Welcome to
the NOCD Community

I have been working on my ocd and I do not feel afraid of my ocd right now but I do feel very depressed and unmotivated is this a normal part of healing from ocd?

I'm curious how often people are able to taper off their meds after they get a handle on their erp? For those comfortable sharing, I would be grateful to learn how common it is to come off meds after achieving success with erp.

In 17 and not diagnose with OCD but I keep getting scared that my dad will one day develop cancer so I keep praying to God that he won't and I keep praying all day and and giving up things which are taste/ sound/ touch like music and nice food because they are ignorance jn Hinduism and I feel like God will punish me for not sacrificing it by giving my dad cancer. I couldnt even function but then I realised I could get around it by 'promising on my dad's life's to do stuff like 'promise to eat this chocolate on your dad's life' and then I had to. The problem is sometimes I promise things I don't want to do unintentionally. Likethe first thing I do in the morning is pray that my dad doesn't get cancer and then when I go downstairs there's a picture of god so i feel like I have to pray for it downstairs too I can't just walk past with ignorance but as I was praying j was thinking about how I don't want to do compulsions and I accidentally promised to god not to. But I knew I couldn't keep it up and later in the day I went to go pray again forgetting my original promise and then after I felt this awful guilty feeling like I've actually betrayed God and hurt my dad. I don't know what to do

Can OCD give you a sense of feeling “on edge” or irritable all the time? I feel like I am walking around in life about to lose control then I start spiraling with harm ocd and mental compulsions. I then start wondering if I am bipolar or something worse. I am so hypersensitive of what I am feeling mood wise that I am just questioning everything . What I do know is I am not relaxed at all . What really is upsetting here is I start thinking to myself … do I have the right doctor? What if there is something worse and no one knows? I start questioning my entire diagnosis ! How can I handle this uncertainty in a productive way while gaining more confidence that I am going to be alright ? Got two kids and a family to worry about and this is a giant distraction.

Are they really intrusive thoughts when I find myself not knowing and questioning if they really are?

My OCD has kept me from Getting serious with a guy I really loved because I was afraid he wouldn’t want me when he realized how bad my OCD was. I married somebody who wasn’t right for me. I took a job out of college that I really didn’t want because I was afraid of getting an important job and getting fired over my OCD. my whole career path was affected . After I had my son, I had so much postpartum anxiety and OCD that I didn’t have another child and I really wanted one.

anxious because I’m always annoyed at my bf and I know it’s just ocd in the form of anger but read a comment on TikTok saying your body is rejecting ur bf if you’re always annoyed and now I’m so scared :))

Hii 💋 Could u tell me what are u avoiding because of OCD, I have harm OCD and i am avoiding social interactions and I am working on it, doing exposures, but sometimes it is giving me a lot of anxiety, do u have any advices expect exposures how I can be as social as I was before these theme

My real event went from the age range of 12-17 and since it feels so recent I am struggling to forgive myself and move on. I went into more detail in my other post if you’re curious. The guilt and shame I feel for things I did as a child is ruining my life at this point.

Do you have any tips to deal with false memory? because i lack the ability to recognize if the events were real or not…

Hello, I do have lots of dilemma, I am not exactly sure what the point of this post is but I have been with my partner for about a year now and 4 months into the relationship ocd creeped in. I have had almost all the different triggers and compulsions there is to have. Luckily my partner is extremely understanding and hasn’t broken up with me yet. I was doing good for about a month prior to this and I had a massive setback because I began controlling and fixing him. I began doing ERP during that period but there was so much anxiety however I noticed I stopped doing lots of the compulsions but the anxiety totally ruined my mood and I will be unhappy most at times so I felt I most be unhappy in the relationship since I am not longer having intrusive thoughts or controlling. I also would get so mad that my partner can feel all the love and excitement in a relationship and I can’t feel it( checking for feelings) so I’ll be so angry that I would start saying deliberate hurtful things to hurt my partner to feel the hurt I am going through. I really want to stop hurting my partner but I don’t know how to. I sometimes feel frustrated that I can’t control my actions or thoughts or even delay it. Because he’d always ask how I feel when u am anxious and I will burst out with all the emotions, this has made me very rude,disrespectful and immature to him. ( our relationship was the happiest relationship before OCD, I keep his flaws but I didn’t care about them at all and saw him as perfect) now I am holding a perfectionist view of how a partner should be(idealised partner) comparing him to that. I also don’t know how to be compassionate to myself and sometimes I feel so guilty for everything he is going through. There is a lot that is going on with me but I just want to know how to start feeling like I can control the actions I take and also how to stop confessing ( I am in therapy but sometimes I just need advice from people who have gone through this)

I am terrified of posting this but am doing it as part of an exposure. This post will contain mentions of grooming, csa, pedophilia, zoophilia, incest, rape, porn, and chronic guilt. I got my first computer when I was around six years old. This was the late 2000s and my parents were pretty old when they had me so I had basically no restrictions. It basically put a huge target on my head. Over the years I was groomed a lot into thinking things like pedophilia and zoophilia were okay, i dated a guy who was 18-19 when i was 9, i saw a lot of horrific porn that I am ashamed to have seen. For a long while I looked at anime porn of things like incest, rape, beastiality, etc. I finally stopped when I was around 16 but the guilt and fear I feel over it is eating me alive. I grew up in a school system that told me 14-17 is a “young adult” and so I feel like I should have known better. I also owned a fantasy werewolf/furry dildo but threw it out a while ago because I felt so much guilt. I feel no attraction to kids or animals but if I see one I get intrusive thoughts and images which heavily distress me. I am so scared of turning into a pedophile or zoophile because of what I used to look at as a kid. I know rationally that kids and teens are weird and curious, and that being groomed wasn’t my fault. But I can’t move on or forgive myself. My OCD latches onto anything it can get its hands on but this has by far been the worst. It has made me completely abstain from anything sexual out of fear and I hate myself daily because of what I’ve seen. I am currently working with an OCD therapist and a trauma therapist. They have helped a lot but I still feel so alone in this.

Anyone else think it’s irresponsible to have kids if you have severe ocd?

Who has had challenges with this and how have you coped? I have found this extremely tough in my 6 year relationship.

One thing that I’m struggling to bear with, is how isolating this feels… I spent all evening yesterday ruminating over intense groinal responses in response to intrusive thoughts. And then I had a dream where I experienced sexual arousal due to being in bed naked with someone… Not sure who, and I didn’t touch the person in the dream… But now my ocd is putting the two together and I’m triggered to the next level right now… I’m trying so hard to dismiss this as a stupid dream but I’m finding it increasingly difficult. I’m so lost, I don’t know what to do…

I'm trying to do this on my own without meds, but I am having trouble convincing myself that I don't need to do a compulsion after a trigger. That it's ok to skip a compulsion, because I don't feel like it is. I want to clean and clean and clean, so that there are fewer compulsions and then try to address them. Short of that, I want technology to catch up and make life with ocd as functional as life without ocd.

unfortunately i’ve been having more any more dreams of my dad. in these dreams he always tries to initiate intimate acts with me, and that scares me. i’m never able to speak up and yell no. but i have these dreams so often. i start thinking, did stuff like this happen when i was young? my dad and i have always been close, especially after my parents divorced. I used to sleep in his bed as a kid. i know i don’t remember anything. but that’s where the false memories come in. it’s like i can imagine this stuff so vividly.

I’m still early in my journey and have only had a few erp sessions. After the sessions, I feel totally defeated and depressed (even if I “did well”). I am totally overwhelmed thinking about the past 15 years I’ve spent reinforcing safety behaviors and ruminating. It seems like it will take a very very long time to see and feel meaningful progress. The sessions are exhausting and I have a family- is it really worth triggering myself like this? When did you start recognizing progress?

Those of you that partake in marijuana, how does it affect your OCD? Sometimes I feel like it calms me down and rids my brain of all intrusive thoughts, sometimes I feel like I take one hit and I'm spiraling. Just wondering how it affects other people. Love you all and am very happy I downloaded this app. I feel so much less alone. ☮️

I got therapy 4-5 months ago and she helped me understand i have ocd but it was also getting worse i would hurt my self a little more and cry alot to a point i couldn't and im getting tired of ocd and therapy and talking to my teachers about it because its getting worse everyday i just want to get out of school and out of my house maybe even the mental hospital is good but i don't want to go to school or home im thinking of maybe killing my self then surviving (sorry if i triggered u)