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the NOCD Community

I feel like OCD has made me a shell of the person I used to be. I am not able to keep up with work, family or friends. I am worried I will lose the ability to work and connect.

It’s so hard to not seek reassurance and to not engage in mental compulsions and rituals. You will feel safe and reassured, and then the vicious OCD cycle returns coming back with “evidence” and putting memories on loop. The reassurance you did feels useless and it feels like you’re against a monster that keeps asking what if’s, how about’s, and you will’s. I miss who I was a week ago, being able to go to clubs, on vacation, hang out with friends, go on walks, watch movies and listen to music. I was a college radio DJ and would listen to hours of music and now it’s triggering. I was looking at my screen activity and noticed I started using NOCD again on Wednesday, I miss who I was on Monday and Tuesday. But it’s been comforting to know I’m not the only one experiencing this. I know ERP is scary, OCD will have you thinking you’re a special case or that this flare is different, it’s a mental hell. It’s comforting knowing I’m not alone, my family is supporting me and they’re going to help me get enrolled to get insurance and start ERP with NOCD and start sertraline again. It just feels scary, what if this time is real, what if this time it’s not OCD. Of course it’s OCD, but OCD has no logic and will latch on. Sending everyone strength and courage. Don’t give up! We got this!

I feel like something that pulls me back into the ocd cycle is the fear that I won’t ever feel like my normal self again. That every single thing I go through since OCD ruined my life will be tainted by OCD. I have been in therapy for six months now and days like today I feel hopeless that I will never get better coz it’s been too many months now and it still has a hold on me. Does anyone feel the same way?

Has anyone continuously googled themselves?? I hear of people doing background checks on themselves. I just need some support. I have done this compulsion for 6 weeks straight now. There are some spam results at the bottom of searches that contain key word stuffing phrases some which are inappropriate. I guess when spammers create these pages, the more you click on them, the more they get paid. reported to google and they even sent me an article about spam/key word stuffing and read some other stuff of people going through this. Ugh but why does my OCD have to put meaning to this!! This is so scary, I hate that i can’t use logic because clearly it’s not even related to me. This can be so distressing

This is getting bad. I genuine believe I’m gay now. Feel like I barely have any attraction to girls. I feel like I’ve always noticed attractive guys, more than girls at times but never thought anything past it. Feels weird calling myself gay but maybe because I’m so deep in denial and can’t understand it. Watched gay porn to check and it worked. Sometimes I get off to it sometimes I don’t. This was different like I tried to actually enjoy it and did. I feel lost and hopeless. I don’t want it to be me but it just feels like I’m stuck with it. I’m supposed to marry the most amazing and supportive girl in 6 months and I feel like I’m doing her a disservice. I was actually doing good and it feels like I’ve been knocked to rock bottom. I just want to be happy. I don’t care who it is anymore. I just want these weird ideas of different identities and realities to go away so I can be happy. I’m to the point where I feel like I have to physically be with a guy and test a new live to figure this out. It makes me want to be sick thinking I’ll betray my fiancée like that but I’m so lost. Please help

How can you accept uncertainty when it is maybe, maybe not a false memory and it would ruin everything when it is true? How can someone accept this? I do not remember the act of cheating, I just remember drunken thoughts like "I wanna die, how could I have forgot about my bf earlier this evening etc." I can not do this anymore, I feel like I am living a lie. I love my bf so so much and doing stugf with hin hurts me so badly. I use this as exposure but it is just getting worse.

I don’t know what it is, but I have an odd trepidation of change. There is something about it. When I buy a new shirt, I fear something bad might happen if I wear it. When we moved to a new house, I didn’t like the change at all, for 5 months straight. When I used to rent cars, I would get emotional turning them in. Why does this happen?

Because is controlling my life

Whenever I read about erp and recovery I find something like "it's not a full recovery, thoughts will still be there" and it triggers a massive anxiety attack in me and a feeling of hopelessnes. What does it REALLY mean to recover? I think I don't know anything at this point

I think i have all themes of ocd. I just overthink literraly about each and everything in my life. I am now scared of relationships in my life. I will be getting 30 next month and i am not even married. All people of my age will be in relationships and might be married. I feel like i will either die single or if i get married it won't be a good person and i won't be happy. I think negative about both cases. What age is too late for marriage? I feel too old now. I feel like my youth has already passed and i don't have any energy left. I am just so stressed and have anxiety about it😭😭

I was watching a video about mental health and self hatred was mentioned and as i was listening it, i started feel anxious and then i was like "i hate myself its so bad" and i started to feel depressed. This happened in the past alot of times and with different topics too, but now i was more aware and i could notice, this isnt true. If i would go to therapy and i would tell that i feel depressed cause i hate myself, we would work on loving myself, but now i was aware that its not that the problem. I felt really sad, cause i believed the thought that i hate myself, when i dont, i just struggle a bit now and i cant feel that big loving feeling towards myself as in normal days, and i interpreted that as i hate myself, so i started feeling sad about it. Is this part of ocd? Alot of times it happened that i had a really strong thought like this, i had like "youre depressed, youre a narcisisst, youre suicidal or i was suicidal in the past" and i believed these thoughts, expecially when the feeling of sadness came with them, it was hard to not believe them.

Is it worth being here if I’m so unhappy and struggling with my self and everything in my life? When I’m this hateful scum? I just feel awful and wish I didn’t have to put up with this, or myself. I’m sorry

Hi! Does it happen to you that your anxiety starts increasing but you don't know why (ex. there was not a particular trigger)? I feel like this during these days. What do you do when this happens?

Hello, Ive struggled with OCD throughout my life. The themes have changed as I gotten older but it ranges from being certain I was HIV positive to that I would have comitted terrible crimes. But I finally thought I kicked it when I went on medication and had a really great year with little to no Intrusive thoughts. But now the thoughts are back in full force because I’ve met the most wonderful woman and I’ve never felt like this for another person in my life. I’ve started to think I’ve cheated on her early in our relationship. When we first started to see each other I still talked to other people because we met on a dating site and i’m very afraid of rejection so I dated multiple people until our 5th date when I realized she is the one I want to persue. We didn’t become a couple until 3 months later because she wanted to take it slow. I’ve told her all of this that I still talked to another girl until our 5th date but after that I fell in love. I confessed to this multiple times and felt awful for weeks. Now I’ve let it go and started to Imagine that I talked to the other girl longer and that i’ve forgotten. I ruminate constantly, read old messages that confirm my story but I still can’t stop obsessing that what if I talked to another girl later. If that would be the case I could never forgive myself. I’ve beaten myself up for it for months now and it’s starting to ruin my health and relationship. I really need some advice. Please help, I don’t know what to do😓

I have such bad ocd over my looks and my friends aren't helping. A lot of my friends are dudes and they tend to he really crass. Yk the engineering types right? I have this one friend who's like well super honest and he's not a bad person he's my fashion friend no shade against him. I often ask him for advice for fashion and he told me I looked a lot hotter without my glasses, that I go from a 7.5 to a 10/10. Me and my ex were joking around and we are still friends and i was like "you're a 7 youfe cute why are you still single?" Amd he was like "you're an 8 and you are too!". We were just joking around and my ocd fixated on it. My other friend once we were talkijgbaboit looks and dating and he was like "you're not average but you're not a model" which is true. This other time (now this was actually kind of weird) I have this one male friend that is objectively unattractive and was into me, and i had a massive crush on a guy who's super hot and we were talking about him and he was like "well he has low self esteem so will probably say yes" which kind of hurt my feelings. We were also just talking about men and women and dating and he was like , if you make the first move unless he's smoking hot he will say yes. So either he meant he's not going to try to look for other options first so will immediately say yes, or you're mid. The same dude also told me that I was pretty so idk. My ocd is making me fixate on my looks. My depression is terrible so being pretty feels like the only way I can have value. I don't see how I'm worth anything if I'm not pretty. Like there's nothing else about me that's worth anything

Let out some tears tonight, man. I was over at my parents and my niece came home. She was sitting across from me and my ocd kept drilling into my head that you need to look to see if you see anything. It's always been that way but as if recent I've done a great job at resisting. But this time it's like the ocd said "stop putting up so much of an effort to not look. It'd be less stressful if you gave into the compulsion!" Obviously that's a lie because we all know when we give into compulsions, they make us feel worse. It's hard to not feel "why me? Why do I have to deal with this? Why do I feel compelled to look?". It's defeating because I've done well with resisting compulsions like that and it's like out of all types of compulsions in ocd why does it have to be this? What's crazy is after the compulsion, I was still at my parents and talked to my niece about coming over next week while she's on break and watching Christmas movies with her and my brother, then she came up to me as I was leaving and we gave each other a hug. I mean that should be great news right?? But the OCD is shutting that down and I'm allowing it because it's like the ocd is shaming me and I'm just taking it because I feel ashamed. It's hard not to fall into that mindset of "you haven't been triggered by this in a while, so you should be good". One thing I have to work on is having Self compassion with being triggered and feeling bothered. It's just difficult. Because with POCD, it can be easy to feel so ashamed and not worthy of self compassion. I know God will repair me. I have faith that he will continue to uphold me with his righteous right hand. I pray that he helps me to remain hopeful. OCD can knock me down as many times as it wants but what I want is to never stay down. To never change my course in fear of the OCD. I will not let this ruin the plans I made to watch Christmas movies with my niece and brother next weeks. Because I've wanted to watch Christmas movies with someone as I haven't watched any this year since I didn't have anyone to watch them with. The holidays can be a rough time for those who deal with all sorts of mental health issues. But let's try our hardest to enjoy them. To smile. ❤️💚

I have been struggling with religious OCD for about five months now, I have an official diagnosis now. Which makes sense as I look back on times in my past, I would have intrusive thoughts about God. The more I researched this topic, the more I sent myself into a downward spiral, and I was having blasphemous thoughts about the Holy Spirit, which is unforgivable, which makes me feel like I am hopeless and I’m terrified and this is ruined my life for like five months. Has anyone experienced this and is there hope for me

Hi everyone I just ran into the woman who sexually assaulted me in college. She had to wait on me at store while I was shopping for presents. I feel disgusting all over again because I was so nice to her I was trying to act like nothing ever happened I didn't even recognize anything about her at first. She was like remember me? I was being so friendly and wanted the moment to just be over, I grabbed my bag and left as soon as I could, ugh I feel so low. I felt terrible because I was being nice. I didn't know what else to do I'm ashamed and embarrassed that I handled it that way. I feel like I should have stuck up for my younger self and said yeah I remember you, you assaulted me and others around the campus! I can't stop crying.

How exactly do you stop ruminating? It’s my worst compulsion and it’s pretty much constant.

I'm tired. I have gone through a very hard month and a half in which: 1. The first few days I questioned whether my relationship was toxic just becauseI had a small conflict with my boyfriend, which we resolved immediately. 2. After this I spent several days comparing him to other people, and questioning whether or not I wanted to date someone else. I had anxiety attacks that caused me to lose weight. 3. My partner is a trans boy, so I questioned whether I would prefer to be with a cis boy. Suddenly I stopped being able to see bodies, people or faces because I immediately felt an illogical excitement in my parts, even if I didn't want to have anything with anyone who wasn't my boy. 4. Then when I got out of this loop I started to question whether my boyfriend was interested in other people sexually, and when I managed to discover that he only loved and desired me, I went back to the beginning of everything. I questioned if I wanted other people and if I preferred a penis. I'm tired. It's unbearable and sometimes it's hard for me to see if maybe it's not OCD. I'm scared that I'm not OCD and that I really prefer a guy with a penis or that I like a penis. I'm bisexual but I don't want to be with a guy who has a penis, I just want my boyfriend. Why does all this happen to me whenever our relationship is going great? Sometimes I think that my brain can't stand the idea that everything is fine, that we are happy. My brain seems to hate the idea of me being happy and looks for ways to make me extremely unhappy. Could someone give me some consolation?