Welcome to
the NOCD Community

I'm just sad that I've never been in a relationship and no one seems to like me this way.

I have my first appointment with NOCD next week, but this past weekend up until now I have been wrecked witch SO-OCD and I am trying to let the thoughts pass by, but nothing is working. My brain is convinced that I'm a lesbian in denial. For context, I just got out of a relationship with my boyfriend of a little over a year in December. I had consistent ROCD feelings for a few months after we moved in together. We broke up because of reasons actually unrelated to ROCD, but have been emailing for the past week and are trying to figure out whether or not we are in a better place to make our relationship work. But out of no where a few weeks ago, I was with my best friend- who is bi- and I had the thought pop into my head that I'm actually in love with her. It made my OCD really difficult for a couple of days. We did talk about it and actually laughed at the idea of it because we're basically sisters and it would just be weird. Since then though, my SO-OCD has been acting up intermittently, with this weekend being the hardest triggering event. I remember having SO-OCD when I was pretty young, but it hasn't bothered me in so long. I've only ever been with men and find them attractive, and always imagined sharing a life with a man. I do find women attractive and have had fantasies, and watched w/w p*rn, but always said I couldn't see myself in a romantic partnership with one. I've thought about my sexuality as being mostly indefinable before without being bothered by it. But this week my brain is saying I just need to be with women, I'm gay, the reason I've had failed relationships with men and have had a hard time connecting with them is because I'm gay, and I can't get back with my partner because I would be lying to him and myself. I feel so anxious and this is all I can think about. I don't know how to differentiate between denial and OCD. Are there any signs? I think, because I'm so anxious, it must be OCD. And I keep wanting to Google questions and check reddit to see if other people feel the way I feel, which I know is me compulsing. I feel like I would be okay with being bi, but I hate how my brain is saying I'm strictly one thing. Or how it's warping every time I have looked at a women in a way that felt innocent, and is saying it was sexual. This was so long but I needed to get this out because I feel so weird, alone, and confused.

I have a tendency to keep a lot of what I’m dealing with to myself because as all of you know, talking about ocd is at times extremely uncomfortable. I’ve been working towards loving myself more and giving myself breaks, just venting here but I’d like to just say that I think the worst way OCD has effected me is by it’s ability to truly make me feel as though I have no idea who I am or what I want. I want to be known as someone who is extremely kind and loving. Someone who is go with the flow and forgiving, slow to anger and quick to love. I feel as though ocd has taken that away from Me. I’ve never been so quick to lose my temper in my whole life than I am now, I can be so mean to my boyfriend and to myself and those around me. I have never been more irritable and angry than I am now. And I truly don’t know how to not be this way. I feel like I’m going crazy sometimes, like genuinely crazy. It breaks my heart because my intentions are good but ocd is quick to tell me they are not. Quick to tell me I am a terrible person. And this is something for me that I will never understand; my ocd doesn’t straight up tell me “U ARE SUCHHH A BAD PERSON” no… it makes me feel like a bad person. Of course I have intrusive thought and images but the kicker that sometimes I don’t hear many people talk about is that it’s not that ocd is really saying to me like affirming these things about myself with words. A lot of the time it’s feeling, emotions, sensations. Something that just comes over me and I immediately know what it means. I feel this feeling = I’m a bad person This feeling= I’m lying This feeling = I want to be with another guy not my boyfriend And the lists goes on and on Now I have no idea of that is gonna make sense to anyone. But my point is that it’s not always words in your head but feelings that are immediately translated into something that’s just awful. And the feelings can last for so long. I will keep all of you struggling in my heart and pray that all of you are victory over ocd with a loving and beautiful transformation !

First of all I’m quite worried about this, I don’t wanna be psychotic but it’s strange, whenever I see something online about an old person being hurt or babies I get this weird sadistic feeling almost like I’m glad. I was a bad kid and did awful things that I would never do now. But I hate it. I don’t wanna feel like that. I feel crazy and idk what to do, but it’s like genuine. I’m worried

Hello everyone!🤍 I would like to ask whether you have this OCD symptom - recapitulation of past actions/events with the aim of making sure you’ve done everything right? E.g. I park a car and immediately recapitulate whether I’ve done everything correctly as I left the car, whether the windows are closed, whether it’s locked etc. Just one example of what I recapitulate. Thanks for your answers.

How are y’all feeling today ?, lets share and talk

Part of my goal is to give back to others who have struggled like me so I would love to answer questions anyone has about OCD, Anxeity, or Depression! As a background around 2 years ago I fell into a really bad stint of depression, anxeity, and severe OCD. Through help with NOCD and lifestyle changes I was able to get my life back on track and create a wonderful life for myself! Drop any questions/ reach out if you just want to talk below!

Instead of focusing on what you think you “should” be doing. Focus on what you actually “want” in life. Never let society or even yourself, trick you into doing something you don’t want. Nothing in this world is more powerful than your ability to choose the life you want to live.

I completely understand the notion that it appears ERP will make our OCD "worse." In my experience, it's not the actual OCD getting worse, it just appears that way because you are allowing yourself to be triggered in order to learn how to properly respond to the OCD. Once you start doing this properly, as directed by your therapist who is a specialist in exactly this, the more consistent you become with your proper techniques through ERP. Over time, you will notice you become more desensitized to your intrusive thoughts. Would you be willing to do this work to get better, even though OCD will try it's hardest to fight back?

have y’all felt heart palpitations due to your OCD?

Hi y'all. I have posted a few times and shared a bit of my story. I have struggled with OCD for years without realizing, until harm OCD hit me a few months ago. It dropped me to my knees, as it is always focused on my hubby and daughters. I was diagnosed by a local therapist and he has been a huge help in walking me through my childhood traumas that are making the situation worse. But, he doesn't have a focus on ERP. So I am struggling with that. I found Nathan Peterson and have started his online course that goes through ERP. I have noticed as I started going through the course and completing the journals and have got to the point where we create a hierarchy and make exposures, my OCD has kicked into overdrive. I had a terrible night two nights ago and then spent all day yesterday kicking myself and trying to get out of my head. Then when I was feeling so down yesterday, my OCD reminded me that my middle daughter has some anxiety and possible OCD tendencies, so I should kill her so that she doesn't have to deal with this. I am so frustrated, because it caught me off guard and has me questioning whether it is me or OCD. I don't want to see my daughter suffer with this, but I am sick at the idea that OCD would tell me that I really think that is the solution. This has now made me even more nervous to do much exposure work. I would love to hear from anyone that has done ERP for harm OCD, especially relating to family. I am struggling.

I found something useful on “dealing” with this as you may put it which can be used for any false attraction in ocd, like ROCD, POCD or SOOCD or anything to do with beastility/incest. I commented on someone else’s post about it but thought what i said may be useful so here it is. FIRSTLY, stop calling it false attraction. The whole premise of this makes people with ocd want to figure out wether they are experiencing a REAL or FALSE feeling which is just going to make people ruminate and pay attention to these feelings which will make it worse. So what are we gonna call it instead? Intrusive feelings. This allows us to work towards the goal of disregarding and habituating to these uncomfortable sensations and feelings rather than work out if it’s real or not. Secondly, I will tell you now that if false attraction gets to a strong point and is distressing you a lot you WONT be able to figure wether it’s a 100% true or not otherwise u wouldn’t be here. False attraction that is fleeting is obviously a strong indication it’s false but after lots of ruminating and worrying about being attracted to something it can lead to ur brain being even more confused. You need to stop all compulsions towards figuring this out: no checking, no ruminating, no testing! Also, if u respond strongly negatively to these emotions as in go into a state where u show ur mind how upset these feelings make u, it’s also a form of reacting and u don’t want to do this because it tells ur mind u care. You need to act like it doesn’t bother you to over come this. Thirdly, aesthetic attraction is different to sexual attraction. For someone with ROCD it’s okay to appreciate that your friends, coworkers, strangers may be good looking people not in a way that makes u want to act on or fantasise about. A girl suffering with HOCD may be worried she is attracted to her girl best friend because she thinks she is pretty. For someone who doesn’t suffer with this can understand they think they’re girl best friend is pretty but doesn’t make her attracted to them, it’s just having an awareness that your friend/ that person isn’t ugly to look at. For people with pocd it’s okay to find a little kid adorable/ cute in a completely innocent way like a puppy without it meaning anything else. There is a huge difference between aesthetic and false sexual attraction that ocd does a good job at blurring the lines inbetween. Fourthly, people who’s ocd use this so called false attraction against them, end up saying it FEELS real and it just can’t be anything else because it FEELS real. It’s hard to comprehend but this is also just a feeling, lol! and you have to learn to sit with it no matter how hard it gets because it’s just gonna get worse if not. and sitting with it, will also help you deal with it rationally if maybe over time u realise that it wasn’t “false”. Also, OCD is a doubting disorder. It can inflict such strong thoughts, urges, sensations, feelings and will use everything in its power to convince u of ur fears. Remember it can even fabricate fake memories so Please don’t forget that u do have OCD and it can be powerful, u can’t give up hope Finally, ik how scary this feeling can be as i’ve dealt with it myself and it is the milestone of sexual related obsessions as it can make u believe this is you but ocd is a liar and i also believe if you 1) label all ocd as intrusive feelings 2)stop all compulsions towards this. and stop ruminating on wether feeling is false / real. feeling is feeling. 3) understand different types of attraction 4) understand that *feeling real* is also a feeling and u MUST habituate to it You may be able to deal with this better. I’m not going to reassure anyone that it will dissolve but this is how u can learn to overcome this as a form of ocd. If you act as if this is ocd, as it’s best to label uncomfortable feelings as ocd to begin, those who are experiencing this intrusive feeling would eventually get to a point where the ocd knows you don’t care about this feeling and stops using it against you and regular attractions would reappear. But don’t do this as an end goal, the goal is to not be bothered! I hope this can help anyone dealing with this, hang in there and DISREGARD!!!

Curious to hear how other peoples intrusive thoughts come up in regards to this theme? I constantly have an “I’m gay” replaying in my head and it’s the first thing that sometimes plays in my head when I wake up. I can’t tell if this is an intrusive thought or if I’m just in denial with myself. It doesn’t really give me anxiety anymore like it used to. More sadness/ state of depression and just overall annoyance. I’m in a relationship and when I started to date my current bf is when all of this came up for me. Curious to hear other people’s experiences with the kind of thoughts they have. Granted I have been dealing with this since about Nov of 2022 or maybe even earlier and it feels like I’ve had an array of intrusive thoughts. Quite frankly I also don’t have an OCD diagnosis but a previous therapist I had(not an OCD specialist) told me that I just have GAD with OCD personality and traits.

I’m on zoloft, and started about last week. I’ll get straight to the point. I do not want to be gay, bi, whatever. I’m a christian. But I keep experiencing thoughts and keep having sexual feelings. I’ve looked at pics of guys at my school to see if I feel anything and then I do bc my mind makes everything sexual, i’ve been stuck in a hole of looking at pictures of people and I started looking at it more then girls. I feel so trapped and medicine is helping, but I feel like I’m losing my mind. I love girls too, and I can’t see myself dating a dude. It doesn’t do anything for me, in fact it bothers me a little bc I just couldn’t do that. But the sexual stuff is so powerful and feels so confusing. Anyone got advice or anything to help me out? Please!!

My ex and I broke up a few months ago.I learned his license plate number while we were dating as it was silly, and I had some joke about it with him. Anyways now I find my self checking license plates as cars drives by ( as I live on a small island ) worried I’ll see him. But like even cars that aren’t his make and model. Also… what does this even mean.

So I'm fairly new to OCD and Intrusive Thoughts. It all started about 8 months ago for me. I had health anxiety and generalized anxiety and got put on meds for that. I read side affects of meds could cause su*cdal thoughts and it freaked me out and lead me to think what if I started having thoughts of harming others too and instantly for the last 8 months I've had horrible intrusive thoguhts about harming others. Now the other day I ran across a post about how ocd can lead to psychosis, reading about it freaked me out so bad that I'm now scared I'm gonna get psychosis. Paranoid thoughts is a sign of psychosis so I started watching myself I guess to see if I'd become paranoid. And now every thought I have seems paranoid. I'll think things like what if I start becoming paranoid of my loved ones and think they're out to get me? That leaves me questioning if I am paranoid and if I actually do think that. Anyways, I guess I'm just wondering if anyone else has had this happen to them? I pray someone can relate because I'm terrified.

Hi, pls someone advise me on this. I am in a loving relationship with my partner who has OCD at the beginning when he confessed I didn’t give much thought because all I knew about ocd was people checking the locks and stove 20 times. But his ocd takes different themes such as ROCD, moral scrupulosity, and last night he confessed me an incest ocd where he felt that his sister looked attractive he also told me that he’s had this thought before which has been followed by guilt and shame. We do an exposure exercise every night about his OCD even things where he constantly doubts his love for me finds another girl attraction and many others. I always deal with it because I know it’s his OCD and not his true feelings/intent. But since he has told me about the incest OCD I wanted to throw up I felt absolute disgust look I know it’s his OCD I know which is why I feel more disgusted on my self that I would feel this way about my own partner. But I find myself having sleepless night nightmare of him doing that to a family member I am in distress but ofc I love him and I wanna help him but I feel very drained. What should I do how can I help him without being drained or grossed out by some of the ocd thoughts he has had. Pls advise me. Ofc he does not know about of this. And I am just pretending to be normal infront of him. How do partners and parents of kids or partner having OCD deal with it?

All day every day I worry about throwing up and make sure everything I eat is “ok” or making sure I don’t get to close to people in case someone is sick. Anyone else struggle with this intrusive fear? I feel nauseous almost every day and I’m exhausted.

i think today has been the hardest day of my whole life. i’ve never ever felt this way before. i’ve been posting on here a lot recently which i feel bad about but i don’t have many people to talk to. my anxiety is worse than it’s ever been before. my entire body fills with dread any time i have a thought about something that even slightly bothers me. i had a five hour long panic attack that lead to me using the SOS button and just hyperventilating and sobbing while i was trying to pay attention. something needs to change. i was thinking of doing my free consultation on here today, but i decided that i wasn’t in a good enough headspace for a simple consultation so i’m going to do it tomorrow. i keep reminding myself that it will pass and it’s all temporary, but it’s so hard. i’m also with drawling off of my medication so that’s making things worse. i feel like if i stop talking i’m going to cry again lol. but maybe i just need to sit in that

I had my first therapy session today and I liked my therapist but she confirmed to me that I do meet the criteria for ocd. I was hoping that it wasn’t ocd but maybe just anxiety. I’m heart broken because my life will never be the same. I lived 38 years without this and now I’m have to deal with this. I don’t know what to do or how to tell my family and if they are going to judge me. I don’t know if my days will be bright again and if I will be happy again. I’m so scared and don’t know what to do. Sigh.