Welcome to
the NOCD Community

My mom passed away on January 24th but my husband and I didn’t know till Sunday a few days ago. Since Sunday - I have not showered, brushed my teeth, have over ate and binged on junk food and drinks. My support groups and therapist is in the know but I have unable been able to respond to texts or calls. I have my finals due this week and my processors said I can have another few days after the submission. I just feel like my life has stopped. I’m only 27. My dad is gone too. And I don’t have a relationship with my other family members - I’m not asking for advice please. I’m only sharing this as a way to literally just share that I am someone whose mom has passed away and I needed to say that. And that I feel complusions coming on but also for a moment … I felt like I wasn’t someone with ocd for a few moments when I got news my mom is gone. But then I also got reminded immediately when I thought how do I get through this now ? Send prayers to me everyone.

I had a great childhood but one bad thing happened and I feel like things just haven't been the same anymore. My teen years sucked and the start of my adult years aren't the greatest. I have good moments still, and there are very high moments but I'm mostly just not happy. I'm just not feeling the days anymore and OCD makes it so much worse. I just hope I can work out the past hurt, guilt, and shame. I try to shake it off but I just can't. I just remember it all over and over again and it's hard to let go of it. I really hope I can somehow get back to where I used to be. I'm mostly worried about how my addiction abuse affected my physical health. I'm always afraid that I'm going to catch a bad disease or that I won't make it the next day. I hate it. I just want to stop worrying and just live my life. I have a lot of good things in my life but I just can't let this stuff go.

I am angry 24/7. I’m in a constant war with my mind, and the images I get inside my head are unbearable to say the least. My mom passed when I was 17. (I’m 24 now)my two older brothers died this past November 2023 in the same week. I have no way of expressing my grief. I feel like nobody understands me. I’m not an alcoholic, but I feel like the only times I’m able to feel genuine emotion is when Im out with family drinking. My OCD is a battle from the moment I wake up, until the moment I drift off to sleep. And I feel restless because I have no relief while I’m sleeping, because of the kind of dreams I get, that are based off of the themes of my OCD. This is my first time seeking help with this, and I have had OCD since elementary school. I don’t wanna carry this anymore. Please, any advice you can pass along, share it. I feel alone.

For a long time now I've been having problems breathing and having a narrow airway so I constantly check my throat and have anxiety and thoughts about dying in my sleep choking or having an allergic reaction. Some nights it is very hard for me to sleep where I just am overthinking and hyperfixating on my throat to the point it feels like my airway is blocked and air can't get through. I do believe I have sleep apnea due to the fact I have nights where I wake up choking and coughing as well as making weird sounds at night. For this reason I am also terrified to eat in restaurants for having a fear of choking as well as sleeping with someone in fear of them hearing me snore and make weird noises. I also worry nobody including doctors will understand what I'm talking about or how I think. I just scheduled an ENT appointment after years of putting it off and I'm more scared of them not finding anything wrong with me. Id rather have something wrong with me so it can be solved. I am constantly thinking about the state of my throat and worried that I am going to die because I can't get a full breath of air.

i want to feel human. i want to feel emotions how normal people feel them. i get everyone is different but i dont get it. everytime i feel human for a second i get a random feeling of discouragement and false sense of temporary joy. i want it to stop but it wont stop why wont they stop. ocd and bipolar are not a good combination

We all have triggers to our OCD but what mine are like are i just recently got out of my OCD attacks, but recently there’s a story of a girl who recently committed and me being dumb knowing that that stuff triggers me watched all about it. now my thoughts are “what if i do that” “what if im not happy in my life” “what if i want to kill myself” but also “your just like her your depressed and want too” and “your not happy” when in all reality i’ve been so happy with my life and living until i started watching all of those videos. I’ve been panicking all day and have been isolating myself from everything because i feel like everything is a trigger to my thoughts. my thoughts are convincing me that i want to kms and im not happy but in reality i am. i hate ocd so much i hate it. because i know i would never do this thought but its causes so much stress and time of my life i feel that i cant function.

I have a sinus infection. I’m scared to take the meds because I have read that the meds can increase anxiety. I also read that a sinus infection can turn into meningitis. So now I’m terrified about that. I’ve convinced myself that I’m terribly ill and there’s nothing I can do about it. I’m so tired but can’t sleep because I’m so anxious. I just can’t stop thinking that something horrible is going to happen but won’t take the meds because I’m scared they will make something horrible happen. This thought process is long and very repetitive. How do I break the cycle and start to feeling better? Being sick wreaks havoc in my nervous system. But so does taking the meds . I don’t know why to do anymore.

When struggling with ocd I've noticed myself disconnecting from the truth of who i am. When your mind is constantly doubting everything you do it can make you feel like you don't really know who you are and that is very scary. I keep thinking back to my past self before all of this got really bad and I can't help but mourn the loss of the freedom I had :/ Despite the fear and depression this has caused me, I'm trying to take small steps to reconnect with that version of myself in the past that felt more free. I don't know if this might help anyone else but don't get stuck in the cloudiness of intrusive thoughts and ocd, do those things you used to love despite the nagging thoughts. Don't let yourself be lost in the haze of your thoughts to the point where you forget who you are. Do those things that remind you that you are still human. Dance, Paint, Write, anything really. Its not that easy but just remember that despite any horrific distressing thoughts you might have, you are still human.

So my theme has revolved around the fear of having schizophrenia for about a year now, many therapist and mental health professionals told me they believe it’s a mix of ocd and hypochondria. Well my main symptom of this disorder is the fear of having delusions, so over the course of this year I’ve had thoughts ranging from “what if my wife is a demon” “what if this song means something” “what if there’s some hidden message in this movie” “what if the government created the world and controls everything” “what if Satan is the true creator of the world” “why did my cat look at me like that, what if he’s a spy created by the government, what if all animals are?” Literally crazy shit but it all feels so real, I’ve thought about this stuff so much that I’ve started to have almost an emotional detachment from the world around me, I’ll have thoughts like, “why should I care, nothings real anyway”. And now it’s starting to feel like my normal line of thinking, like now I genuinely feel like everything is fake or staged in some way, nothing feels real or genuine, it feels like everyone around me, the media, news, politics, all feels like some sort of big act or lie. Feels like there’s something more to reality that I’m missing or something, everything feels “too perfect”. I’ve lost all happiness in everything and I’ve become SO suspicious of every single thing, everything has to have some deeper meaning according to my brain, it sucks. Has anyone ever had the fear of schizophrenia and it got this bad?

OCD definitely makes me feel like my future is nothing but bad. A bunch of what ifs and it feels super anxiety inducing. I remind myself that no matter how bad my life gets, I never want to harm myself or end my life. I want to get through each struggle in a healthy manner. I just have a fear of bad things happening in my life and Im scared how I would react to it. My OCD is definitely super anxiety inducing and I would love for anyone to share their thoughts.

Is it possible for your ancestors to curse you??? I keep getting intrusive thoughts about my relative that passed away and my thoughts are saying that they’re gonna curse me with one of my biggest fears. I’m so terrified right now. What if these thoughts were to actually come true..??!!!

Does anyone else get this sinking feeling in their gut, like something terrible is about to happen? I use to panic over it but now I know it’s my OCD, it’s just so random, like all the sudden my brain is like SOMETHINGS WRONG OMG OMG DONT BE ALONE DONT LEAVE OTHERS ALONE 🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨

someone said something WORD FOR WORD what i am going through. i want to post it to see if you guys have any advice. to me, it’s the fear that my values or morals have changed forever. i don’t want them to change tho, i have no idea what to do

Hi all! I just wanted to see if anyone has any knowledge about when exposures become compulsive. My OCD has often centred around the anxiety itself and it never going away so my themes often jump around meta OCD and the fear of not getting better / doing exposures wrong. I find it always gets very complicated when OCD latches onto the exposures themselves.. I have found that saying “maybe, maybe not” to intrusive thoughts in the moment often comes with that temporary feeling of relief similar to that of compulsions. Is there a chance this in and of itself has become a neutralising technique? Does this sound mad? I’m struggling to find relevant research around this topic so if anyone can help that would be great. (well aware this could just be another obsessional fear!)

hi, I haven't posted here before, but I'm feeling really alone and hoping this will help a bit. I was diagnosed with OCD 2 years ish ago, after being able to hide a lot of cleaning compulsions during the pandemic as everyone was doing them, but it's really gotten worse in the past 6months ish. I'm on 100mg sertraline which seems to help take the edge off, but not really do much else. my main theme is contamination but others present too. I'm just feeling really out of control at the moment, the control it has on my life is so intense and I feel like nothing is helping. I'm in therapy doing ongoing cbt/dbt due to trauma, but also working partially on other things, I have done a course of cbt in the past but felt it had no effect. I have been looking into ERP but the thought of actually facing the things that trigger me is absolutely terrifying, the anxiety I get even when having to delay a compulsion almost always leads to a panic attack, today i didn't have my hand sanitiser on hand and had to walk back to a class to get it up one flight of stairs and that felt like it was too long and caused such a bad spiral. The flare I had today and reflecting on the last few months had me googling if I'd ever qualify for euthanasia (not legal in UK anyway) purely because this condition is so debilitating. I don't want to die, and everyone thinks I'm suicidal, but death isn't something I want at all, I just want this all to stop, and the thought of there being no cure and living with this forever is so scary and makes me feel like living isn't worth it. Everywhere says that OCD gets worse with age, and the thought of it being worse than this is terrifying. I'm scared, I think. I don't want to die, and I don't think anyone gets that, but I can't face it, either, because it feels so real to me. I know I need to, and I know it will help eventually, but I just wanted to sort of share what I was feeling, hoping others do as well. I know there are others, but it still feels so lonely.

I keep thinking back on my past and worry if I ever actually had empathy or ever really cared about the things I care for, or when I think of bad things that happen, I try to think of my emotional reactions to them, and most of the time I can’t feel anything to them and when I think of a past memory of my reactions to them, I can’t tell if I was genuine about it. It’s pissing me off and confusing me, why do I have to be like this, why can’t I just be normal or just never worry about anything? It’s changing my perception of myself and who I am morally, I think back to all the bad things I’ve done as a kid and of recently and I fear that I haven’t changed or progressed forward as a person, I want my morals to be genuine and to feel like a genuine person. I’ve been told that I’m a good person by my sister, but I just can’t live by that somehow, it’s like I need to find evidence of it by using my memories of my past actions and thoughts just to prove to myself that I am good, and like it’s so confusing, it’s like I’m trapped in hell, scared that I won’t be the best person that I strive to be like, and when I say that, it makes me question if I actually want to be good or if I just want to be good to go by societies norms of what being “good” is, and like idk, it’s just so annoying and it scares me so much, it has made me scream and cry so much to get this feeling out of my body. I hate it.

So this is more of a rant and I’ll try not to seek reassurance but it’s really tough right now. I got diagnosed later (when I was 30) when I had a pretty big suicidal ocd onset after I had several family losses including ( one close one and one family friend to suicide which wrecked me) so needless to say I had a breakdown and felt like a baby and couldn’t be away from my mom or brother, I literally drove up to their house cause I couldn’t handle the thoughts and spent two months there before I went into erp which helped a lot. A big hang up I had was I considered my cousin and I very similar and close but he didn’t want help and I didn’t understand him so I have a lot of regrets regarding how we approached it but we didn’t know either. So fast forward to now I’ve had erp and I-cbt and trauma work and the anniversary of his passing happened a week ago. I thought I was fine, it’s been a long time since it happened and I was so proud of myself for conquering the suicide theme as it didn’t affect me any more and I was confident in my ability to deal with it. But then I had SO-OCD show up something that has popped in here and there but never this strong, so I have been dealing with that and now that that’s gone the suicidal ocd is back and it’s so upsetting to me and I don’t feel confident anymore. I will say after reading some posts I do have a fear I realize of not being able to manage my mental health so any time I start feeling negative feelings I can start to worry and go down that rabbit hole. Idk if that is what happened. Lately I’ve been struggling with and being frustrated with finding a job I like and dating ( has always been a struggle) and I moved to a different city and live with my family again ( after my first onset I did leave my families house and go home for a few yrs and did my erp but after i was in remission I just wanted a change and needed a safe space to start over as I didn’t see myself in my old city anymore just scrapping by). I’m glad I made the change and I’ve had positive things happen for me where I’ve been slowly overcoming my dating fears and my ocd themes and found an area of work I liked and pursued… but nothing has happened and I’m frustrated I thought it would all be an uphill swing as long as I just intentionally tried and I feel like it just hasn’t landed. And I’m also realizing sometimes that happens but my perfectionism can really start working its magic in me to beat myself up about not doing or being enough. I’ve always had this fear that I’m just gonna end up a bum and this past weekend I was down and just tried to let myself feel down despite fears of depresssion because I was just looking at the trend of my life and I feel like the outlook doesn’t look great despite me trying I even logically know I’ve done way more and come a lot farther that I “ feel” I have big feelings can trick you I’ve learned especially when you have ocd about not being able to handle them. Anyways I’m in a state of just like really because last night i was down and teared up about the changes happening with my friends starting families and I was trying not to be down but then kept having thoughts of what’s the point in trying you’re not gonna get the things you want, your never gonna stop feeling bad or confused about your emotions, what if you’re actually depressed and want to die and then I would have no emotional reaction to it cause I just feel like numb to it or apathetic at this point. I know I know I don’t want that but it’s liek my lack of feelings toward it is trying to convince me otherwise. Then I went to bed in a foul mood and mad and Ofcourse had the suicidal thoughts pop up and trying not to pick it apart or test if I wanted it there ( but I did give in to the testing a few times and felt nothing) I was liek just go to sleep you’ll feel better tomorrow your ocd is just fucking with you. Then I had a dream that I was super sad and emotional everyone else was happy and doing things with their life and starting families ( which I again don’t get I don’t want to start a family right now I’m just trying to get into dating and maybe finding a partner) and here I was not ready but feeling left behind liek I didn’t get the memo and in my emotional state in the dream I said I wanted to die and I remember feeling liek no this can’t be true but it felt like real and out of my control. Almost all my friends are getting pregnant and as a woman in their 30s this has gotten to me ( I never thought it would). And so I woke up this morning feeling that intense sadness left over from the dream and not wanting to get out of bed and trying to talk myself out of the dream like it wasn’t real and is again my ocd just fucking with me. I think I should also mention that I’m about to start menstruating and have pms/pmdd sometimes. I guess I just wanna know if there are others out there that experience this liek you’ve conquered themes but then they back door through a new theme. And I honestly just feel like it’s stupid af but my ocd is liek but it could actually be you’re depressed and suicidal and I just feel like all my work is gone. Is ocd more likely to strike when you’re frustrated with certain aspects of your life, does it make you more vulnerable to it. I know my cousins anniversary is a potential trigger but I thought I was okay but maybe it was just there in the background. Idk. Looking for support and ppl who have gone through it too and I know we can come out of it and conquer it even if sometimes you really don’t want to cause it’s tiring.

So my theme has revolved around the fear of having schizophrenia for about a year now, many therapist and mental health professionals told me they believe it’s a mix of ocd and hypochondria. Well my main symptom of this disorder is the fear of having delusions, so over the course of this year I’ve had thoughts ranging from “what if my wife is a demon” “what if this song means something” “what if there’s some hidden message in this movie” “what if the government created the world and controls everything” “what if Satan is the true creator of the world” “why did my cat look at me like that, what if he’s a spy created by the government, what if all animals are?” Literally crazy shit but it all feels so real, I’ve thought about this stuff so much that I’ve started to have almost an emotional detachment from the world around me, I’ll have thoughts like, “why should I care, nothings real anyway”. And now it’s starting to feel like my normal line of thinking, like now I genuinely feel like everything is fake or staged in some way, nothing feels real or genuine, it feels like everyone around me, the media, news, politics, all feels like some sort of big act or lie. Feels like there’s something more to reality that I’m missing or something, everything feels “too perfect”. I’ve lost all happiness in everything and I’ve become SO suspicious of every single thing, everything has to have some deeper meaning according to my brain, it sucks. Has anyone ever had the fear of schizophrenia and it got this bad?

My biggest fear right now is not getting better and rhats so scary. I dont want death to be "my only way out" I hate this so so much. Please if any one has advice pls do give because i feel hopeless. I want to live again. The overwhelming amount of fear anxiety i get every day is just too much. Please help.

Hi everyone. Has anyone's OCD skyrocketed after an abusive relationship and/or after having children? I've always had some version of OCD but two years ago in February of 2022, I experienced this really horrible bout of DPDR. I lost my sense of self, I was having really strange spiritual thoughts or existential thoughts. I was in an abusive relationship at the time. I'm still recovering from that. But my OCD jumps around. Today, I was worried I was having a brain aneurysm because of a mild headache and because I'm prescribed Lexapro for my depression/anxiety and a low dose of adderall for my adhd. I've been on these meds for a while with no issues but I am now getting thoughts like," maybe I'll have a stroke or an aneurysm from my meds." With no reason to think so. And then I spend hours googling. The health anxiety and death anxiety are fueled by a fear of my kids being without a mother (I'm a single mother.) in some ways, the fear has helped me to make healthier choices but these thoughts of death and the million things that can cause it are taking away from the joy of living. The DPDR seemed to kick this off. Does it ever get better? I exercise, meditate, pray, talk therapy, I just want to feel like "me" again.