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the NOCD Community

The years I spent denying that I was gay, the years I spent trying to convert myself to straight, or at the very least bisexual so it would be easier, the years I spent coming to terms with it and finally the final moments where I started embracing my lesbianism and felt the happiest I've ever been in my life after all the agony that I went through all feel like a joke to OCD now. I wish that there was a crystal ball that would show that I never liked a man and will never like a man. I know, that's reassurance. But I so long for that same feeling even though I know I cannot have it.

Hi everyone. My name is Dan, I suffer with very severe Pure O OCD. This year my OCD has been awful and then when lockdown happened things got progressively worse. I sometimes can spend up to 12 hours a day doing rituals. Yesterday, I had a terrible day. I was doing rituals for 10 hours, and becoming very distressed with the intrusive thoughts. I often bash my head to make them stop but yesterday I did it a little too hard. This has given me a slight wake up call however to be making better choices. I have tried exposure several times but I am going to try again. I'm taking the mind frame that rituals make the situation worse and keep feeding the thoughts. It's going to be incredibly hard, I know. And I'm sure I will fail at times, I'm very scared but I feel I have to do it in order to just be Dan again. If anyone has any support or tips, I would be very grateful. May you all have sunny days and starry nights ?

do you think ocd is something i should let my teachers know i have? my ocd gets in the way of my work sometimes especially during english class, reading is especially hard to do and doing a lot of writing really triggers my perfectionism. i just don’t know whether it’s something to tell my teachers or not. part of me thinks yes bc maybe it’ll help teachers understand that some things might be a little more tough for me and obviously i’m not looking for any like pity or excuses or anything just like letting them know that i might need some extra help sometimes or just for them to be a little patient with me or let me have a little break on my desk to maybe stop writing for a few minutes and just take a few deep breaths you know what i mean? what do you guys think?

I’m feeling super guilty about something that happened over a month ago. I was talking with this guy and I get very anxious when I talk to new people and I have what I call vocal diarrhea, and say things I shouldn’t. So anyway we were talking about stuff via video chat and he asked me about my ex best friend and what happened to make us not be friends anymore. I told him everything that led to the end of the friendship. And then he encouraged me to name drop her. And let me tell you the millisecond after her name left my lips I REGRETTED it. I feel like such a freaking horrible person, I had no right to name drop her. turns out his best friend is related to her, I don’t think he’d say anything, honestly, he did ghost me a couple weeks later because I told him I wasn’t ready to meet during the pandemic. It was at the height of my OCD and I know that’s not an excuse But I feel absolutely horrible, because she is a good person. She’s not evil (I never said she was) but I was so hurt and it felt good to tell a stranger what hurt me. I just wish I never said anything. I hope he forgot her name, because he said he didn’t know her. I just don’t want to be the reason someone thinks she’s a bad person. She has a good heart. But she did things that broke my trust irreconcilably. Please don’t think I’m a horrible person. We all make mistakes, I never want to be the reason to cause her pain. (Nothing I said was like inappropriate or anything of that nature. Just things that led to the downfall of our friendship.) Just how do I deal with this? I haven’t spoken to her in over a year. I’m not going to call her. But should I feel guilty over this still? Is it okay to let the guilt go?

Three months ago I tried to quit my career because of my OCD. I was under a huge amount of stress and it broke me. I work in healthcare and I began to get extreme anxiety and ocd about my job. I became terrified of making a mistake that could possibly harm a patient. I’m great at my job, but my OCD convinced me that I would make a mistake and someone would die because of me. It got so bad that I would redo things and check things 6 or 7 times and still feel like I did them wrong. There were many times that I called into work and had someone check something again for me. A few times, I even drove back to work to check something again. It was insane and debilitating. It became impossible to do my job. I tried to quit because I felt that I hit a point where I was actually causing patient harm by delaying care due to my obsessive checking. I basically had a mental breakdown in my supervisors office when I gave her my notice. Luckily She is amazing and talked me into taking a leave instead of quitting. My therapist had suggested it too, but I was in such a dark place that I felt like giving up completely. Luckily I listened and I took the leave. It ended up being three months. It was the worst three months of my life. For those three months, I adjusted medications with a psychiatrist and I went to therapy weekly. I have a horrible sensitivity to SSRIs. They make me manic. Every time I tried one before, I’d not sleep for three straight days, be physically unable eat, and be severely agitated until it wore off. So I started a medication to prevent that first, then started on a tiny dose of Zoloft. I increased the Zoloft weekly until I hit max dose. Even with the tiny increases, I still had 3 days of severe anxiety and agitation each time, but I knew if I just got through those days, eventually my body would get used to it and I’d feel better. It was hard. So hard. But I was desperate for anything to make me feel better. I was so severely depressed because I felt like my life was falling apart and that I was throwing away a career that I worked so hard for. I also had a lot of other really hard things going on in my life too. There were a lot of days where I wanted to give up. Some days I’d be just so damn tired of fighting. It felt like I’d never feel okay again. I had days where I was definitely suicidal. But I pushed through it. I went to therapy. I did everything I was told. Finally after three months and LOTS of medication adjustments (including a last minute addition of Abilify which I swear changed my life) and therapy, I feel okay. Good even. I’m even back at my job. I still occasionally have OCD thoughts and anxiety over making mistakes but it’s definitely more manageable now. I’m happy and smiling again (I swear I didn’t smile for like 7 months). Life is better. It can get better. You just have to keep fighting. I know it’s hard. Believe me. But i promise it’s possible.

hi so I’m getting a job and I’ve never had a job and I want to be soooo excited but I’m worried I’m going to jail for something I did a year ago and I can’t be happy for anything because I’m obsessing over it. I think I blackmailed and posted pics of someone on the internet without consent. I was involved in findom where men like to be humiliated and blackmailed but I’m worried I went too far and actually blackmailed/post embarrassing things of someone who didn’t want it and I will be reported. This was 4 months ago I haven’t done it since.

Hello everyone. Is it OK to ask for some love? I know it's super weird but I need a bit of motivation right now. I'm going through heartaches again and I feel so bad. Today/tomorrow is a semi important day to me and I'm suffering from the break up. I'm so sorry. I know this is the wrong place to do this but I feel so lonely right now. I havent forgotten to take my meds but they aren't taking away this mess inside my brain. I feel so selfish... I'm so afraid that this heart break is just not wanting to be alone instead of missing the person itself. But I'm almost sure it isn't.... I don't mind being alone... It's selfish, when I know she deserves someone so much better than me. I'm so sorry. I just want to talk with someone. To feel less alone... This loneliness I feel comes from abandonement. No matter how much I understand her reasons to break up, I still feel abandoned. It's feelings vs logic all the time. I keep telling myself she deserves better. Someone kinder and smarter and beautiful. Something I don't feel like I am. I'm so sorry for asking for this. I don't want reassurence. I don't want compliments. I just want a comment for me to feel less lonely. I will never be able to love and trust again... For many reasons. And no one will love me either. I'm too awful for that. I'm ugly and gross. And because of my former gf, I lost trust on people. How can I believe in someone that tells me they will never give up? She said it and left me. Am I so worthless? Maybe I am. The only thing that keeps me sane is telling myself she deserves better.

I keep getting strong urges whenever I think of something bad happening ( example: my ocd getting intense again ) like I want it to happen but I don’t, I don’t really know how to use erp for it either since it’s a mental thing :-(

Question: 1 in how many people in America have ocd? And 1 in how many teens have ocd in America?

I posted in a legal advice subreddit about what I did and these people are like yea you’re probably going to jail even tho I did it like a little less than a year ago I’m so scared I’m so scared I wish I never posted there I’m so flipping Nd scared I think I blackmailed someone through findom and I’m so worried about jail my life is ruined

I was having such a good day these past three days! Tonight my mother in law stopped by unexpectedly (I'm already bad with that) and we had a brief, distanced visit out doors. But what threw me was she had this awful smoker's cough and I cant calm down now. No one was in a mask and I think my hubby was JUST 6 feet from her. I'm trying to remember Cdc guidelines and nothing more but I'm having obsessions and could not deny my compulsion to hold my breath while she coughed and then come in and shower and ask my husband to shower. I dont think my husband held his breath. I know she isnt sick right now but my brain is losing it because like also what if shes asymptomatic? Ugh today was the first day I was relaced enough to ACTUALLY yawn and stretch and when it happened I was like "wow, I actually cant remember the last time I yawned and stretched!" And I thought it was such an accomplishment. Especially since we did groceries last night and that's usually a trigger too. Now my stomach is in knots and my shoulders are up to my ears and im so scared.

I go back and forth every day convinced I am gay or convinced I am straight. I wonder if I’ll ever be happy in my relationship and I wonder if sex will ever be good since I’ve had HOCD since I’ve been sexually active. This is all a mess and I’m hitting low points more and more often.

guys im literally stressing my self out so much, my brain keeps on being negative and is making me convince my self something that isn't true, it's like " what if you're secretly thinking of this when thinking of this "

Does anyone else have problems of where reality slips in to your OCD thoughts and they mix together and you don’t even know how to feel. And you feel worse. And you feel more guilty. And just like a horrible person.

Americans: I am from New York and want to make a new start somewhere else. At first I moved to Dubai for a year to escape some ocd and PTSD/bad genera memories from New York. Now despite that New York is becoming way too expensive to live in and the crime rate has shot up because of pandemic. Where are nice places to relocate to in the US for a 27 year old woman?

I literally feel an ‘exclamation mark’ in my stomach every time a pretty girl does something funny. It’s something I’d be attracted to in a guy but now I feel attracted to it in girls. I hope it’s false attraction.

I’m having an extreme anxiety attack help. I was on the iPad which is connected to my moms phone and I went on to my Spotify (web player) I wanted to listen to the moana sound track so I looked it up and accidentally pressed the result under it which was a podcast titled something like “daddy’s baby girl moaning” or some shit and now that is BOOKMARKED ON MY MOMS PHONE. And she has it blocked so you can’t delete history and it pops up as a tab anytime you look anything up and I’m so worried she’s going to see it and think I’m weird or something like how am I supposed to explain that story and I’m doing compulsions and she’s going to hate me I’m so scared. And then I looked up aton of stuff to make it go farther down in the history but of course it’s still there and still pops up when you look up certain stuff and Now it looks more suspicious even tho I didn’t even mean to look it up in the first place what do I do.

vent below- so i’m going to be as transparent as possible ever since this started about 3 months ago in may. i felt tortured sometimes i still do. one thought sent me into a spiral of questioning everything. a thought so disgusting it made me stop eating. i didn’t want to wake up and i couldn’t go to sleep i would drink some nyquil for nights on end to try to sleep and i didn’t care what it was doing to me because i just wanted to sleep and do nothing but sleep. i didn’t even want to wake up and sometimes i still don’t. i couldn’t understand why all this was just happening to me everything that i was so sure of and felt safe with became a blur. from one day to the next to months. and i would isolate myself from days on end and keep my distance from family members because i was just so scared of myself and i would cry about it and no one understood what i was going through and they still don’t. i don’t have a diagnosis but i know that something is definitely going wrong up there and lately i’m trying to cope with it better and do the best i can and eat and wake up and try to sleep earlier and be the best person that i can be and i know that it’s super scary feeling like you aren’t you and suddenly it’s like you’re a monster on the inside that no one sees but i promise you that you aren’t. day by day i believe in all of you that the sun will shine a little brighter and the pain will numb bit by bit. crying for days on end was living hell and living was what i didn’t want anymore and sometimes i still don’t but it’s a working progress. find the strength in yourself. treat yourself with kindness and love because you’re the only one who understands at the end of the day the hell that your mind might put you through. try to overcome it. i know it hurts and you want to feel the way you did before all this happened and maybe somehow you can feel the way you once did and not obsess over the things you’re feeling or thinking. to just feeling peace with yourself. some families or your family might not understand but i believe in all of you and what you’re going through and what you’re fearing is valid. you’re valid and you can handle all this. take it day by day. no matter how much anxiety you might feel. even if it feels like fear is consuming you sometimes. you’ll survive this and overcome many more things because you’re strong. so be you and be brave. you don’t have to talk to your demons alright.

hi! so I have ocd (I thinks never been diagnosed). I keep thinking about something I might have/ might not have done in the past and Im worried I will go to jail in the future for it. I cannot do anything now because im obsessed with the thought of “why should he be happy if im just going to go to jail”I basically cannot watch any YouTube anymore, hang out with friends, do well in classes because im like “what’s the point if im just going to end up in jail and lose all of my riends anyway” Backstory: I was involved in findom which is where men feel submissive and decide to give money to others in return to be hurt, humiliated, blackmailed..etc. I also sold lots of feet pics. I stopped doing this 3 months ago. I was worried at first about hurting them even tho they’re the ones that hurt themselves. Then I got worried about blackmailing even though it was consensual and they asked for it. I have recently gotten into the scary thing of like “omg what if I blackmailed and it was not consensual” or “what if I threatened someone and they didn’t want it” I’ve been FLIPPING about this and can’t do anything with my life because im sooo flipping afraid. I’m almost positive I blackmailed someone for money and I was like “I’m gonna post ur real name and address if u don’t give me money” and they would give me money

My ocd is making me think against my boyfriend who is the best man ever. ? At some point he was battling depression and he used to get angry at me but later he regretted for shouting at me and now he is over depression, he told me that my love helped him get through depression. Why can't i do the same. He is giving so much of love to me. Why can't i beat ocd. My mind is telling me that he used to behave like that when he was in depression that's why you developed rocd. I read a post on fb about emotional abuse and now my mind is thinking maybe that was emotional abuse but he is never Abusive to me. Why am i thinking against him. I am very scared I'll ruin my relationship with him. He supports me very much. He is tolerating me and my thoughts from 4 months. He is the guy every girl would want. I literally didn't give a fuck about our pasts when i was normal. Why am i obsessing over our pasts. I want to get out of this i cannot afford therapy please help me. I want to marry him. How can i improve my relationship.