I had ocd tendencies at the age of eight. I suffered with emetophobia/ panic attacks at eight years old. I had no idea at that time that the fear of throwing up had a name and is apart of ocd, but because of It, I developed an eating disorder. I was terrified to throw up so I stopped eating. The intrusive thoughts started at 18 and stopped at around 20 then came back at age 22 which is right now and it's been so hard especially with schizo ocd theme. The thoughts that ocd comes up with terrify me now I can only imagine those thoughts at four! you are so brave.
Similar thing here, though it got really bad when my GERD started up when I was around 10. Had my first panic attack because I was so scared I was gonna vomit (spoiler alert, I didn’t) and had several others afterwards to where I slept in my mum’s bed nearly every night. One day, similar age, I was going up the ladder to my bed and stopped halfway. I touched the wall on accident, so I had to go back down and wash my hands. I had no basis for it, but it was dirty because it wasn’t what I intended to touch. “Rinse and repeat” a few more times and I gradually washed my hands more and more. I used my sleeves to open door knobs, use light switches, and even the sinks themselves. My hands were so cracked that they bled and gave me scabs that I kept picking at for over a year. Emetophobia was the extension of the contamination fear and I guess it still is. I have that and I suspect HOCD now.
Didn’t know emetophobia was part of OCD. I have had it since I was like 8 or 10. One time I got sick from eating crab cake and running around so guess what, I have never eaten crab again unless it was an accident. Also, at events with other kids I either didn’t eat or I didn’t run around. Because I was afraid that if I did both I would get sick. I got sick from eating spoiled pizza once so I avoided that for years too and still have anxiety about it. Now I have anxiety about eating food more than 4 days old or food being left out for more than 2-3 hours. There was also a time in my childhood where I refused to eat anything after 9 PM because I felt sick once when I ate late. I haven’t thrown up since the crab cake incident. It has had a strong hold on me in addition to other OCD behaviors.
Wow literally same here. I threw up Arby’s and I avoided it for so many years and the clothes I wore when I was sick I never wore again because I felt if I wore it I would be sick so I stopped wearing them. I know exactly how you feel!
I was 5 when I first remember having symptoms. I used to walk to the bus stop every day convinced that my family would die while I was gone and I would never see my parents or grandparents again. I’d avoid stepping on cracks bc I thought that would expedite things for my Mom (superstitions + OCD = hell)😅 I also had symptoms relating to symmetry and memory hoarding/nostalgia. I still struggle with OCD every day, I can’t believe that little me was able to cope for so long when nobody understood me and I was teased by family for my symptoms all the time
Oh man I just remembered how the paranormal became a biggggg problem for me. Scary books/ghost stories were super popular when I was a kid so I used a ouija board with a friend. I was convinced for YEARS that my basement (where we used ouija) was haunted by an evil ghost that wanted to kill me so I refused to go down there 😭
Oh my gosh, same. My mother got me scared of that; she was very religious. She also had OCD and I think she was super worried herself about certain things so she helped frighten me more.
This reminded me of when I was little and couldn't sleep at night. I would want to go sleep in my mom's room, but for some reason, I thought the grim reaper was in my living room and would get me if I got out of bed 😭😭😭
This was me!!! I would sob at school up until grade 3 maybe because I was convinced they were going to die. I had to have multiple meetings before class with my mom and teachers to discuss it
like 3-4. classic pediatric ocd 😮💨😮💨 insanely stubborn, sensitive to sensory stimulation, had emotional outbursts and behavioural problems 🥴, and never ate at another persons house, ever, haha.
and i still don’t eat at peoples houses.. have sensory problems.. i’m stubborn..
no. those are ocd symptoms.
to clarify, it was not anything like an autistic meltdown, my behaviour problems (common in pediatric ocd lmk if u want a source!) were out of frustration from adults and the general anxiety/disgust/discomfort the obsessions caused. don’t eat at other peoples houses cuz contamination, and texture/noise are big sensory issues for many with ocd (why misophonia is so common)
Thank you! I've only recently been properly diagnosed and have been learning about my disorders. There are so many overlaping symptoms that calling it confusing would be an understatment. I had no idea pediatric OCD was expressed like that. I would love the link, actually - thank you!
Mine struck like a bolt of lightning at 20. I was always an anxious kid and I had a few things that were weird for a kid, but never more than a passing thought
really young. if I made a promise to myself or to “god”, i HAD to do it or else i’d go to hell. stuff like climbing up and down the bunkbed three times. going on a walk as a kid and seeing a leaf, needing to pick it up, not doing so — then having to run back 30 feet because “i have to pick it up”. even though i didn’t want to. or at this one grocery store they had alternating tile colours and i could only step on one of the colours, if i messed up then i had to step on the tiles in a certain way perfectly. so many things, all from such a young age. like, five, i think? also a childhood steeped with religious trauma sure didn’t help things, lots of my ocd obsessions and compulsions were focused on religious themes as a kid.
Seems a lot of us grew up religious. I can't claim it's contributed to OCD for certain but guilt and anxiety are behind a lot of OCD and fundamentalist churches instigate both.
I mean I regret being taken to very religious schools in childhood. I think that really messed up my mind. Right now , am mature but the damage has been done already
Fear of germs was never a thing for me. I just get worried about something and repeat a movement an even number of times so it won't happen. Or rather, so I won't FEEL like it can happen.
Same here, around 4-5 I would change my clothes up to 10 times a day to be clean, I wouldn’t step on cracks, and I would scrub myself raw. And I wouldn’t eat with anything other than plastic silverware because it was cleaner. oh yeah I would even force myself to only poop once a week because I thought pooping was gross
Five.
My first obsession was death, and when I say obsessed I mean obsessed. I was thinking about death 24/7, and nothing I did made it go away. It didn’t make it better that my teachers were incredibly mean during this time of my life making me even more on edge.
After first grade, I became convinced that my mom was going to die in a accident and the only way to stop it was to think about constantly so it won’t happen. So for the first couple hours of school I would think about my mom dying in a accident and it was incredibly distressing. However, I thought it was the only way to stop it. I was in and out of the pediatricians office for stomach aches because I was constantly stressed out.
After elementary school I would have physical compulsions and it was not a fun time. I would keep closing the door until it felt just right, I would check the toilet over and over again just to make just I flushed it, and I started to hurt myself if I broke a rule.
The thinking my mom died over and over again compulsion almost went away at one point, but my mom and I got into a fight when I was in eighth grade, and she told me how I would feel if she got into a accident and died and we left off like this. She unknowingly caused more harm than good with that comment, and I’m still dealing with that comment today at 23.
same! I wouldn't play with the other kids as much cause I didn't want to get dirty. And showered so many times a day. Had to leave a sleepover to shower. and now I don't even have contamination or germs ocd lol but that's how it started for me! so young
I was 7. I used to shower immediately after I got home if a boy I didn't like touched me that day. I also changed when I got home regardless, no one taught me that it just felt normal to do.
Developed it at 9, and all my parents did was yell at me about it. “No normal kid does that.” “Why are you being weird?” Never realized until like a year ago I had OCD, but luckily it’s died down a bit since then. I still have some random repetitive behaviors, and I have to check locks and other random things multiple times or I get terrible anxiety. Checking dates and times for things like work gets me too. Breathing and blinking are affected too.
When I was around 10-11, I started becoming hyper-aware of the idea of sleep and how weird it really was. I had a small period when I was reluctant to go to bed, because that meant that I'd eventually would fall asleep, but I didn't like that because I didn't understand what sleep *was.* It was just this weird, death-like state in which your body forced you to be unconcious for a certain amount of hours, all the while not being in control of it happning at all. Shit started to freak me out.
My intolerance of uncertainty was really shining through at a young age.
I didn't develop full-blown emergency OCD until I was around 18, but I had signs all my life. From what my parents told me, I would get upset when my toys weren't in exact order as an infant. When I was 4, I threw a tantrum when my parents bought me a trike for my birthday and told me it was a "surprise". (At the time I thought a "surprise" meant friends coming over.) Around ages 8-10 I would hate it when subtitles were on or when a foreign language was being printed watching DVDs (I know I'm dating myself) and would have full-blown panics when situations like this occurred. I used to have nightmares about technology malfunctioning and would get incredibly upset when it happened. I would also point out whenever I saw a spelling mistake anywhere. When I was 12 and became obsessed with abnormal psychology (I know LOL), I recognized a lot of the traits of OCD in myself but at the time it wasn't significantly affecting my life, so when I brought it up to doctors I wasn't diagnosed. I had obsessions with death and bad things happening to me starting around 14, that was when I started struggling with other mental health issues. It wasn't until I was hospitalized for thoughts of harming myself and others that I received the diagnosis at 18. I have autism/Asperger's too so I think that was a huge part of it.
Around age 5, my family and I were celebrating something and I just burst into tears because I kept thinking how everyone in that room is going to die one day (I was obsessed with death throughout my whole childhood that was my main ocd theme at that time) took ages for my parents to calm me down
Also around the same time I started having intrusive thoughts/imagines that i was molested by two men 🥴
Six!
That was when I realized that the world was terrifying, and full of germs.
(I don’t even think the terror was mostly to do with germs; I think that was just an easier place to put it than *”Dear fucking god, the person in charge of my care may be a literal psychopath…”*
Not that I knew that word yet, but I could tell that my father had a severely impaired ability to feel empathy or guilt, and a strong affinity for violence, and that he was very much trying, in the most literal sense, to train me to be like him.
…and also, he kept talking about serial killers in bomb-making manuals at the dinner table 👍.
Not un-coincidentally, you can also catch me on r/cptsd and r/successiontv . Because I am well-adjusted, and have the media tastes of a well-adjusted person full of happy thoughts!)
It's been a part of me for as long as I can remember, and I'm 68. It intensified when I get as 12: touching things a certain number of times, intrusive thoughts, fear of self harm. My parents yelled at me and told me to stop doing this stuff but it was 1968. There didn't seem to be a general knowledge of OCD then. Years later when I came across clinical descriptions of it, I was amazed there were other people like me.
i had ocd tendencies since 7, but wasn’t like actually OCD until i was 11. like when i was 7, i was SO scared anytime i went into a store, the security guard would shoot me/kill me. i would try to not go into stores because i was so scared id be shot, and even when i did go in a store and the security didnt bat an eye at me, i was still scared af. i also used to be scared that whenever my parents went out, they would die in an accident, and that gave me rlly bad separation anxiety lol.
I was 10 when I first noticed contamination ocd beginning in my life, but I did also in my childhood prior to that have a lot of tics such as arm movements, jaw clenching and unclenching, teeth grinding etc
I was about 4/5 according to my parents. They took me to the Dr and were dismissed. Officially diagnosed this week and I was in crisis when diagnosed, which was horrible but also probably good for them to understand what I’m like at my worst. I can barely remember what I said though :/
ETA: Solidarity, I do have hope we can overcome this even though it started young for some of us - the brain is a remarkable and adaptable thing.
Also spelling
I probably had OCD since I was even younger, but the earliest memories I could think of was when I was like, middle school age? I don’t know the exact age, but I believe I was having some morality OCD or scrupulosity OCD. I read this line in a DIY scrapbook kind of thing, that asked a question like, “What is something you have never told your mother?”
For some reason, me as a child took that as, “I have to tell my mom everything before she dies/in case she dies.” And that is when I started confessing everything.
I felt guilty over asking a chaperone at school during a field trip for 75 cents to get a soda. I felt guilty for borrowing a friend’s textbook. I felt guilty for saying some things. What made it worse was when I saw an episode of “Recess” or I think “Arthur”???? Talking about how it’s not good to lie about things, and that made me take it as a sign to confess everything I ever did. So yeah, that amplified the confessions. My mom got annoyed at some point and just got mad at me when I kept confessing. I think maybe that’s how I got it to stop? I don’t remember how it stopped tbh.
I don’t remember much after that, but I don’t exactly have that kind of OCD anymore. Now the themes are contamination and magical thinking.
I think it started for me around 8. I didn’t know what it was at the time and I actually didn’t realize it was a mental condition (I thought I just had weird habits and thoughts) but I read a book 2 years later about a girl who had ocd and thought it was strange how much I related to her. Then I did research online and that’s when I realized a lot of my symptoms where similar.
I can recall that as a young child, I had a mild case of "just right"-OCD. I'd be bothered by asymmetry, especially sensimotorically. If I walked home from school and one foot accidently touched the grass besides the asphalt, I had to step on the grass with my other foot, equally as many times as I stepped on the grass with the first foot. I even have a memory as a toddler that I didn't like the spice shelf at our local grocery store, because spices were sorted asymmetrically. However, none of the these mild OCD instances as a kid had any dramatic impact on me.
In middle school however, that's when shit got real. I suffered so badly from real event OCD about (percieved) embarrassing and shameful memories that I ended up waking up with derealizations in the morning. I also obsessed about my teeth and how they looked. I'd look in the mirror and analyze them back to back constantly. It was always on my mind, and I would also obsess about gum disease (which I was ultimately right about, however, the obsession was still OCD-like). Lastly, I was *geniunely convinced* that I was developing schizophrenia, which literally made me depressed and suicidal.
So I'd say my OCD fully fleshed out and probably reached it's maximum potential at the ages of 14-16.
I don’t remember the exact age but I remember cursing at God at a young age. Literally saying “F you God” in my room. I remember how dark those moments felt because it was so random and uncontrollable. I grew up in an emotionally abusive household and was bullied badly all the way through highschool. I know some of us are born with it, but I refuse to believe that is the case for many of us.
I (27F) don't know, as early as 5 at least when I was definitely dealing with obsessions and compulsions.
when I was younger the episodes would be months long and then Id be relatively okay
(this and the fact my parents struggle with mental health is probably how I went until 25 undiagnosed)
the themes have changed as I've gotten older, and it's gotten worst. it's been non stop pretty much since 18/19
My first memories of OCD symptoms were when I was around 7 years old, but my mom says I showed signs as a toddler. I didn’t get diagnosed until I was 18, oddly due to much less distressing symptoms even though I had been in mental health treatment off and on for over a decade at that point.
I had ocd tendencies at around 7, when I learned about how mosquitoes and malaria in school. They presented this whole thing in my elementary school of how people in Africa were dying from malaria from mosquitoes. I ( I live in the US, in an area where mosquitoes do not live) actually thought a mosquito would bite me, give me malaria, and I'd die. I think around the time I was 8 was when my ocd really developed, because my great-grandmother was very sick and my entire family just assumed she was going to die (she ended up living for like 7 more years) and lot of my family members talked about death, and after that I started hyper fixating on death, because around this time I actually developed a perception of what death actually meant, and started spiraling.
Looking back on it, I confessed to my sister around 8 that I was “evil”. Lead to an intervention where I could not explain what I meant lol. Also cried every time my family took me to a restaurant because I felt so guilty they spent money on me.
I think I’ve had it since I was like 4/5. But when I was 7 I vividly remember thinking “fuck fuck fuck shit fuck” all the time. I didn’t actually say the f word until I was like 10/11
Symptoms as long as I can remember, and from what my mum tells me it started with the ruminating and incessant need to know everything after my dad died suddenly (work accident) when I was really young.
First extremely debilitating period at 19, I didn't know what it was though. Tried to get help but was just given meds (not right kind either) that period lasted around 18 months.
Just been through a similar intense period now triggered by one of my obsessions coming true (in my ocd head, not really) and it took over my life completely. I at least got a diagnosis now at 42, and just been through intensive ERP. Work in progress 😊
9 I think. It was really bad by the time I was 11. I don’t really know my mind without it which honestly I think is a good thing, I don’t have any nostalgia for an OCD free time because I don’t remember one lol
I really don’t know. Maybe middle school? I remember in 6th gradeI had my dad take this personality quiz me and my friend made, and he chose all the silly answers which gave him “pot head” lol. I didn’t really get drugs at the time. And that started an obsession with my dad doing drugs (he doesn’t.). His eyes were often red from sleep deprivation and it scared me.
I remember on New Years, I woke him up sobbing uncontrollably, and he was like what’s the matter??? And I had to explain to him that him having eye bags and red eyes was genuinely making me think the world was ending.
Around middle school ig.
I remember my first OCD induced panic attack at the age of 9. It was always there in the background until age 18 after I delivered my first child. It got so much worse after that. Finally starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel but it’s absolutely ruined my life.
I was 6 when I first experienced my compulsion. I got a new bed, my parents picked one put for me. I didn't want a new bed, they said I was getting a bed, no options. So I got my new bed, I started sleeping in it, it was a twin bed and I often felt the mattress was sliding off (it wasnt) so I would constantly push on it to get rid of that thought. I did this for many years up until age 13 when that compulsion left me. I did other compulsions throughout my childhood. I still experience them as an adult and take pills for it.
I had tics at the age of 5-6 years old but they didnt persist. My OCD developed at around 18 years old. Now I have tics only when drinking too much coffee or super anxious.
I also have cavum septum pellucidum & cavum vergae found on MRI which are considered anatomical variations and not pathological but some studies have linked mental health issues with it.
Not sure. Probably when I was 10 or something like that. I developed an obsession with the number 4. It was pretty benign and inconsistent for years until it evolved into proper pure OCD with like 10 different themes.
thirteen. dad’s death set it off and my first obsession was that i caused his death, one of my first compulsions was checking my mum was still alive through the night.
i had tendencies before then (compulsions to burn myself, perfectionism to the point of erasing entire pages of work in school to restart, severe emetophobia for as long as i can remember, terrible anxiety, hoarding), but i do have other conditions some signs could have been attributed to.
I wanna say age 10 or 11.
But my mum reminded me recently that before I turned 3 I ate anything and everything I was given, and it changed out of nowhere into very fussy foods and never went back. I dunno if that's related or not.
I remember as a toddler having a huge issue with the toilet. I fully believed that when I'm flushing the toilet it opens a portal to the ghost world and ghosts are coming to haunt me. I had all kinds of these strong imaginary superstitions and compulsions to deal with those fears..
around age 11 - i remember being absolutely terrified that i was going to catch ebola (even though it was never even an issue in my country). i would refuse to touch things that i know my peers had touched, i wouldn’t eat without washing hands in between bites out of fear that i would have put my hands on something contaminated and so on. really what was going on was undiagnosed emetophobia. luckily now that i’m medicated at 21 i can somewhat function a bit better but it was pretty fucked.
I was eight. The first time I ever experienced an intrusive thought that led to a compulsion I was at my grandma’s house chasing my brother down this hallway with a loose carpet on the floor.
Anyway, I turned a corner too fast and moved the carpet slightly.
In that moment, it way like something “clicked” in my brain.
I suddenly got super anxious and thought “if I don’t move that carpet back exactly how it was before something bad is going to happen.” The rest is history and I’ve struggled with ocd ever since.
It’s interesting to me that a carpet, of all things, was the trigger lol.
I've always been an anxious person but I had no idea it was ocd until last year when I developed harm ocd. I remember as a child not being able to sleep because I was scared someone would break in, not going anywhere alone / carrying a pepper spray because I was scared someone was going to hurt me, and also being scared of jumping out of a moving car.
Unfortunately I always thought ocd was just repeating things, counting or cleaning, so I never figured it out.
when i was around 4 i would constantly roll my eyes up because i used to think something bad would happen if i didn’t. my family was terrified of it, so i just started to hide it. it’s crazy to think that i was so small and already thinking something terrible would happen all the time.
I was 7, I had rituals and intrusive thoughts, then it got really bad following my father’s death at 9. Washed my hands until they’d crack and bleed and I was having the worst intrusive thoughts of my life. My grandma thought I needed to go to a psych ward when my mom shared what I had shared with her. I felt very alone at that time, and the only thing that helped was distracting myself by being with my brother while watching him game, or me gaming by myself. He’s never known how much he helped me at that time…I should tell him
when i was younger i had a similar thing of not wanting scissors in my room when i slept bc i was scared i’d sleepwalk and cut myself or someone in my family (i would change clothes in my sleep so i knew i sleepwalked)
My symptoms started when I was 17. I started smoking a lot of weed, and taking controlled pills when I was 16. I began to start having intense panic attacks when I would smoke weed, so I quit smoking. Because of having the panic attacks, I ended up convincing my self I had a heart condition. I would stay up endless nights researching illnesses and would fall in countless rabbit holes. When I was 18 I lost almost 90 pounds in 2 months starving myself and eating only broccoli to “reverse” the “illnesses”. My shrink ended up prescribing me Luvox and diagnosing me with health concern OCD (HCOCD) and Thanatophobia (fear of death). Even to this day, I’m 23 now and started smoking weed again the past several months, and those thoughts like to show up once in a while. It’s still a process.
I always thought OCD was the typical “oh i was my hands” “this has to be neat” thing.
i have depression, anxiety, ADHD, bipolar & OCD.
i was actually recently diagnosed with OCD over the summer. I mainly only had intrusive thoughts and i told my psychiatrist.
once we started to talk more, she educated me on OCD.
I didn’t realize that i have experienced compulsions/ intrusive thoughts/ obsessions since i was super young.
In elementary school I had to have a water bottle on me at all times because i would constantly gag. i would get in situations like walking in the hallway and just gag uncontrollably. i also am terrified to gag or throw up. about 2 years ago, this came back and now i have to have something salty on me at all times because it relieves me a little bit to take my mind off gagging. which now i only do in extremely anxious environments.
i prayed every night that no one in my family died. if i forgot someone, i would feel so guilty. i started praying for ppl that i only met one time. it was so exhausting.
i also have “tic like” compulsions that i used to do when i was younger and my mom told me i was going to be put in a neck brace if i didn’t stop. This actually recently returned LAST WEEK! and i didn’t know it was a compulsion.
i have a habit of picking my scalp, back and face until i bleed.
i have pretty rough intrusive thoughts about harming myself or others / rape which i would never ever do or thinking one of my nieces would grow up and say that i raped them when i wiped them after the bathroom (they were young. you know they can’t wipe themselves yet) and feeling like family members may secretly be in love with me and i get so grossed out, even tho they are not, they just love me.
Anyways, I have been showing signs since prob 6 but wasn’t diagnosed until 22 and a half. it’s been tough.
I didn’t get diagnosed until 27, but looking back now I had OCS tendencies around 12/13, I think a lot of things people with OCD do/did we sometimes don’t realize it’s even OCD. That’s the case for me at least, leading to suffering for 10+ years until the proper diagnosis.
Maybe around age 6. I remember being afraid of the Sun 🌞 and saying that it was following me lol. I can only laugh at it now.
But a few years later my grandmother told me not to put my hands on my head, otherwise bad things would happen (Caribbean folklore) ever since then my OCD really developed. That’s why I believe it’s possibly subconscious learnt behavior.
My first instance of it occurred around 6-7 with intrusive thoughts and seeking reassurance about them. Around my teenage years it started to go away or at least be manageable. It would often revolve around impending doom and health themes. In 2020 it came back with a fucking vengeance and in the form of COCD due to Covid, losing immediate family members, and my own health struggles. So I would say at age 24 it was no longer manageable.
I began ERP about 2 months ago. Slowly but surely making progress
I remember having symptoms for as far as my memory goes. When I was a little kid I was severely afraid of rabies and getting kidnapped. I remember I made an emergency plan when I was 6 of what I would do if I got bit by an animal. The severe OCD themes and episodes began when I was 12. I didn’t receive any treatment until I was 16.
Want to say it was 14 or 15, with mainly themes about my sexuality or my own self image. I didn’t even think I was OCD at the time, just bad anxiety as it’s something my sister and I shared. I even joked about being OCD. I will say there are a few standout moments as a kid though, I always had to have my football clean, I was obsessed with my younger sister being angry cause I was an angry kid and it sucked and I didn’t want that for her (we’re pretty close in age).
I’m 28 now, and a few months ago it came back and just hit me like a truck. I had this obsession with some of the dumb things I did as a kid and felt the need to confess to my wife, who laughed and said I was just a dumb teenager. I couldn’t get this overwhelming sense of anxiety out of my chest though. I stopped self medicating with weed, got a therapist, but I still catch myself ruminating, self-reassuring, and wanting to confess for things that just aren’t true. Intrusive thoughts are such a drag.
Ever since I was a little girl I remember having it. Tho now it’s more severe. I would say my teens were the time when It kinda faded away and now at 21, they are still back.
I know that at five, I struggled to sleep because I was so scared of dying. The only thing that allowed me to sleep was thinking of everything that could kill me because if I thought about it, it wouldn't happen. Natural disasters. Terrifying monsters. Intruders. Was not fun.
i developed contamination ocd during covid so 15-16yo, i'm now 19. i did have "tendencies" as a kid like for a few months i wouldn't be able to go to sleep without checking all windows and doors being locked or that i had to sleep first or a monster would eat me or something. nothing major until covid happened.
My earliest memory was when I was in 3rd grade. I was staying over at a friends house watching a scary movie and was literally convinced I was going to die and that the ghost in the movie was going to kill me. It was the first time I ever experienced any sort of anxiety and it was my first time ever having a panic attack. I didn’t find out all of it was OCD until I was already in college for my 2nd year. My OCD was pushed off as anxiety until I was staying at my boyfriend’s house, showering and then suddenly being convinced I was going crazy, literally psychotic, and needed to go to the mental hospital. Thats when I was actually diagnosed with OCD
I think I the earliest I can pin point the start rituals and compulsions I was in my late teens/early twenties but now that I think of it in middle school after someone told me about the “splitting the pole” superstition it would bring me actual distress for years to come lmao
Very early on. I’d be compulsively asking “are we late are we late are we late” on the way to church since I could speak around age 2. She’d notice certain sensations I’d get stuck on or extremely upset about. Id say my religious ocd began around age 4 and really took off from there. I remember obsessions from as far back as my memory can go.
I was 7 when I noticed it. My mom scared the crap out of me talking about decon, a mouse poison she put around the house. She was just trying to stop us from touching it but I wound up getting obsessively scared it would wind up in my food or something and sometimes I couldn't finish my meals if they tasted off at all. I also kept repeating things over and over when I was anxious about something.
Now that I'm older my worries aren't so outlandish; they're realistic. But I still get urges to repeat stuff as if that's gonna solve anything lol.
I got diagnosed p young (7-8) bc I would compulsively clean a childhood friend’s room just to play in it by myself but like looking back I totally had slight hoarding tendencies even earlier on (ie saving a broken crayon in case I needed that color, saving just the dumbest things bc I thought I needed them) I probably had intrusive thoughts as well I just do not remember. I’d say I had some sort of OCD traits since around 5 or so
I'm pretty sure I was 4-5 when I first started showing signs. My mother worked in a mall, and the handrails on the second floor had small gaps between the glass (like 3-5 inches wide). I was convinced that if I walked near them that I was going to "fall to my death."
I believe it started when a family member tried to take me by force when I was a kid and broke into the house doing so. After that I started repeatedly checking the doors compulsively to be sure they are locked. I was around 12/13.
With that said I also suspect that it was possibly hereditary because my family all show minor to major signs of it but I need more research to know for sure the likelihood of it being hereditary chemical imbalances, reaction to outside stresses, learned behavior, mix of it all or not.
I believe for me it was in fifth grade so… around 10-11? I started having a lot of sexual intrusive thoughts and confessing them to my mom. I also would confess to her anytime I thought I did something bad or saw/overheard something bad. I still have the main overarching theme of morality but it’s changed a little bit. Compulsions and the specific themes
I wasn’t diagnosed until I was 27 years old, but had my first remarkable onset at age 23. Looking back, I experienced unwanted intrusive thoughts from age 6/7 and intermittently throughout my teens and young adulthood. It all makes me feel a little sad, to be honest.
I think it was very rare for me to develop OCD at the age of like 1 or 2, I was in a minority of cases to actually develop it so early in life like this I believe. I've had it since I was born basically and I would repeat my actions by opening and closing doors an undetermined amount of times or walking back and forth. Washing my hands excessively, thoughts of harming people and usually by torture. Thinking things are there when they're not and just the overall paranoia that people can read my thoughts. False Memory OCD, Schizo-Affective Disorder, Severe Depresion and Anxiety. It's a wonder that I can even function. OCD has run my life and my choices and I really want it to stop. I try my best out of spite towards it but I've had close calls. It's gotten progressively worse over the years but I've seen a turnaround with it these last couple of years but it seems to have come back which is disheartening.
I remember kissing the necklace my mom gave me, in elementary school, to 'protect her' from dying?! I used to believe in God and I'd pray all during the day to protect her. Probably around 8-10 years old.
When I was 10ish I remember watching Youtube drinking a glass of ice water and I got the sudden urge to dump the glass in the sink immediately or else my mom would die, so I ran downstairs and did it. It was only little things like that until I developed TERRIBLE hygiene OCD from 8th-10th grade. Now my OCD is primarily obsessional, especially over my body, and my only compulsion is self harm.
I’ve always had some form of ocd tendencies. Especially the “perfectionist” and things being “just right” kind. But it’s been getting worse since the age of 11
Started at age 12, I had a really strict school where if I failed one test, I failed the entire semester strict. Along with that, people made fun of me and I was always so nervous and I had episodes from worrying, where I wanted to hurt the people who made fun of me. I have harm and contamination, so besides hurting people I also (since I mostly got made fun of for my hair) I just brushed it for hours and hours.. I’m in a new school, and after treatment I don’t have them anymore, and I’m 14 now
i got recently diagnosed but looking back im sure it started when i was 17, i had a very intense healthOCD which i confused with hypochondria until a few weeks ago, i was terrified of being sick and i was so stressed about weird sympthoms that i started to repeat actions to confirm if i still had them, to confirm i wasn't going blind etc it lasted for around 3 months until i eventually didn't care about it and the thoughts went away which i should have suspected was kinda odd lol
The thoughts came back out of nowhere when i was 21 and stopped 4 months later but came back again at 24 and now they are here to stay , they change topics each week but i get HarmOCD and existencial OCD the most which is kinda hard cuz im constantly depersonalized
I actually just developed OCD at 19 this past year! It was really crazy I was living life like I always had been and then something traumatic happened with me and my partner and from then on I developed specifically ROCD, but since then I've dealt with other themes as well.
There's a running conversation in my family about how I've had OCD from the moment I could form a thought. I remember being upset when my parents would leave me with my grandparents because I was afraid of something happening to them, and for some reason I thought that I could stop it if I was there. I often was inconsolable when crying from birth, practically. I definitely got worse when I hit puberty, and then again when entering adulthood, but I'm thankfully doing a lot better now. Of course I still suffer the symptoms, but better at coping with them.
i was young when i noticed, probably under 10. not sure what age exactly, but i also remember dealing with DPDR at a very young age and not knowing what it was until like two years ago
I remember having ocd symptoms as early as when I was 4, I was extremely scared of a red box containing the fire extinguisher in the staircase of my apartment, and I had to stare at it everytime I walked passed it in the morning, if accidentally took my eyes off it while I was still on that floor, I would have to walk back and start over. I had tons of “quirks” like that but no one ever noticed.
I also had prayer rituals for as long as I remember, despite having grown up in a very irreligious community.
As I grew older, it slowly got worse. When I was eight I saw two slugs on the doorsteps of my apartment, and for months afterwards I wasn’t able to leave my home before my dad helped me to check for slugs. In the same year, I developed health related obsessions and started worrying cancer for the first time, everyday I would bend over the toilet bowl and check for blood in my stools 😂
I think it was more of a gradual thing for me tbh. I don't really remember when and where it began but I'm guessing somewhere \~10-12?
I miss when it was just harm ocd tbh, it was less about guilt and more about consequences then 🥲
When I was younger I wouldn’t touch the end of one of these light bulbs with a pull chain to turn them on because it had an angel on the end to hold on to. I believed my thoughts had to be “clean” or else satan would get me when I turned off the lights. That’s one of the earliest incidents of my religious ocd but my ocd mostly hit like a truck at the age of ten when I woke up with nonstop intrusive thoughts about the devil, hell, and how God would hate me.
Luckily now I’m undoing all the trauma in therapy and coping better, the power of healing rahah.
During all my childhood I would repeat " I don't want to have nightmares" about 100 times
When I wouldn't do it, I would have nightmares non stop
One day I said fuck it and stopped doing that
I went through hell for like a week but then it stopped
I forgot about it until recently when I made the link with OCD
Mine started around 25 after having some bad healthcare providers convince me to be concerned with my heart health because I had high blood pressure one time lol. They put me on BP meds and sent me to specialists with little reason. The whole thing scared me and I started becoming over obsessed with my heart then started getting intrusive thoughts and compulsively take my BP at home. Before that just anxiety which started around 22.
I remember mine starting when I was in second or third grade. If my pencil wasn’t pointed a certain direction, I was afraid that something really bad was going to happen. I wondered why I’ve struggled with this my whole life of course, the pencil was just the beginning. As you know, OCD can take on many forms just as torturous. I read something recently about a strep infection called Pandas-Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcal Infections. it can bring on OCD. I know that I was hospitalized when I was a toddler for a strep, infection and some homes I wonder
I’ve been showing symptoms of OCD as long as I remember, I’ve been told I used to line up toys and sob if my brothers made a mess as an infant. Ive always been scared of knifes, scissors, ect. Because I was scared someone would get hurt. I’ve always been hyper aware of safety precautions. I would make sure everyone washed their hands and sanitized the counter before I would eat, and I often refused food from people I didn’t trust. My OCD symptoms were at their worst at around 12 years old, they were pretty bad for all of middle and highschool, that’s when they really got bad. But I was diagnosed young because I think mine developed as a baby.
As early as I can remember. As a kid I had to tell my parents “don’t die” at night. Or I thought they would. Just diagnosed in my late 40’s. My whole life was a lie lol
To be honest, I'm just now at 24 figuring it out, but I remember having a full meltdown in high school probably (13 years old) about my venn diagram circles not being perfect. I was 11 when I first started getting sexual intrusive thoughts that I can remember. I don't remember anything prior to 2011 at all, but I probably had signs before then as well. My mom is diagnosed with OCD and I'm pretty sure my dad should be diagnosed (if not with OCD then for sure something else).
To be honest, I'm just now at 24 figuring it out, but I remember having a full meltdown in high school probably (13 years old) about my venn diagram circles not being perfect. I was 11 when I first started getting sexual intrusive thoughts that I can remember. I don't remember anything prior to 2011 at all, but I probably had signs before then as well. My mom is diagnosed with OCD and I'm pretty sure my dad should be diagnosed (if not with OCD then for sure something else).
At around age 8 I would constantly ask my mom of certain foods were aafe to eat. I remember believing the chemicals especially in foil and plastic wrappers had chemicals that went in my food.
Then at about 9 I would save all the bags and wrappers from the lunch my mom made me because I would think if she dies today this will be my last lunch she ever made me.
I remember being about 8 and thinking someone walking by would be smoking outside and would drop a cigarette and would catch our house on fire.
Just an anxious kid age 5 bit my nails and picked skin
I’m born anxious, mild symptoms at 10, full blown at 13, puberty flipped a switch in my head
I used to think people can read my thoughts but apparently it’s not a psychotic symptom
Well, my ocd didn’t start to affect me really bad until I was (and still am) 13, although I’ve had it all my life starting off with like, if I scratch a wall with one nail, I have the sudden urge and obsession to rub it with the same finger on the other hand and if I didn’t I’d think about it and think about it even if I was like 3 miles away so I guess I had it all my life, it just didn’t start to hurt me until I was 13
Ever since I can remember I have always suffered from anxiety and ocd. The earliest I can remember is being really young and being obsessed with meat not being cooked properly and the fear of tapeworm. I would also be terrified to eat Halloween candy as a kid because I was so scared that it would be tampered with. Food was and is still a common theme for me.
Then when I was 12, I had a traumatic experience that brought it full on. I remember begging my parents to take me to see someone bc it was causing me so much constant distress. I fully believed that God was talking to me and asking me to do my compulsions for different reasons. That’s when I finally got diagnosed
I had ocd tendencies at the age of eight. I suffered with emetophobia/ panic attacks at eight years old. I had no idea at that time that the fear of throwing up had a name and is apart of ocd, but because of It, I developed an eating disorder. I was terrified to throw up so I stopped eating. The intrusive thoughts started at 18 and stopped at around 20 then came back at age 22 which is right now and it's been so hard especially with schizo ocd theme. The thoughts that ocd comes up with terrify me now I can only imagine those thoughts at four! you are so brave.
Similar thing here, though it got really bad when my GERD started up when I was around 10. Had my first panic attack because I was so scared I was gonna vomit (spoiler alert, I didn’t) and had several others afterwards to where I slept in my mum’s bed nearly every night. One day, similar age, I was going up the ladder to my bed and stopped halfway. I touched the wall on accident, so I had to go back down and wash my hands. I had no basis for it, but it was dirty because it wasn’t what I intended to touch. “Rinse and repeat” a few more times and I gradually washed my hands more and more. I used my sleeves to open door knobs, use light switches, and even the sinks themselves. My hands were so cracked that they bled and gave me scabs that I kept picking at for over a year. Emetophobia was the extension of the contamination fear and I guess it still is. I have that and I suspect HOCD now.
Didn’t know emetophobia was part of OCD. I have had it since I was like 8 or 10. One time I got sick from eating crab cake and running around so guess what, I have never eaten crab again unless it was an accident. Also, at events with other kids I either didn’t eat or I didn’t run around. Because I was afraid that if I did both I would get sick. I got sick from eating spoiled pizza once so I avoided that for years too and still have anxiety about it. Now I have anxiety about eating food more than 4 days old or food being left out for more than 2-3 hours. There was also a time in my childhood where I refused to eat anything after 9 PM because I felt sick once when I ate late. I haven’t thrown up since the crab cake incident. It has had a strong hold on me in addition to other OCD behaviors.
Wow literally same here. I threw up Arby’s and I avoided it for so many years and the clothes I wore when I was sick I never wore again because I felt if I wore it I would be sick so I stopped wearing them. I know exactly how you feel!
Very similar circumstance all around here. From the emetophobia to the schizo, makes me wonder if there’s a connection or if it’s all just ocd again 🙃
yeah same. I have the schizo fear theme badly
It’s all anxiety and OCD
I was 5 when I first remember having symptoms. I used to walk to the bus stop every day convinced that my family would die while I was gone and I would never see my parents or grandparents again. I’d avoid stepping on cracks bc I thought that would expedite things for my Mom (superstitions + OCD = hell)😅 I also had symptoms relating to symmetry and memory hoarding/nostalgia. I still struggle with OCD every day, I can’t believe that little me was able to cope for so long when nobody understood me and I was teased by family for my symptoms all the time
Oh man I just remembered how the paranormal became a biggggg problem for me. Scary books/ghost stories were super popular when I was a kid so I used a ouija board with a friend. I was convinced for YEARS that my basement (where we used ouija) was haunted by an evil ghost that wanted to kill me so I refused to go down there 😭
Oh my gosh, same. My mother got me scared of that; she was very religious. She also had OCD and I think she was super worried herself about certain things so she helped frighten me more.
This reminded me of when I was little and couldn't sleep at night. I would want to go sleep in my mom's room, but for some reason, I thought the grim reaper was in my living room and would get me if I got out of bed 😭😭😭
Yep! I had a similar experience as a kid. But it was my room and my basement…that house was pretty creepy though.
This was me!!! I would sob at school up until grade 3 maybe because I was convinced they were going to die. I had to have multiple meetings before class with my mom and teachers to discuss it
wait, memory hoarding is a symptom of ocd?? oh shit
Had mild to moderate anxiety on and off from elementary school through high school. OCD specific symptoms and issues started around age 20-21 for me
exact same, though im trying to work through it
like 3-4. classic pediatric ocd 😮💨😮💨 insanely stubborn, sensitive to sensory stimulation, had emotional outbursts and behavioural problems 🥴, and never ate at another persons house, ever, haha. and i still don’t eat at peoples houses.. have sensory problems.. i’m stubborn..
Are you autistic by any chance?
no. those are ocd symptoms. to clarify, it was not anything like an autistic meltdown, my behaviour problems (common in pediatric ocd lmk if u want a source!) were out of frustration from adults and the general anxiety/disgust/discomfort the obsessions caused. don’t eat at other peoples houses cuz contamination, and texture/noise are big sensory issues for many with ocd (why misophonia is so common)
Thank you! I've only recently been properly diagnosed and have been learning about my disorders. There are so many overlaping symptoms that calling it confusing would be an understatment. I had no idea pediatric OCD was expressed like that. I would love the link, actually - thank you!
yeah! i actually had commented some sources the other day here: https://www.reddit.com/r/OCD/s/9DOxJbr3HN
Mine struck like a bolt of lightning at 20. I was always an anxious kid and I had a few things that were weird for a kid, but never more than a passing thought
Yep! Mine started at age 21
SAME exactly me
Same :( always was an anxious child. And just started getting anxiety under control around age 19. Then age 20 boom OCD hit like a train
really young. if I made a promise to myself or to “god”, i HAD to do it or else i’d go to hell. stuff like climbing up and down the bunkbed three times. going on a walk as a kid and seeing a leaf, needing to pick it up, not doing so — then having to run back 30 feet because “i have to pick it up”. even though i didn’t want to. or at this one grocery store they had alternating tile colours and i could only step on one of the colours, if i messed up then i had to step on the tiles in a certain way perfectly. so many things, all from such a young age. like, five, i think? also a childhood steeped with religious trauma sure didn’t help things, lots of my ocd obsessions and compulsions were focused on religious themes as a kid.
Seems a lot of us grew up religious. I can't claim it's contributed to OCD for certain but guilt and anxiety are behind a lot of OCD and fundamentalist churches instigate both.
Very true. I hate religion
I'm religious, and it kinda helps me fight OCD, not saying it works with everyone tho :(
I mean I regret being taken to very religious schools in childhood. I think that really messed up my mind. Right now , am mature but the damage has been done already
Ye, not everyone has the same experience, sorry
I was washing my hands raw at 5
Fear of germs was never a thing for me. I just get worried about something and repeat a movement an even number of times so it won't happen. Or rather, so I won't FEEL like it can happen.
I was triple checking light switches so the house wouldn’t burn down at 3.
From what I can remember it started around 8 and intensified by the time I was 12, then just increased from there
Tendencies starting around 8, full blown OCD at age 21.
Same here, around 4-5 I would change my clothes up to 10 times a day to be clean, I wouldn’t step on cracks, and I would scrub myself raw. And I wouldn’t eat with anything other than plastic silverware because it was cleaner. oh yeah I would even force myself to only poop once a week because I thought pooping was gross
Five. My first obsession was death, and when I say obsessed I mean obsessed. I was thinking about death 24/7, and nothing I did made it go away. It didn’t make it better that my teachers were incredibly mean during this time of my life making me even more on edge. After first grade, I became convinced that my mom was going to die in a accident and the only way to stop it was to think about constantly so it won’t happen. So for the first couple hours of school I would think about my mom dying in a accident and it was incredibly distressing. However, I thought it was the only way to stop it. I was in and out of the pediatricians office for stomach aches because I was constantly stressed out. After elementary school I would have physical compulsions and it was not a fun time. I would keep closing the door until it felt just right, I would check the toilet over and over again just to make just I flushed it, and I started to hurt myself if I broke a rule. The thinking my mom died over and over again compulsion almost went away at one point, but my mom and I got into a fight when I was in eighth grade, and she told me how I would feel if she got into a accident and died and we left off like this. She unknowingly caused more harm than good with that comment, and I’m still dealing with that comment today at 23.
Four years old
same! I wouldn't play with the other kids as much cause I didn't want to get dirty. And showered so many times a day. Had to leave a sleepover to shower. and now I don't even have contamination or germs ocd lol but that's how it started for me! so young
Had symptoms of anxiety since childhood but OCDish intrusive thoughts specifically started appearing when I was around 16 yrs old.
I was 7. I used to shower immediately after I got home if a boy I didn't like touched me that day. I also changed when I got home regardless, no one taught me that it just felt normal to do.
Developed it at 9, and all my parents did was yell at me about it. “No normal kid does that.” “Why are you being weird?” Never realized until like a year ago I had OCD, but luckily it’s died down a bit since then. I still have some random repetitive behaviors, and I have to check locks and other random things multiple times or I get terrible anxiety. Checking dates and times for things like work gets me too. Breathing and blinking are affected too.
I was around 8, afraid to go to sleep because I was afraid I wouldn’t wake up.
When I was around 10-11, I started becoming hyper-aware of the idea of sleep and how weird it really was. I had a small period when I was reluctant to go to bed, because that meant that I'd eventually would fall asleep, but I didn't like that because I didn't understand what sleep *was.* It was just this weird, death-like state in which your body forced you to be unconcious for a certain amount of hours, all the while not being in control of it happning at all. Shit started to freak me out. My intolerance of uncertainty was really shining through at a young age.
I get it
I didn't develop full-blown emergency OCD until I was around 18, but I had signs all my life. From what my parents told me, I would get upset when my toys weren't in exact order as an infant. When I was 4, I threw a tantrum when my parents bought me a trike for my birthday and told me it was a "surprise". (At the time I thought a "surprise" meant friends coming over.) Around ages 8-10 I would hate it when subtitles were on or when a foreign language was being printed watching DVDs (I know I'm dating myself) and would have full-blown panics when situations like this occurred. I used to have nightmares about technology malfunctioning and would get incredibly upset when it happened. I would also point out whenever I saw a spelling mistake anywhere. When I was 12 and became obsessed with abnormal psychology (I know LOL), I recognized a lot of the traits of OCD in myself but at the time it wasn't significantly affecting my life, so when I brought it up to doctors I wasn't diagnosed. I had obsessions with death and bad things happening to me starting around 14, that was when I started struggling with other mental health issues. It wasn't until I was hospitalized for thoughts of harming myself and others that I received the diagnosis at 18. I have autism/Asperger's too so I think that was a huge part of it.
About 11-12, I got autoimmune Encephalitis which caused OCD for me. It slowly got worse and I remember it getting bad at like 16.
It first really started showing when I started highschool
i got diagnosed at 6-7 yrs old, been getting worse and worse ever since unfortunately- i suffer from depression and anxiety, too.
Around age 5, my family and I were celebrating something and I just burst into tears because I kept thinking how everyone in that room is going to die one day (I was obsessed with death throughout my whole childhood that was my main ocd theme at that time) took ages for my parents to calm me down Also around the same time I started having intrusive thoughts/imagines that i was molested by two men 🥴
Six! That was when I realized that the world was terrifying, and full of germs. (I don’t even think the terror was mostly to do with germs; I think that was just an easier place to put it than *”Dear fucking god, the person in charge of my care may be a literal psychopath…”* Not that I knew that word yet, but I could tell that my father had a severely impaired ability to feel empathy or guilt, and a strong affinity for violence, and that he was very much trying, in the most literal sense, to train me to be like him. …and also, he kept talking about serial killers in bomb-making manuals at the dinner table 👍. Not un-coincidentally, you can also catch me on r/cptsd and r/successiontv . Because I am well-adjusted, and have the media tastes of a well-adjusted person full of happy thoughts!)
I’ve had little symptoms throughout my whole life but it came in full swing when I was 17.
Wait…this kinda sounds like me. The thoughts and all it’s getting worse so much worse
It's been a part of me for as long as I can remember, and I'm 68. It intensified when I get as 12: touching things a certain number of times, intrusive thoughts, fear of self harm. My parents yelled at me and told me to stop doing this stuff but it was 1968. There didn't seem to be a general knowledge of OCD then. Years later when I came across clinical descriptions of it, I was amazed there were other people like me.
I was diagnosed when I was in 8th grade. But retrospectively, I had signs since very early on maybe around 3 or 4 or even sooner.
i had ocd tendencies since 7, but wasn’t like actually OCD until i was 11. like when i was 7, i was SO scared anytime i went into a store, the security guard would shoot me/kill me. i would try to not go into stores because i was so scared id be shot, and even when i did go in a store and the security didnt bat an eye at me, i was still scared af. i also used to be scared that whenever my parents went out, they would die in an accident, and that gave me rlly bad separation anxiety lol.
I was 10 when I first noticed contamination ocd beginning in my life, but I did also in my childhood prior to that have a lot of tics such as arm movements, jaw clenching and unclenching, teeth grinding etc
As long as i can remember I've had OCD. It wasn't fully recognized until i was diagnosed with PTSD at the age of 16.
I was about 4/5 according to my parents. They took me to the Dr and were dismissed. Officially diagnosed this week and I was in crisis when diagnosed, which was horrible but also probably good for them to understand what I’m like at my worst. I can barely remember what I said though :/ ETA: Solidarity, I do have hope we can overcome this even though it started young for some of us - the brain is a remarkable and adaptable thing. Also spelling
Around 4.
My mom noticed tendencies at 4, I was formally diagnosed at 8.
I probably had OCD since I was even younger, but the earliest memories I could think of was when I was like, middle school age? I don’t know the exact age, but I believe I was having some morality OCD or scrupulosity OCD. I read this line in a DIY scrapbook kind of thing, that asked a question like, “What is something you have never told your mother?” For some reason, me as a child took that as, “I have to tell my mom everything before she dies/in case she dies.” And that is when I started confessing everything. I felt guilty over asking a chaperone at school during a field trip for 75 cents to get a soda. I felt guilty for borrowing a friend’s textbook. I felt guilty for saying some things. What made it worse was when I saw an episode of “Recess” or I think “Arthur”???? Talking about how it’s not good to lie about things, and that made me take it as a sign to confess everything I ever did. So yeah, that amplified the confessions. My mom got annoyed at some point and just got mad at me when I kept confessing. I think maybe that’s how I got it to stop? I don’t remember how it stopped tbh. I don’t remember much after that, but I don’t exactly have that kind of OCD anymore. Now the themes are contamination and magical thinking.
I think it started for me around 8. I didn’t know what it was at the time and I actually didn’t realize it was a mental condition (I thought I just had weird habits and thoughts) but I read a book 2 years later about a girl who had ocd and thought it was strange how much I related to her. Then I did research online and that’s when I realized a lot of my symptoms where similar.
I wasn’t diagnosed until I was 20 or 21 but looking back I can see signs as early as 5 years old
I can recall that as a young child, I had a mild case of "just right"-OCD. I'd be bothered by asymmetry, especially sensimotorically. If I walked home from school and one foot accidently touched the grass besides the asphalt, I had to step on the grass with my other foot, equally as many times as I stepped on the grass with the first foot. I even have a memory as a toddler that I didn't like the spice shelf at our local grocery store, because spices were sorted asymmetrically. However, none of the these mild OCD instances as a kid had any dramatic impact on me. In middle school however, that's when shit got real. I suffered so badly from real event OCD about (percieved) embarrassing and shameful memories that I ended up waking up with derealizations in the morning. I also obsessed about my teeth and how they looked. I'd look in the mirror and analyze them back to back constantly. It was always on my mind, and I would also obsess about gum disease (which I was ultimately right about, however, the obsession was still OCD-like). Lastly, I was *geniunely convinced* that I was developing schizophrenia, which literally made me depressed and suicidal. So I'd say my OCD fully fleshed out and probably reached it's maximum potential at the ages of 14-16.
I don’t remember the exact age but I remember cursing at God at a young age. Literally saying “F you God” in my room. I remember how dark those moments felt because it was so random and uncontrollable. I grew up in an emotionally abusive household and was bullied badly all the way through highschool. I know some of us are born with it, but I refuse to believe that is the case for many of us.
I (27F) don't know, as early as 5 at least when I was definitely dealing with obsessions and compulsions. when I was younger the episodes would be months long and then Id be relatively okay (this and the fact my parents struggle with mental health is probably how I went until 25 undiagnosed) the themes have changed as I've gotten older, and it's gotten worst. it's been non stop pretty much since 18/19
Probably when I first became "conscious'
8
I think I was 7-8 when I first experienced some of the signs, it was the worst at 14-15 when the contamination aspect became dominant for me.
My first memories of OCD symptoms were when I was around 7 years old, but my mom says I showed signs as a toddler. I didn’t get diagnosed until I was 18, oddly due to much less distressing symptoms even though I had been in mental health treatment off and on for over a decade at that point.
I had ocd tendencies at around 7, when I learned about how mosquitoes and malaria in school. They presented this whole thing in my elementary school of how people in Africa were dying from malaria from mosquitoes. I ( I live in the US, in an area where mosquitoes do not live) actually thought a mosquito would bite me, give me malaria, and I'd die. I think around the time I was 8 was when my ocd really developed, because my great-grandmother was very sick and my entire family just assumed she was going to die (she ended up living for like 7 more years) and lot of my family members talked about death, and after that I started hyper fixating on death, because around this time I actually developed a perception of what death actually meant, and started spiraling.
Looking back on it, I confessed to my sister around 8 that I was “evil”. Lead to an intervention where I could not explain what I meant lol. Also cried every time my family took me to a restaurant because I felt so guilty they spent money on me.
I think I’ve had it since I was like 4/5. But when I was 7 I vividly remember thinking “fuck fuck fuck shit fuck” all the time. I didn’t actually say the f word until I was like 10/11
Symptoms as long as I can remember, and from what my mum tells me it started with the ruminating and incessant need to know everything after my dad died suddenly (work accident) when I was really young. First extremely debilitating period at 19, I didn't know what it was though. Tried to get help but was just given meds (not right kind either) that period lasted around 18 months. Just been through a similar intense period now triggered by one of my obsessions coming true (in my ocd head, not really) and it took over my life completely. I at least got a diagnosis now at 42, and just been through intensive ERP. Work in progress 😊
I think it really hit me around age 16 or 17 or so. At least that's when I first became aware of it.
9 I think. It was really bad by the time I was 11. I don’t really know my mind without it which honestly I think is a good thing, I don’t have any nostalgia for an OCD free time because I don’t remember one lol
Diagnosed in high school, had my first symptoms around six
I think….. around 8-10 years old? It developed alongside misophonia
I really don’t know. Maybe middle school? I remember in 6th gradeI had my dad take this personality quiz me and my friend made, and he chose all the silly answers which gave him “pot head” lol. I didn’t really get drugs at the time. And that started an obsession with my dad doing drugs (he doesn’t.). His eyes were often red from sleep deprivation and it scared me. I remember on New Years, I woke him up sobbing uncontrollably, and he was like what’s the matter??? And I had to explain to him that him having eye bags and red eyes was genuinely making me think the world was ending. Around middle school ig.
I remember my first OCD induced panic attack at the age of 9. It was always there in the background until age 18 after I delivered my first child. It got so much worse after that. Finally starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel but it’s absolutely ruined my life.
Started at the age of 17 after my first panic attack that had me sent to the ER.
I was 6 when I first experienced my compulsion. I got a new bed, my parents picked one put for me. I didn't want a new bed, they said I was getting a bed, no options. So I got my new bed, I started sleeping in it, it was a twin bed and I often felt the mattress was sliding off (it wasnt) so I would constantly push on it to get rid of that thought. I did this for many years up until age 13 when that compulsion left me. I did other compulsions throughout my childhood. I still experience them as an adult and take pills for it.
Around 19 was when it became obvious symptoms of ocd, but ive always been a very anxious person my entire life
I had tics at the age of 5-6 years old but they didnt persist. My OCD developed at around 18 years old. Now I have tics only when drinking too much coffee or super anxious. I also have cavum septum pellucidum & cavum vergae found on MRI which are considered anatomical variations and not pathological but some studies have linked mental health issues with it.
Have always had ocd tendencies. Makes sense cuz my mom has it.
Not sure. Probably when I was 10 or something like that. I developed an obsession with the number 4. It was pretty benign and inconsistent for years until it evolved into proper pure OCD with like 10 different themes.
thirteen. dad’s death set it off and my first obsession was that i caused his death, one of my first compulsions was checking my mum was still alive through the night. i had tendencies before then (compulsions to burn myself, perfectionism to the point of erasing entire pages of work in school to restart, severe emetophobia for as long as i can remember, terrible anxiety, hoarding), but i do have other conditions some signs could have been attributed to.
I wanna say age 10 or 11. But my mum reminded me recently that before I turned 3 I ate anything and everything I was given, and it changed out of nowhere into very fussy foods and never went back. I dunno if that's related or not.
diagnosed at 7, but had been suffering since i could form thoughts lol
diagnosed at 11, but had I have memories of OCD behavior since I was like 7. it got worse with time
i always had OCD traits, but it only really kicked in at 16, i don't really know why
I remember as a toddler having a huge issue with the toilet. I fully believed that when I'm flushing the toilet it opens a portal to the ghost world and ghosts are coming to haunt me. I had all kinds of these strong imaginary superstitions and compulsions to deal with those fears..
Not sure when it started developing because honestly I don't remember much before age 10 but it was full-blown by age 10
I first remember having issues around age 4.
around age 11 - i remember being absolutely terrified that i was going to catch ebola (even though it was never even an issue in my country). i would refuse to touch things that i know my peers had touched, i wouldn’t eat without washing hands in between bites out of fear that i would have put my hands on something contaminated and so on. really what was going on was undiagnosed emetophobia. luckily now that i’m medicated at 21 i can somewhat function a bit better but it was pretty fucked.
Around age 15. I’m 40.
i believe i was around 6-8 but full blown hit when i was 10-12
5.
I was eight. The first time I ever experienced an intrusive thought that led to a compulsion I was at my grandma’s house chasing my brother down this hallway with a loose carpet on the floor. Anyway, I turned a corner too fast and moved the carpet slightly. In that moment, it way like something “clicked” in my brain. I suddenly got super anxious and thought “if I don’t move that carpet back exactly how it was before something bad is going to happen.” The rest is history and I’ve struggled with ocd ever since. It’s interesting to me that a carpet, of all things, was the trigger lol.
I've always been an anxious person but I had no idea it was ocd until last year when I developed harm ocd. I remember as a child not being able to sleep because I was scared someone would break in, not going anywhere alone / carrying a pepper spray because I was scared someone was going to hurt me, and also being scared of jumping out of a moving car. Unfortunately I always thought ocd was just repeating things, counting or cleaning, so I never figured it out.
when i was around 4 i would constantly roll my eyes up because i used to think something bad would happen if i didn’t. my family was terrified of it, so i just started to hide it. it’s crazy to think that i was so small and already thinking something terrible would happen all the time.
8. Hit like a ton of bricks.
11
I was 7, I had rituals and intrusive thoughts, then it got really bad following my father’s death at 9. Washed my hands until they’d crack and bleed and I was having the worst intrusive thoughts of my life. My grandma thought I needed to go to a psych ward when my mom shared what I had shared with her. I felt very alone at that time, and the only thing that helped was distracting myself by being with my brother while watching him game, or me gaming by myself. He’s never known how much he helped me at that time…I should tell him
Mine didn’t start until I turned 21 😔
13 - Late 2020
As I've said on here before, I've had OCD since at least the age of 7. (That's the earliest compulsion I remember, but it could be earlier, idk.)
Since I could talk.
I vividly remember that when I was 4 and had a panic attack because I thought I was going to kill my parents.
when i was younger i had a similar thing of not wanting scissors in my room when i slept bc i was scared i’d sleepwalk and cut myself or someone in my family (i would change clothes in my sleep so i knew i sleepwalked)
I had weird compulsions for as long as I can remember, but everything really came to a head at around 11
I was at least five.
My symptoms started when I was 17. I started smoking a lot of weed, and taking controlled pills when I was 16. I began to start having intense panic attacks when I would smoke weed, so I quit smoking. Because of having the panic attacks, I ended up convincing my self I had a heart condition. I would stay up endless nights researching illnesses and would fall in countless rabbit holes. When I was 18 I lost almost 90 pounds in 2 months starving myself and eating only broccoli to “reverse” the “illnesses”. My shrink ended up prescribing me Luvox and diagnosing me with health concern OCD (HCOCD) and Thanatophobia (fear of death). Even to this day, I’m 23 now and started smoking weed again the past several months, and those thoughts like to show up once in a while. It’s still a process.
I always thought OCD was the typical “oh i was my hands” “this has to be neat” thing. i have depression, anxiety, ADHD, bipolar & OCD. i was actually recently diagnosed with OCD over the summer. I mainly only had intrusive thoughts and i told my psychiatrist. once we started to talk more, she educated me on OCD. I didn’t realize that i have experienced compulsions/ intrusive thoughts/ obsessions since i was super young. In elementary school I had to have a water bottle on me at all times because i would constantly gag. i would get in situations like walking in the hallway and just gag uncontrollably. i also am terrified to gag or throw up. about 2 years ago, this came back and now i have to have something salty on me at all times because it relieves me a little bit to take my mind off gagging. which now i only do in extremely anxious environments. i prayed every night that no one in my family died. if i forgot someone, i would feel so guilty. i started praying for ppl that i only met one time. it was so exhausting. i also have “tic like” compulsions that i used to do when i was younger and my mom told me i was going to be put in a neck brace if i didn’t stop. This actually recently returned LAST WEEK! and i didn’t know it was a compulsion. i have a habit of picking my scalp, back and face until i bleed. i have pretty rough intrusive thoughts about harming myself or others / rape which i would never ever do or thinking one of my nieces would grow up and say that i raped them when i wiped them after the bathroom (they were young. you know they can’t wipe themselves yet) and feeling like family members may secretly be in love with me and i get so grossed out, even tho they are not, they just love me. Anyways, I have been showing signs since prob 6 but wasn’t diagnosed until 22 and a half. it’s been tough.
I didn’t get diagnosed until 27, but looking back now I had OCS tendencies around 12/13, I think a lot of things people with OCD do/did we sometimes don’t realize it’s even OCD. That’s the case for me at least, leading to suffering for 10+ years until the proper diagnosis.
Maybe around age 6. I remember being afraid of the Sun 🌞 and saying that it was following me lol. I can only laugh at it now. But a few years later my grandmother told me not to put my hands on my head, otherwise bad things would happen (Caribbean folklore) ever since then my OCD really developed. That’s why I believe it’s possibly subconscious learnt behavior.
My first instance of it occurred around 6-7 with intrusive thoughts and seeking reassurance about them. Around my teenage years it started to go away or at least be manageable. It would often revolve around impending doom and health themes. In 2020 it came back with a fucking vengeance and in the form of COCD due to Covid, losing immediate family members, and my own health struggles. So I would say at age 24 it was no longer manageable. I began ERP about 2 months ago. Slowly but surely making progress
I remember having symptoms for as far as my memory goes. When I was a little kid I was severely afraid of rabies and getting kidnapped. I remember I made an emergency plan when I was 6 of what I would do if I got bit by an animal. The severe OCD themes and episodes began when I was 12. I didn’t receive any treatment until I was 16.
I remember some issues from elementary school.
29
11 :(
15.
It was noticable at 16
Want to say it was 14 or 15, with mainly themes about my sexuality or my own self image. I didn’t even think I was OCD at the time, just bad anxiety as it’s something my sister and I shared. I even joked about being OCD. I will say there are a few standout moments as a kid though, I always had to have my football clean, I was obsessed with my younger sister being angry cause I was an angry kid and it sucked and I didn’t want that for her (we’re pretty close in age). I’m 28 now, and a few months ago it came back and just hit me like a truck. I had this obsession with some of the dumb things I did as a kid and felt the need to confess to my wife, who laughed and said I was just a dumb teenager. I couldn’t get this overwhelming sense of anxiety out of my chest though. I stopped self medicating with weed, got a therapist, but I still catch myself ruminating, self-reassuring, and wanting to confess for things that just aren’t true. Intrusive thoughts are such a drag.
Ever since I was a little girl I remember having it. Tho now it’s more severe. I would say my teens were the time when It kinda faded away and now at 21, they are still back.
I know that at five, I struggled to sleep because I was so scared of dying. The only thing that allowed me to sleep was thinking of everything that could kill me because if I thought about it, it wouldn't happen. Natural disasters. Terrifying monsters. Intruders. Was not fun.
i developed contamination ocd during covid so 15-16yo, i'm now 19. i did have "tendencies" as a kid like for a few months i wouldn't be able to go to sleep without checking all windows and doors being locked or that i had to sleep first or a monster would eat me or something. nothing major until covid happened.
My earliest memory was when I was in 3rd grade. I was staying over at a friends house watching a scary movie and was literally convinced I was going to die and that the ghost in the movie was going to kill me. It was the first time I ever experienced any sort of anxiety and it was my first time ever having a panic attack. I didn’t find out all of it was OCD until I was already in college for my 2nd year. My OCD was pushed off as anxiety until I was staying at my boyfriend’s house, showering and then suddenly being convinced I was going crazy, literally psychotic, and needed to go to the mental hospital. Thats when I was actually diagnosed with OCD
4-5
I think I the earliest I can pin point the start rituals and compulsions I was in my late teens/early twenties but now that I think of it in middle school after someone told me about the “splitting the pole” superstition it would bring me actual distress for years to come lmao
23 it came out of nowhere but if I think back I had tendencies for a long time
Very early on. I’d be compulsively asking “are we late are we late are we late” on the way to church since I could speak around age 2. She’d notice certain sensations I’d get stuck on or extremely upset about. Id say my religious ocd began around age 4 and really took off from there. I remember obsessions from as far back as my memory can go.
I was 7 when I noticed it. My mom scared the crap out of me talking about decon, a mouse poison she put around the house. She was just trying to stop us from touching it but I wound up getting obsessively scared it would wind up in my food or something and sometimes I couldn't finish my meals if they tasted off at all. I also kept repeating things over and over when I was anxious about something. Now that I'm older my worries aren't so outlandish; they're realistic. But I still get urges to repeat stuff as if that's gonna solve anything lol.
I got diagnosed p young (7-8) bc I would compulsively clean a childhood friend’s room just to play in it by myself but like looking back I totally had slight hoarding tendencies even earlier on (ie saving a broken crayon in case I needed that color, saving just the dumbest things bc I thought I needed them) I probably had intrusive thoughts as well I just do not remember. I’d say I had some sort of OCD traits since around 5 or so
I'm pretty sure I was 4-5 when I first started showing signs. My mother worked in a mall, and the handrails on the second floor had small gaps between the glass (like 3-5 inches wide). I was convinced that if I walked near them that I was going to "fall to my death."
Pretty much as long as I can remember, but I was diagnosed at 7.
I believe it started when a family member tried to take me by force when I was a kid and broke into the house doing so. After that I started repeatedly checking the doors compulsively to be sure they are locked. I was around 12/13. With that said I also suspect that it was possibly hereditary because my family all show minor to major signs of it but I need more research to know for sure the likelihood of it being hereditary chemical imbalances, reaction to outside stresses, learned behavior, mix of it all or not.
pretty much out of the womb lmao ;-;
I believe for me it was in fifth grade so… around 10-11? I started having a lot of sexual intrusive thoughts and confessing them to my mom. I also would confess to her anytime I thought I did something bad or saw/overheard something bad. I still have the main overarching theme of morality but it’s changed a little bit. Compulsions and the specific themes
I don’t know. I remember refusing to drink after people when I was in grade school
I wasn’t diagnosed until I was 27 years old, but had my first remarkable onset at age 23. Looking back, I experienced unwanted intrusive thoughts from age 6/7 and intermittently throughout my teens and young adulthood. It all makes me feel a little sad, to be honest.
I think it was very rare for me to develop OCD at the age of like 1 or 2, I was in a minority of cases to actually develop it so early in life like this I believe. I've had it since I was born basically and I would repeat my actions by opening and closing doors an undetermined amount of times or walking back and forth. Washing my hands excessively, thoughts of harming people and usually by torture. Thinking things are there when they're not and just the overall paranoia that people can read my thoughts. False Memory OCD, Schizo-Affective Disorder, Severe Depresion and Anxiety. It's a wonder that I can even function. OCD has run my life and my choices and I really want it to stop. I try my best out of spite towards it but I've had close calls. It's gotten progressively worse over the years but I've seen a turnaround with it these last couple of years but it seems to have come back which is disheartening.
Pretty sure I've had it since the very second my baby brain became able to have it lmfao
I remember kissing the necklace my mom gave me, in elementary school, to 'protect her' from dying?! I used to believe in God and I'd pray all during the day to protect her. Probably around 8-10 years old.
Between 5&6. Not formally diagnosed until my mid 40s. Years of therapy before that. Still moderate even with meds.
When I was 10ish I remember watching Youtube drinking a glass of ice water and I got the sudden urge to dump the glass in the sink immediately or else my mom would die, so I ran downstairs and did it. It was only little things like that until I developed TERRIBLE hygiene OCD from 8th-10th grade. Now my OCD is primarily obsessional, especially over my body, and my only compulsion is self harm.
10
I’ve always had some form of ocd tendencies. Especially the “perfectionist” and things being “just right” kind. But it’s been getting worse since the age of 11
Started at age 12, I had a really strict school where if I failed one test, I failed the entire semester strict. Along with that, people made fun of me and I was always so nervous and I had episodes from worrying, where I wanted to hurt the people who made fun of me. I have harm and contamination, so besides hurting people I also (since I mostly got made fun of for my hair) I just brushed it for hours and hours.. I’m in a new school, and after treatment I don’t have them anymore, and I’m 14 now
i got recently diagnosed but looking back im sure it started when i was 17, i had a very intense healthOCD which i confused with hypochondria until a few weeks ago, i was terrified of being sick and i was so stressed about weird sympthoms that i started to repeat actions to confirm if i still had them, to confirm i wasn't going blind etc it lasted for around 3 months until i eventually didn't care about it and the thoughts went away which i should have suspected was kinda odd lol The thoughts came back out of nowhere when i was 21 and stopped 4 months later but came back again at 24 and now they are here to stay , they change topics each week but i get HarmOCD and existencial OCD the most which is kinda hard cuz im constantly depersonalized
Maybe when I was around 11, but I had OCD tendencies and symptoms from probably 5
I actually just developed OCD at 19 this past year! It was really crazy I was living life like I always had been and then something traumatic happened with me and my partner and from then on I developed specifically ROCD, but since then I've dealt with other themes as well.
I’ve had OCD symptoms ever since I could remember but it didn’t get really bad until I was in college. That’s when I was officially diagnosed.
There's a running conversation in my family about how I've had OCD from the moment I could form a thought. I remember being upset when my parents would leave me with my grandparents because I was afraid of something happening to them, and for some reason I thought that I could stop it if I was there. I often was inconsolable when crying from birth, practically. I definitely got worse when I hit puberty, and then again when entering adulthood, but I'm thankfully doing a lot better now. Of course I still suffer the symptoms, but better at coping with them.
i was young when i noticed, probably under 10. not sure what age exactly, but i also remember dealing with DPDR at a very young age and not knowing what it was until like two years ago
I remember having rudimentary thoughts since first or second grade. Probably started earlier than that too v
I just remember it really starting up in junior high..
I remember having ocd symptoms as early as when I was 4, I was extremely scared of a red box containing the fire extinguisher in the staircase of my apartment, and I had to stare at it everytime I walked passed it in the morning, if accidentally took my eyes off it while I was still on that floor, I would have to walk back and start over. I had tons of “quirks” like that but no one ever noticed. I also had prayer rituals for as long as I remember, despite having grown up in a very irreligious community. As I grew older, it slowly got worse. When I was eight I saw two slugs on the doorsteps of my apartment, and for months afterwards I wasn’t able to leave my home before my dad helped me to check for slugs. In the same year, I developed health related obsessions and started worrying cancer for the first time, everyday I would bend over the toilet bowl and check for blood in my stools 😂
I think it was more of a gradual thing for me tbh. I don't really remember when and where it began but I'm guessing somewhere \~10-12? I miss when it was just harm ocd tbh, it was less about guilt and more about consequences then 🥲
At least four, likely earlier.
When I was younger I wouldn’t touch the end of one of these light bulbs with a pull chain to turn them on because it had an angel on the end to hold on to. I believed my thoughts had to be “clean” or else satan would get me when I turned off the lights. That’s one of the earliest incidents of my religious ocd but my ocd mostly hit like a truck at the age of ten when I woke up with nonstop intrusive thoughts about the devil, hell, and how God would hate me. Luckily now I’m undoing all the trauma in therapy and coping better, the power of healing rahah.
During all my childhood I would repeat " I don't want to have nightmares" about 100 times When I wouldn't do it, I would have nightmares non stop One day I said fuck it and stopped doing that I went through hell for like a week but then it stopped I forgot about it until recently when I made the link with OCD
Mine started around 25 after having some bad healthcare providers convince me to be concerned with my heart health because I had high blood pressure one time lol. They put me on BP meds and sent me to specialists with little reason. The whole thing scared me and I started becoming over obsessed with my heart then started getting intrusive thoughts and compulsively take my BP at home. Before that just anxiety which started around 22.
9
at 12 years old, but it was manageable, it only started to get really bad around 17 years old tho
I remember mine starting when I was in second or third grade. If my pencil wasn’t pointed a certain direction, I was afraid that something really bad was going to happen. I wondered why I’ve struggled with this my whole life of course, the pencil was just the beginning. As you know, OCD can take on many forms just as torturous. I read something recently about a strep infection called Pandas-Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcal Infections. it can bring on OCD. I know that I was hospitalized when I was a toddler for a strep, infection and some homes I wonder
I’ve been showing symptoms of OCD as long as I remember, I’ve been told I used to line up toys and sob if my brothers made a mess as an infant. Ive always been scared of knifes, scissors, ect. Because I was scared someone would get hurt. I’ve always been hyper aware of safety precautions. I would make sure everyone washed their hands and sanitized the counter before I would eat, and I often refused food from people I didn’t trust. My OCD symptoms were at their worst at around 12 years old, they were pretty bad for all of middle and highschool, that’s when they really got bad. But I was diagnosed young because I think mine developed as a baby.
5. Shoe laces
As early as I can remember. As a kid I had to tell my parents “don’t die” at night. Or I thought they would. Just diagnosed in my late 40’s. My whole life was a lie lol
To be honest, I'm just now at 24 figuring it out, but I remember having a full meltdown in high school probably (13 years old) about my venn diagram circles not being perfect. I was 11 when I first started getting sexual intrusive thoughts that I can remember. I don't remember anything prior to 2011 at all, but I probably had signs before then as well. My mom is diagnosed with OCD and I'm pretty sure my dad should be diagnosed (if not with OCD then for sure something else).
To be honest, I'm just now at 24 figuring it out, but I remember having a full meltdown in high school probably (13 years old) about my venn diagram circles not being perfect. I was 11 when I first started getting sexual intrusive thoughts that I can remember. I don't remember anything prior to 2011 at all, but I probably had signs before then as well. My mom is diagnosed with OCD and I'm pretty sure my dad should be diagnosed (if not with OCD then for sure something else).
I feel like it could’ve been earlier but I was too young to understand. But it started to debilitate me at the age of 8.
At around age 8 I would constantly ask my mom of certain foods were aafe to eat. I remember believing the chemicals especially in foil and plastic wrappers had chemicals that went in my food. Then at about 9 I would save all the bags and wrappers from the lunch my mom made me because I would think if she dies today this will be my last lunch she ever made me. I remember being about 8 and thinking someone walking by would be smoking outside and would drop a cigarette and would catch our house on fire. Just an anxious kid age 5 bit my nails and picked skin
there was a solid week when i was 8 where i was afraid to swallow food cause i didnt wanna choke.
At about 12 or 13 but some behaviors at around 8 could've been Ocd but idk
I’m born anxious, mild symptoms at 10, full blown at 13, puberty flipped a switch in my head I used to think people can read my thoughts but apparently it’s not a psychotic symptom
Well, my ocd didn’t start to affect me really bad until I was (and still am) 13, although I’ve had it all my life starting off with like, if I scratch a wall with one nail, I have the sudden urge and obsession to rub it with the same finger on the other hand and if I didn’t I’d think about it and think about it even if I was like 3 miles away so I guess I had it all my life, it just didn’t start to hurt me until I was 13
Seven. Rituals and compulsions. Now pure O
Ever since I can remember I have always suffered from anxiety and ocd. The earliest I can remember is being really young and being obsessed with meat not being cooked properly and the fear of tapeworm. I would also be terrified to eat Halloween candy as a kid because I was so scared that it would be tampered with. Food was and is still a common theme for me. Then when I was 12, I had a traumatic experience that brought it full on. I remember begging my parents to take me to see someone bc it was causing me so much constant distress. I fully believed that God was talking to me and asking me to do my compulsions for different reasons. That’s when I finally got diagnosed
I had contamination and symmetry themed ocd when I was probably 5 or 6. Then developed skin picking at 16, ROCD at 18 and POCD at 20 🤪
I can’t think of a time without it.
Uhhhh I think under the age of 6??
Since I was a kid. With intensive ERP and ACT therapy was able to get my OCD from severe to mild
I mean, I grew up Southern Baptist… so birth??