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the NOCD Community

Has anyone realized their OCD stems from trauma? Not just serious abuse necessarily although that too but other things too? My therapist and I discussed some family stuff of mine and how it could be related to my need to protect everyone or worrying about them being harmed hence harm OCD as my main theme. Plus I was kind of picked on a bit from elementary to high school and made to feel weird and bad about myself so I started to think there must be something wrong with me. On some level I think I still feel that way.

Does anyone else ever have this fear that maybe they are gonna be stuck with this illness forever? I keep getting mixed answers so I never know if OCD really can go away or not and even though I'm doing alot better now with medication, I sometimes get really sad and start thinking that I'm always gonna be like this and that I don't want a life with OCD

Just a quick message of caution. Before I was diagnosed with HOCD, I was convinced I turning exclusively Gay, so I went to a therapist, shaking, full of dread, fear and anxiety, I explained to him my instrusive thoughts, urges and feelings.... And to paraphrase, he said the reason I was feeling this is way is because, and I quote "you are repressing your sexuality", "if you do not come out as openly gay and live the lifestyle, you will forever be miserable and always anxious", "I advice you to re concile between your faith and your sexuality or else you will continue to remain depressed forever" and he went on and on and on (I was shivering with extreme fear the whole time) That was without a doubt, one of the worst days of my life, I left the room with extreme fear, believing everything he said, convinced I needed to come out and begin the process of living as a gay man, even though I WAS DYING internally. I am not homophobic however I don't desire to live as a gay man (even if i do have sexual intrusive thoughts about males) I don't desire to be sexually active with the same sex, again my own personal choice, nothing against those who choose otherwise. So please be cautious regarding the therapist you see, ensure they are a OCD specialist because a general therapist who has NO idea regarding Pure O OCD will only make things worse.

People in the UK with HOCD: have you been afraid to seek help because you’re worried that your GP won’t understand and neither will a therapist? I really need help, but I’m scared they won’t believe me, esp as I haven’t been diagnosed with OCD before.

I don’t even know how to begin ignoring my obsessions. I know that’s the only way to get rid of them, but I just don’t feel like I can. My habits are out of control. I can’t even use the bathroom in my own house without REALLY REALLY bizarre rituals.

How do you all deal with Sexual Obsessions? Let me just state that I have severe Relationship OCD as well as intense sexual obsessions. Most of these obsessions are actually pleasurable. Sometimes I have images about family or kids but for the most part, my sexual obsession are over someone i actually I find attractive. It is pleasurable to think about them sexually, but then I find myself feeling absolutely terrible and guilt for thinking about them or masturbating about them. My partner and I have just broken up for like the 4th time this year, mostly because of my anxiety. I feel intense guilt and feel ashamed. Because I cannot just have the thought, enjoy it and be done. It turns into “You have to break up with her.” Or “You clearly really want to have sex with this other girl so do it.” And just constant fantasizing and feeling ashamed because I get obsessed with literally any attractive girl I see and I hate it :( It’s very hard because my partner and I were in a long distance relationship, so we couldn’t be intimate very often and I just stopped enjoying it when we were because I was so in my head. I also am very hooked on pornography which I think might be a compulsion to my sexual obsessions. Thank you for reading. I know this is long. I was wondering if anyone had the same thing or if they had tips for how to deal with sexual obsessions! All I can do is distractions right now.

Guilt/ confessing compulsions: anyone else hate this theme? It seems like I have to tell every detail of things to my partner or I won’t be able to live w myself or it makes it “inauthentic” very frustrated

When was the first time you realized you may have OCD? Or what was that “final straw” that pushed you to get help?

Possible TW? Does anyone else with POCD see/read things like "You know you're not a pedo because it disgusts you" and wonder am I disgusted enough? or "pedos feel distressed at their thoughts" and think I'm distressed about these thoughts too? Or see people say "pedos are distressed that they won't be accepted and have normal lives" and think oh my god, I'm scared I won't have a normal life? It seems like anything people say that is meant to make me feel better or convince myself I'm not a pedo is only twisted around in my head so I'm even more convinced I'm awful and that all of these things are evidence of that

My ocd thoughts are really bad. Does anyone else have fears about their significant other?? I'm told it's ocd to worry that he's going to hurt me, or cheat on me, or that hes gay. I worry that everything could go wrong in our relationship despite no evidence. For instance, last night I was convinced he was going to hurt our dog. Our dog loves him so much and there was no reason for this thought. Can someone else tell me if they ever have thoughts like these. I have searched the internet but people with ocd tend to worry about themselves. Am I going crazy??

Second night of breaking down crying, i am tired of my head. My head hurts, i feel like a horrible person. I don’t want to do anything, i don’t want to go anywhere and i don’t know who i am anymore. I’m scared of what my life will become. I never thought i’d say this but i just don’t see the point in living anymore, i don’t care about what happens to me. I don’t feel anything but anxiety and fear. My life is horrible.

Maybe this will help someone. I have had Pure O / POCD / ROCD for about 18 years. Recently I’ve started to open my mind to all the negative thoughts, to just sit and say ‘Do your worst’. And when the thoughts come I refuse to deal with them, I just accept that these things might happen. And of course, when I feel like I’ve dealt with one thought, my OCD looks for another, and another...but I just deal with those in the same way. I feel like I’m tiring out my OCD, little by little. It can be really scary, but it definitely works. I don’t know how it works, but it does. In a few weeks I felt a lot better about two specific thoughts that I’ve had for literally the past few years. We all need to remember that the stuff we think works (rumination, reassurance) doesn’t, and the stuff we don’t think will work actually does! Stay strong everyone ?

I have literally never felt worse than I feel now. I can’t stop randomly telling my boyfriend of 4 years every little unnecessary and upsetting detail of every sexual thing I did with people in the short month we weren’t together over 3 years ago. This is after so far having one of the worst days as far as my ROCD in a long time, I’ve been confessing stuff all day but now it’s getting ridiculous and really hurtful. He’s considering leaving me because of the things I’m saying. I completely understand because after saying these things such as explicit details of these sexual encounters or my thoughts and feelings about them out of extreme guilt, I realize I’m sharing things that could ruin our relationship. But I can’t help it and now I’m miserable because I STILL feel like I have to keep going despite the fact he’s already almost gone. Help me

So the fact that i haven’t been officially diagnosed kind of makes my ocd worse. I’ve kind of become positive that I have it. Thinking back now, I can think of a few rituals I did as a child that could be seen as warning signs for OCD, but the debilitating stuff happened about 5 months ago in October. I saw a therapist for about a month and a half but she never gave me an official diagnosis and even though I asked, she just said it hasn’t been long enough to tell. It seemed like she wasn’t helping at all and wasn’t doing anything for me I couldn’t hear off of a forum such as this or an informative YouTube video so I quit going. I had problems this entire time but just this past week it has spiked up to the severity it was when it first started and is once again making me desperate for help! I think I want meds this time so I want to go to my regular doctor and ask. I guess my general question is how should I go about seeking help and can I say I have OCD even if it wasn’t officially told to me? This week has been very debilitating and the fact that I’ve been suffering for 5 months makes me believe this isn’t going to just go away.

This is gonna sound super weird but here goes. After having general cheating ocd and ROCD for months and gone through many different obsessions relating to those, my brain has become creative and given me some obsession as specific as NOT thinking about male genitalia. I know that’s absolutely ridiculous but if I single thought of one pops up my brain either from seeing/hearing something or just anxious thinking, my brain goes “what if you aren’t satisfied with your partner’s” “what if past people you’ve been with had better ones” “what if other people have better ones” and the whole thing makes me absolutely sick!!!! I’ve never had thoughts like this before like a week ago and I’ve always been happy with my boyfriend. My main compulsion seems to be confessing information to my boyfriend. I do this like an addiction almost. So here I am telling him hurtful things that I don’t want to think or feel. He got mad the first couple times with this theme, even though he’s used to me confessing stuff in general, but now he’s realizing that I have a big problem with this one too. Thanks to anyone who actually reads all this and doesn’t judge me too much because I know it’s weird and disgusting and I’m a horrible girlfriend for it but I just want these thoughts to stop happening and just live in the moment with my boyfriend. Don’t know what else to do because I’ve already confessed it to him a million times and I want to stop so bad!

Absolutely disgusting that someone just told someone on here to not talk about drug use that helped them with their OCD because there are younger people on here. How about we let everyone discuss what works for THEM. I don’t see anyone freaking out that we’re talking about antidepressants. THOSE ARE THE REAL DRUGS. Those led me to attempt suicide those led my OCD spiraling out of control! Where is the restriction of talking about those drugs on here?!? Some of you are so backwards. We should be HELPING each other. If you don’t agree with medicinal drugs here’s an idea, don’t take them. But don’t bash those who want to talk about how it’s helped them!

SSRI success story: so far... It’s been 5 months since my POCD flare up. And it’s been by far the worst experience of my life. I was terrified to even leave my house and go to work (I work in child care) in December I decided enough was enough and went to see a specialist for a diagnosis. She diagnosed me instantly with OCD and recommended I gave medicine a shot. I started on Lexapro 4 weeks ago yesterday and the change has been incredible. That with a mix of ERP and Acceptance of the thoughts (Acceptance has been the biggest help, and very easy to do when the Lexapro makes me not care about the thoughts) Now, I won’t say I don’t get thoughts. I still absolutely do, but I get less of them. And when I get an extremely hard convincing one, I accept it in, and sit in any guilt I have until it naturally dissipates. I’m not recovered, not by a long shot. But I have a small piece of me back, and it feels good. I’m hoping with hard work, and not letting OCD thoughts get under my skin. Recovery will be possible. If you’re scared to try an SSRI. I completely understand. I was lucky enough to have the first one work for me. The side effects were HORRIBLE, almost worse than the OCD for well over a week. But the benefits I have now outweigh the negatives of that week. I’m not promising a fix with an SSRI. But I think it’s worth a shot. Hell, this could all come back to bite me in the ass, who knows? I believe in you guys, and I’m starting to believe in myself again. We can do this. We’re one big family here, and we need each other. (But no reassurance ??)

Tw Do you guys think with POCD/HOCD it‘s nearly impossible to not develop ROCD? I met my boyfriend during recovery, but I didn’t have any butterflies or faster heartbeat and I wasn’t that attracted to him but I was fascinated by his character, attitude and charisma. I started to google and asked friends if I’m allowed to start a relationship with him if I don’t have overwhelming feelings. I noticed I still thought about other guys.But I knew that I wanted to be with him I was feeling good and happy, he is perfect. I thought maybe I’ll develop harder feelings during the next couple of weeks. But I didn’t. I developed more feelings than I had in the beginning and even sometimes butterflies, but I always thought it wasn’t enough. After 2 months my POCD started coming back because I was asking myself constantly if I’m not enough attracted to my boyfriend. We got intimate a couple of weeks before it came up again and it was new and everything to me and it was hard to manage, questioning my feelings constantly. My therapist also said that we have to work on my feelings because she thinks I’m not letting me feel enough. She’s right, since POCD is here again, I am afraid to have feelings towards anyone because I think all my feelings are linked to children. I feel like I just can’t let go and be happy. I don’t know what to do. POCD is one thing, but I thought about breaking up with my boyfriend a lot of times because I feel very guilty concerning the fact about my lack of physical feelings. I know that I love him, I want to be with him, I want him to be the last person I see in the evening and the first person I see when I wake up, I feel safe, he feels like home, he is the most caring, loving and sweet person I’ve ever met. The thought of braking up with him makes me cry so hard and breaks my heart. But I just can’t stop thinking about whether it’s enough or not, whether it’s enough or not, whether it’s right or not. I think my OCD plays a huge part concerning the feelings but at the same time I question “what if not? What if OCD isn’t the one who stops you from feeling things and you just don’t love him?” It makes my POCD even worse. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do/feel/think. Whether it’s my OCD ruining it or not. If I’m ruining it myself and in denial and just not wanting to let go of my boyfriend. I feel very guilty especially towards him. But I want to be with him but all the things from the beginning and everything tells me that I shouldn’t. I don’t know anymore.

Does anyone have advice for how to begin the conversation about telling your partner about your OCD? I don’t want to have a huge sit down conversation about it but almost how to work it into normal conversation

I know I’ve always had OCD, but it’s been manageable my entire life until about a year ago. I had never ever ever experienced anxiety or suicidal thoughts until this year and I feel like I’m in a constant state of obsessive fear nowadays and it’s horrendous. I have always been the happiest, most positive person I know so this is the polar opposite of what life used to feel like :-( I feel like I’m in a totally different realm than everyone else and I’m just barely getting by. Of course it has gotten somewhat better since I have learned different ways of how to cope, but I feel extremely disheartened by the idea of this being how my life is going to be from now on. Medication makes everything way worse but I’m trying counseling again. I just really want this to go away and feel like my old self again. I feel like I took my mental peace for granted before and would trade the world to be back where I was before :-(