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the NOCD Community

Hello everyone, I'm just now hearing about the various types of OCD. I was diagnosed with Bipolar 1 in 2007. I always suffered from anxiety since early childhood as I grew up in an unstable and abusive home between 2 households. I have insecurities with relationships both with family and friends. I tend to feel unworthy of love or respect which makes ppl take advantage of my efforts to make friends or ask for help. I wasn't shown much respect as a child which explains a lot of my symptoms of anxiety and depression. I feel like I was punished and blamed for not reporting my abuser as a child which haunts me to this day 50 yrs later.

Hi, I’m Lukas, 21 years old and am going through some sort of a crisis at the minute. Some time ago I had an argument with my boyfriend after lying to him about something. After weeks of worrying and overthinking I finally found the courage to tell him the truth, as I thought that would make me feel better and less guilty, which it did (he also want mad about it). However now I’m back to worrying as my mind is telling me that I did some other things, such as sleeping with someone other than my boyfriend. I’ve been finding myself spiralling for a day now and gradually start believing that I actually did cheat on my boyfriend, which I know deep inside me is not the case. However I keep questioning my memory and don’t know what to do. I have the urge to tell him, even though I know that my mind is just playing a trick on me. For instance I spent the entire day today with my friends and family, but despite that I still have the feeling that I did something just like what I previously mentioned, which is next to impossible. I just don’t know what to do, I don’t want to lose my boyfriend. I really need some help and/or advice.

Are there any demisexuals on here that struggle with SO-OCD (I'm a straight woman, or so I think I am). It's a struggle to know what's OCD and what isn't

Does anyone else get the theme of fear of going crazy or into a psychosis ? I’ve been having that fear lately and it has been the worse ever. I’ve never had these thoughts before and I don’t know what triggered them that they won’t go way. I couldn’t eat for days from how scared I was of these thoughts. I keep having intrusive thoughts like what if you’re imagining it for example I was at TJ Maxx with my mom and I was looking for her and when I saw her a thought popped into my head like “what if that’s not her and your imagining it” it was so scary that I wanted to cry. Of course apart of me knows that’s not true but the thoughts keep popping up. I’m so scared and just want to be myself again. So if anyone has gone through this theme can you please tell me what helped you. I’ve also struggled with harm ocd, suicidal ocd and a lot of health anxiety. I can’t afford therapy so if yall have any recommendations on what helped your ocd please let me know. I’m so tired and feel so helpless. I want my life back.

Hey, this isn't really ocd related but I just wanted to know if anyone else has MDD ( Major Depression Disorder) it's also known as Clinical Depression. I also have OCD as well. But if anyone else has MDD, I'd just like to hear any advice on how to get over those tough days dealing with it or sharing your story with it. Mine just have been bad for a lil while now and today it just feels pretty unforgiving to me. I have work soon but idk, I just feel so out of it. And my bf and I are taking a break as of last night cause sometimes I just feel so different that I need to figure out who I am or what. I just get very numb or almost like a zombie almost? I can't quite explain it. But yeah I didn't know where else to ask and thought I'd ask here real quick haha. Thanks for anyone who replies. I just feel stuck, It's like I have the key to open the lock but my will power just won't let me I have looked on YouTube to look for people's experiences cause I like knowing I'm not alone in this battle. But I didn't really see videos besides Dr's. Telling you what it is lol where I'm looking for someone telling their story and what has helped them. I like supporting those videos cause it helps the community get more recognized.

its been over a month and im losing hope of these thoughts ever going away. im so sick of this. every waking second im just over here thinking im a serial killer. i’ve convinced myself the only thing that would make my thoughts go away is if i act on them or end my own life. i cant keep doing this..

Just a quick question for anyone on here today. Does anyone else's OCD get more prominent when they're mad?? Not necessarily "mad" but just frustrated. For example, I'll be having an argument with my girl and the intrusive thoughts just seem to arise way more frequent and severe i guess is a word i can use for it. They just pester me a lot more when I'm frustrated rather than just sitting around playing a video game or something. Appreciate y'all wit the feedback. Have a good one.

Hi all!! It's been a while since I've been on here and I just want to say everybody can do this. When I was diagnosed with ocd and specifically so-ocd I thought oh lord I'm lying to myself and my sexuality. No! I've always been straight and will be!! Anyway, what I have learned is to let thought be a thought (that is harder than it seems). But if you try to not force the thought and let it leave when you want and show the thoughts that you are unbothered things will become easier. But today I have the realization that I no longer have the urge to figure it out because I do know who I am and that these thoughts are not of me. I no longer feel like I am lying to myself and I feel more and more like my old self. Anyway, if you have read all the way here just know you got this I'm proud and I feel myself beating ocd every day. You will have your down days and that's ok just get back up and keep moving forward. Love you all❤️

Hi, I'm new and have my first NOCD session next week. I was trying to waiting to post on here but I'm really really struggling. I struggle with mold and bacteria atm, and keep wanting reassurance that things are normal/common/okay/not harmful. It's hard to know the line because of past trauma and living with a hoarder for 20 plus years who never taught me how to clean anything. I have health issues that I'm waiting to see what the cause is and I'm afraid, very afraid of mold, right now. In fact, I'm writing this after a big trigger. I panic when I learn I haven't cleaned something I was supposed to and now I just sit and worry or extend myself to thin on cleaning. Please don't give advice on how to clean because things like Google and internet advice just makes me panic more. I'm at a loss and feel panicky. Any advice for dealing with mental anxiety attacks while waiting for my first session? It's impeding me from moving forward with my day. I'd love to hear from people who deal specifically with this OCD that have already been to therapy. Trying not to ask for reassurance.

My main worries around my ocd is pocd and being a bad person. Everyday, it’s always in the back of my head. At school . At work. And they aren’t even what if thoughts. It’s just feelings impending doom and thoughts like “u are a bad person and u have to live with the fact that u are and some choices you’ve made” I hate feeling like a bad person all the time. It makes me hate myself and I get sad about it 24/7 I only have periods of clarity when im distracting myself extremely. I really am sad. I feel tainted. I also feel like a fraud hiding behind a mask to everyone no matter what I do no matter if im being genuine and my raw authentic self

I have a boyfriend I’ve been with for 11 months today. He’s great, caring, kind, funny, etc. But he’s very aggressive when he’s mad or jealous and he is the rudest person I’ve ever met when we fight. He has squeezed me, grabbed me, pulled me, and today he hit me on the head with a water bottle, not hard, but not very gently either. I’m assuming he thought it was funny. We are 16, our families are close, so I wouldn’t consider this too serious because we’re young. But he never listens to me when I tell him, “that hurt!” He laughs and will most often say, “i barely tapped you.” He is about twice the size of me, and I’m starting to completely resent him, and honestly, I’ve told him that. For the most part we are very healthy, we have lots of trust and communication, we work things out beautifully too but he’s just too damn aggressive and won’t listen to me all the amounts of times i cry. he’ll call me names. I’m admittedly not the best girlfriend, i have a lot of baggage and trauma from my past that causes me to have an avoidant attachment style and have a rage problem. I understand the mean words he uses, but he should never ever be aggressive to me. I just need another side to this. I need someone to comment what they think so I can show him, because he just thinks he’s done nothing wrong and that I’m just dramatic. I know a lot of people on here are adults, so I’m asking for help.

Ok so basically I have a question and it's genuinely like a question, when having false groinal responses/ erections, can those happen while having a loss of attraction to your preferred sex? Say like your into guys and then you all of a sudden loose attraction to guys but you still have groinal response to girls, is that something y'all have experienced? Like it happened and I was still feeling those groinal responses but it was so hard to get erect at erotic media of men, and then maybe 7 or 5 days after the loss, I had a thought about one of my male friends that I thought I had a crush on and it all came back, anyone relate?

I struggle a lot with ROCD and I'm so worried that I'm burdening my partner with these issues I have. He hasn't told me that or anything but I'm so worried that I'm letting him down by being so scared. Anyone relate?

does anyone knownif there is any truth behind the statement that strep throat can cause an onset of mental health issues such as ocd?? I used to have strep throat a lot as a child and early teen, but now I don't get sick very often. I've seen some tik toks talking about how people can develop ocd after experiencing certain infections, commonly strep throat. has anyone else heard of this or know why it happens?

I don’t really wanna go into detail about what it’s about cause I feel like it’s super embarrassing, but there’s this one specific type of intrusive thought I get that I struggle extremely with ignoring/sitting in discomfort with. Does anyone have tips for managing something like this?

i’ve been dealing with SOOCD for a while now. in the beginning i remember getting random thoughts about secretly being gay because whenever i see a woman portrayed in a sexual manner (like butt naked and/or doing something super sexual) i would get aroused. i used to brush it off because i just knew i didn’t want to be with a woman and i was and always have been only interested in men. I would only get aroused seeing those things in media and ofc porn but never in real life. I would even sit and stare at the content trying to see why i was aroused because it would only give me a groinal feeling and not the same attraction i felt when i saw sexual content about men (i had a HEALTHY libido growing up and all i thought about was men). i would watch music videos and not think anything of it but when something sexual came up or if a woman was nude or doing something sexual i would get aroused and as my anxiety got worse the intrusive thoughts started to pop up and stick around for longer. i tried to understand why it was happening and i realized i was exposed to sexual content at a pretty young age (thank you google) and i knew what sex was and how a woman “should look” during sex and anything that was even a little bit sexual made me aroused . Like me looking at myself naked would arouse me because i felt like “oh this is sexual” ykwim? and if i saw like lacy underwear i would be like “oh this is for sex.” in middle school the world history textbooks had pictures of statues with women without shirts and i automatically got aroused and i was concerned and confused but i realized oh i immediately think this means sex? like a woman only looks like that to have sex? i think my exposure to sexual content at a young age warped my idea of sex and what being sexual is? idk if what i’m saying is making sense. anyways in high school i noticed i started getting urges to watch any sexual content or anything involving sexual content whether it involved girls or guys and that triggered my intrusive thoughts even more. i still had and have no desire to be with a girl. I would rather never marry and be single all my life than even think of experimenting with a girl. basically i’m writing this all bc i was triggered by a cardi b post where she started twerking in a thong out of nowhere (i should’ve expected it) and i got the most massive groinal response and i got extremely anxious and i started thinking “you’ve always been aroused by sexual content like this your gay” “your lying to yourself” “this isn’t just ocd stop lying” “there was too much exploration in your childhood to mean ur straight” “you don’t even have a libido or attraction to men anymore but you get aroused to this?? ur gay”. and so i’m here ranting and not making sense. i miss being boy crazy so fucking much i hate living like this i used to be so BOY CRAZY that these things and experiences and thoughts never affected me but now that it’s all gone and it’s been so long since i’ve felt any of it the intrusive thoughts hit me harder. ok i’m done sorry this is all over the place.

Vent My real event ocd is flaring up badly again, I just started school and keep having the intrusive thoughts that I don’t belong here because I’m a horrible person, that I should just give up because I’m a monster, and that I shouldn’t even try and pursue a career in the field I’m interested in because my real event will come back to haunt me and I will end up in jail. My real event happened when I was a child around 10 or 11 and at the time I had no bad intentions and didn’t realize what I was doing could be perceived as inappropriate or sexual since we were both girls, I just thought it was me and my friend who was younger than me being stupid. I have really struggled moving on from this real event, I’m 22 now and started really struggling with obsessive intrusive thoughts over this real event when I was 19. The intrusive thoughts have come and gone over the years but it’s currently flaring up really bad as I am starting at a new college, my ocd actually impacted my college life so much that I’m about two years behind everyone else. I should’ve graduated last year but because my ocd consumed my life, i basically dropped out and now I’m starting fresh but I feel like I don’t deserve it and that I’m a monster and I’m horrible and that I’ve ruined someone’s life. I also have the constant fear that I’m going to get into trouble, go to jail, lose everyone and everything, and that everyone will hate me. I also have so many false memories involving this event that feel so real and terrify me because it felt so real and I felt like a monster. I’ve told my mom about this event and she said I did nothing wrong and that it’s normal and that I was a child, but it’s impacting my life to this day. I’m getting back into the routine of taking my meds but god I just feel like I’m horrible, I keep feeling the need to confess and then my fears are temporarily gone but they always come back and it’s a constant cycle.

I have suicidal ocd and fear of depression. Lately I have really been trying to accept these thoughts and they are terrifying. Is this what OCD recovery feels like. Does the panic and fear and feeling like out of control go up when you’re trying to accept something so hard.? Anyone else like this? Do you feel out of control when acknowledging your feelings. Like the past two days I have really been thinking on my feelings and talking them in my brain but my panic is so out of control and my stomach hurts and I feel shaky and scared of my self. Anyone else!?!!

…waiting for someone you already meant spiritually… it’s hard. I just want to physically be with them and I can’t. Even with all the knowledge I have about them…temporarily cope. Having activities/self work has helped a lot, ive created healthy boundaries with myself while remaining completely open in expressing myself. Perfection doesn’t exist So here I am having a hard time tolerating… tolerating that they aren’t physically here… yet?. …also I sincerely hate intrusive OCD. At least I grinned at this meme 🥴. I’m going to 💤 ✌🏼 yall.

Having ocd can either make life difficult or painful or both depending on the theme(s). For me it’s painful. My ocd latches onto my children. I have very upsetting harm and pocd intrusive thoughts. Sometimes it’s easy to shrug them off but other times the ocd makes it seem likes it’s me thinking these things and it feels so real and it has me so depressed. I never used to see any parents posting about this but recently there have been a few. I know it’s really hard to talk about but sharing can help us all feel less alone and more supported. I’m grateful to anyone that offers support because I feel so defeated lately. 😞