Welcome to
the NOCD Community

24/7 I battle with my pocd and hocd, I have Intrusive thoughts and compulsions. I haven't smiled or laughed in a long time. I've made mistakes in the past that haunt me today. Any advice out there on how I can forgive myself and move forward?

im not on this app such a long time because i was doing really well. i felt like my ocd has gone and i thought maybe if i go to therapy once a month is okay like im doing really well. but then the day after i felt incredible anxiety just beacuse i put on a parfum like on the bad days too. and i got so scared like what if its gonna be like old times again. what am i gonna do. i cant resist for a second time something like that am i gonna live like this forever? i cant live like this. please if you triggered like similarity with your ocd flared up times please write to me.

recently, while on a hiking and climbing trip, i came into contact with some poison oak. living in cali, this is normal. when i got home i made sure to use Tecnu, clean all the right stuff, x y z you know the drill. A few days later i start getting a pretty bad rash on my ankle. After a day or two it had spread to large portions of both of my ankles, and even up my legs. This was the beginning of hell. For the past week or so i have been in a constant state of needing to itch, NEEDING. so bad it hurts and i actually physically cannot stop myself from scratching. Which of course makes it worse. I have been dealing with very very bad OCD for my entire life, and for the most part, have been good about my routines, what i need to do, dealing with thoughts and intrusions, but this brought it to a whole new level tonight, when i broke down crying after my father brought my phone into my room. i had left it in the bathroom after my shower, and had gone and done my other stuff, cleaning off surfaces, getting dressed, on this occasion changing my sheets because the old set had been giving me new spots of poison oak on my arms. It was late (for me), i had just had a VERY eventful evening, most of it bad, and i was tired. Thats one thing i didn't realize for a long time is how tired my OCD makes me. It is so draining to worry and to clean and to criticise myself and every last one of these things. I had just put on my new sheets, i was tired but finally okay with everything. Suddenly my dad bangs on the door, pissed. Turns out my alarm to go to bed had been going off and he heard it and it pissed him off. In an attempt to not raise anymore questions i just grabbed it from him and closed the door, apologizing. I stood there for a minute, feeling the germs from my phone seeping into my hands before i tossed it on the ground and furiously covered my hands in hand sanitizer. i sat down on my bed and out of no where started crying. I don't cry often. I am a 17 year old guy. i don't want to play into stereotypes but i really don't cry. even when im sad i just sit with it. i've never been good at it, i cry completely silently, even if its sobs. But i eventually laid back and just cried. i couldn't stop crying. i kept repeating i was so tired and i couldn't do it anymore. After a while i finally got myself up. I went along with my night, and it took so long. I can't describe to you how goddamn tiring it is. I just want to go to bed, but my bedside table is touching my bed, which is where my old sheets were, my charging cable by my bed has touched my old sheets, so it must be cleaning. My feet are disgusting from walking only from my bathroom to my room, i touched one little thing and now i have to coat my hand in hand sanitizer that is rapidly depleting because i use it so much. i can't touch any of my old water cups because i touched them when my hands had been in my old sheets, my phone is absolutely nasty from today, the bottle of calamine lotion i use on my poison oak was touched when my hands were gross, god the list goes on. I am so tired. i just want to sleep. sorry for such a long post, i am just so tired of not talking about it all. Have a good night Dan

I have a lot I need to do for work and feel like I’m slacking but I’m just so overcome with my obsessions. I can hardly focus either due to the obsessions or lack of mental energy leftover after the episodes subside. I’m frustrated because I know what I need to do a lot and I have to get focused asap. Please encourage me to get a lot done at work this week. I need to tell myself I can do it and stick to it.

Hi! I know everything works differently for everyone but what medications do you all find help your ocd the most?

TW saw a traumatizing video of this poor child in gaza and now my head wont stop replaying it. What do i do? its make me sick.

Have you ever been blackout drunk or on any substance that causes you to blackout and your ocd tells you that you did something horrible or something happened to someone and you were there and you were under the influence so your ocd gets triggered and makes you think you did it even though you weren’t having intrusive thoughts at that time in your life?

Ever since mother’s day i’ve had doubts about my feelings towards my partner of almost 2 years. We don’t have anything problems, i am attracted to him. There are a few things going ti be changing in my life we will be going to different universities and we hadn’t been hanging out as much due to conflicting school and work schedules and he went to washington for mother’s day weekend and it caused me to spiral and doubt my feelings for him. I’m not sure why i’ve had doubts in the past but they were just the usual doubts that would go away but these keep coming in waves and i tell him and i know it hurts him and i feel so guilty about it and I know i love him and i know i want to spend my life with him but at some points i get a twinge that says but what if you don’t and i just don’t understand.

I’m very early in my ERP. I tried being brave and jumping right to eating a food that I was afraid of (fear of allergic reaction or bodily sensation) and I panicked really bad and dissociated. I feel like I made a mistake and it backfired on me😞I feel really ashamed and scared and just exhausted by this stuff.

I cannot be a passenger in a car or walk around at an event or stand in a spot for more that 2 minutes without feeling lightheaded and scared that I’m going to pass out. I just can’t shake it. It won’t go away. I’ve been dealing with this for a couple months but it feels like it’s getting more severe. I also have this reoccurring thought/image in my head of passing out randomly and being in the hospital. Like i can legit picture it happening and myself laying in the hospital bed. And every-time i step foot in a car that I’m not driving i literally feel like I’m going to pass out. Yesterday i went to a friends house with my sister and mom in the car as well. I was sitting in the back and i ended up having a heart rate of 140. And it’s somewhere that I’ve been a hundred times. It’s not like i was going into the unknown. It was a 10 minute car ride that I’ve been part of multiple times. But yesterday i had a dry mouth, heart rate of 140, felt like i was burning up and felt extremely lightheaded and was convinced i was going to pass out. And i don’t know why. Like me and my sister work together and when she’s driving I’m the passenger and i feel the same way. And it’s only a 5 minute car ride. 😭and when I’m standing in line or something i instantly panic and feel like i need to sit but I’m scared to sit down because i don’t want to draw attention to myself. And by the way i pretty much suffer in silence. So unless someone notices that i get fidgety or frantic nobody knows how i feel. And I’m scared to say anything because i don’t want to go to the doctors or hospital.

Yesterday was one of my worst days in a while. Everything went downhill fast. I woke up to realize my wife had emailed the school I work at to inform them that they are under paying me. I knew she was frustrated on my behalf (I would teach for free). Teaching is a passion of mine and I only get to do it a few times a year. It’s at a massage school. I teach chair massage. She wants my hourly rate to be the same as what I charge for my massages. Do, essentially a $30 raise. She was pretty upset at the time and I thought it would blow over. I didn’t know she actually emailed the director using my email. I So, when I woke up I had to do a lot of damage control. I still have the job, but they are willing to replace me now. My 14 year old son is being just awful to me and we argue almost daily. My mom was supposed to take my kids to the pool but she canceled due to the weather. I tried calling her several times yesterday only to be sent to voicemail. I texted her later and she claimed she didn’t know I was trying to get a hold of her. Plus, she didn’t want me to know that she was watching my little brother’s kids instead. My pure O was in overdrive yesterday. I couldn’t sleep. I just woke up at noon. I’m pissed off that I watched the news yesterday. I’m glad Trump was found guilty, I just don’t think it will matter as much as it should. End of rant. There is more to it but that’s the main issues.

How do I even talk about this to ANYONE, I feel so shameful especially because why do the most horrendous images or saying pop up in my head. Just because of incident that happened @ a young age between my cousin and I, I keep telling myself I’m a P and I can’t get close to the little kids especially the ones I know because it starts attacking them. I keep fearing gods judgment like these are sinister thoughts, i NEVER wanted. I feel like this is going to follow me through death and I’ll be punished.

Early this morning I was laying in bed with my youngest daughter. My Harm OCD was having a field day. The intrusive thoughts that I would hurt her. So vivid and alarming scared me so bad. I really had to lean into "these are ocd thoughts" I know I would NEVER hurt her. My therapist has let me know OCD takes what we value most and turns it against us. Being able to identify that it is a terrible thought and the fact that it brings horrible fear with it shows that it is OCD. I just hate this. Other subtypes are horrible too but this I think is the worst. I also have suicide OCD that flares up from time to time. I have a irrational fear of dying/getting older but I still have the thought of "What if I get so bad I just snap and think its the only way out" and then I spiral in those thoughts of guilt and not wanting to get that bad. Other days I have just the residual anxiety that sits there. The physical feeling of the adrenaline dumping into my body and not knowing why. I have been able to function and I am working on reframing and identifying triggers (Fairly new to this). Not seeking reassurance, but I am wondering if anyone else has had similar. PS. I have started having very Vivid dreams when I go to bed. I don't know if its the OCD or if its the recent med change. If anyone has input or wants to discuss some of them I am very open to it.

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 :))