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the NOCD Community

Have any of you ever had your ocd be on remission? Where ocd was not bothering you and you had no intrusive thoughts?

When the ocd feels real and like it won’t go away the depression is so hard to deal with. I don’t even want to get out of bed. How do people balance this?

Really don’t like how OCD will even give me intrusive thoughts surrounding the person I love as well as others close to me. Makes me so anxious and when I see or talk to them when I’ve just had an intrusive thought of that theme I’m trying to get over it makes me feel awful. I know the thoughts are not true but the anxiety it gives me is still awful. Anybody have a tip to combat that weird and anxious feeling from that?

I’m terrified of death. I was doing amazing for weeks and then this last week I have been giving into the compulsion of going to the ER. I had chest pains that took me to the ER, and the. Today I thought I swallowed a bug that then got lodged into my throat.

I haven’t done much today. It’s been a rather relaxing Sunday. I have a compulsion of going out and doing something to ease my anxiety about not doing anything. But instead of going out and doing something, I am sitting with the discomfort and continuing to play sims. Lol I’m a twenty six year old gamer don’t mind me. Also the time change is really messing with me. Knowing it’s gonna be dark in an hour and a half does not help the anxiety.

How do you guys deal with the stories of coming out later in life? I feel like I can find some similarities between me and them and it freaks me out because i don’t want to leave my boyfriend or have that happen

Anyone here get tired of feeling hyper responsible and having to care about everything?

my ocd fears are starting to come true …. I knew I was the exception , i knew it was never ocd despite years of therapy and now look where ive ended up …. Two of my fears have come true. i can’t live like this anymore

I have made so much progress, but now that I'm doing good I feel this strange sense of missing the hard times. The other day I forgot to take my meds and I felt the rush of anxiety that I used to feel all the time and it made me sort of miss that feeling. I am doing amazing, but life sometimes feels pretty dull. Now that I'm typing this I'm thinking it might be my meds, but I don't think I could ever get off of them. Another theory I have is how people's lives feel dull after skydiving. I feel like I've accomplished so many things that feel impossible that I don't really get that rush anymore. Taking the trash out used to feel impossible. Maybe I need to do other things that still feel impossible. I think I was so focused on just being able to manage in daily life that now it feels like my work is done. I feel like I have slightly higher anxiety than the average person most days. Maybe I need to continue to challenge myself. It is just a weird, boring feeling to feel so functional. Its crazy because I would've given anything to be bored a year ago.

So I got diagnosed with OCD this past summer. Since then I've been in ERP therapy for my OCD. I'm 24 and it took a long time to figure out that what I had was OCD because a lot of my compulsions are internal. I struggle a lot with rumination, my brain just chewing on the problem to find a definitive answer. My therapist told me to focus on the feelings in my body, to try and be present in my body and not just stuck in my head. But it's really hard because I don't realize I'm ruminating until I've already started and it can be hard to drag myself away from it. I usually just start ruminating about something else related. My question is, does anyone have any tips and tricks to stop ruminating? I read the article by Dr. Michael Greenberg about stopping rumination but it just seemed like his advice was "Just don't ruminate" and it was very stressful.

I’m very covid cautious and afraid of getting sick with any illness. I mask everywhere and don’t hangout with anyone even my partner right now who is doing his best to make me comfortable to see him. I can’t get myself to want to see him because I’m afraid he’ll get me sick. I don’t want it to ruin our relationship. I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to hangout with anyone or go anywhere and I’m sad. It sucks. I’m scared. Thanks for reaching.

I grew up in a conservative christian home, school, and church. over the past few years, a lot of unexpected and difficult things happened to me which caused me to start questioning my faith. i’ve become a lot more open-minded and studied and after researching different religions and spiritualities, i don’t see christianity or anything the same. issues, doubts, and questions i’ve had with the bible and modern interpretations of it and god ultimately led me to take a step away from christianity. i’m convinced this is what i must do but it is terrifying thinking i’ve “gone astray” or “never knew Jesus” or that i may be going to h*ll. i have intense fear of death because of this which is always present in my mind. and i struggle to stop thinking existentially about everything.

Anyone else freaking out about the days getting shorter? I hate this 😭😭. It’s dark at 5 pm

Growing up as a kid, whenever I’d get new shoes, a new bike, or just something cool, I always had my friends and the other kids in the back of my mind thinking about how cool they’d think my new shoes are, my new bike is, or my new toy, etc. The thought of them thinking my new item was cool added to the excitement of what It was I was getting (shoes, toys, etc.) In fact, I felt like I wanted them to be jealous of me. I wanted them to have thoughts like, “ugh…she’s so lucky, I wish I had that, etc.” In a way I wanted them to be jealous of me. I was not a mean kid. I had many friends in elementary school, who I am still friends with to this day nearly 30 yrs. later. These were just private thoughts in my head that I gave no thought to. Now as an adult, whenever I go to decorate for Christmas, make an amazing Thanksgiving meal with a gorgeous table, have my master bathroom redone, etc., I still weirdly have those kinds of thoughts in my head of wanting the neighbors to think we have the most beautiful house, or friends and family to wish they had our newly remodeled bathroom. Again, Im a nice person, am often told I am nice, but these thoughts bother me so much that I think that way. They’ve always been background noise in my head since I was a wee little kid and I think they’re just apart of me. Does this make me a sh*tty person? Can anyone else relate?

It's been 22 months since I fell victim to existential OCD and heavy depersonalization, and it feels like an eternity. I can't shake off this feeling of not existing like I'm on autopilot and everything around me is just a blur. I can't connect with my family and friends, and worst of all, I couldn't even recognize myself in any of the pictures I had. It's like I'm living in a parallel universe, detached from reality. Nobody realises that some people have to expend tremendous energy daily merely to be normal in the eyes of others. My faith deconstruction was kicked off as my anxiety and OCD worsened and inner critique of the most strongly held beliefs I had for no good reason to hold it's a double ended sword it made me see the world for what it really is and accept that no body truly has an understanding of what all existence is all about as well as maintaining my anxiety and worstening it at times no longer for the sake that we dont know why we have something instead of nothing but instead the implications this have with the people in my life that think there is a reason. My mind is constantly paralyzed with thoughts on matters of existence, and I've fallen so behind on my med-school work that I don't think I can catch up anymore. The tuition fees are burning in front of my eyes, and it exaggerates my anxiety. I've always wanted to get into med school, and I suffered so much to get into it, reapplying three times. Now it seems like everything is slipping away from me, and I'm powerless to stop it. I know my OCD is constantly seeking comfort, and I may come across as wanting you to conform to my way of thinking. But please understand, more often than not, during my rants, I forget this. I don't want to continue this cycle all of this is unwanted, and I need to remind myself to love myself. In the past, I had health anxiety for about a year and a half, and it evolved into my mind convincing me that I was schizophrenic because I thought intrusive thoughts were the same as hearing voices. It's been a long and hard journey, going through different phases of Harm OCD, Solipsism, and finally Existential/Pure-o. I just hope that someday, I'll find my way out of this darkness. For the past year, not a thought goes by that isn't about the matter of why I exist and how, and what may lie beyond us. That's when I (now regrettably) opened up to my mom about this issue, and her answer was for me to participate in the Islamic faith again. I went back to Islam to find answers and enjoyed learning about its formation and how it shaped our world today in matters of science, mathematics, and philosophy. I also interacted with other Muslims to learn more about the religion and removed some major misconceptions I had due to improper teaching. Overall, I have a newfound respect for it and what it provided humanity with, especially in the more progressive and “free thinking” Islamic traditions that are, for some reason, stifled and castigated against as they don't adhere to the dogmatic mainstream. I also fell in love with the stories in it, which I see as allegorical and not literal. But saying that is enough to get my head on a stick in some places and would cause arguments with my mom. I came out with even more questions than I came in with, and the nature of my OCD keeps flip-flopping, doubting myself, and wanting a concrete answer to life. But I realized that limiting my beliefs to one book that lacks evidence for its claims, as well as problems with interpreting the texts (as there is no such thing as an objective reading into such texts as society evolves and context is incredibly important), was not doing it for me a book that stands for everything simultaneously stands for nothing. It caused a form of critical thought suicide. A God with all knowledge, power, etc., could make it easier to make the message objective with no forms of interpretation to make logical sense. It was kind of naïve and ignorant and bred tribalism throughout my life, especially watching my parents bicker constantly over which one was true or not, chucking books all over. That's when I came to know that all religions do is separate us from each other and the environment around us. I was taught as a child that everyone but us (Muslims to an extent) is going to perish by eternal torment, but God is simultaneously merciful and loving and allows forms of terrible evil (terminal illnesses and environmental disasters) to do so, especially knowing that there are 4200+ other religions throughout human history out there with 330m+ deities, is blissful ignorance and contradiction that I cannot ignore (a gamble) as they deny all of them based on ignorance and not finding out which would then make you an atheist with respect to the other religions yet they fail to see this and want me to do the same thing with no justification as to why. You can give me good reasons to, but that doesn't negate all the others or prove them wrong and yours right and in doing so you're being bigoted no matter what. Not to say that all justifications of beliefs are delusional I see religion as something that can be very important to some and provides meaning to their lives, especially after times of calamity etc as well as forming privative communities used to fight injustices and side with the poor in that era and additionally can be used to justify its exact opposite (exploitation war etc) and for me, it never really helped me especially when I need it the most it's always a sunk cost... There's so much more to this life than the cages of religious dogmas and superstition. Dogmatic individuals have many problems in understanding new ideas as they are comfortable in their stubborn ignorance and are hostile when you point it out... They fail to realize that their life experience determined by their material conditions shape their beliefs and to say one is better than the others is nothing but flat-out garbage as you cannot know because you can't experience their lived experience and her spamming me videos of people converting as "proof" that the religion is tRuE is beyond ludicrous but I know she only has good intentions but is unaware that no matter how good these intentions seem to you to others they can be the opposite. It's just that I do not appreciate when someone uses their own personal reasons to believe in it and put it on me like it would work the same that breeds insincerity and false belief additionally using mechanisms of shame, guilt, and fear to reinforce your beliefs to be objective truth is simply cruel and condescending. Insincere belief on matters of God is disbelief you cant simply force yourself to become sincere as that's doing the complete opposite it must come from within as it is simply personal and has no justifications as to why you have it you simply have it and it gave you a piece of mind and without someone constantly telling you to do it on their behalf. It comes off as very pushy, arrogant and two-dimensional and lacks any nuance and diverts me from even giving it a chance as I don't fit into your " rigid confines of why you should". I feel like I'm being gaslit and bullied, and forced to pick sides that I don't fully accept. I never explicitly chose not to believe our of rebellion or sake of personal gain this was a lonley and devastating realisation based on reason as opposed to my prior religious convictions fueled on purely emotional appeals and group think resulting in me never actually about if the beliefs I hold were true in the first place but instead if it can provide emotional support causing me to interpret scripture written in days old and renegotiate with it inorder to fit my current progressive worldview that's what Kickstarted my realisation of how dishonest things like that can be especially in the hands of an authority . The unsubstantiated claims and internal contradictions increase my ruminating to paralyzing levels due to the presence of uncertainty, leaving me feeling like I never had a choice. Instead of being raised as a carbon copy of my parents, why was I not raised to find my own truth and not recycle borrowed ones that are not self-evident? I know confessing and arguing with others is inherently compulsive behavior, but I always want to give in, and doing so will result in more problems, so I MUST refrain. Forcing someone down a path to a treasure they don't want robs me of a life that is my own; it's like I'm living their unlived lives. The inner parent in my mind is rarely enlightened or aligned with my intentions, yet I can observe how deeply these things run. My parents' views rarely stick out in my mind; they merge with mine, lose their identifying labels, and become sides of everyday consciousness, indistinguishable from what we more broadly want and believe.

Hello, I’m new to this app! I’ve been struggling with ocd since I was young.. I joined this app as I feel really alone and want to feel less alone in my struggles! My ocd has always been around but is better some days than others

I don't know if I can survive this, now I know that the recovery isn't linear but this OCD spike this week was something else, it's my hardest one so far, I really don't if I'll make it out alive, I'm alone and I have no one to talk to

I don’t know anymore it just feels like it’s growing like I don’t have a sexual attraction to same-sex and never did, but it feels like physical attraction I guess(emotional or romantic). Like at work there's this one dude my brain likes to linger on and i get urges to ask him out and it feels like genuinely attractive. This is a genuine attraction how I used to feel with women. Like no anxiety no nothing, or maybe a little bit because you everyone gets nervous around crushes. And now for women like if i even tried to fantasize about them it feels like i don't even like it anymore and it feels like my body and brain pushes it away when I try to fantasize or try to find a girl attractive now. Is this still HOCD and if so how can i beat this stage.

Let me start this out by saying I am not diagnosed with anything; I'm just looking for insight from people. So yeah, this all started like 5–6 months ago. I had disturbing intrusive thoughts before, but I was usually able to just shake them off but theyd always come back some days they were worse than other they were alway super disturbing but i have never experienced anything like this before and i am actually terrified that I am an awful person and i want to act on these thoughts or that i do want these thought and i am just trying to convince myself that it is ocd so i dont feel gulity about thinking about it like what if im just useing the possibility that i might have ocd as an exause that way i dont have to take responsibility for it. When I was playing Tomb Raider and listening to a podcast, I got this image of me doing something that I couldn't remember doing, and it sent me spiraling, and I'm still spiraling right now, and that kept going, me trying desperately to remember what happened by searching my search history, and my moms, and dads then i started looking for dates, asking my parents what was going on during specific days, and I'm still fighting with myself about this, and I'm just so confused as to how I could ever forget doing something like this and then it spread into my dreams. I'm pretty sure they were dreams, but it's been so long that I'm not sure if they were dreams or memories of me doing this thing. Then it spread into religion, im Christian, so it was quite anxiety-inducing, and still my thoughts go haywire when I'm at church, images about God, and just disturbing things in general. Then it spread into really distressing thoughts about suicide and hurting my family, so I started avoiding knives, scissors, and all that stuff. I also started to count pretty much everything I do. I also started avoiding cooking because every time I try and help with that stuff, I feel like I'm having a panic attack and that I'm going to get everyone sick. I've been washing my hands very often, to the point of dry cracking. I've used pure rubbing achol and bleach and soap on my hands. I cant leave the bathroom without wiping down the toilets with bleach. I also count the my seat belt because if I don't i feel like we're getting into a crash because of me. Last, I cried because I didn't finish counting, and my brain was like your mom was going to die. Also, I fell asleep before doing my nightly routine because I was exhausted, and I feel so guilty for not doing it, like my entire family could've been burned alive or our house could've been broken, and it would've been all my fault and sad. I've spent pretty much all of my days just dissasoating scrolling on TikTok. I've started avoiding showering, brushing my teeth, and using the toilet because it takes so long to do them. Because of all the counting, I've been trying every day to figure out if I'm in denial and if I'm just an awful person who wants to think about this stuff or if it's okay, plus the fact that my memory keeps reminding me of something that happened to me a couple years ago and adding stuff to it and telling. It was my fault, plus the fact that I've been avoiding animals, because of these thoughts . Ive been raking through my memory to remember what I was thinking and feeling in certain moments with certain people, or so and I just feel like an awful person, so yeah. Everyday feels so fast, and I feel not real. I spend most of my day googling and looking stuff up. I don't know anymore im scared that I do wanna do these things I'm scared that I'm just in denial? Im starting to feel numb i cant feel anything and im scared that it means i do actually want these thoughts and that i did actually do this thing that i cant remeber and i struggled to even wash the knives that were in the sink i could barley that without immediately dropping them if i did do these things i just dont think i could live with myself

I'm sick of feeling like I need to get this off my chest and confide in someone, but when I do nobody seems to get it and they just end up hurting me and making me feel more alone