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the NOCD Community

I feel like instead of accepting uncertainty, I’ve given up and believe that I am what I fear. I’m so terrified. I don’t know what to do

How come I didn’t do erp but my hocd isn’t affecting me anymore?

How do you counter “the evidence” your brain gives you for why your fears are/might come true?

Those struggling with HOCD, I’m here to tell you that it does get better. 5 months later (I know some of you have been struggling with this longer) and I have been relieved of my obsession. I simply stopped the compulsions and started facing my triggers head on and slowly but surely the obsession began to dissipate. Yes, I fret as to what OCD will disguise itself as next, but I know now that “this too shall pass”. God bless.

Look At the Size Of Your Heart, Not the Size Of the Beast First off I want to start off by thanking each and every single one of you that read my last post “You Are Not the Problem” the response and effect it has had on a lot of you is just so inspiring and encouraging and I am so thankful and blessed to be in a position to help. And now as promised I am going to discuss ERP and I pray this post can inspire some of you to no longer be afraid, and take the steps necessary to recover! I know for a lot of you life is already hard. Even the thought of willingly throwing yourself into an exposure isn’t realistic and in all honesty is probably frightening. But DONT be afraid! You already have been thru so much, you have already proven to have the HEART of a WARRIOR, everyday your battling with these thoughts, so what is one more battle to you? I want to talk about David V Goliath to help put this in perspective for some of you. David’s only job was to tend his fathers sheep, he was a young boy and wasn’t seen as a warrior. His brothers and fellow countrymen were in battle when Goliath came out and disgraced their country and intimidated them. Nobody wanted to challenge Goliath but David who was only a shepherd and young boy had the courage to step up and fight Goliath the reason why is because, WHILE EVERYBODY WAS MEASURING THE SIZE OF THE BEAST, DAVID WAS MEASURING THE SIZE OF HIS HEART ❤️. Yea Goliath was big but David’s faith and his heart were much bigger than the beast, and that’s how YOU ARE. I know this exposure is a beast, it’s intimidating but YOUR HEART AND YOUR STRENGTH IS MUCH BIGGER THAN ANY BEAST, ANY OBSESSION, ANY COMPULSION. You see David had every right to be scared, he was only a child, but when he went to Saul and said put me out there he said “I already had to slay bears and wolves from hurting my fathers sheep, I can handle this”. The same is true for you, you already have had to slay bears and wolves, so what’s one more beast to you, yea this one is a little bit bigger but you’ve already slain everything else in your path! You put your heart, mind, body and soul thru so much so what’s one more battle?! THE SIZE OF YOUR HEART IS MUCH BIGGER THAN THE SIZE OF THE BEAST. GOD IS ON YOUR SIDE. He will not let any disease hurt you, you are his chosen one, he loves you! You don’t have to ask God for strength because he already gave it to you! David was a poor shepherd but after he slayed Goliath he became a rich King, and not only did his life changed but his people, friends and family lives changed as well they didn’t live in fear anymore. Once you beat your Goliath your family and friends won’t be afraid anymore, you will embrace like you never have before! So take the step, start off small. Expose yourself to your obsessions, you don’t need to be afraid! Start with a one minute exposure and work your way up. If it’s a mental obsession write a story, say your fear out loud and see how you feel, they are only thoughts and cannot hurt you! Always remember these thoughts are your beast and yes they are big and scary but your heart and strength is twice and big!! Good luck I’m praying for you all ?? and I hope this message helps whoever is in need of it! If you have any questions or comments please share them. I try my very best to respond to all of them. God bless you all ❤️

Let me start this by saying I have been living and identify as transgender since 2016. Up until the last 2 days or so I've been extremely happy and supported by my friends and family on my choice to transition. More recently I have started having doubts regarding my transition. Not thoughts that I'm actually analyzing. Rather, the thoughts are intrusive and causing doubt about my journey and my decision to transition. What's strange is that I had never had these intrusive thoughts up until these last few days and have been living and loving my life as a trans woman. I could barley find any articles on this matter. Is this a form of TOCD? I understand gender OCD. But most of them seem more or less anxious of the idea of them being trans. Mine comes from being trans and feeling doubtful all of a sudden after years of living as female.

Hello new friends! My name is Graham and I just got diagnosed with OCD in December. I’m 21 years old and a music student at a prestigious conservatory in New York City. This is my OCD story. I have had OCD like symptoms since a very young age, for example, at age 3 I thought I would die if I left the house without a bottle of water, and refused to do so for almost 7 years, and I had countless sensory issues with food and clothing. However, around age 12, the thoughts began to become increasingly horrible. Violent intrusive images, urges to yell obscenities at people, overall intense fear of hurting other people emotionally or physically occupied my brain for hours a day. Additionally, I began to have intense contamination fears - obsessive hand washing, (although not nearly as bad as many people’s) having to carry hand sanitizer everywhere I went, and even worse, as I began to grow body hair, that was as “unclean” as it could get to me. I *had* to rid my body of it. These thoughts then began to plague my performances as well - I would obsessively worry about a certain thing, and it would ruin the whole experience for me, no matter how well I pulled through. As I also was trying to come to terms with my sexuality, (I’m gay) my brain produced tons of sexual intrusive images of both men and women, leaving me lost and confused as to what I actually was. I did not dare search what my thoughts meant. I thought for sure doing so would lead me to be put on a FBI watch list, inform me I was clinically insane, or something along those lines. One day in late October, I was on my commute home from school. This commute is an hour each way on crowded public transportation - between contamination and harm OCD, you can imagine how this experience goes for me every day. For 30 minutes, my brain thought of everything horrible I could do to the person next to me. Strangle them, stab them, rape them, call them racial slurs, rip their hair out. It was so overwhelming that by the time they walked off the train I thought I was going to faint from the panic I felt. I decided enough was enough and googled what I was feeling, which lead me to discover this subset of pure O OCD, which I knew nothing about. A friend of mine was diagnosed when we were 15, and I assumed it just meant obsessive without compulsive, and didn’t look into it whatsoever. I began to see a counselor at my school, and he sent me to the psychiatrist through the school who diagnosed me with OCD. Almost immediately after my diagnosis, my grandfather fell ill. I couldn’t bear to tell my parents while we were dealing with that. He ended up passing away a little less than a month later. This has been so beyond hard on my entire family. It’s been a little over a month now, and as more things have gone wrong for my mom - her company being hacked, getting in a car wreck (she’s totally fine other than whiplash) - I haven’t been able to bring myself to discuss with them. I feel as though I will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. But I know I need to tell them. Hopefully it will happen as soon as possible...but it’s plaguing my mind a lot. If anyone can offer words of advice on what to do, I would appreciate it greatly. Thanks for reading. That’s my story. I hope to meet more wonderful humans who understand what I go through - have a wonderful day all! :)

Just asking for fun: What are your plans for this year? Like what do you really want to do or accomplish? :)

Just when I thought I was doing better, it all just crashed. Last week I was put on meds and things started to look up; I was starting to feel better about everything. Then these past 2 days just hit me like a brick, and I feel worse than I ever did before. I’m starting to feel like I’m going to have this guilt/shame/fear for the rest of my life. Sorry for the rant, I just needed to get it out somewhere.

Break up urges HELP PLEASE Sometimes I look at pictures of my boyfriend and I feel this pit in my stomach and anxiety and I think to myself “just break it off” and I feel relieved and then I freak out cause I must be lying to myself about loving him even though yesterday I as crying and heartbroken about him going abroad next year......if anyone else has experienced this please help!!!!

I need to talk about my mom again please? :(

This coronavirus is scaring me y’all. Not gonna fake. ?

Does anyone struggle with perfectionist OCD such as having a tough time beginning essays/ tasks in general?

Does anyone else have hyper awareness of sounds (background noise, hum/whistle of vents, outside traffic in distance, etc) and if so, how do you get past it and let it be? Looking for advice on what’s worked for you.

Hi! Does anyone ever feel like their OCD manifests when they talk to others? in a way that goes, “scary internal thought” right in the middle of their words and then you don’t know if you spoke the scary thought out loud or not? I’ve been having a CHALLENGING time with this the past year. I’m doing a LOT better with a lot of work. just wanted to see if I can help anyone or if I can see how anybody else handles it. thanks y’all ?. So much love to everybody.

You know what I dislike I dislike that so many people still refuse to speak about pedophilic ocd because of the taboo behind it. It’s like do you think I like waking up to terrible intrusive thoughts of children do you think I like doubting myself on whether or not an intrusive is real or not! No I don’t enjoy it yet nobody talks about it everyone gets so scared to talk about it and it leaves all of us to suffer in silence.

Hidden compulsions are the worst! I just realized I was doing a compulsion 192938 times a day since one month Checking if person I like texted me or if he already answered or maybe left me on read , or blocking notifications to stop checking it all and then unlocking... i know it sounds like a silly compulsion but I was once "brutally" ghosted. So I check if I'm not being ghosted again. But it doesn't make sense cause this person is so awesome and not a ghost type at all ... I also do every evening since forever a symptom assessment (for like 1 hour)on smartphone app to check if I'm not going crazy cause I have problems focusing lately and other stuuf. ( my psychiatrist says 1 hour a day it's not that bad so it's not OCD symptom...) Also that" gost man" when we were still having contact called me "mental with mental disorder girl" cause I have little temper when I get upset (only sometimes)and one time I told him some silly stuff to upset him but it was out of frustration. Now I have this sentences he said in my head: "you're mental !!" , and when he calmed down : " I guess you have some mental disorder or you're crazy , I didn't do anything to you"... Since then when other people around me behave unserious or they act out of emotions or eccentric I call people crazy or mental and I assign them mental illness.. I wanna stop but I feel so hurt from the past and my head is tired from thinking . I feel like bad person but I really had lots of patience and empathy for people before that bloody " ghost man "

Hi, I was wondering if anyone experiencing this symptom. When anxiety kicks in from OCD thoughts and it’s strong, I sometimes feel actual pain in my head and I start to be over sensitive to sounds. At that point any kind of conversation or sound I feel it like a knife through my head, and my thoughts that time is like attacking these sounds or the person that starts the conservation with me. The more my love ones try to relax me the more my head reacts during the episode. At that time I feel like my head is going to explode and sometimes I get very frustrated and angry. The only thing that helps me that time, is time alone, just to breath, relax and try to get away from the thoughts, to put my attention somewhere else, and slowly slowly fades away. The moment I relax little I feel this noise in my ears and the pressure in my head and after a strong headache kicks in. The reason I ask this is because during this time I react toward the people I love and after the episode passes I feel sad and mad at my self for reacting that way. And I am trying to understand why I react this way...

How does OCD interfere with your reading and has anyone been successful at getting past it? :)

Hello, um I’m not really sure if this is the right place to talk and probably gonna get flagged; but lately I’ve been struggling to cope. Things are very bad and I don’t feel like i can do this anymore. Im scared to talk about my suicidal thoughts and don’t really know how to.. I’m 15 and have no clue what do to or what would happen?