Welcome to
the NOCD Community

TMI/TW for mention of masturbation . . . Just did some intense exposure therapy. I pleased myself and didn’t let the thoughts and images stop me. My anxiety is skyrocketing. I feel like I did something wrong. Trying to reclaim my life by not letting my intrusive thoughts stop me, but it can be so hard and shameful. I want to be able to be sexually intimate with people, and this is the first step towards that. Anyone who can relate?

I’ve been having issues with my medication for a while now and I think my mom has something to do with it. My mom didn’t even like the idea of me going to therapy because I should “just get over it”. She also doesn’t accept any of the diagnoses and tries to play doctor saying “well I think you have this-“ and she won’t let me tell her that she’s not qualified to do that because she’s a nurse who worked in pharmacy for like a year which in her mind gives her power over my psychiatrist. She also doesn’t take me seriously because when I was a child I had a tendency for overreacting as children do, but this has branded me for life so now no one in my family takes me seriously. I told her I had intrusive thoughts, anxiety, and all this stuff and she kinda just shoved it off as being overdramatic. Anyway, for a long time I would only get one month doses of medication and then suddenly “your psychiatrist didn’t redo to the prescription and I talked to her and she keeps denying it”. I believed that..until I talked to my psychiatrist who I haven’t seen in months largely due to my mother and I brought up the medication and my psychiatrist was genuinely shocked that I haven’t taken it in months and that she had no idea because she hasn’t heard from us. I don’t even know how to feel at the moment. It’s makes sense that my mom would do that considering how she feels about the whole mental health situation anyway. Plus she had a lot of reservations concerning this medication. I just don’t understand why she would go as far as to lie and make me quit medication cold turkey. It was a really hard time for me when I ran out because “it couldn’t be refilled”. I feel hurt.

i cant do it anymore. why wont this ever end? i thought i was getting somewhere and now a whole new theme on top of it. why cant i make this stop :(

I feel so immature and dumb going through this at 23 years old how is it that one minute I’m fine and now I’m this

Hey guys. I told my parents that I sometimes have negative thoughts and the conversation didn’t go well. I get bombarded by them at times. Now i feel like if i have a negative thought about something/or reason for doing something, I can’t do it anymore and if I would want to change that negative thought or reason and make it positive that it wouldn’t work. What should I do?

I haven't had a panic attack for about 3 weeks now and I just had a mild one. I need some support. Im supposed to fly out to see my son tomorrow and ocd told me that since the number 7 is my lucky number, that I should act on my thoughts on the 7th. Im so terrified of how ocd is evolving. I had a mild (compared to others) panic attack. I kept trying to do erp everytime I began to do compulsions. I didn't even go to the gym. I messaged my therapist about this so Im waiting to see what she says. Im at a loss. I feel like life is taking my son away from me. I wanna be with my son, but I also want to protect him. Im just exhausted.

⛔️ PLEASE HELP!!!!!! ⛔️ Does anybody get intrusive thoughts that get presented as statements rather than questions? e.g. I am ____, It’s because you’re _____, etc. Is it my mind playing tricks on me? I REALLY hope that it is because I find it extremely upsetting and distressing. Not to mention, I have been dealing pretty well with intrusive thoughts, mental images, gronial responses, false memories and false attraction to far because I sit with my discomfort and refuse to do compulsions (this is incredibly difficult and sometimes my mind will revisit the exact same thought 5-10 times. However, I refuse to do compulsions). As of present, I have developed my attraction again and I have developed a crush on a celebrity that I liked before HOCD plagued me five months ago. However, I was daydreaming about him and I a few days ago and I got an intrusive thought asking me whether I had come out. As you can imagine, I started to overthink it and I began to believe that I was experiencing deja vu and my future self had accepted the thoughts and admitted that they felt denial all along. After getting these thoughts, I began to watch “HOCD vs denial,” videos, analyze my symptoms and ask my mum repeatedly whether she thought I was. I became incredibly uncomfortable and distressed because this particular thought felt so real. I honestly thought that my future self was asking me and I wasn’t sure whether I was being irrational. Either way, my question is whether you can receive intrusive thoughts that are statements rather than questions e.g. I must fancy them. Is this normal because I haven’t seen anyone mention intrusive thoughts like these as they aren’t “what if’s.” Instead, they are saying that I am what I DO NOT WANT TO BE. Please help!

Something important my therapist told me was that I shouldn’t get lost in the contents of my thoughts, but focus on what ties them all together instead— which is uncertainty. Uncertainty is the problem in every theme and situation my mind comes up with. Nothing else matters but solving that issue, not each individual disturbing obsession.

I just watched a video in which an OCD therapist used the exposure of walking into a gas station bathroom, lights off, sitting down on the toilet without checking, using the bathroom & then leaving. He used this as an "overcorrection" exposure. I don't understand these types of assignments. I thought ERP was about facing YOUR obsessions & compulsions as they are, not going against what you set out to do/would usually do in the world. I keep thinking that because I had the intrusive thought "You need to smear soap all over your TV screen", that this now needs to be what I do for an exposure based on what the OCD therapist has people do for "overcorrection" Another intrusive thought I get is that I'm supposed to purposefully leave a lot of soap on myself every time I leave the bathroom, so now I need to actually treat that thought as reality?? ERP is super confusing. I just want to get on with being me, not turning into someone who always lives their life in "overcorrection".

I've just started my seratine 50mg , second day ,feeling a bit weird? Is it too early for them To kick in ,is it my mind just knowing I'm taking them or are they working ? I'm confused ?

Sometimes I feel really isolated as a queer autistic person with ocd. :/

Hi guys i'm 23 and i feel like a loser and everyone around me thinks sorry this has nothing to do with my ocd but i just feel like i need to share this with you

Anyone else with contamination OCD find it WILD that people can carry on with their daily lives during the pandemic? Like, there's actually TONNES of people out there who don't wipe down their groceries or shower when they get home. What?? Or like, theres people who can wait to for a few days with symptoms before they go for a covid test. That blows my mind. At the same time, thoughts of those people help me remember to calm down and trust I'm doing things safely.

Can someone please help. I'm struggling with severe anxiety and depression. I'm very depressed and feeling like I'm hanging on by a thread. It feels completely real and I think there is truth to it. I'm am so sad. I'm sorry, but I just dont want to be gay. Sometimes I feel I would rather die. I have no issues with anyone else being gay, I just dont want it. I feel aroused when I see random women fully clothed. Old women, and children sometimes too. I LIKE THE FEELING. I feel a strong urge to act sexually.I feel like just sinking into the Earth. I want the pain to stop. I am in so much pain. It is getting to the point where it is unbearable. I don't have any fucking money and I can't get help. What do I do.

I am terrified to take a step towards exposing myself to my compulsions. I need everything to be clean for me to be clean so I don’t want to touch anything that I view not clean. I’m stuck and I am working with a therapist on my own, but I am still struggling with several thoughts and weird behaviors.

One of my exposure homeworks is to watch comphet videos or read about comphet. But I’m struggling with compulsions. It’s probably the hardest exposure for me since I’ve never been in a relationship and a lot of the things it talks about is women who are reluctant to have relationships or inexperienced women but for me it’s just a relationship was never a huge part of my life. I would often imagine my life with this “perfect guy” I guess when I was younger and I always had a “type” of man I would want to be with. Again my ocd says this is all brainwashing from society. But anyway, how do I go about doing this because I’m really struggling to just sit with the thoughts and try not to analyze what people are saying. Like I tend to “look for clues” to see if anything relates to me or if someone says something that doesn’t relate to me I say almost automatically “oh great that isn’t me then” It’s so hard to stop it. Does anyone else here find comphet triggering? And how do you do response prevention because I’m having a really hard time.

Well, after a day and a half of nearly no bad OCD thoughts... BAM, I think horrible one and I’m making myself mad because I didn’t feel any anxiety over it. It makes me feel like a disgusting human. Like I don’t want to do anything like my thoughts suggested! I want to be known for the good I can do for this world, I want to help the homeless, my goal is to one day open a homeless shelter! But like my “insidious” thoughts are making me mad. I don’t want my name to go down in history as someone who did bad! I want to be good.

what are your guys thoughts on just trying to make through each day, day by day. This seems so hard and its exhausting with all ot the thoughts.

I’m like trembling and shaking thinking about starting therapy on this app. It almost feels more comfortable to wallow in misery and the fear of even sharing my awful thoughts is too much to handle.

The following text will be a bit stronh.... I'll talk about certain things that are sexual. Please proceed with caution. (tw sex and mastutb-) (23, F) I'm so sorry for talking about this here but I am losing my mind... I saw a law and order episode and I was disgusted.... It was about r-pe. I hate that show. It makes overly exaggerated stories in my opinion My pocd started because I started masturb- (which happened by accident but the details are meaningless). And my former therapist agreed with me. I don't think Ive ever had disgusting (non consensual) fantasies but I've had a few that ashame me greatly. The man on the show filmed himself while masturb- and I felt like a monster... I never did that but this word "masturb" is a huge trigger for me. I was never addicted to it because it never consumed my life. I only had urges to do it if I was at home, bored (at least I hope I have false memories about this.) but I sometimes over did it (4 times in a day) because masturb for me was always unsatisfying... Im still a virgin, but I also believe that it will be unsatisfying too, since I have poor libido. (which is something good for me) Since I started masturb- my brain made me feel like a pervert and I started thinking about sex more and that's why I have false memories about touching a child inappropriately... I hate myself so much... I should kill myself. Masturb- was my biggest mistake. Most of the times I tried to quit only to get strong urges from my body asking for it weeks later. One year ago, I successfully stopped. It was hard but I did it... However lately I have been having stronger urges to do it again and it has been poisoning my dreams. I'm so close to cut down there to stop it. I used to do it a few months ago. I'll restart it if I need to