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the NOCD Community

Does anyone have any tips on stopping ruminating? I'm doing exposure therapy and struggling to break the cycle of rumination.

Does anyone else with contamination ocd struggle to trust certain things? I really dont trust hand sanitizer which sucks. We went out today and I thought I grabbed a railing so I used sanitizer but always feel like maybe my sanitizer is fake or something. Or like....to me it seems crazy that you wash for 20 seconds but only have a few seconds before sanitizer dries and you're supposed to trust it. Sometimes I struggle to trust disinfectant as well but I honestly have no choice in that. I have to trust it or I'd give myself a heart attack.

Does anyone with POCD have children? I want to have children in the future, but the idea of it really scares me because of my fears. Something I have been learning in therapy is not to make fear-based decisions. So it’s definitely something I want to do, but I just wanna know some of your experiences with this.

I’ve reached a dipping point in my recovery. My Wellbutrin (it’s now been a week on it) has eased my depression but now I can feel anxiety welling up. I’m paying more attention to my thoughts. It’s starting to interact with my ROCD again. It’s hard for me to be intimate with my boyfriend even though I want to but it’s the constant what ifs and if I’m using sex as a compulsion (ex: checking) also, my libido is kind of nonexistent right now. On top of that, my therapist wants me to start writing out my intrusive thoughts so we can assess them next Monday. I have found myself procrastinating it. Not out of laziness, but I think I’m scared to do it. It’s physically putting it out there that’s not my brain. What if they are true, what do I do, what can I do, etc. I’m just feel like this is a tiny roadblock even though I’ve barely started :/

Does anyone here practice tarot in a healthy way? I really want to do it but feel like I might be setting off ‘magical thinking’ and scrupulosity ocd I wanted to use it for secular introspection/inspiration. But people tell me to not ignore the spiritual part of it bc its like talking to the universe. And I admit sometimes the cards feel eerily accurate or relevant. But thats the problem? Ideas like manifestation and “looking for signs” have given me problems before. I even feel like I hear weird noises after using tarot. It made me paranoid. anyone relate to this ? I spent too much on these cards and don’t want to return them lol

Anyone feel comfortable giving the reason behind their username? For instance, mine is obviously my first name combined with the year I was born ☺.

murphy’s law is freaking me the fuck out

I was putting my boy to bed last night like I usually do. And i had an intrusive thought that felt like an urge to touch his bum but more between his bums and private bits So I put my hand on his bum like I would anyway if I was comforting him, but then i started to move my hand over his bum to check for arousal or anything I stopped myself as i felt bad, but then I questioned how I'd touched him so I put my hand back on to check how I'd touched him. Then I stopped but checked again to see for arousal. This has happened befor but I touched his leg I know I have no intention of touching him sexually it kills me But is it wrong that I did this or is this a common thing that happens with pocd?

Failed.. Gave in to my compulsion. Can't stop thinking about the worst case scenario now.

I’ve lost my sense of identity now (I don’t know how I am or what I want). I recently read that we can force ourselves to love people, be in denial when it comes to who we really are and develop attraction to an array of different people before and after puberty. Now it seems like my whole life is a lie. Has everything been forced? Am I secretly bi and in denial? Ugh, I hate it. To make it worse, I was recently watching a TV game show and a question about Katy Perry and her songs popped up. My immediate answer was her song I kissed a girl. Obviously, I took that as a mental sign. On top of that, I’ve had many “uncertain,” crushes (I wasn’t too sure whether I really liked them) that have actually developed into love. Now I’m wondering whether I forced myself to feel that way and I feel horrible; I just want to be with a man, not a woman. The idea of touching a women inappropriately makes me want to cry and throw up; it generally makes me distressed and uncomfortable. I don’t know what to do because I don’t know who I am anymore; I was so boy crazy and romantic beforehand. Now I’m plagued with anxiety and uncertainty.

Woke up with suicidal thoughts this morning. I developed a new compulsion of looking at reddit forums similar to my situation. This particular one set me off and now I really feel unlovable. Just like the girlfriend he is describing I am also 27 and tried a sugar baby site for 2 months and was taken advantage of and it was also poor naive decision making on my part. The men on here are so cruel. https://www.reddit.com/r/relationship_advice/comments/dwjg87/should_my_28m_girlfriends_27f_sugar_baby_past_be/?utm_source=amp&utm_medium=&utm_content=post_body

can you be straight and still have had experienced comphet crushes ? (don’t search it up if you don’t know what it means please)

Curious if any of you with OCD have other family members with OCD? What’s that like for you?

Anyone have advice on obsession with death? I feel like I go through phases and my compulsion is to look things up to “inspire me” or give me hope. Obviously, not doing the compulsion is better in the end. Has anyone gone through this particular ocd cycle?

Hi there my name is tahahussain and i am not in the state never have been but pliease can u help me So here the thing everyday i wake up i have to think of beautiful face and swallow my spit while thinking but most of the time faces of ugly people just pop out randomly and i have to do all over again so after that i have a specific time in that time i wash face but first i look at a beautiful face of a man while swallowing then i look at someone near by and swallow while thinking about their face and if i dont do that i began to think that my face is becoming ugly so after that i wash my face while thinking of handsome faces and then after drying off look at those beautiful male face again and then faces of real people and if i fail to do so i have to do the whole ritual again untill i have done it right i. Prevent mirrors and even camera screen like taking a selfie and the whole day i just keep thinking about beautiful faces but the problem is that from random places in my head ugly face pop up i dont know how to over come i tried my own therapy and even visited a phycologist he recommended and cyperlix a pill everyday but it does not seems to workand if i dont stop this behavior and ritual my parent said that they will disown me and throw me out of house i have controlled some of my obsession and compulsion such as i stopped masterbating because whenever i did it i have to masterbate while thinking and seeing a beautiful face and if not my mind will say that do it again and again it made me do it almost over 50 times or more i would have lost concious but now i dont masterbate just for that reason please help me u r my only hope now after that the only way out is to kill my self

also if anyone sees this can you please comment something positive for me to wake up to ): it would mean a lot because i always wake up with extreme anxiety in the morning

I don't know if I have OCD but I have experienced obsessions in almost every subtype. About 7 years ago, I had a year where every day I heard voices telling me to kill myself. I thought these were demons, and also were related to my fear of not being straight. Eventually I felt as though I was not following God and decided to kill myself because I just wanted silence. Someone shared about mental health at church and I realized I had never taken medication. I know it was likely placebo, but in the first hour after I took my first dose of Lexapro, my brain was silent. It was like a physical pill made the spiritual darkness I felt disappear. I guess I've been on meds for 6 years now. I've gone from 5mg to 30mg/day of Lexapro and also another med for seasonal depression. I worry what it does to my body but I tried cutting down on the Lexapro recently and I became so distracted and obsessed about my coworkers talking about me. I don't know that OCD is my biggest issue, as I also have SAD, panic attacks, social anxiety, and PTSD. But the Lexapro usually helps the OCD and I'm a big advocate for trying it out

why is the night time so frightening? maybe my existential thoughts get loudest right before sleep because sleep is the literal act of giving into uncertainty sleep is a huge daily act of letting go...i think the worst thing about ocd and there are a lot but being afraid of your own mind is a horrible feeling i want to learn to love my mind again i dont think i always felt this way or this low... when i listened to dr emily oleary on the ocd stories podcast i started to cry tears of relief because those two days prior i was experiencing crying spells and panic attacks and i just typed ocd into my podcast app after remembering that i had googled one of the themes in my head a few years back and ocd had popped up as an answer and the first episode i played of the ocd stories was the only interview she had done and i picked it at random and i finally felt this ability to turn my thoughts off by listening to her very grounded sure voice and she started talking to the listeners in this way that made it feel like a comforting call to those of us in distress and i still was and probably am still on the fence on about my ocd but when i couldnt calm the thoughts in my head, the loudest of all of them being that i am a bad person, she said more or less something like this, "not to generalize the whole group but people with ocd are awesome, they are so awesome, you guys are so smart and so caring with such empathy and the reason you got this is because you care too much you care too much about people and stuff which is an awesome thing its just that you get stuck on it and so you have to be smart about it no matter how much you wanna have a chat with the beast you just cant but you can smash this you totally can and those of you with the harm and sexual thoughts stop sitting in silence i know you are scared but this is standard variety stuff for people in our field and you are not a bad person you are a good person find someone to talk to you can smash this" obviously ocd cant be summed up perfectly in one quote but to hear her enthusiasm, passion and certainty about treating ocd i just felt a release of emotion and she talked about how she fell in love with working with ocd patients and how much she genuinely looks forward to working with people with ocd every day, i listened to that recording probably 5 or 6 times since then, during times of needing comfort, im sure that some might say that its a compulsion but until i start my sessions im fine with that for now ... im so thankful i listened to that episode i wish i lived in australia so i could get her help specifically but im glad to have this app and this community especially during covid ... if anyone is hating on themselves right now i hope you have something like this a quote from a book, a metaphor, a song, a loving memory, a ted talk, an amazing dream, or moment that you can cling to during the struggles to help you flip the script in your head sending out positivity and good vibes 🙏💕 good night everyone hoping to fall back asleep

My head keeps saying I'm a p, I'm a p. I'm so sorry for venting but I was just browsing YouTube and video was recommended to me which showed like anime characters getting revenge for bullying and I saw it out of curiosity. Nothing bad was shown in that video but you know how characters look like: too young, too childish and I immediately get in panic and get "what-I-hope-it-is" false attraction and I feel even worse... I'm so afraid to be one... I literally have closed myself in my house, panicking everyday. I can't leave the house because I'm afraid I'll do something wrong... Or that I'll have intrusive thoughts... I'm sorry for this bit. It's just too tiring...

I’m new to this app and really happy to be within a community of people working through same thing. I have been working through contamination ocd since the start of the pandemic. It’s debilitating mentally. It just wants me to seek certainty in every compulsion and also reassurance and researching online incessantly. Anyone else struggle with this specific ocd? Wiping down doorknobs every time someone touches them. I can’t even sit outside in the grass I’m afraid of the pandemic. I won’t touch my groceries for three days. I miss my old self. I literally feel like a different person since March.