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the NOCD Community

Hey! Does anyone have OCD regarding having a personality disorder such as Narcissistic PD etc?

My contamination ocd has gotten so bad its currently making me have meltdowns 24/7 and its got me to the point where I’m thinking im done with trying because I cant seem to find any therapists that do erp in my city. The only ones that are “close” are 2 hours away so it makes it impossible for me to do therapy with them.

I’m confused an a bit angry. I met with a new therapist today and my insurance hasn’t allowed me to get someone who understands pure O and who is knowledgeable about ERP. This woman was a CBT and told me that wheneve I have an intrusive thought to deny it and tell myself that I’m a good person and to reassure myself. I tried to explain that that in itself is a compulsion for people at Pure O but she kept coming back to it. My gut is telling me she’s wrong because the times I was panicking And would try to rationalize it like she told me to the thoughts would only get worse. I told her that I used to be worried about harming people and have been listening to podcasts about serial killers as an exposure and how it’s working and I’m not having a problem with it anymore and she told me to take a break from that as if it was unhealthy. I told her I’d appreciate it to research ERP as a I left, and was willing to give her another chance but as soon as I told my parents about what she said they flipped out on me and told me I’m being picky and am unopen to options other than ERP. Am I being crazy or picky ??? I’m so confused

I know I’m posting a lot today but I’m having a rubbish time. Does your ocd ever make you feel as though you really want to be that thing your obsessing over? Like today I’ve been able to say “I’m gay” and get almost a good feeling from it which worries me.

Im thinking about starting medication soon bc college is about to start and i don’t wanna be having these anxiety attacks due to OCD on top of anxiety from school stress. Im just worried about the side effects. If school starts at the beginning of next month, do you think it’s too late to start meds (like do u think the side effects will carry into college)?

!NOTE! READ BELOW. HI EVERYONEEEEE ? - I just want you all to know that we need to cheer up! Let’s stop focusing on the bad things about our illnesses and let’s focus on the good.? Talking about a bad experience will not help you in anyway, even though it’s okay to sometimes because GUILT is a HUMONGOUS part of OCD. We need to take that love with no where go, and put it in positivity and the good things that happen in our lives. - Ever since this “ Group “ part of NOCD started I’ve noticed people like to talk about their bad experiences but we need to change. This needs to be a positive part of this app. Not somewhere to read bad experiences. - I will start by saying; TODAY I showered, I washed my my favourite pair of Pyjamas. ( So they will be nice and clean for tonight ? ) I was sick today but managed to still get these things done. I FaceTimed my best friend for about an hour. I ate Chinese, and I made Kraft Dinner. Also later I’ll be playing with my NEW son TINY. ?❤️ Your turn guys! ?

God this is hell idek if I have hocd anymore maybe I'm jsut bi and won't admit it but like I don't wanna date women or get with them on anything but I keep thinking that's just cause I have a boyfriend and if I was single I would ughhhhh x

HOCDers: do any of you ever go through moments that feel like realisation or discovery of being gay (I hate this so much because I know I’m not) Also does your ocd ever make you feel funny about being straight when you know you are? Sometimes if I say to myself ‘I’m straight’ I get a sensation that isn’t quite anxiety, I don’t know if it’s a longing/missing just knowing?

Hey guys, I’m new here and just joined. My OCD has been so paralyzing that I was actually scared to post something, but hopefully I can get a little support. On April 30th I had my first bout with hit and run OCD and since then my life has become so hard. I get drive anywhere without tracing my routes, checking the news, and seeking reassurance from loved ones. My OCD has now morphed into thinking that I’m going to go to jail for something, and the thoughts are so awful I’m not sleeping well, eating well, and affecting my work and relationships. Please any help or comforting words would be appreciated. OCD sucks, and I just want my life back.

my hocd is unique because i know i’m bisexual but i obsess over: how bisexual am i? was i always this bisexual or is it the ocd? is every attraction i feel to anyone fake? it sucks and i feel pretty alone in it

Hey guys! I got this email from Chrissy Hodges (an advocate for ocd) and I thought I would pass it on to y’all. I know it’s long, but I found it very encouraging! In my own experience with OCD as well as many individuals I work with, the impact of trauma in our lives as a result of OCD symptoms and diagnosis is often grossly underestimated. In my message today, I wanted to validate that you are not alone in experiencing that trauma whether it is previous or ongoing for you. Believing and validating our experiences with OCD are so important in recovery and healing from the trauma of OCD. When I first received treatment for the debilitating symptoms of sexual intrusive thoughts, I wanted nothing more than for the symptoms to be gone and to never have to deal with them again. 'I'll be cured if I just do this treatment', I thought. I couldn't have been farther from the truth. Firstly, OCD has no cure, but it has effective therapy for incredible management of symptoms. It took several lapses of symptoms over the years after therapy to realize recovery from OCD is an ongoing process that I needed to learn as a lifestyle change, not just a quick fix with behavioral therapy. Secondly, I didn't allow myself to face and process the degree of trauma I had experienced at the expense of my OCD. Intrusive thoughts ARE traumatic! They change how we see ourselves, how we see the world, and how we believe the world would see us (if people knew what we are thinking). I lived for 12 years with undiagnosed, untreated sexual intrusive thoughts by just surviving everyday. That is a great deal of trauma to process and learn from. The diagnosis and the treatment was traumatic for me as well. Living with a mental illness felt isolating and shameful and I wanted to get as far away from that label a possible. The process of ignoring and denying it caused even more stress and wreaked havoc on my self esteem and ability to have compassion for myself and what I'd been through. I didn't realize how important it was to face and work through the trauma of what we go through with OCD until many years after treatment. I had never received supportive validation for what I'd gone through and survived. Without that validation from others, I couldn't validate it for myself. The reason I'm sharing this with you is because I wanted to validate how you feel if you've experienced trauma surrounding your experience with OCD. If you have, it doesn't make you weak, small, stupid, or less-than. I never realized how much I needed other people to validate what I had been through for it's torment and torture and have them assure me that it took strength, resilience, and perseverance to survive it. I needed to hear it from someone else so I could understand and believe it for myself. So today, I hope you will hear that from me. I know where you've been in your head with OCD. I know how tormenting it is. I know how lonely and scary it is. I know there are times you feel you can't hang on anymore. I'm here to tell you that you can and you will and you are not alone. You are strong enough, resilient enough, and you will persevere. My hope is you can find empathy and compassion for yourself through my message. What you have gone through with OCD and are going through matters. And you matter.

My job requires that I work with numbers (data entry, simple math, etc). When I do some of my jobs duties, I feel like I have to mentally trace the numbers a certain way, read the numbers a certain way, &/or redo my calculations to make sure I don’t make any mistakes. Sometimes, it gives me so much anxiety that I have to take a mental break in order to continue. My boss & coworkers don’t notice. They really like that I rarely make mistakes & call me a perfectionist. Just wanted to let this out somewhere. I’m a little antsy right now.

I was doing better until a few days ago. I have ROCD and I keep thinking that my boyfriend and I aren’t right for each other. In some way we don’t match despite me not thinking this before the ROCD kicked in. I went from thinking we were a perfect match to for without reason thinking differently. But I have to remind myself it’s ROCD and as long as your happy then that’s it. That’s all you have to worry about.

Ugh so I had a bit of a melt down in public today. This girl that my OCD has labelled as “contaminated” came up to me out of nowhere and hugged me. I immediately imploded into this spiral of intrusive thoughts and must have appeared so rude because I just had to flee the whole situation. I hate it because the girl is one of my friends and she doesn’t deserve to be avoided like my mind makes me. Anyone do things like this? I hate having to avoid contact with other people. d a i s y

everytime i wake up and the intrusive thought is still there or i wake up just... panicked i feel so defeated. i know it can’t go away in a day but i really wish i would. and even when i know my thoughts aren’t me and what i want, i can’t help but wonder if i can ever really go back to who i once was. i’ve spent so long panicking and thinking that no matter what, it’ll always be there. i’m sorry for being so negative, but the mornings are always the worst for me.

today has been such a long and exhausting day that’s resulted in about a million tears and feelings of giving up. everytime i feel marginally better my ocd takes some memory from my childhood and throws it at me as “evidence.” even though i believe in my ocd less, the thoughts still feel constant and unbearable. i can’t help but feel like my mind has been tainted forever. i know it isn’t useful to think this way, but for today at least, the battle seems to have been lost. it is so incredibly painful and exhausting to know that my mind has the ability to doubt anything and make me feel like anything is true. i know we all feel this way, but it’s so incredibly lonely. i hate ocd with every fiber of my being and i’ve started to feel more anger that scares me. this post is pointless but i feel like it’s better to type it out. i guess i’ll ask a question though: how does ERP work? i just don’t understand how it has the ability to retrain the brain ‘cause honestly even when i feel it’s getting better, i feel sick and sad that i could have ever considered these thoughts to be true. i love and hope everyone on this app feels like they can get better, because of this feeling of hopelessness is a feeling i would not wish on my worst enemy.

POCD/HOCD: okay, this is going to be a very long post but if anyone reads and replies to this i will be forever thankful. sooo i used to have really bad OCD when i was younger following my parents divorce. i almost totally beat it (i was 11 or 12) and have always been so proud of myself! ever since i’ve struggled w other issues such as social anxiety / self harm (i beat this. yay!) / really intense depression, but no *major* obsessive thinking that took over my constant thoughts. i finished up my 2nd year of college this past spring and let’s just say i had an unusually stressful end of the year (a lot of crazy stuff happened, not worth getting into). once i returned home for the summer and all the stress was gone, i started to obsess over past things that i’ve done / have happened to me (“will anyone ever find out / am i a bad person?” etc.) one at a time, i curved these thoughts and realized yes i’ve done stupid and bad things but i’ve learned from them and i’m not a bad person. but THEN i began to obsess about my sexuality. am i gay? do i like girls? am i going to get married to a guy then have to leave him after i realize i’m lesbian? the problem w this obsessive thought is - in my normal (non obsessive days) i have thought about girls before (like i’ve flirted w lesbian girls i met via tumblr) and had a genuine desire from time to time to talk to girls, but when it came to romantic feelings i would always think of boys or wanting a boyfriend. however, i do remember once thinking in high school “i’m not in love with my best friend or anything but if she told me she loved me that way i might realize i love her too?” which sounds pretty much like a gay girl in denial to me, especially since i don’t think this was in an OCD episode. i’ve also been in situations, usually drunk, where i’ve realized “wait yea i would hookup with this girl”, but i’ve also been in other situations where i was like “ok this girl is totally coming onto me (i go to a very lgbt friendly school) but i WASNT interested. anyways, after days of anxiety/hocd about my sexuality i came to the overall conclusion this summer that i’m bisexual: i like boys, i like girls, no biggie! i have a groin reaction to every girl i see though and i know i’m not attracted to every girl i see, so that part is obviously the OCD, i can’t look at any girl w/o wondering if i’m into her lol. dating a girl seems pretty weird to me but idk if that’s because it’s foreign / i’ve never really considered it or if it’s because i’m just straight. but anyways i was literally ready to come out as bisexual, like 99% ready, when i came across a post online about how pedophiles shouldn’t be a part of the LGBT community and i was like....shit am i a pedophile??? (this was a fear i had when i was 11 or 12 w crazy pure ocd). i thought to myself, well, everything that i’ve been anxious over has been about facts so far (except the sexuality one i’m not so sure anymore) so does that mean this is true too? if i’m bisexual am i also a pedophile? if i’m not a pedophile am i not bisexual? i’m okay w being bisexual, but don’t want to come out if it’s not true because i wanna be right about it you know?? however i am NOT okay with being a pedophile. i would never touch or hurt a child (but i wonder if i would want to even though i have never wanted to in the past the same way i’ve thought about girls in the past). then i think “what if i’m okay with being bi but not being a pedo bc one is socially acceptable but one isn’t?” (this is the OCD talking, right??) my POCD is mostly regarding young girls not boys though, so does that mean the POCD and the HOCD are both false? i just don’t know. it could be these are separate. i know the ocd is what is making me think about it. i want to reinforce that i would try hooking up with a girl / talking to a girl but i would NEVER go near a child. i would sooner kill myself. does this mean one is real and one isn’t? my worst fear is that they are both real and i’m only okay with one because that one is morally okay. idk idk idk. it’s all i think about. my ocd keeps telling me i want to look at, you know, those pictures of children even though in reality i really don’t think i do?? but then i think...what if i actually do but don’t because it’s very wrong??? okay i’m starting to spiral and let my OCD thinking get to deep in this post but i just needed to vent to people who understand. am i a rare case? does anyone relate at all? (also i hope this doesn’t trigger someone. just because i might actually be bisexual doesnt mean that you are bisexual / lesbian / gay as well. you aren’t. it’s your anxiety.) a final thought: i would be kind of sad if i wasn’t bisexual, but i would be happy if i knew i wasn’t a pedo (and i mostly know i’m not) but maybe i would only be sad bc i finally came to terms w the idea of being bi. idk. if you read this all and especially if you respond, thank you for your time and compassion. i’m having a lot of anxiety about posting this so pls be kind:)

hey guys. this is morning i saw a post on fb that was talking about how people want to add pedophilia to the lgbt community (the post was disagreeing w that, as it should) but people were commenting about how it should be considered more of a mental illness (since it is one) and not like “all pedophiles should die” which i don’t agree with. however, i get sexual intrusive thoughts when it comes to pedophilia and start to fear that i am one (even though i know i am not) so usually in those moments i ask my mom to reassure me that i am not, but bc i am trying to resist my compulsions more, i sat with that anxiety all day and it has been a TOUGH day with this anxiety. i have just been extra sensitive and afraid of everything. so i vented about it on my private instagram account (that only my close friends follow) and my friend just texted me an hour ago asking what facebook post triggered all this. So because i trust her i told her the whole story, but she seemed to misunderstand and ask me if i was actually having thoughts of pedophilia, which like super set me off anxiety wise because now am i not only having the acknowledge the all day suppressed intrusive thoughts, but am worried that she thinks i am ACTUALLY feeling this way. I am so anxious and feel like so mentally ill today. ugh.

Do any of you men have the kind of ROCD where your OCD makes you think your girlfriend might be doing something sexual with another man? The intrusive thoughts are torturous. It would be nice to know I’m not the only one who suffers like this.

I’ve got to the point with my OCD where I don’t really have compulsions anymore, just a few intrusive thoughts which I’ve learnt to deal with quite well now. But my main thing is anxiety about getting anxious (which obviously makes me become anxious?)or being the way I used to be. Has anyone else experienced this?