Welcome to
the NOCD Community

Hobbies! It's important to have things in our lives other than OCD, which bring us joy, calm us down and can provide a good way to redirect our attention away from obsessions and compulsions. I'm curious about your hobbies and interests! I enjoy painting and learning languages- I reached B2 in Swedish and am starting on Korean. I love to follow artists on YouTube who show their methods step by step and try them out. I also decided to learn more Python (programming language) and brush up my C++ in order to work in software development and eventually data science, so I am making a plan to write some code every day. I find that redirecting my attention to these hobbies when I'm anxious makes my OCD symptoms reduce and ensures that life isn't entirely passing me by even though I struggle to be social.

I'm really tripping on schizophrenia right no, I'm worried that I'm going to hear voices but I don't, also think I'm going to go insane, it's very scary right now for me

Im having a panic attack . ;(

And last night a thought came to me about my sister and I was stupid or paralyzed two seconds before taking out the thought, it's as if I wanted it there It is as if I had been watching the thought, I feel it is real and I want to die because this is horrible

How can a single thought ruin your whole day. I opened my eyes to anxiety and constant thoughts. Spent the morning searching the internet for answers. I can’t seem to get myself out of this state of panic. I don’t want to live like this anymore. I don’t even feel like I’m living. I’m just trying to survive

I need some advice from someone with pocd

My POCD is back and therefore so is my feeling of complete loss of attraction to guys my own age. In fact I would say that the latter is what I’m obsessed with the most, the loss of attraction. Also just the weeks proceeding this I was so attracted to a certain guy that I had OCD that I might lose control and give in to sexual urges for him, I also know he’s not in to me. I’ve had this before where I’ve completely lost my normal attractions, and it’s freaky to say the least, so I know I can get through this. However, the last time I had this the loss of attraction lasted for months and it really made me feel like a pedo because I lost them completely. I miss my attractions so bad because it felt so good and now they’re gone and I really hate that. How do I get them back without it taking months? Even when I try to except the thoughts I still get pissed off because I don’t feel like the attractions are back.

If you have some, share your recovery stories! Myself, I was lucky and strong enough to completely overcome Contamination OCD and had a small period of Pedophilia OCD. there are still rare thoughts but they don’t affect me at all. Additionally I’ve made a tremendous progress in relationship ocd, so now thoughts rarely disturb me or have much effect on me. You all got this!

I’m new here, and I decided to download this app because I’ve been having some weird thoughts for quite a long time. These thoughts might or might not have to do with my illnesses but I’m not sure. So ever since I was little I’ve had urges to harm people and myself, not because I WANT to be the cause of someone’s death but I just have impulses that make me want to do really, really horrible things. I self harm a bit, and when I get these impulses I usually search for pictures of dismembered bodies and things along those lines. I’ve had bad impulses involving myself and others, one time I was close to stabbing my mom and I don’t get it. When I tell people they usually say that I’m messed up, and I agree. I’ve also been having some pedophelic thoughts, and I’ve never really felt bothered by them until a couple of days ago. I had a really messed up dream about sexually abusing two children, and I’m way to ashamed to talk to my therapists about it. It might be one of those impulsive thoughts, but it bothers me that my thoughts don’t disturb me. I’ve never been abused in any way, I have an amazing family. I don’t get it. These thoughts of mine have usually circled around self harm, suicide, jumping off high things, and murder, but it’s just quite recently that this other thing comes to mind. If I don’t respond to any texts it’s because I easily get a lot of anxiety, but I’ll respond sooner or later. Sorry for such a long post. //Adam

HOCD has took everything from my life, i have nothing.. no car, no money, little friends, my family can barely stand me i feel like a burden. I dropped out of college, i have no direction in life, im also an alcoholiic because it stops the gay thoughts and i feel normal. Ive lost 4 girlfriends over this too and currently dont have a job. Im 25 years old and i feel like my life is over.

Does anyone else’s OCD cause them to be hyperaware or background noises (hum of refrigerator, fan, distant traffic, etc.) and make your hearing incredibly sensitive? If so, how do you push your way through it? Mine gets to the point where I can hear all these things that the mind normally tunes out, and then I fear I am having “hallucinations” because I get thoughts about how “I mean it kind of sounds like a whistle, or this or that” and then it causes panic due to my health anxiety and fear of psychosis. My psych has said this is a part of OCD and that I’m focusing on the noises and coupling them with intrusive thoughts, but I’m curious how others have fought this and gotten through.

POCD people, thought you might find this exposure helpful. I am not trying to reassure you and hinder progress, but to give a bit of background to this exposure so that it can be of use. So, I have done a lot of research in scientific journals about female arousal (not so much male but many of the same points will apply). It is a scientific fact that, although women have no desire to mate with apes, they respond with physical arousal signals to images of ape penises. With this in mind, even though at a point in your life you probably would not have considered even the possibility that you were attracted to or turned on by children, now your brain is plagued by the idea; a thought has become stuck. So, let’s bear in mind that humans can have a physical arousal response to apes. Let’s also bear in mind that the humans involved in studies were not people who subjectively found apes attractive or appealing (so no, zoophilia is not relevant). These women did not want to have sex with apes, or have romantic feelings for them. With all of this in mind, try to accept the possibility that a normal person like you could feel a physical arousal response towards a child. Even if you don’t believe that you could, you know that this thought is stuck and needs some help to get out of your head. Now repeat after me: Maybe I can be aroused by children. Maybe not. It does not say anything about me as a person.

Feeling like a horrible person. I feel so bad about my existence right now. I just want someone to comfort me. Anyone online?

Dear all, I could really do with some advice from someone having experience with ocd about washing. I'm soo fed up with it right now. Whenever I'm out with someone they usually touch all kinds of surfaces that a million people before them have already touched, they touch their face, eat without washing their hands before, they touch me and it's grossing me out. I can literally see the germs being transferred from one surface to the other and I can't stop worrying about it (these days it's even worse due to Corona) and it's so bad that I'm having troubles following the conversation. It's really annoying and I want it to stop. Can anyone give me some ideas about how to tackle this? Suggestions for exposures? Experiences? I'd really appreciate it.

“But I’m not even performing compulsions!” I see people on this forum suffering a lot to understand why they seemingly aren’t performing compulsions, but their obsessions persist. What I also notice is that within the same post (sometimes even the same sentence!) people are actually performing mental compulsions. Understanding and identifying mental compulsions is one of the hardest parts of learning to deal with your OCD. If you can’t figure out when to say to yourself, “hey, that’s a compulsion!” and stop, recovery is much harder. I found this nice resource online that explains mental compulsions better than most others (way too many out there summarize mental compulsions as simply counting or wishing... ugh.) So here it is: http://www.steveseay.com/pure-o-ocd-obsessions-mental-rituals/ An excerpt: “Mental rituals are varied and include such activities as repeating certain words or phrases in one’s head, counting, reviewing/checking memories, intentionally thinking “positive thoughts” to counteract “negative thoughts”, pre-planning words before speaking, making mental lists of similarities between one’s own experience and others’ experiences, conducting online research to prove or disprove a fear, or repeating/restarting prayers due to distraction or worry that one’s prayers are not 100% genuine. For some individuals, mental rituals also include complex cognitions. Complex mental rituals often begin simply with one of the following statements or questions and then take on a life of their own: OCD Mental Rituals - “I would never do that…but what if I do?…I don’t want to…but what if I secretly do?” - “Why is this happening?” - “When will this stop?” - “I can’t live this way…” - “I need to know…” - “I’ll never be strong enough to face this…” - “I wouldn’t be having these thoughts if I didn’t secretly want this…” - “Maybe I need to act on these thoughts to finally be rid of them and feel closure…” - “It’s always going to be this way…” - “I can’t take the chance, because if I did…” - “If I could just figure this out, I would be able to move past it and it wouldn’t bother me anymore…”

To anyone who has been professionally diagnosed with OCD: how were you diagnosed and what was it like?

I’ve been dealing with ROCD and HOCD for the past year, and finally a therapist listened and diagnosed me with OCD. I’m wondering if anyone who has dealt with these themes has any advice for exposures (I know it’s super personal but I end up drawing a blank) and if anyone has any words of encouragement and recovery!

How can I accept the uncertainty around how I told my friend a really big secret about me that she could tell others and quite literally ruin my life?! It feels weird to say, but I wouldn’t be able to live if people found out. I’m scared she’ll get mad at me or even just accidentally say it to someone one day. And I find it hard to accept that scenario!

Anybody else’s ocd stressing out about corona virus?? ?

Is anyone else starting to regret treatment? I had moderate contamination OCD gr hat I had JUST gotten a handle on, and now because of COVID-19 I feel like the world suddenly expects me to act...exactly the way I was, and I KNOW the difference, but I’ve been guilted out of purell as part of “treatment” and now we actually need it I don’t have any and feel guilt buying it. I’m just really starting to wish I’d never gotten help ?