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the NOCD Community

Howie Mandel’s decades-long career as a comedian, actor, television host, and producer is certainly impressive, but if you ask us, it’s his tireless advocacy for the OCD community that really steals the show. Since Howie first partnered with NOCD to illustrate the real impact of OCD on social media, TV, and billboards, his openness about his personal struggle with OCD has reshaped society’s understanding of the condition. And that’s not all: Through the awareness Howie has helped us raise and the peer-reviewed outcomes we’ve achieved, NOCD has been able to form partnerships with insurance providers that make evidence-based OCD therapy more accessible than ever before. As a result of these partnerships, more than 130 million people—or over 2 in 3 Americans—with commercial insurance have access to life-changing OCD treatment covered by insurance. Watch Howie share more about this major milestone in our efforts to increase access to OCD-specialty therapy, and his hopes for what’s next.

It’s the third month of 2024 and life has been just a lot of good and bad no in between, and it’s affecting my OCD. My sibling got engaged (at first we thought it was an abusive relationship but they seem to be working things out) I started majoring in sign language and made Deaf friends, My friend’s mom died and my soul sister’s best friend died and she found the body. The thoughts about me touching something the wrong way and someone dying is going INSANE and although I think that an important part of life is remembering we all die, So much death has happened I feel like the world is caving in. False memories, magical thinking intrusive thoughts etc. Any advice?

Anybody else have obsessive ruminations about their partner being a “moral” person? It doesn’t relate to God or a higher power but rather being obsessed about my partner not causing harm to others/ fighting for social good.

I’ve been struggling with POCD since I was 18 years old, I am now 22. It’s terrifying how quickly it switched from my ocd focusing on a fear of pregnancy, to magical thinking ocd, and then to POCD. I’ve been suffering with it so much so that I’ve convinced myself and have lost friends due to confession compulsions. I have major issues with ruminating, and it frequently goes hand in hand with my relationship OCD and my Suicidal thoughts OCD. (Worrying my partner will leave me because what if I am, and that I can’t take this anymore so I have to __) I often experience things like shame, guilt, grief, and intense emotional pain that manifests itself into nausea and heartburn and sometimes headaches. I’ve tried everything, so this app really is my last resort. I wish to find community here, to know that what I’m facing I’m not alone in my battles with. I know that I’m not, so why does my brain work so hard telling me I am? I love children, I always have. But I get so afraid of being near them. I want to get better. I want to be able to spend time with my family again.

What has led you to believe that OCD is the source of truth? Or it could be that you cannot distinguish between what are thoughts and what are OCD thoughts. A normal thought considered significant becomes a compulsion especially when you attach meaning and get anxious about it. What OCD is doing in your brain is searching for threats when there are none. Trying not to have a thought is like pushing a baloon into the water in the hope that the balloon will sink, but it will come up and you know it's hopeless. That's how it's with OCD. I get that everybody is afraid to do ERP because I don't know how to emphasze this enough, it's really scary to do ERP. It's not easy. It's not supposed to be easy. If it was easy, we as a community wouldn't exist, nor OCD specialists. Because it would have been easy, and we would have gone on with our lives simply because it was easy. It's hard to do ERP. But it's worth it. And those people who still think they can't do ERP. They can instead actually try "Do nothing" about the intrusive thoughts thing. We are already exposed to intrusive thoughts whether we consciously do it or not in the case of ERP. But take the opportunity and use those intrusive thoughts as exposure and change our response around it. Sometimes I sound like I don't have OCD. And I know that. I suffer from OCD just like you do. I suffer from Pure O, Magical thinking, and superstitious numbers, and the list can go on. Even as I am writing this, my OCD is like erase that sentence and think about something positive or else something bad will happen. So what have I done then? Nothing. How do I feel? Terrible! And the distress is too uncomfortable. But this way I know, I am starving OCD. And then it tries its best to change and attack other things that I value and love. But once you decide and tell yourself with courage that, I can candle anything that OCD throws at me, that's when you claim power back from OCD. OCD knows your limit of tolerance. So it always try to go higher than that. Try not to outsmart OCD. Because you can't. What you can do is sit in the discomfort and do nothing about your thoughts and compulsions. I always say this and I will say it again, it sounds so easy. But when it comes to doing, we are all back to doing compulsions, and neutralizing thoughts. Somehow it just doesn't work. Why? Because deep inside all of us we have the what ifs, and they have us fight and flight response which makes the thoughts, urges feel so real. Except, it's not dangerous at all. So an alternative to the ERP is "Do nothing". And it's not something new, nor do I take credit of inventing it. No. Most of us are tired of OCD. We need to get tired of the default responses we have for the compulsions and replace them with nothing. We can try. Stay Safe. Awais Bahar

This is going to be more of a venting post rather than being a post that asks for advice but of course any advice is welcome! I’m very fortunate in saying that I have many many friends and a very healthy social life. But something that pisses me off more than anything is having severe debilitating OCD. Not only do I have this horrible disorder but I’m also the only one of my friends who has it and I never dare mention anything about it to them. Sometimes they’ll get mad because I’ll occasionally be late or just no show events when we plan to hang out because of my compulsions. See they just think it’s “oh he’s just trying to be cool and fashionably late” yea trust me I wish that was the case lol. What’s the most sad about this is that even though I always had OCD it hadn’t become debilitating until 2 years ago. Everyone who knows me probably thinks I’m the happiest most fun person they would ever hang with. But behind closed doors I suffer everyday :(. I would do ANYTHING AND I MEAN ANYTHING to go back to the version of myself I was 3 years ago. My 25th bday is in May and this disorder has held me back in so many aspects of my life. Most people my age are planning to move into apartments and advance their careers. Me I’m just trying to go day by day and work to defeat this disorder. If I ever get to a point where I can defeat this disorder which is literally from the depths of hell I will never take anything ordinary in life for granted ever again!

My OCD makes me angry at the world. I have been so angry/irritable lately and I can’t seem to control it. Does anyone else struggle with anger and rage due to their OCD?

I am always anxious and overthinking in my relationship I’m scared that it’s the Lords way of telling me he isn’t the one. I always hear that when you’re with the right person you’ll have peace about it and know that they’re the one.. but that freaks me out because I’m alwaysss overthinking and anxious 😭 I’m scared that he isn’t the one the Lord has for me

I spend a lot of time ruminating about my health and how I'm going to get past all of the thoughts I think of and the events that I think of in the past. It leaves me really nauseous randomly throughout my days. Anyone else get this from their OCD? It makes me worry more about my health

Hello everyone, Happy Sunday. I am still working on locating individuals who are interested in partaking in my research. Please please take a moment to read the attachment on this post! I am initiating my integrated research project for my masters program and need a few participants to partake in a brief interview. Again, kindly read the document and message me directly to the email listed if you meet the criteria and are truly interested in participating. 💕🫶🏼 greatly appreciate you all who take the time to reach out!! Thanks so much in advance, Vanessa

This is the worst my OCD has gotten! I’ve freaked out many times about harming my children, touching them inappropriately, etc. the other night I got blackout drunk and woke up and had thoughts of something specifically that I did to my 5 year old. It’s horrendous. Do you think it’s possible to become our worst fear when drunk? Do you think my son would wake up if I did something? This is awful! And I’ve been very suicidal since. I’m not sure how I can accept the uncertainty of this and move on. Yes, I’m in therapy.

I can't seem to shake the troubling sexual images that come to mind when I'm feeling alright. I like men, hell I'm getting married to one. He's the light of my life. But when this started in 2022 I can't shake these sexual images that pop up so frequently about being with other women. I'm not into it. But my body reacts differently and it sucks. I don't know what to do or what this is but it's really awful. Please help

I developed ocd only after having my first baby. Postpartum ocd. It never went away and i’ve had it on and off ever since. I have a question..If you are so focused and stuck on an intrusive thought and you tell yourself over and over “it isn’t real because you’ve never had these kind of thoughts before it’s just the ocd” and then suddenly a random memory pops up from before the baby but this time its different than you remember and now you are having an ocd thought in the memory but you know you never had ocd before the baby..can ocd change a memory and add something to it to fit the lie the ocd is trying to convince you of? Has this happened to anyone else?

Does everyone really have em too?

For the past 8 months I’ve been terrified of developing schizophrenia, I’ve gone through various stages of this theme, like in the beginning I was really afraid of hallucinating and stuff like that but as the months and this obsession progressed I’ve become more afraid of having delusions and the negative symptoms of schizophrenia. In the beginning after watching a demonic horror movie or something I would start getting awful intrusive thoughts like “what if I start to believe my wife is a demon” or “what if I start believing the government is run by satan” or some shit, but now i get thoughts like that all the time and even without watching horror movies, and now the “what if I start to believe” part is gone and now the thoughts are like “what if my wife is a demon.. well you can’t prove she’s not” etc etc. my ocd or anxiety has really latched onto these delusional, demonic thoughts. I hate them so much, I have never ever believed in superstitious stuff like this before, I am a literal atheist and a secular humanist. What is wrong with me? Has anyone ever had intrusive thoughts like this?

That I hate that joke. It's made a bunch of people that have no idea the depths that it can bring people to.

Has anyone here stopped taking hormonal birth control pill when in a relationship? How did it affect attraction to partner, sex, and ability to orgasm etc. I just stopped taking the birth control pill for medical reasons but I’m freaking out about how it might impact my sexuality/ attraction

Has anyone successfully conquered this type of ocd, if anyone does I really need to talk to someone and ask a few questions❤️

Hello! I'm not quite sure if this "symptom" is part of OCD, but I'm curious. Does anyone have an absolute need for a routine? I usually create a bullet point list (sometimes with times) either on my phone or on a sheet of paper. It feels like I'm a bit rigid at times as well. Not a huge fan of events or things happening that would disrupt my routine or list. I'm fairly new to understanding my OCD diagnosis, so I would love to hear other opinions! Thank you.

Hi all, this technically isn’t OCD related although I believe my OCD and hyper fixation on it is making it worse. I just know this community has been supportive in the past. I was able to get past my harm thoughts and urges OCD which made life hell a year and a half ago. I thought that was impossible, but I did it and feel like that is behind me. Although thoughts still come into my mind, I manage so much better. Recently, after a painful ear irrigation to clean ear wax I got stuck because I had a bad habit of sticking my finger in there to clean it out. Ever since then, I’ve had a feeling of fullness in that ear and now tinnitus which has just gotten worse and is in the other ear now. Multiple tones, like 8 or so. I’m also getting noise distortions and can’t mask my tinnitus very well because it seems to get louder with a lot of other noises. My life feels like a living hell, I miss my old hearing and the worst part of this is that I feel like it’s all my fault. Maybe that’s my OCD wanting to go back in time and not completely ruin my life. I don’t know how to go forward, and it doesn’t seem to get better, only worse. Feeling suicidal. By comparison, OCD felt easy. Thoughts I realized are controllable. This can’t be controlled though and I hate it. I don’t see a way out of this at this point unless I start seeing improvements. Any support helps.