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Has anyone read the article in the Guardian yesterday by Rose Cartwright? It basically says OCD is not a medical condition in the brain but the brain is formed by trauma in childhood. So I guess she means deal with the trauma and the intrusive thoughts stop? I have had therapy for many years have dealt with my traumas but it never helped my anxiety and intrusive thoughts. 🤷‍♀️ https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/apr/13/i-was-the-poster-girl-for-ocd-then-i-began-to-question-everything-id-been-told-about-mental-illness?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

It might just be the opposite of what I fear; it might just be OCD. The whole thing about being uncertain of something that you're not willing to tolerate not knowing is a sign of how distressed you are by it. Having uncertainty and obsessing and worrying about not being certain about something should be self-reassuring because it means that you're wondering and thinking painfully about an issue that many wouldn't even question or doubt themselves within; it bothers you and it scares you. It suggests that you're clearly not what you fear the most. All this time, you thought that in order to not be a monster, you should never even notice and think about these scary and disturbing things in the first place. But maybe the fact itself that you're obsessing about this bothering stuff, trying to figure it out, confirms that you're the furthest thing away from being that monster. Not wanting to be is an enough answer. All the things that are triggering us daily, are just tests in which we have to always recognise when we're about to ruminate and pull ourselves out of it, and thinking it as a chance and a challenge to practice exposure and response prevention.

So today I was typing a message on my phone and my boyfriend is playful sometimes and likes to try and get on my nerves a little bit, so he started tapping on the screen and I pushed his hand away (maybe a little too aggressively) and said “stop it.” I was getting genuinely annoyed so I walked across the room where he followed me and then started playfully hitting my arm. I said stop and he did it a couple more times then stopped and at that point I was already overthinking (abuse is a common obsession for me; sometimes I’ll even get painful sensations for a long time after in the places he barely touched me) and started asking reassurance questions like “why were you hitting me?” etc. He said I was hitting back, which tbh I don’t even remember if I was—I don’t think I was—and basically just tried to calm me down. We’ve been dating for over 3 years, so he’s very familiar with the way I act and things I say when I’m obsessing. It’s just stressing me out so much, we play fight all the time and I know he wasn’t trying to hurt me, but I have a really hard time trusting him and my brain just ticks every time something like this comes up.

I have been going over how my ocd will affect a future relationship. The things I struggle with in my OCD is cleaning and contamination. There are times where when I feel at my worst, I have to wash any cooking or eating utensil/dish/pan/pot multiple times. I think the max amount of times I have washed a single bowl alone in one wash is 17 times. That's just a bowl. I also when cleaning use gloves that they use at doctor's offices and/or hospitals. It helps me to feel like I won't need to wash or complete a compulsion(s). So my question is would I be enabling myself or no because I am constantly going over in my head what I should be doing or not being doing and it's always so exhausting.

Because I’m travelling I’ve started taking a lot of photos and I’ve made the decision to make a hobby of it. Coincidentally I want to take photos of street people but feel rude or guilty about exploiting them. My solution is to give them money or food and ask for a photo in return. This crosses the line between begging and paid modelling work. Everybody is happy and the photos will even highlight their situation. I’ve wanted to do good work here since I arrived but didn’t want to feel like a mug. Here is my first photo of a lady that asked for money at the bus stand. She was a natural.

I’ve fallen into another on going episode of OCD one of my worst ones, this happens often where I’ll be in remission for about a month or so then my OCD flares up for a couple months. My most reoccurring form of OCD is relationship OCD though I suffer from others as well. My overthinking about my girlfriend and our relationship is tormenting my mind. She’s a wonderful woman and my thoughts my horrible thoughts have been making our time together insufferable but not to her but to me, normally I love being around her and even going through this I adore her and want to always be with her, I keep my thoughts to myself for the most part but she notices that I’m not ok but I can’t tell her what I’m thinking cuz I don’t want to make her feel like I just think she’s horrible or not loyal to me. She is and she loves me very much and does her best to ease my mind. I just feel like such a problem and my thoughts drive me crazy I literally hold my head and cry just wanting the thoughts to stop they flood my mind unintentionally and cause me great emotional pain…I wanted to just end myself today to just be done with it.. but ik she’d be crushed if I did, that’s all that’s keeping me alive. My mind is my biggest enemy and I can’t silence it. Please help anyone I don’t care if you think I’m overreacting I probably am just please how do I make them stop? How can I stay alive…

I’ve been having constant delusional thoughts about my family not being my family or being swapped somehow. It started out as very existential what ifs as well as me just in general being delusional or schizophrenic but has now actually moved into delusional thinking. It really scares me because my brain will start to look for proof that it’s true when I’m constantly trying to logic my way out of it. I get thoughts like “what if your family are skin walkers” and my brain will try to find a reason why unwillingly, and then I will fight that thought. And when I do that it will find the deepest delusional thought to combat that rational thought. Like I’ll see something and get a crazy thought “what if that’s a warning or sign that your family is not your family” “what if that thought was put in your head” “what if none of your thoughts are yours” or something insane along those lines, and it can truly feel like it could be happening but I still know deep down it’s not. Like I know there are a million logical explanations for why it isn’t true but my mind wants to stick to the worst thing imaginable. It’s like my brain is forcing me to find a reason on why it could be true, and making bizzare connections, when I just know in my core it’s not. I fear that I’m developing schizophrenia. I just don’t understand why there is a part of me that is considering this as a possibility when I know it’s not? Even when I say I know I can’t feel that feeling of knowing. It also almost feels like I am forcing myself to write normally, like I question if I’m just in denial and am just coping with this being true or something. I saw a psychiatrist and told me he believes it’s OCD, but I sometimes just don’t understand why these thoughts can get so deep. I truly feel like I’m insane. Like I’m aware of my own paranoia or psychosis.

I used to have big dreams of being a professional dancer in NYC. It didn’t really matter to me what style. I danced for about nine years, ages 9-17 (almost 18). Nearly half of those years were competitive, with around 2-3 classes a day, 4 days a week. I wasn’t the best in my class considering 9-10 is still pretty late to start dance. I had thicker thighs and flat feet, but I worked my absolute ass off to try and make that dream happen. I did ballet, pointe, contemporary/modern, jazz, and hip hop. I think I was too afraid to go all in when it came time to graduate. I didn’t have the best home life, so I was desperate to leave my dad’s house ASAP. Dancing was put aside while I ended up going to cosmetology school and briefly becoming an esthetician as a way to support myself enough to leave home at 18. I always thought I could come back to dance later, that I could still make my dreams come true in some capacity. From 18-20, I worked as an esthetician for 12 hours a day, 4 days a week. I did some ballet classes here and there, but not nearly enough to maintain what I’d learned throughout the years. Even with 3 days off, I was burned out and exhausted. I wanted to do fun young people things. I moved in with my girlfriend. My mental health started suffering. Then Covid hit. From 20-22 got comfortable with the isolation and staying home that Covid brought. I didn’t know about online dance classes or anything then. Then from 22-24, even though lockdowns were lifted, my mental health was at an all time low. Constant obsessing, ruminating, reassurance seeking, finding new reasons to hate myself. Hundreds of days just lost to Google. I wasn’t even thinking about dance. I accepted that I failed. And now I’m 24. I will be 25 in July. I’m employed part time as a pet caretaker, and it has hit me that I threw away the one thing that I was truly passionate about. My childhood dream. It’s been nearly 7 years since I danced on a stage. I live in NYC, just like little me wanted. I have just signed up for some low level ballet classes. But all I ever wanted was to be a professional dancer, and now that will never happen because 24 is “too old” to start as a professional. Even though I have about 9 years of experience, I wasn’t the best in my class. I was always behind. But I put my entire heart and soul into it because I knew in my heart it’s what I wanted. I know I can still dance for fun, but that isn’t really what I want. I want to perform onstage. I want people to see me. I want to be talented and recognized. But I threw that all away for the chance to get away from my parents and stew in my mental illness. I have been ruminating all day. I wish I could make my dream come true. But I feel like I just need to accept that it won’t happen no matter how hard I try. I’m nearly retirement age in dance years. There is really no other career I want. I just want to cry. Sorry for the rant. Don’t give up on your dreams please. Don’t be like me.

i was at a rehearsal yesterday and i got super afraid of hurting someone for no reason. i wish i could tell someone, but i don’t know how to get them to understand that i don’t want to and i truly won’t? it’s really scary and i can’t really isolate because i’m around other people. instead i just start feeling terribly icky, if you know what mean. like my own skin shouldn’t be touching me. i feel horrible for thinking about any of it.

I can’t even tell if my intrusive thoughts are real or not. Sometimes I feel like I want the thoughts or am just in denial and some of the actions I’ve done in my past, I can’t forgive myself for. I have Real Event OCD and I can’t forgive myself for my mistakes. I hate myself so much. I hate feeling like such a bad person all the time. My themes have also continuously switched and it feels like I have a new theme every few months. I’m so done with this and I don’t know what to do.

Receiving the email congratulating me on 6 months was a pleasant surprise this morning. When I was notified that I received my conquerer badge back in October, I was feeling pessimistic and not nice towards my progress, so I didn’t share it. But, I’ll share this achievement. I was finally diagnosed with OCD at 31. I’ve been in therapy with NOCD for a little over 2 years. When I started ERP, I went in blind, not knowing what to expect. The work was really, really hard. I had to learn how to undo years of mental compulsions and OCD-related habits. I was constantly tired, scared, and mentally exhausted. I took life day by day. If you’re in ERP, you’re probably familiar with the pattern of starting an exposure, feeling really scared, doing all of the hard work, until that exposure gets easier and easier, and you cross it off your list. Then you start the next one. My journey was sitting in my car for my therapy sessions, going to work after, and doing my exposures during the week. I cried often, i got frustrated with myself for not doing my exposures “perfectly,” for not being able to do things like a “normal” person. But then, I noticed changes. I realized instead of just feeling fear, or apprehension—I was also feeling that I could get through the exposures. My mindset went from “I don’t want to do this, it’s too much, I miss my comfort zone of compulsions,”—to “ugh, I don’t want to do my homework, but I will-because I know this is my way through.” Here is what I can do now, in my life, that I could not do years ago: I can use public restrooms. I can drive further than 20 minutes on the freeway. I drove about 4 hours all together last weekend. I can drive at night again. I used to love it, ocd took it away from me, but I took it back. I drove in the pouring rain on the freeway today, and I forgot to be scared. I joked with my friend instead as I drove. I care so much less about what people think of me, in small moments (how I look being new to the gym, how I appear in public doing simple things). When thoughts of death come up, I can dismiss them. I’m not afraid to be around my grandmother (I feared emotional contamination for years and years and years). I still have hard days. Last month, I thought I was going to relapse. Starting medication was really hard, because of the unknown. But here’s the magic of ERP—you develop the skills, and you don’t lose them. I worked through my fears of relapse over a new theme, I was honest with my therapist-and I bounced back. I bounced back so much quicker than I thought I would. I still struggle with grief, of things ocd took a hold of. I’m still working on acceptance. But I’m finding my values and living my life according to them. I can be my authentic self. Wherever you are at in your journey-you will find the peace you’re looking for. You are all more than your OCD. If you haven’t found that yet, you will. And I can’t wait to hear about it.

Hi my name is Haley. This is my first time using NOCD. I'm reaching out to talk about my trama and what has been bothering me for a very very long time. I don't like being judged. So this is a no judgement zone. I have been through hell for as long as I can remember. From All 4 abuse categories. From also losing my baby 2 years ago and from the nightmares. I need help and I'm admitting that. I have an appointment scheduled Monday with a therapist on this app. I would like some advice. Please and ty

I mean like we believe in the devil and demons, then you hear that others on social media talks about ocd being a demon possession, or any mental illness being a demon, and if you believe that and it helps you, do it, but this makes me more paranoid. I just let my tiktok algoritm become more christian but then it ended up being this "we call everything a sin and a demon" type of videos which made me question if im really a good person and saved, and now im even afraid of demons, that they are attacking me and thats why im dealing with fear, and it just scares me, it became so bad that i start to get paranoid like im sure you experienced that when you think youve seen something in the corner of your eye, like something moved, and this just worsenes the fear... i know im dealing with fear but you know my mind still makes up shit... As a christian its really hard to deal with ocd, cause we do believe in demons but we cant view mental illness as possession, it just doesnt help, and i got to a point where i started questioning everything i hear about the bible and then i realized maybe its not a good thing tho, so i started to learn about things and now im back at fearing demons and that i have a demon or i can be posessed in the future. Same with sins, legalist people made me angry so i just ignored everything they said but then i realized maybe its egoistic to think everything they say its just legalism, and i went back learning about it and now im having this legalist/is this a sin or not problem. It feels like im on a spiral, i always come back to fear demons and fear that what i do is actually a sin and i live a sinful life

I’ve only taken two showers in the last month because I can no longer take cleaning the hair trap and the hair and scum and pooh particles out of the tub. I’m afraid of the germs on the walls, shower curtain, floor mat, and grab bar. I can’t even use the main toilet because I’m afraid of what I’ll sit on. I heater being dirty, but I hate the thought of other peoples hair and germs touching me.

I don’t know where else to go, I feel as though my depression just keeps getting worse and worse and even though my ocd is under control, it still makes me upset. It truly is a life ruiner and there’s nothing I could do about it but take medication and learn to adapt. Not only that, I’m starting to feel like my home isn’t a “happy home” that much anymore. Everyday or at least every other day there is an argument between my parents. I hear it, even at times where it’s 1 am and I can literally hear them angrily have sex and THEN going back to arguing and crying and shit. This is relevant because I started getting more unwanted thoughts about my dad and mom, not only with my harm ocd but maybe a newly stemming ocd too ? 100% gross sexual images pop into my head and I fucking hate it. I just need some comfort and to be told I’m not alone.

How can I tell the difference between avoidance and fighting a compulsion. I thought check ALOT I’m constantly checking the thoughts are there half the time I don’t realise till I’m mid doing it. So I’ve just been really trying not to and even when I’m watching something I’ve been really confused on concentrating and not thinking the thought that I’m not sure if I’m just avoiding thinking at all or trying to fight the compulsion to check 😐😐

In a great place with my OCD but had some lingering anxiety I couldn’t shake. Just started taking Prozac and am curious if anyone has taken it and what their experience has been. Currently I’m on day 3 and feeling tons of energy and am happy but not sure if that’s normal / will last.

Hello everyone, I struggle with believing I washed my hands the entire time I counted for a specific time such as 20 seconds. I guess I doubt that my hands were moving the entire time. I sometimes feel I need to have my partner watch me when I count and wash and that makes me believe I washed for the entire 20 seconds. Does anyone struggle with this? I don't want to count anymore as I know this is a compulsion. This started during COVID. I don't feel I know how to wash hands normally, without thinking about it and worrying if I did it enough. Any advice on how to fight this would be very appreciated. Thank you!

Hello all! Hoping everyone has been feeling good! For the most part id say ive pretty much gotten thru my most recent episode but i will still have some hiccups, which brings me here. My hardest theme is POCD. Somedays i can shake it off , even laugh and other days im just in mental prison. For me, the two most triggering factors regarding this theme are groinal responses & false memories . When one takes the back seat it doesnt seem so real but if one is at the forefront i can still get stuck ruminating on it. so heres my question, especially for those who are parents …. How do you move past false memories? My situation was changing a diaper, having an intrusive thought/urge and then almost INSTANTLY started questioning if i acted on it and just didn’t realize? So ofc i replay the moment. Over and over again to no avail. I know the whole deal with ocd is to accept the uncertainty, but how do you accept something of this nature? Deep down i dont think ive ever behaved inappropriately as i have no desire to and because of this i know its why ocd latches …but when i obsess , re-imagine, re-play the scenario, it FEELS real or like it could have happened? Ive asked here before and got some responses but it does seem like for me it starts as an intrusive thought and quickly turns into false memory, not like how it seems for most people where they may search for a past event and the ocd adds new details creating the false memory. So just wondering if anyone can relate or give advice on how to stop questioning reality 🤌🏼

Parts of the day I feel my body get stressed from the thoughts. But a lot of times I just don’t! I have the feeling and the thoughts, I don’t want them, but there’s no anxiety, just some kind of sadness