So since I got asked to share my ROCD story I figured I would for my peeps out there for some encouragement. So growing up I was a romance fanatic and always loved the idea of falling in love with a boy and getting married, etc. I’m a hopeless romantic is basically what I am/was ?, I dated a boy from being 8-13 and he was all I knew for so long and ya girl was INFATUATEDDD. It ended on good terms but after that it was my first heartbreak bc I had known him for most of my childhood and also bc I was attached to him bc of this. So 9 months later I’m moving on and I’m getting cute lil crushes on boys still doing the do and I met my boyfriend in 8th grade PE and we slowly began to like each other until we admitted we liked one another to one of our best friends. So fast forward about 3-4 months and stuff is fine and I feel like I’m falling in love with him, at this point we’re both 14 and had been dating for about 3-4 months like I mentioned. I was enjoying everything about us and things were fine until one day I felt kinda off and had my first intrusive thought which was “what if I lose feelings for him?” So this started the ocd cycle, I’d write love notes for reassurance, I cried myself to sleep bc I had all these intrusive urges and awful thoughts. It was quite hard to grasp at the time, I do remember scrolling around on the internet one day and stumbling upon articles for ROCD. I clicked on it and realized I had it. It all made sense. So my mindset was “okay, let’s recover so I can love him again” which is a fairly decent mindset ?. But I didn’t know how to deal with it. I struggled with this on and off for 2 months until HOCD came. I just walked into my kitchen and got a random intrusive thought of me playing with Barbie dolls and making the two girls kiss, it was like when I was in elementary school. So I had the thought of “did I turn gay or am I gay?” It was something like that and it began, I realized within the same day I had HOCD bc I remembered an article being written about it on the same website as ROCD. So again I’ve battled this for a long time. The summer and everything made it awful, I used to lie about my age when telling people about my ROCD bc you never see people who are 14 with it, I didn’t wanna hear “you guys will break up anyway, high school relationships don’t last only 2% last” etc etc. I now know I can’t rely on statistics to make my relationship work bc I used to worry about that all the time. ROCD and HOCD recovery is difficult bc love and sexuality are weird. It’s not that difficult to grasp, but weird. I’m gaining more of who I am back after god damn years of this hell. And my boy and I are gonna move in together when we save up enough money for an apartment. I now know that love is so much more than infatuation and butterflies , it’s in the actions you take and the stuff you do. Love is something you create with another person. And with sexuality, the stuff I worried about that I thought “made me gay” or “proved” anything was merely me being a kid and letting my sexual mind develop/curiosities. Currently my boyfriend and I are happy but we have fights like any other couple. Anyway for ROCD don’t let the ocd take you away from your love, you will get your life and your love back, I promise ❤️❤️. And with HOCD do not give up. You will get your sense of self back.

Struggling with TOCD has probably been the hardest theme I’ve had to deal with so far For reference. I’m a gay male 20yr old Before this theme I was so open with my gender expression, love drag and used to do it for a time. A lot of my friends are trans women and my whole life is queer When this theme hit. It’s like I completely lost who I was. Questioning everything I enjoyed, not participating in anything because it triggered me so heavily. I went through a whole gender journey awhile back and the trans path never spoke to me when I looked into it. I love my physique and my face but now when I look into the mirror i feel like a shell of who I was. I can’t find any sort of pure enjoyment without the accompanying “what if” or “you’re this” intrusive thought I still enjoy how I look. I’ve not looked in the mirror and felt like anything is missing from me or needs to be taken away I just feel like a spectator in my life while this disease tells me I’m not who I know myself to be I affirm myself every day I know who I am and it may change in the future but that’s not important. It’s highly unlikely it will but it may! Giving into the uncertainty has been so hard but it’s worth it! My ocd has really picked up since getting into my first serious relationship I care about my boyfriend with my whole heart but over the course of our relationship my themes have included Health Relationship Irreality Harm I just want to be who I was again before this current theme it feels unbearable to live like this BUT! I’m seeking appropriate treatment and not giving into a majority of compulsions I just wanted to write this to see if anyone can relate and if they do. Know that you will overcome this! I know I will and you will too

TW: SO-OCD. I have been a part of the NOCD community for around 4 years now. I am seeing more and more posts, but I am very rarely seeing people actually commenting, reposting and engaging back. I think I have always had obsessive thoughts, but never knew it was a thing until around 5 years ago. I believe my first theme was Harm OCD, when my little brother was first born in 2007. I used to scream at night as I was so worried he was going to be kidnapped, or he may d*e. I would avoid sleeping at friends house's, my dad's (as my parents had split) as I thought if I wasn't there to protect him then something bad would happen. My mum said she would wake up and I would be asleep net to his cot in the morning (I was only 10 at the time). Fast forward to 2017, where me and my high school boyfriend split up, I convinced myself I may be gay as I no longer wanted to have sex with him (almost found it a chore). I was 16/17. We split up and I lived my 'single' life. Spent my time dating males etc and then myself and my ex got back together in 2018. My intrusive thoughts took a turn for the worst in lockdown, when again may libido decreased significantly, and I didn't feel and ;urge' with my boyfriend sStill current partner). I remember one day, bursting into tears, had a panic attack and cried for hours with the most excruciating anxiety chest pains. I told him and my mum about my thoughts. They are both incredibly supportive and my mu actually told me that she had these thoughts too when she was round 19 and still does now (I also didn't know that COD can be inherited). After about 18 months of the worst mental health, significant weight loss, social thoughts and almost ending my relationship, I started to see light at the end of the tunnel. 2022, things started to get better. My partner and I were in the best place we could have EVER been! Sex life was AMAZING (quality of quantity I mean) and I honestly thought, this was the end. March 2024 I fell pregnant. Again, I had a great pregnancy, sec life was great, was so excited for our future. I have never been one to be bothered about marriage, but kept having this lovely vision of us getting married and our little girl walking down the aisle. Baby girls born in November 2024 and BAM, SO-OCD and ROCD have kicked in. I am now questioning my sexuality again, if I am in the right relationship, am I just 'settling'?, does he deserve me?, am I in denial?, what if we get married and then it turns out I am gay?, I don't want him to propose as I am scared etc. Just relentless every single day. I even question, if any of the conversations I have had with family and friends where they have related to me, were even real or if I made them up for my own comfort, so that I do't feel alone?! I am constantly reviewing past events, as I worry that I wanted to explore my sexuality in university, as I remember having an amazing friendship with a lesbian (who was, I am not afraid to admit, very 'handsome'), and we did flirt, as she did with everyone!! But we never took it any further, it never crossed my mind! I almost don't even get the 'anxiety/'sick' feeling anymore because I am SO used to the thoughts. I don't have an urge to act on my thoughts, but they are also no longer debilitating for me. I just feel exhausted with them. They are ALWAYS there. I have gone down the rabbit hole of avoiding meeting new women friends incase 'I find them attractive', if there is a same sex couple on a program I watch, I automatically avoid. I compare my relationship to others. I saw an insta reel yesterday of a women in her 30's that said 'when you're lay in bed with your husband, searching 'Am I Gay' questionnaires and you decide to divorce and follow your heart' and it was a page dedicated to her helping other mid life adults cope with coming out as gay! It really really really triggered me. I am just exhausted. If anybody else wants to share there story, comment below. It doesn't have to be the same sub types, but just an opportunity to vent!

Hello everyone, I just wanted to share a part of my journey that I’m struggling with right now. I’ve been diagnosed with ocd and while this is not my first subtype, ROCD and so ocd have definitely been the ones I’ve been struggling with the most. For context I have a boyfriend who I love very much and am terrified of loosing. That’s probably what ocd latched onto. The so-ocd especially is tricky because I’ve come to acknowledge that I am bisexual. Don’t worry I didn’t “discover” this through ocd, I’ve always known and it’s been in the back of my mind way before ocd, I had just never really directly acknowledged it because romantically I just always leaned towards men. The thing my ocd latched onto is “what if you are actually a lesbian and don’t know it yet and will have to leave your partner or are lying to your partner or end up leading him on” The thing is, I don’t have much experience with women except kissing my female best friend once, which didn’t feel special or made me have romantic feelings for her. I’ve always seeked men more actively than women and didn’t feel like I was gonna miss out if I get into a serious relationship with a man before having had more experience. I just know that I can be sexually attracted to women as well. But now that I’m in this beautiful relationship I’m terrified of getting it wrong or having missed something about myself or being scared that I’m actually a lesbian and have been lying to myself all along. I’m not seeking reassurance, just wanting to share and maybe someone else is going through something similar? If so I’d be so grateful to know I’m not alone. I love my boyfriend dearly and i really hope we will work out in the long run.