So I know a lot of people search for the cause of OCD so to speak. And while no known direct cause is really scientifically stated and it just seems to be a huge puzzle right now (like the human brain in general honestly), I'd like to talk about where I think my OCD roots from. I'm unsure why I'm posting this, writing my thoughts off probably. I digress, I think for me it started actually after getting bullied/isolated at school. I don't hear people on this app talking about this a lot but I bet a lot of us have been bullied/ignored/isolated before. I've read in a study before that the odds of developing OCD after bullying is from what I can recall 10 times more likely (I think it was even more). It was a higher odds than with depression, which shocked me at first because everyone knows that bullying can onset and that it increases the chance for that depression. But then I gave it a thought. The bullying made me become more perfectionistic, making me feel like I couldn't do anything right, lose self confidence, doubt myself a lot, etc. Perfect recipe for OCD, it sounds like. If anyone's interested I'll post below what my experiences at school were, but honestly I am more interested if many of you guys also went through something similiar.

Some background: I’m a woman in my 30s who’s been struggling to find the right diagnosis for years. Since 2022, I’ve had multiple psych hospital stays, and with each stay came a different diagnosis and different sets of medications: Bipolar II, CPTSD, MDD with psychotic features, “high functioning BPD,” and most recently, Schizoaffective Disorder (depressive type). Before all of that happened, I had been seeing a therapist for CPTSD and AuDHD traits for 2 years, but after they left the practice, I struggled to find someone I trusted again. Most of my breakdowns happened during my last relationship. Looking back, I was in survival mode with them, leaving who *I* am behind. I got to the point where I started doubting my own reality from the abuse. This eventually added up and landed me in my first episode of psychosis. That combined with my attempts is what got me my schizoaffective diagnosis. After finally leaving that relationship 1.5 years ago, I’ve slowly rebuilt my life: new town, new job, new friends. Many of my old symptoms (major ones) haven’t returned, which makes me believe I may have been misdiagnosed due to reliving past childhood trauma and stress responses from the abuse. Through all of this, I’ve felt like nothing ever truly fit. I journal, I reflect, I replay the recordings and I’ve even watched old vlogs –the puzzle pieces still don’t come together. It’s left me feeling like I’ll never really know what’s going on, and I’ve started to fear that my diagnoses will just keep stacking up without ever leading to effective treatment. Recently, I opened up to a friend about this. She mentioned that her neighbor went through something similar not exactly like me but she thought it would give me a starting point—multiple diagnoses that never felt right—until a new doctor finally identified it as OCD. That one diagnosis changed everything for her. It made me realize I really don’t know much about OCD beyond the stereotypes. I didn’t know OCD could involve intrusive thoughts, rumination, or mental compulsions. My friend encouraged me to look into it, especially as I start searching for a new therapist. Facebook and Google lead me here… So now I’m wondering: could OCD be a better explanation for what I’ve been experiencing all these years? Questions for the community: 1. What steps did you take to find out if OCD was what you were dealing with? 2. If you had a long history of misdiagnoses, how did you finally find a clinician who got it right? 3. How did you advocate for yourself when people dismissed your concerns? 4. Is there anything you wish you had done earlier in your OCD journey? Thank you so much if you made it this far. I’m really grateful for this space and just want to start finding answers and the right kind of help.

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

tw: abuse I feel like my early childhood experiences may have caused OCD. Most of them not really positive, involving one that was somewhat sexual but could be passed off as a brief accident (without going into detail), though even that I feel like has left a scar of some sort. I also endured neglect and unfortunately physical abuse for a really long time so I do sometimes get flashbacks of certain things and it's tragic what happened. This made me hide completely everything from my parents and not interact with them, instead being left completely alone to figure things out myself. It made me redirect to the online world where morbid curiosity led me to really disturbing stories and tales, all at an age where I wasn't really able to process it completely and instead resorted to saying "This wouldn't be me, 100%. This is disgusting.". Could this have caused my OCD? Maybe helped trigger it, not like it made it any better. I almost feel like I was watching those videos compulsively, to see whether I still react "how I'm supposed to". I was also raised in a very religious and strict household, where any deviation from the norm was considered "against God" which also is how OCD started - with me getting blasphemous thoughts and feeling like I'm going to hell over it. It's also caused a lot of internalized homophobia / transphobia where OCD told me that by being LGBTQ+ I'm immoral or that "God has left me to my own twisted desires" and that the next step is complete immorality. Hell, it even made me avoid the term "pan" and use "bi" instead because it told me "So you're open to relationships with all genders, sure, but what if you start ignoring everything altogether?", yikes. I even had transgender OCD, but the kind where you're afraid you'll suddenly become the other gender / are on your way to becoming the other gender AND that you'll be socially outcast for it. Interestingly enough, I've learned that it's nothing dangerous and I am in theory transgender - not the opposite sex assigned at birth, just outside the binary. And I can already hear OCD screaming "SO YOU'RE GONNA NORMALIZE SOMETHING BAD NEXT" - no, I won't. All the theme's I've had up until this point were characteristic of Pure OCD - always things that are seen by me as "unacceptable" or "wrong". Whether it's me having swears interjected into prayer, or worrying that I'll become trans and be outcast, or then worrying about harm ending up on sexual OCD, all revolve around me fearing that I'm not who I think I am and trying to desperately figure out whether that's the case. Anyone relate? Any advice you would have for me? I feel like this could be CPTSD / generally trauma but then I'm not qualified to say that it is with certainty. Just wanted to rant / vent.