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Has any one else dealt with hair pulling and/or skin picking?? I have really bad and quite damaging habits around both and I’m just wondering if anyone has any solutions or general advice?

this disorder is so frustrating. sometimes i even doubt i have ocd because of the nature of the disease, but i’m just so tired. i’m in college right now and tbh everything is great, im hanging out with my friends, my classes are cool, the weather is getting colder again, i have a great family back at home. i feel happy but it’s like i have this giant weight im constantly carrying around because of the harm ocd. it follows me everywhere i go. i can’t look at a cat (my beloved favorite animal) without thinking “what if i want to hurt it” or thinking of something else terrible. i cant stop thinking what if i wanted to hurt everyone i love, what if i am truly an evil person. i just want to be happy, i don’t want to deal with this anymore. i’m so scared, so tired. i feel like i’m losing myself. i have been such a kind sensitive person but this disorder makes me feel evil. i don’t feel safe in my own mind. does anyone else relate :/

I try so hard to just let it be and move on with my life because there is nothing I can do to change even though I was an idiot as a teenager I’m so scared every day and I don’t know if it’s because of the ocd I don’t know anymore but I feel like I’m going crazy because it just stays in the back of my mind haunting me and the guilt, shame, whatever really hurts. I wish I could go back knowing what I know now. How could I have been so dumb

OCD has affected me more silently than I previously thought. I read an article earlier about how OCD can shapeshift. I never realised at how it did this to me.

Ocd really bad today because last night my bf was doing things I found cringey and I worry that means I don’t like him and I also had the thought “maybe you’ve outgrown him” and it felt true

Hello, I’m fairly new to NOCD and I’ve noticed that talking to others does seem to make me feel a little better. That said, I’d love to hear personal stories about what other people’s contamination OCD is like? I feel like it might help me understand my own. Does anybody else obsess about the microscopic world? Not even bacteria, just things that might be on other things that we can’t see?

I was diagnosed with GAD a few years ago. (And panic disorder back in college) but early this year, when I was looking into some checking behaviors in my son, it was like the veil was lifted for me- and when I started reading about “pure O” and mental compulsions- I felt like my whole world was rocked. Like all of a sudden my whole childhood made sense. That all the things I had been doing were maybe OCD and not normal kid stuff. Here are some examples. Wondering your thoughts for those of you diagnosed? I finally went to a therapist and after three sessions (she didn’t even want to talk about my childhood at all) I asked her if she thought I could have ocd because of my compulsive researching and certain tendencies and she literally said “ocd looks like handwashing” and brought up Howie Mandel not touching door handles. That was a red. Flag so now I’m here. Thanks for any thoughts: Childhood triggers: Death- was CONSTANTLY worried my parents would die. Couldn’t go to movie theater and enjoy the movie. Or on vacation. Would spend the whole time worrying about their health. Did they have cancer? Both were smokers. Would just watch them breathe. Religion: OBSESSED with the end of the world. Tried to learn everything I could about it. Worried constantly that it was going to end at any moment. I would look out our front window to see if the church across the street was still there or if it was “raptured.” Prayed a lot over and over. Felt if I didn’t pray enough about certain things- like my parents health if they had to go to the doctor for a check up that God would punish me by giving them cancer. Was also very obsessed and worried about getting my period. (Luckily, or unluckily it didn’t come til I was 14). An example of how messed up I was- I would pray to God and barter that he could give me my period if it meant the world would not end. I was like 10-12 probably at this time. (Y2K was also around this time frame) How my symptoms have possibly adapted? (This is outside of rumination, mental review- I do a lot of that- but I feel like that’s common in GAD?) Had a bad bout with panic disorder in college where I was fearing for my own health all the time. I still have the issue. It’s now turned more into obsessive googling. I was recently diagnosed with Graves Disease and I know just about everything you could know about thyroids, tests, autoimmune illnesses etc. same with OCD. Same with ADHD for my kids. I plan what I’m going to google/research after work each day. I have to GPS my drive time to work just to see if I’m going to be late, even though it won’t change the outcome. I wake up like 1-2 hours before my alarm goes off every day and check my phone probably 15-20x before my alarm goes off.

Did anyone just say yeah I’m definitely gay and have their anxiety disappear? Kind of like making your ocd chicken out like a coward? Now I’m honestly not sure if this is ocd anymore

As soon as I booked an appointment for ERP, my OCD decided to fade away after months of dealing with it. Now my mind is telling me to cancel the appointment because I’m “better” now 🤦‍♀️

On Satuday afternoon, I noticed bruises all over my legs and a weak feeling and although I was obsessing that I was going to die, I still went to the hospital. When they checked my blood, they found out that my platelets were very low. (Platelets are in charge of blood clotting and also its one of the three things made in bone marrow with White Blood Cells and Red Blood Cells being the other two). Luckily RBC and WBC count were of normal range. After staying for two days and being on edge the whole time thinking I was going to hear I was going to die, I was released (since they saw my platelets were going up and the rest of lab results were good except some things relating to iron). I still have a follow up appointment with the Hematologist to discuss the results and I am terrified. I have gotten all sorts of reassurances from two doctors, nurses, my mother in law who is a nurse, and literally everyone else but I am having this dreadful feeling that this is a sign I am going to die that my time is up. The most likely scenario I think was that my platelets went down with a combination of vitamin deficiencies (iron) and another combination like infection. But I went to the hospital the next day after my release because I felt weak again and panicking and they did my blood work and everything came up good (Finding out my platelets are continuing to go up). However, my OCD says if I think I am ok then it is not going to be ok so I need to be stuck in this loop of torture. Like what if I have something and I will never find out, what if I have something and find it too late? I have been crying non stop since Saturday evening, my head feels like a bowling ball which makes me think "oh maybe its a brain tumor." I google low platelets and one of the things of the list is Leukemia which I was already tested for Leukocytes and it was normal range but that was not enough because I googled nonstop and it said that they also do a bone marrow test to see for sure Leukemia and that freaked me out because I did not do that test. Then my thoughts changed to "my lymph node is swollen and now I have Lymphatic cancer" and it causes me to touch all parts of my body (even though I was tested for Lymphocytes on blood test and it was fine but again continued googling). Because of the bruising, I have trauma and I can't look at my own skin. I am afraid something new might come up. Now, its "oh I have a brain tumor because I am not feeling like myself, sometimes I stumble on my words, and my head feels congested and pressured. In fact ever since I had COVID, my head congestion never really went away so thats a sign. Actually anyone else has that? I remember my mom told me once that I was given an MRI when I was 8ish 9 for something in my brain and she said I had something and God healed it. Now, I am freaking out and thinking "this is it" I feel weak because I had it this whole time and it has grown and I am going to die. My mom - who has a chronic and untreated paranoid schizophrenia, would always tells me growing up that God was going to kill me and I was going to die young. I have been having panic attacks, crying almost every 30 minutes since Saturday, my head is more congested than ever. This past month was the hardest month of my life. Two of my loved ones passed away. I had a scare with my daughter because two weeks ago, my daughter had a fever that came and went away and then a day later it went back and I freaked out, had a panic attack and took her to the only hospital in the middle of the night and thinking she was going to die, turns out she had an ear infection. A day later I had ear pain and I went to the doctor but they didn't find an infection and that freaked me out. Ear still hurts now from time to time but not as frequent. And now I am obsesssing and saying "well I was right about going in on Saturday for my bruises, what makes this time not be right for me to have cancer or something deadly" or "my mom was right, I am going to die young and I will never see my daughter grow or grow old with my husband - that is the most terrifying part. To make matters worse two weeks ago, I changed my prescription from 75mg - 50mg, and now two weeks later (because I had extreme mom guilt on breastfeeding Kaia while taking medication). And the nurse practicioner told me that he doesn't usually do babies because most of the people he treats are older people and because moms choose to not take medication because they don't want to harm their babies. I feel like I am going insane. I have been shaking, losing hunger, not eating, having panic attacks almost hourly, lost 10+ pounds in a matter of four weeks (which I never know whether it is me about to die or a combination of chronic anxiety and OCD or all of it together). I am scared, I am in a constant state of over analyzing on what goes on inside my body. Every little discomfort, pain, itch, or anything else, I am googling and thinking this is my time. I am scared of eating because I am afraid of throwing up and that it is a sign that I am going to die. I am scared of sleeping because what if I never wake up again. If you took the time of your day to read this - I know it was long - but thank you, seriously thank you.

This might be a bit long but it’s the first time I am talking about it. Tbh I don’t even know where to start, maybe if I write it down I will feel better but I don’t know. So if all started when I discovered what hentai manga pages were. I didn’t know what these websites were but I found out about them through a twitter website and they posted this story that was kinda wholesome of this bf and gf, so basically a manga that was 18+. When I went to this website I didn’t really know that lolicon and shotacon was so common and when I was looking for stories to read the covers will always come one and I would try my best to avoid them like trying my best not to look at the covers and even looking away from my phone when I was scrolling. I didn’t know the damage this would do and I only started noticing when I started to fee uncomfortable around kids and then the groinal response started to happen. It didn’t even have to be images just the fact that I was avoiding them and felt uncomfortable. At first I didn’t know what was going on until one afternoon I collected my thoughts and started to think why am I feeling this way. I cried so much because I didn’t want to be pedo. I was so distraught and ashamed. I felt like my brain my torturing me, when I finally started to feel happy and look forward to the future and have a family and raising my kids without the traumas that I went through and giving them all the things I didn’t have. This came and ruined everything for me. I started to do my own research and I found out that it was POCD, I haven’t been diagnosed with ocd but I have seen obsessive behaviour within myself like having to check the doors multiple times even thought I know they are closed or my brain not letting me relax unless I wash my hands for no reason. None of those alarmed me until this and honestly it was so bad I wanted to kill myself. The thoughts would get so bad I wanted to do anything to get rid of them such as pinching myself and hitting my own head, I even almost cut once. I started to feel better because I kept researching on others that are going through the same thing got better and basically all I had to do was tell my brain to shut up because it was not making sense. This actually helped and I was so happy even though I will go through times where it’s not as easy to tell my brain to shut up it actually helped. The next problem I had is even though the thought and the awful images were gone I was stuck with the anxiety or my brain telling me I’m faking not feeling anything when I am around children, even if I am not feeling anything the awareness is still there. I am happy that it’s better then before tbh sometimes it is bad but the thoughts are less frequent. Now that I was able to overcome that my brain decided to cling to another thought which is that I find it hard to trust men. This honestly sucks because I want to have a bf and even get married one day but I can’t get rid of the feeling that what if he is a bad person who does bad things to kids. This stems from all the pedo stuff I have seen is don’t by men and the lolicon mangas I had seen men were the main character. I know that women can be pedos too but because most content I have seen was men I find it hard to let this anxiety go. My brain will put me in their shoes and I will try and find reasons as to why they wouldn’t be attracted to kids. I know this is dumb because I know not all men are like this but I brain simply won’t let go, I can’t tell my brain to shut up and that it’s being ridiculous because I am not those people and I don’t know them personally. I really don’t know how to overcome this :( the future I wanted of a family is gone because my brain keeps going what if my partner hurts our kid. I am so tired of feeling like this, sometimes I feel like my brain is factory resettled and I have to retract myself all things like why certain things is bad and stuff. I’m honestly tired I was so happy that my intrusive thoughts were going away and the images were going away but now I am stuck on this new thing. I should mention that when I were having the intrusive thoughts and images they weren’t me doing things to kids but a faceless man doing something. I were able to overcome it because I know I’m not like they but this new thing that my brain is stuck on I don’t know how to overcome. I’m probably not making sense but I needed to let that out after holding it in for so long n

Hi all! I’m experiencing a bit of a relapse after thinking I had it all figured out! I think that I was actually avoiding a lot of things and not really putting that much pressure on myself to do ERP and accept uncertainty that I allowed what was a small ball of thoughts to turn into a life shattering obsession again. I’m feeling a little discouraged, and constantly questioning the meaning of existence again. This always happens when life gets hard and I lose my footing, I question the whole world and become dangerously obsessive and it makes me suicidal. I also feel like I forgot all my tools, or I’m scared that my ERP skills won’t work anymore because I thought I got rid of it so that means it’s back to stay. I just was wondering if I could have some encouragement and reminders on how to best approach this situation and stay positive. No reassurance pls 🙏🏼

I feel like I'm harboring a horrible secret, or that I'm a monster, because of my OCD & I'm struggling a lot to let myself make friends and have deeper connections with others because of it. I know it's OCD, and I would never feel like other sufferers' are their fears - but when it comes to me, I just can't disconnect my intrusive thoughts with the idea that they mean something about me as a person. There's someone I'm starting to like, in a serious way I think, but it gives me so much anxiety to let him get closer to me or consider things becoming romantic in the future. And I hate it, because I know that if I didn't have OCD I'd be overjoyed with how much he seems to enjoy my presence - but I feel like a liar, like by not telling him all of my intrusive thoughts I'm hiding my "true self." I know that it's an OCD thought, and I need to not engage with it, but it's hard. I don't want people to care about me just for me to end up being the monster my OCD warns me I am. I can't afford therapy - so any responses are welcome, tips & tricks or just comfort that I can get through it. 🥲

I can’t deal with this OCD bullshit anymore. It’s to the point where every time I walk out my house and come back in I have to sanitize my shoes then the floor where my shoes stepped. I even have my boyfriend doing this and he doesn’t have OCD. I can’t even enough life like I use to anymore I have constantly be cleaning and disinfecting. All these chemicals that have gotten on my skin I know that can’t be healthy. I’m scared the thought of even walking in with my shoes and not using disinfectant triggers me so badly that it ruins my whole day. This all happened when weeks ago I saw a skunk at night walking through the apartment complex I lived in. Then I took my dogs to the vet to get their vaccines. Even though there was no contact I still freak out about rabies. Then the vet assured me that everything was ok. Then I see this stray cat that walks around the apartment complex and he is always trying to come up to my apartment door or the walkway then I’ve seen him walk we’re the skunk area was so now I’m like what if this cat has rabies and I walk where it walks and track it in my house and get rabies. God forbid. It’s to the point where we have a shoe rack and we have to disinfect every time we walk in and out. The other day I had guest and when they left the whole entire house was mopped and I even had bathe my dogs too since they were walking around where everyone was stepping. I even threw away their dog bed and bought them new ones. Please help I can’t live like this anymore.

So, I am going to go out of town next week for three days and I am trying to prepare myself for it when it comes to my anxiety about hotels. I am always anxious these days when I go to a hotel because of standing in a shower and even when had flip flops on in the shower I was still anxious. I want to have a good time with my family, but I don't want OCD to ruin it. Does anyone else experience this when going out of town and if so, how do you cope with it?

I dont understand why i have been obsessed with the same person (its gotten better then came back) over a period of 6 years. I've tried everything but ERP. Im just scared. Im scared it wont work and im so used to this now when i do get better for a while it always comes back. I need to get better once and for all but idk one small trigger and i let myself get sucked back down the rabbit hole.🤦

Feeling really down today. Could use any kind of support

this is weird af, im so confused. I was fine yesterday and now it feels real even though I tested it yesterday and I felt like gross. I dont even know anymore

I need some advice. Here’s some information: I’ve liked boys for just about my whole life. Recently I thought I started having attraction to the same sex. I have thoughts involving the same sex, and my brain convinces me that I enjoy them. I keep checking if I have attraction to the opposite sex, and now it feels like I don’t? I don’t think my orientation can change in span of two days. Now, I’m falling into this spiral of thoughts that has me thinking if I should accept that I’m not straight, and change my entire lifestyle. Sometimes I feel okay with these thoughts? But sometimes I get anxious, thinking that I don’t want to accept it. Is it hocd or am I not straight?

I saw the fifth episode of the Sandman, if you are in a bad state of mind do not absolute start this series or read this post (also spoiler ahead if you're planning to watch it.) I also attached some screens of comments under this video that made me think about this. https://youtu.be/pOslfcSBYmo Basically the premise of this episode is that a person named John Dee uses the magic ruby he stole from the god of dreams to make dreams and desires come true. His desire is to create a new world without lies, where everyone is honest to each other. He first tries this power and we see its effect from the point of view of various people in a diner. I was triggered when it was mentioned that the cook had an affair with the waitress'son, because at first it wasn't mentioned that the son was 21 years old and when the cook revelead that the waitress said "but he's only a ***" and then the cook said that her son was 21 years old and that he wasn't just a *** anymore. I was very triggered because I initally thought that the cook SA the waitress' son. I think I even pictured the scene and I felt sick. Then the point of view changes and now there is a scene with high se*ual tension where a CEO woman interviews a new employee and things start to get sensual. The weird thing is that when the CEO woman and the younger guy started making love I started feeling arousal and I wanted it to stop. It was a very sick and disturbing feeling because I passed from being triggered from the previous scene to feeling arousal in the following scene. But what triggered me the most was what John Dee did. He basically made it so that intrusive thoughts led to action, the realization of the thought. I thought intrusive thoughts were egodistonic and that they were meaningless lies that our brain made to make us worry. In this episode the intrusive thoughts are depicted (by John, not the message itself I guess) as the truth that we try to hide and not unwanted thoughts, as our real nature. So does that mean that my intrusive thoughts are my true thoughts? Are they my "real" desires that I try to hide and reject with lies and use ocd as an excuse not because thay aren't who I am but because of shame and judgement? Am I a monster? Does that mean that my intrusive thoughts could led to action? And I have pocd and that's the most disgusting and unforgivable theme. I'd rather kill myself like all the people did at the end than to be a monster, to be in denial, to harm others. I just wanted to hope that I had ocd. I still don't have a diagnosis. But I lost hope a lot of times, I've accepted in the miserable state in which I am and that I don't deserve to heal or happiness. But I still reject and not tolerate those thoughts. I harm myself. But in this episode Morpheus says that if you lose hope and dreams humanity and civilization cease to exist, because you start giving in to the "intrusive thoughts" which are dark desires and if dreams and hope aren't there anymore there is nothing holding us back and keeping us sane and alive and we are not different than animals. Then, does that mean that I was overcome by intrusive thoughts and fully became a monster? Did I let the intrusive thoughts win and take over me? Did the intrusive thoughts became just thoughts? Did I start to tolerate them? Or were they really intrusive to begin with? From a viewer perspective this episode was incredible, but it tackled themes that triggered me a lot. If anybody has watched it please let me know what you thought about it.