A moment of vulnerability

Hey there, I just joined the site, and I thought I’d share my OCD story in an effort to relate with a person or two; to remind you that you are not alone. I first noticed my OCD around 5th grade. It came in the form of compulsive hand washing and fear of toxins. None of my family understood and I pretty much just lived with it. It quickly evolved around 6th grade when a friend told me it was possible to break your own neck. Then the questions started coming - “is it possible? How do I know?” I would wrench my neck back and fourth in effort to convince myself that it wasn’t possible - so much to the point that my whole neck was in pain. But I felt as if I had to know! This evolved further throughout sixth grade and into 7th grade with various other self harm fears. It then that I began to see a psychologist and we concluded that I had OCD. Freshmen year of high school was when I began to take Zoloft, but before that I felt with fears of North Korea nuking us. And that what when my worst enemy came to visit - THE INTERNET. I would spend hours researching on the likelihood of a nuclear attack. My OCD in high school is a little fuzzy, but I remember at some point a fear of getting rabies emerged. Again, the internet was my compulsive outlet and I researched constantly to see if I was at risk. I couldn’t go outside at night because of the bats flying overhead. There were multiple other fears, mostly related to complex religious themes that I won’t get into right now, but by my freshman year of collage I was mostly free of the OCD! I could function and live with it. This was the case until April 17th of this year when I began down a rabbit hole of research into my own faith as a Christian. I wondered - is all this Christianity stuff even real? Is God real? Again, I took to the internet (and even worse - I began researching on Reddit) to the point where I sat alone one day weeping my eyes out for fear that I had lost my faith. This has been tormenting me ever since. The fear is that I will loose my faith, to which I hold so dear and to which I attribute the immense growth in my personality (becoming a much kinder person; seeing others with absolute love regardless of what they do to me; etc). My compulsion is to do research and try to deconstruct my faith. Every time I find what I see to be an argument for Christianity/God I feel like I need to immediately find all the arguments against it. This, as you probably can tell, is an endless rabbit hole for someone with OCD. No amount of research or philosophy/science will ever cure the desire to find more answers. So that’s my story, and my current state. I’ve been fighting it constantly but the fear that I might be wrong or that I am being willfully ignorant persists. I hope that I can relate on some level with someone in this community.

Logyman13

Date posted: 2y

Hi there! Your story is somewhat similar to mine. I currently deal with a lot of Existential OCD that has actually led me TOWARD religion. But in doing this I have often wondered if this is a compulsion or a genuine interest / call to the faith. I have been an atheist for most of my life so it's interesting to hear we are in an inverse situation. I often wonder what the best form of morality is or if I really care about things vs thinking I care about those things just to please God. I also have a big problem with researching for reassurance / answers on Reddit. I had to delete the app to help me not do it.

VintageVPN

Date posted: 2y

@Logyman13 That’s fascinating! The fine line between OCD and legitimate thinking can drive me insane. I’ve had to work on detaching myself from my thoughts and instead finding a higher purpose to focus on, like helping others and making customers smile at work. I’ve found that there is so much more to life than figuring out philosophy and theology. I’ve never met a homeless person who was worried about God’s existence, which should tell me something about the effect comfort has in exasperating OCD😄

truetrev

Date posted: 24w

An Intro to Trevin

Hi everyone, My name is Trevin (24,male,he/him) and I’m new to this app and this is my first post. Here’s how I’m feeling today: OCD frustrates the hell out of me. Mostly when it becomes hard for me to comprehend. A few weeks ago I had convinced myself I have Huntington’s Disease (or will have it in the future). I was reading symptoms that overlap with how I was feeling at that time, and started drawing connections to my life. Some large connections, like my grandma who has parkinson’s, and my psychiatrist augmenting my SSRI with memantine, fixating on “what it means” for me, a young, healthyish individual to be on an “old person” drug. Some longshot connections linked to Huntington’s, like my above average intelligence and large head size. Each symptom I found that “clicked” my OCD made the anxiety ramp up. I shut this down fairly quickly as I could tell it was unrealistic and it felt very clearly that it was OCD. However, on days like today, my OCD is a much more undefeated beast, not dissimilar to a Rancor. Unfortunately I am not a Jedi. Today, my OCD just feels like nothing feels right. I feel like my entire perception of the world is different today. I’m drowning in it. The sky looks different, the coldness against my skin feels more piercing than it normally would. My thoughts just feel like a whirlpool, like I can’t place a finger on a single thought I have. They are moving fast and swirling like a galactic orb or nebula. Everything just feels “off”. And that makes me frustrated and angry. I feel like I have no control of myself. TLDR; I fucking hate this disorder. And I hate its name too. More often than not, I don’t feel like I have an obsession or compulsion. It’s just a feeling or perspective distortion. Maybe a better name for OCD is Control & Doubt Disorder, or Obsessional Uncertainty Disorder. I hate searching OCD online and it simplifying the hell out of it: “Obsessions that lead to compulsions”. Girl, I wish it was that fucking cut and dry and easy to delineate. I still insist to my psychiatrist that I have a different disorder in addition to OCD, because what I feel doesn’t “feel” like OCD. They, of course, insists that this is OCD about OCD. Ugh, frustrated, whatever :P Thanks for reading 🫶🏻

_okayylexi

Date posted: 17w

Newbie Here 🙏🏼

Hi, I’m new to the app as of today. I’m 20 years old, and wanted to get some stuff off my chest about the types of OCD I’ve been experiencing over the years. I’m not entirely sure how or when my OCD was brought up, but I’ve been a perfectionist for as long as I can remember. Anywhere and everywhere I go, if I see things placed in an order/angle that my brain doesn’t approve of, next thing I know I’m “fixing” it to be in the placement I feel looks better. I’m not aware of why I feel the need to do that, but until an object is in the “right” placement, I won’t take my eyes off of it. My eye will even twitch. Another form of OCD I have is in relationships. I spend each day overthinking and over-analyzing every one of the relationships that are important to me. Friends, family, significant other. Another one is what’s considered “Pure OCD” . When I get an intrusive thought of something devilish, whether it’s randomly seeing my great aunt naked bc my grandma considers her “fat” even though she’s not, or it’s seeing something demonic and traumatizing, I immediately tell myself, “I don’t wanna see/think about that” over and over and over until the thought is gone. Or I’ll try to replace one mental image with another. One other form of OCD I face every day, is religion. I got baptized for the first time in my life earlier this year in January. I had finally started to repent for my sins, and now I’m constantly feeling afraid that I’m letting God down due to my depression/lack of motivation and vaping/smoking. I also fear excessively that He’ll banish me from His kingdom, or just turn a cold shoulder. I know that what I’ve just typed up is probably all over the place. That is my brain unfortunately. How do you go from being a mentally disorderly and seemingly erratic young woman, to a more well-established, successful woman? I’m all ears!

RepetitiveMatt

Date posted: 4w

Introduction to me and my OCD

Hello everyone! This is my first post since downloading the NOCD app and wanted to share a little about my life with OCD. I was first diagnosed when I was 17 but truly started noticing there was something going on with me as early as 10. To summarize: I have the repetitive ritualistic type of OCD. Basically, I have a fear of becoming other people. I believe that if I perform an action, like turning off the sink or closing a door, or even breathing in and out while thinking about somebody, especially someone that I dislike, that eventually I will become just like that person or experience something they've been through that is negative; like health issues, personality issues, or social status decline. Simple example: I know this one dude named Richard, I worked with him in retail, and he told me about how his brother died at a young age. Now, it’s nighttime, and with that new information known about Richard, I believe, that If I take my contact out while thinking of Richard, or an image of him appears in my head while I’m taking out my contact, I believe that MY brother is going to eventually die too. What’s the solution?: I worked with another kid in retail. His name is Mikey, he was decently put together, and his brother didn’t die. So that means: Now with my contact still on my finger, I put it to my eyeball, and keep tapping at my eyeball with my contact while trying to get an image of Mikey perfectly timed, so that I can cancel out the image of Richard and save my brothers life. This is a challenge because the image of Richard, or I should say, the fear that my brother could die from this thought, is strong, and often times I have to think of other people (from other life experiences) along with Mikey just to feel confident that I got the image cancelled enough to move forward. Every day, I complete many actions and with every action comes a thought or image of some person I’ve encountered in my life that I’m either afraid of becoming or obtaining the same negative life experiences, which therefore means I also have all the othet people in my mind, at the ready, that cancel them out too. Every day I cancel people out and repeat actions disguised to the public. Sometimes it’s noticeable, but knowing how to cover your ugly side while making sure you don’t mess up your future with the wrong thought is just what I call life. I’m a man with a thousand people in his head and its been an EXHAUSTING journey. But through therapy and acceptance of myself, I have found a way to love with it. Like anything else, there are horrible days and okay days, but this is apart of me forever and im lucky to share it all with you! Can anyone relate?? Feel free to comment or reach out! - Matt

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A moment of vulnerability

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