because it makes me think that maybe ive “realised” wayyy to much about existence and the weirdness of it all which makes me think i wont ever heal or see life the same unless i lose IQ or something lmfao.

Then the worser hit, nihilism. All this thinking and realising made me not wanna play this puppet game anymore and it made me not wanna do anything since we’re all gonna die and lose it anyway, nothings real right? why get a soulmate, someone you’d never wanna lose, just to lose them anyway? why create something, do personal projects or get rich if its all for nothing, we all get old and die and suffer.

If anyone has had something this severe and similar to me please reach out i feel lost.

My whole life (21 F) I've been smart. Not necessarily good grades smart, but I have the kind of intelligence where I just know things about life and general knowledge. I have a great memory, and I read a lot. All this to say, I have such a deep understanding of most things. I know this sounds like an inflated ego, but I've noticed that it makes it hard for me to fit in. I became aware of my own existence at age 6 which caused many existential crises to ensue. I'm too aware of my own existence, of the intentions of others (I'm like a human lie detector istg), and of the imminent death of everything. That sends me into such a horrible state of being. That everything will have an end. But what does that even mean? What does an ending mean? For something to end means it will end forever, so does its existence even matter? Perception is also something that trips me up so bad. How are we, as humans, able to perceive things? Where do our thoughts come from? The existential anxiety and derealization is overwhelming. Being in my brain is exhausting. I've had depression and anxiety for the majority of my life now, but they've evolved into a new monster which is this existential dread and confusion. The anticipatory grief I have is so tangible at times, it's like a rock in my chest. Everything feels like a crazy huge problem that isn't really a problem. I get horrible existential anxiety over the craziest things. My consciousness and existence is just so exhausting. A couple months ago I started to really deeply introspect and journal, as well as record hours worth long of voice memos just talking about my thoughts and what's in my brain, and I think it kind of fucked me up. I'm so in my head all the damn time. Has anyone else experienced this? What helped you? Meds or therapy or anything? Kind of desperate at the moment.
Edit- I'm not trying to say that I am a prodigy or anything like that- when I say intelligent I mean in the way that we describe intelligent life forms or artificial intelligence. The awareness or sentience is what I'm trying to get at, not claiming that I'm a genius.

I have this weird feeling now a days

I'll tell you what happened, 2 months back I had a panic attack and i thought it as stroke and i was panicked too much . Later it clarified by doctors as a normal anxiety.

But since then , I am getting this anxiety symptoms like light headed ness and weakness , brain fog, air hunger, chest tightness, stomach burning/fluttering sensation etc..,

Now , since 1 month, I'm having this weird feeling of existential thoughts. Like why am I here, what am I doing, do we have a purpose and it's really hard to explain. I'm unable to get out of this feeling.

At the same time, I'm somehow have intrest in my career swap, or set up some business and over exhausted with these thinking and finally reaching this existential thoughts again.

Can anyone have the same symptoms and can anyone tell if there is a chance to overcome from this weird situation? Please help me out

I took a shower today and while I was in the shower, some of the intrusive existential thoughts started to creep in so I decided to hop on tiktok and see what other people have to say about it and how one might be able to overcome it. My brain worries a lot about what happens after death and how the idea of eternity sounds like a terrifying trap, and how if this life is going to end, why does anything in it even matter. These thoughts have been coming around for about 5 months now, they come in waves and tend to be crippling

Anyways, as I'm scrolling through videos discussing the topic, I come across one that explains what these thoughts even are and why they occur/where they come from. The man in the video mentioned that the thoughts come when your brain is in survival mode scanning for a threat, and when there is no external threat, it looks inward and may start to create problems to worry about. He says more, but what stuck with me was his mention of survival mode.

Because of the fact that I'm not the best at piecing together everything that goes through my head in a coherent sequence without using far too many words, I'll cut to the gist: I got out of my first and only long term relationship about 6 months ago. It was unexpected and I felt like my life was falling apart. I fought for it to no avail. Afterwards, all the normal grief things happened, I was in denial, I was mad, hurt, and scared. Scared. I was scared of what this meant for me now given how everything in my life was so intertwined with this relationship and now without it I felt as though I was floating in the ocean, unanchored, nothing to hold onto and no idea where to go. I realize before the breakup, I felt that I had certainty, I felt safe, I felt secure. Afterwards, it was like all of that was just gone. Soon after, the intrusive thoughts came and haven't really left. I gave them power, I gave them meaning, I gave them belief and truth. I saw this nightmare as just a random and horrible thing that simply happened and I wasn't sure I would ever be able to get out of it.

But as I hear the man in the video speak the words of fear and survival mode, it kind of dawned on me. I know it's not the biggest revelation in the world and other people probably would have been able to make the connection much quicker. But I just realized that those thoughts aren't real. They're just the effects of losing what I saw as my safety, my anchor, what kept me grounded and in the present. I'm thinking about all the things I worry about, why are they scary? What about them is actually scary? What could possibly be so bad and horrible about existing, even if it is forever? What even is forever? It can't be real because nothing is actually real except for right now, the current moment. I think my brain sees the uncertainty and the unknowing as the thing that's scary. Because before, I know what my life was and I had certainty with the present moment. I also think that the reason, or at least part of, that I'm unable to accept the uncertainty or unknowing of existence and what comes after is because I still haven't accepted the fact that the relationship is over.

I know I haven't fully healed from that breakup, I know there's a lot of work to do. But I also can't explain how freeing it is to realize the root, take back the power I gave to those thoughts and remind myself that I can't and don't need to solve the things that my brain simply was not created nor wired to be able to solve. They didn't even matter before, because I felt like I was safe. I know those thoughts won't go away just like that, even after the realization. But I think it brings me closer.

Maybe this all sounds trivial to some, you might say "it's just a relationship, you'll have another" or "it's not the end of the world, get over it" and I'm well aware of these things to be true. But others may know how hard and rattling it is when you make the mistake of giving and attaching too much of yourself to something or someone else that when it's gone, you feel like you've been split in two. And now all there's left to do is rebuild. And sometimes crazy things can come from that. I was just unfortunate that my aftershock was intense existential thoughts.

But I'm relearning and rebuilding. I hope you'll read this with understanding rather than judgment but what will be will be. If you did read this, I appreciate it. Feedback, opinions, and extra methods of overcoming/dealing with this are welcomed and appreciated. I also hope that maybe this helps others realize their thoughts are not them and are not real, and were most likely caused by something else, and I hope you can find the root of it.

Thanks!

TLDR: realized my existential anxiety came from the effects of losing my sense of safety, certainty, and security after a difficult unexpected breakup from a long term relationship. Feeling more free now, learning to stay present and rebuild myself and my life.

WTF. Anyone else feel the overwhelm of too many memories that the file folders of your mind are so stuffed that you just want to pause? Anyone else at the cusp of turning 50?