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the NOCD Community

the way a year ago having babies was a dream for me and being a mom was this huge plan i had and i would watch mom videos on youtube and now i feel depressed about it and can’t even look at children without feeling guilt because of POCD intrusive thoughts. it makes me feel like a monster inside and it’s so far from who i am and what my intentions are. it makes me feel sick and gross and it’s like my brain does it on purpose, it sees me happy and instead of basking in the peace of it, it will push horrible gross disturbing graphic images in my head and i feel guilty so then my happiness disappears. i know i would never hurt a child, that’s not what i am worried about, it’s the intrusive thoughts i can’t stand. sitting with the anxiety is horrible because the thoughts just get more and more graphic and horrible so i react and i can’t control it. if i could i would erase my brain and restart. it attacked my biggest fear and made me feel like i WAS what i fear and now i can’t live normally. i can’t be around children because then my POCD will be triggered and i will have intrusive thoughts that self sabotage and make me feel guilty and anxious and i hate it so much. it’s HELL ON EARTH. it’s so painful to want to be something so bad (a mom) but you’re own brain is against you and fights you and says you’re evil. it’s even worse when graphic disgusting thoughts follow up with it and you’re stuck in a mental battle for days and days. women my age are dating and planning their lives and i am here scared of my own brain. it’s so sad and i don’t want to pity myself because i feel unworthy, but it’s like i don’t know if i could live like this. how do people wake up everyday with POCD and get better and stay positive. i try SO hard, like i even tell myself when i have an intrusive thought “ok don’t react” because i know it’ll make the thought louder, but it’s so difficult because the thoughts are so disturbing that i want to fight them. the guilt is IMMENSELY PAINFUL too like i feel like i am unworthy of being a human because of my POCD and i will never be a “good person” truly and that terrifies me. the last thing i would ever want is to have these thoughts, i rather anything else, but that’s why they come i guess, my brain knows i’ll react to them and it’s truly the worst because it’s a mental prison. all i want is a break from this horrible disorder and take a breath and feel normal again. my heart goes out to anyone with horrible intrusive thoughts and POCD bc it’s such a SCARY theme to have and it’s something that traumatizes you. :(

Having a tough couple of days at the moment because i finally gave into the compulsion of reading the masterdoc the other day. I feel as though all my crushes on guys can be explained by comp het and that none of it was real. Im worried i might have had a crush on a girl when i was 15 or so but didnt realise it at the time even though i was already having intrusive thoughts about this back then as well so i dont know if it was checking or actually true. Ive been trying to accept that im probably a lesbian but im really struggling. I dont want to do anything anymore and i just feel numb. I dont feel attracted to guys anymore either but i also cant imagine myself with a girl either but i genuinely think im in denial at this point and ive just been using ocd as an excuse. I feel like i cant go to a therapist because its probably not ocd anymore and i just feel really stuck and guilty about everything and dont know what to do. I know i should try and accept the uncertainty but i feel like its all true now and i cant get past that thought. Sorry for the long post and im really sorry if i triggered anyone. I would appreciate any replies, im just feeling very alone to be honest..

What did medication help for you guys?

Interested in your experience: How do you guys recognise that ocd tries to trick you into a compulsion that could trigger you into spiralling/relapsing? I sometimes find it difficult to recognize in the moment but for me its usually when I get a sudden urge/idea to review/read/watch something related to my theme. my theme is sexual orientation OCD, so usually it's when I see a video or book/article about that theme that I suddenly feel I have to watch it right now to make sure that I don't relate or feel triggered by it to make sure it doesn't bother me. Then when I do it often it does trigger me hard and I feel scared and upset with myself. I feel the difference between a compulsion and using it for ERP is to not watch it while I feel that urge and need to know right now but wait until it passes and then maybe watching it later with a more mindful attitude about what I am doing... would you agree? I am curious how you experience that and where you draw the line between a trigger, a compulsion and exposure? It's so difficult to differentiate, especially when you deal with mostly mental compulsions...

I am not diagnosed with OCD but could really use some guidance. Over the last few weeks, I’ve been dealing with this thought that I had cheated on my bf in the first few months of our relationship and I believe it’s a false memory as I have no recollection of it happening and it only appeared in my head 15 months after it “happened”. Background: I’ve been with my bf now for 2 years and I’m the happiest I’ve ever been and love him so so much. I went abroad for the summer for 2 months and we kept in contact the whole time (texting, video calls). I was always referring him as my boyfriend to other people when I was out there even though back then, he didn’t ask me since he wanted to wait till I returned home. There was one night I was out with one of my friends and a couple of her friends (all guys). I wasn’t drunk and I remember most parts of the night, including the end when I got in a taxi and I called my bf cause I was upset caused I missed him so much. There was a part of the night where I got separated from my friend so I was there with some of the guys I had met earlier in the night. I remember one particular guy who was there but I didn’t find attractive. However, I have this thought in my head that during that time I was separated from my friend that I kissed him. I am 90% sure that I didn’t as I remember other parts of the night before and after the event and I feel like I would’ve remembered some sensory aspect of it as I remembered sensory aspects of other people I have kissed. I also know how I would’ve felt immediate regret and upset with myself after the nights events but I was in good spirits the day after and for the rest of the trip. It also appeared in my head a year and 3 months initially after it “happened”. I know this is me looking for reassurance but I have no other means of getting reassurance. I haven’t told anyone about this thought as I am scared that it isn’t a false memory and I blocked it out all this time. I literally can’t think of anything else other than this and the more I think about it, the more real it feels. Has anyone ever experienced false memories about cheating and if so, do you have any advice on how to manage these thoughts or make them go away, it would really help 😭

How is it possible that for so much of my relationship I could feel so confidently in love and attracted to my male partner, then suddenly, almost if by magic overnight, I questioned the validity of every second of it, even of the moments in the past when I had head over heels feelings for guys and longed for them endlessly? How is it possible that I went from infatuated with my bf every second to questioning whether I'll ever know for sure that I genuinely like men? This is the worst torture I have ever known as a human, and I was seriously abused by my parents my whole childhood, so to say this is worse is saying a lot. The worst feeling in the world is feeling constantly dissociated around my boyfriend to the point that he feels like a stranger, feeling as if every perceived good moment with him in the past was all but an illusion or a repressed trick I played upon myself because I was unaware of some truth. These are the scripts that play through my head 24/7 with no relief. I'm exhausted. I'm depressed. I'm afraid I'll never enjoy life again like I once did with my partner.

i just heard something that said “you CAN control your thoughts” and now i am worrying that i purposely have horrible disgusting “p” thoughts and i am a evil person inside. lately i have been in a really mentally dark place, everyday feels repetitive, trying to deal with the anxiety of these thoughts and the CONSTANT gut wrenching guilt that comes with them and feeling unworthy of living. it’s been hell to say the least. i feel like i am genuinely messed up and i have no chance at fixing myself and it’s causing me so much pain internally. i can’t sleep at night, i can’t think normally, i can’t be myself. i feel horrible, i can’t afford therapy and it’s hard to really be real about this kinda stuff bc most wouldn’t understand, it’s self sabotaging and i am not living. i am so grateful for my life, i want to be a mom one day and enjoy motherhood and be happy, but ocd ruins it all for me. i am up until 3am having panic attacks over thoughts that i don’t want, i am wasting away my life just worrying and being guilty and feeling like i am not a good person and i am TERRIFIED. just wanted to let this out and share this so someone doesn’t feel alone or feel like they have “worse” thoughts so they must not have ocd bc i have TERRIBLE HORRIBLE DISTURBING TRAUMATIZING intrusive thoughts and i can’t even tell you how much pain i am in....

Ok let’s say I really am a lesbian or bi. I don’t have a problem with being it if I was comfortable with it! But I don’t understand why I would go through all this if I really was homosexual. Like if I was a lesbian, wouldn’t I know and like don’t question every single thing in my life and have so much anxiety because of the uncertainty? I wouldn’t mind being a lesbian if it made me very secure in myself and happy! But I am not, I hate this. If I end up being a lesbian after all (this gave me much anxiety to write) it was a HELL of a process? I don’t understand how my sexuality just change? After being sure of my sexuality all my life.

I honestly just need somewhere to vent because I have nobody to talk to. My boyfriend and I live together, and he hasn't had a job since March 9. We just moved into a new apartment, which took our savings from about $8500 down to $1300 (bought a new couch, bed, had to pay on both apartments for a month while transitioning into the new place). Even when we both worked and made $15 an hour, I was always so worried about money and I would cry anytime we spent money on anything. I make $13 an hour at my new job, and even if I work 40 hours a week, it still would not cover our bills (about $2000). Ever since he quit the job in March, he has had 3 different jobs which he has quit within 3 days of starting. He just says they aren't what he's looking for. These next 2 weeks my store manager is on vacation so they are letting me work as many hours as I want to. I will work about 45 this week and 54 next week (after working 45 last week). I have tried to get my boyfriend to doordash but he says he doesn't want to do it alone. We have gotten into multiple arguments, but in the end I can't win. I even had a thought last week of kicking him out. I just feel so alone and I can't talk to my family about it because I don't want them to judge and think he's a bum. I can't even talk to my best friend about it because she says "I don't know what to tell you" anytime I vent to her about him. I'm sorry for the long rant, I just needed somewhere to put my thoughts before I explode

this is hard to explain, but i am always ruminating on the mistakes i made during my last relationship (july 2019-november 2019) during the relationship, i was struggling really badly with intrusive thoughts and relationship OCD but i was undiagnosed and much less mature. i had constantly avoided kissing my boyfriend as i was obsessed with the idea of my first kiss and i wanted it to be perfect. i was so scared i would do something and he'd break up with me and i often questioned if i was just lying to myself about liking him just so i wouldn't be lonely anymore. i was overthinking everything i said to him, sometimes i couldn't even look him in the eyes because of how badly i was worrying. he broke up with me in november 2019 (very nicely lol) but i still talk to him and we are still friends. the problem is, i look back on our relationship all the time and blame myself for everything. i do think i still love him, and sometimes i find myself thinking "if only i had known about my OCD" or "i wish i could tell him about my OCD now so he can know it wasn't his fault it didn't work". he is a wonderful person and i was lucky my first relationship was with him, but im scared he thinks he did something wrong that made me so closed off and weird. many times i consider texting him an apology or a big explanation, but considering its been a year and a half i think that's a little weird. has anyone ever experienced this or does anyone have any advice? it keeps me up at night and i don't talk about it with my best friend because she knows him and i don't want her knowing how much i still think of him.

Starting ERP today. For the last few days, I’ve been calm about it. Now that today is the today, I am so anxious. My heart has been beating out of my chest all day.

I’m just so fuckin pissed. I don’t understand why I’m being triggered. I’m not fuckin gay. I’m never going to fuck a dude I’m never going to ask a guy out or hold there hand or kiss them or any of that shit. I just have weird thoughts that pop up when I see a girl now which causes this fucking endless arousal feeling cuz I just can’t see a girl like regular anymore. I get that. There isn’t a perfect erp for this ocd. Yes there’s times to where I can get a visual of a women and get an erection thinking about sex with a girl but I know it doesn’t stop my ocd of the stupid shit that pops up. Cuz I can go out and see a girl and boom there’s my ocd again saying “dick” or saying “dude” I’m not an idiot I understand this it’s never going to stop it’s never going away it’s going to be there and I have to live with this the rest of my life. I just want to stop being triggered in purpose cuz it’s not helping it’s just not. It’s just taking me away from being able to do something I love which is working out and being able to go to work to so I can workout. I know my life will never be normal again but I would just like peace and quiet when I come home from work so I can go to bed and wake up in the morning feeling good enough to go workout and go to work that is all I ask. I know I’m never going to be the same and live a normal life again I understand that but if I can have some normalcy of going to the gym and going to work then I will be just happy with that.

Wow its so damn hard to stop avoiding. And not to ruminate. I literally feel like I’m agreeing with the thoughts and like I’m gonna act on them, since I can’t prove myself otherwise. It is really hard because I feel something telling me to act on my thoughts and I can not fight back. It’s crazy and scary af.

So I have been battling OCD my whole life. And about three years ago it came to an extreme problem. During that year I was diagnosed with severe OCD with many themes and with the help of a professional I worked through it. It was a decently long haul of years but I have now tears of happiness. Within that time I started to write a book of my experience with it. I haven’t wrote more In a while but I will again one day. Please let me know what you think of the first chapter. At the end it does talk about my deceased grandfather that I was close to. He had the same issue with OCD and I felt he helped me to figure this out. WARNING ! I don’t have great grammar skills. Lol ! Chapter 1 Imagine being reborn Imagine being reborn at 35 years old with super hero powers. Not the power to fly, read minds, X-ray vision, or even to walk on water. Imagine you had the power to understand your mind. Why you went through your whole life with crap fogging your brain, things that made you anxious and sometimes scares you to the bone. Things that sometimes woke you up in the middle of the night and had you staring at the mirror wondering why or yelling at the mirror for it to stop. Sounds like a bad nightmare you would see in a movie ? Damn right it was like that. It was stuff I could never get out of my mind. I had many ups and downs but when I had my downs, OMG it was bad. My story of my life is to show strength, show that with a lot of will power it will never be overcome but there are ways to deal with it and cope with it. There are so many ways to help yourself from the bully of your mind. I’m a fighter and for years I fought it and showed it emotion but not to realize I was dealing with this bully wrong all along. But just like school yard bullies if you show emotion it will keep on pushing you from behind trying to get a rise out of you. You need to show this bully that you don’t care, that you are aware it’s there. Eventually this tool this gift I have unwrapped and learned amongst many others has made the bully subside. Not go away but get board of me cause I don’t care. Now sure as shit it can come knocking on my door tomorrow but I’m ready for you to become board of me once again. Now the bully I’m talking about is what lurks around in your head. If I told most people that I was diagnosed after all the years with OCD no one would believe me. In fact most people don’t believe me especially the close ones, but that’s ok they won’t understand but until you have it most doesn’t truly know what OCD is. Most people look at OCD as being just neat and clean. And I did for years as well and for a while I always said I am. Not because of anything but myself always needing to touch things with both hands and etc. but that’s a small portion of this doubting disorder AKA OCD. There are so many areas of OCD. Let’s break it down. The “O” stand for obsessive, the “C” stand for compulsive, and the “D” stands for Disorder. Basically the disorder is a misfiring of the brain. Instead of letting things especially thoughts go, the trap door of your brain never closes. It draws more things even topics to be obsessed by, it starts to have a ping pong affect in the brain. The argument in your brain starts to spirals quickly south. Now instead of teaching your brain to close that trap door. You sink lower and lower into the bullies grips. You fight and fight, you beg and pray for it to stop, you yell at it in hopes for it to go away but it makes it worse and worse. Before you know it you are looking for certain compulsions to stop it. You think these compulsions work but they do only temporarily. The temporary relieves just fuels the fire to roar harder and louder. You can’t stop it you need to except the fact that this is the way your brain functions. And until you admit there is a problem to understand and until you except it, it won’t go away. This bully of OCD won’t stop . For example some that feels that they can’t go into a room without flickering the lights on and off seven times or their parents will die, they will have a very temporary relieve from that compulsion of the light switch. Now it will work great for them until they enter a new room. Now that’s the OCD everyone knows. How about the OCD of Unwanted Intrusive Thoughts. Things that pop up into your mind for no reason and they make no sense but they throw you for a loop. You have compulsions internally where no one can see them, in your mind. This took me 25 years to say to my parents and then another 10 years afterwards to truly start to realize what it is. And to realize what it is and learn tools to except is the gift from Poppy. You will learn later why it was him that helped me. Poppy helped me unwrap a 35 year old gift.

I have a tricky one for you guys... Please help me in this. I don’t know what’s true and what’s anxiety in this situation and I need some help. I have a pretty paralyzing fear of being murdered by my partner. I don’t remember how it started but it’s a fairly new theme (within the last 2 years). I probably make it a lot worse by watching a lot of true crime documentaries and, of course, many of the killers are the spouse. Anyway, it usually comes and goes in terms of severity and I JUST felt like I had gotten over it. I didn’t really worry about it anymore. My partner knows about this. He has a twisted sense of humour and has made dark jokes but never threatened me or made me feel like I was in any ACTUAL danger. But he can say things that will just absolutely send me over the edge. He’s promised (and pinky-promised) that he will never murder me or anyone else. That sounds SO silly when I type it out but it’s how I ask for reassurance. Anyway, something happened today where this has now come up again and I’m through the roof with anxiety. I googled (I know, stupid!) and it sounds like a lot of people have this dark sense of humour and a lot of people think it’s normal to joke about killing each other with their partner..? I don’t know- it’s not like I feel like he’s threatening me. He always apologies when he sees how anxious i get and promises he was just kidding and he would never hurt me. But I just don’t see how it’s funny? Maybe I would if it weren’t for this intense fear? I don’t know, please help. I don’t know what’s really a threat and what’s not anymore. Thank you!

Any mamas of little ones on here trying to tackle this OCD beast while taking care of their kids??? Could really use a tribe of women right now. I’m finding it so much harder to fight when I have to care for her because she is only 3 1/2 and takes up all my time (it’s wonderful btw I am just finding it difficult to fight through the panic attacks in front of her.)

Out of control intrusive thoughts of all types have become a part of my everyday life I do not know who I am anymore and I see no hope:(

Omg, loss of attraction is kicking my ass....

Someone else that also get icks when a guy is overly kind and says he cares about you a lot, and I mean a lotttt.. I don’t know why but I want to distance myself from all of it, makes me feel weird

Help someone?