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I feel like I’ve lost myself completely. I don’t know who I am or what I want anymore. This disorder is making me feel like I’ve lost everything.

i’ve been around for just a few days and, as it’s common to people in the OCD spectrum, I’ve seen a lot of reassurance seeking. and i thought about NOCD app’s administrators creating an emoji/reaction to the posts that represents “maybe, maybe not” as a way of this community to participate actively in each other’s acceptance skill. does it sound like a good idea? what do u think? (maybe, maybe not?)

I can’t stop crying. I can’t stop ruminating. I can’t get over the false attraction. It is all so painful. I just want to feel like myself again. Are there any other lesbians on here who have ocd???

I can’t take it anymore. It’s so confusing and I hate it. I am a lesbian. Why can’t my ocd just leave me alone?

it’s been immensely hard for me these days. i’ve been managing a impulse to numb myself and my efforts to offer myself compassion are getting harder and harder to manage. i’ve been able to recognize the symptoms i’m experiencing as CTPSD and OCD strongly associated to each other — and this year’s has been such a hard one for me. is there anyone here that’d like to share their own experiences with comorbidities and multiple diagnoses? i’ve been struggling to get the proper care, mainly. that’d be really helpful, thanks.

Lately, I've been trying to pinpoint exactly what is causing me to feel down on myself all the time. I also have been having a hard time making and maintaining relationships or connections with others. I'm not sure if it's me, what I'm going through, or just the people I'm dealing with. I feel bad blaming it on others. Anyway, for the past 6 or 7 seven years I've been dealing with a bit of depression and anxiety. It started when I was about 13 years old. I felt like nobody wanted me around, everything I did was wrong, I hurt everyone around me, and everyone would be better off if I would just pass away. However, about two years later I started high school. I was in honors, doing well in my classes, and had made a few friends. I was really happy. Then covid hit and I began to feel depressed, nervous in public situations, and alone. During all of this I was also questioning my sexuality and because I went to a private school and my family was very religious, I was absolutely terrified of being gay. My junior year of high school I was feeling even worse and more alone. I began cutting myself. Then, a couple months into the school year I made a few new friends and met a girl that I liked. I began feeling a bit better about myself and was happy to have people around that shared similar experiences with mental health and sexuality. Later on, things began to go down hill. The girl I was talking to soon hated me because I didn't properly communicate my feelings. She started saying hateful things which in turn made me upset with her because I had apologized multiple times and tried to make up with her. I was also extremely upset with her because I had found out that she had really upset my younger sister and made her uncomfortable. About a month or two later one of my other friends told me I was a horrible person for sticking up for a girl I considered to be my best friend at the time. I noticed after these events and interactions I became a lot more insecure with myself and began feeling like everything was my fault. I overthink every interaction and everything I say when around a girl I like. I get scared that I'm bothering them, being annoying, or I'm making them uncomfortable. However, I also feel that most don't want me around, see me as embarrassing or childish, see me as too emotional or high maintenance, or just don't care about me at all. I then obsess over what I should do or what I may have done wrong. I sometimes also make impulsive decisions. Whenever I have feelings for someone and I start acting like this, they tend to get upset because neither one of us can understand what's going on or why I'm doing the things I'm doing and I feel like I've lost a few good people because of it. On top of all of this, I feel bad for not having my priorities in line. For some reason I worry more about friends than I do about family issues. It's also embarrassing because others deal with much more than I ever have and probably ever will. At this point I'm scared that nothing will change and I will always be in this position. Sometimes I feel like the only way out is suicide or self harm to atone for everything I've done wrong. If anyone has any suggestions on types of therapy, what I may be dealing with, or just simply how to go about getting better I'd love to hear your ideas. I would really like to get better so that I continue to help my family, help those around me, and enjoy my hobbies or things I love.

I need someone's thoughts on this I've been starting to question everything and all the things I've done, I've never liked any girls despite being in a girls class for years, but because if hocd I've starting to think about things I've done or thought that are not normal for a straight person, when I was little I used to enjoy watching videos of people making out and I kind of felt aroused when the guy touched some parts of the girl, sometimes i stumbled upon some videos of girls kissing and I remember I felt aroused by that too,then I stopped but growing up I tried to watch porn despite the fact that I'm rarely horny and straight porn just didn't do it for me, then I stumbled in lesbian porn and I actually enjoyed it and would get around by it,but I never questioned my sexuality because I knew that it was quite common for straight girls to watch lesbian porn but the thing is that sometimes I've wanted to do the same things that girls did in those videos,not essentially making sex with them or being touched by them but touch certain parts of some girls(not a lot just the ones I found extremely attractive)and this thought aroused me. Since hocd hit I've been rethinking everything and this thing in particular has stuck with me. Idk really I feel so hopeless because I mean for someone it could not be a big deal being not straight but for me it literally is because my entire identity would be destroyed and I would not be able to play those kind of games cause I would not enjoy them or I won't be able to watch any straight romance movie anymore or I could not fangirl with my friends about some hot singers or actors or even fictional characters and my dream since I was a child of being married with a man and having a beautiful family with children would be destroyed. So right now I would like someone's thoughts on this,like I don't want reassurance I just want to know what someone thinks about this,like do you think I'm not straight in reality?

I'm tired. I have gone through a very hard month and a half in which: 1. The first few days I questioned whether my relationship was toxic just becauseI had a small conflict with my boyfriend, which we resolved immediately. 2. After this I spent several days comparing him to other people, and questioning whether or not I wanted to date someone else. I had anxiety attacks that caused me to lose weight. 3. My partner is a trans boy, so I questioned whether I would prefer to be with a cis boy. Suddenly I stopped being able to see bodies, people or faces because I immediately felt an illogical excitement in my parts, even if I didn't want to have anything with anyone who wasn't my boy. 4. Then when I got out of this loop I started to question whether my boyfriend was interested in other people sexually, and when I managed to discover that he only loved and desired me, I went back to the beginning of everything. I questioned if I wanted other people and if I preferred a penis. I'm tired. It's unbearable and sometimes it's hard for me to see if maybe it's not OCD. I'm scared that I'm not OCD and that I really prefer a guy with a penis or that I like a penis. I'm bisexual but I don't want to be with a guy who has a penis, I just want my boyfriend. Why does all this happen to me whenever our relationship is going great? Sometimes I think that my brain can't stand the idea that everything is fine, that we are happy. My brain seems to hate the idea of me being happy and looks for ways to make me extremely unhappy. Could someone give me some consolation?

I've been struggling with my gender identity since about 2018 and have reached the point where I am currently on hormones. For a little bit I thought I was a woman but as time has gone on I've settled more into nonbinary as an identity. Now that I am on hormones, I'm noticing that some changes are positive in my mind and some give me a pretty decent amount of distress and doubt. I then discovered that TOCD is a thing and it's kind of thrown me for a loop since I already know I have OCD. I already had doubts but now I'm like, "Could I just be lying to myself and I actually have TOCD?", "Is this just a transphobic diagnosis that keeps people from living as they want?", "Is it possible for me to have TOCD and still be trans/nonbinary?". I'm going to have to talk to my therapist about it but in the meantime I would love some help understanding this whole issue. Thank you.

Hi everyone, so I’m way new to this kind of thing but I figured it might help to find more people that I can relate to as far as this part of my life goes. I will put a trigger warning for certain language regarding illness, violence, SH, COVID and obviously OCD. I was recently diagnosed with OCD, not really a specific kind just mixed obsessions and compulsions. Even so, I’ve known for a while that I might have OCD, my family did as well. I started having problems when I was about 11 when my whole family got sick with a virus, since then my whole life revolves around this disorder. Where to begin, I guess I’ll start with my fears, I think the better question would be; what don’t I fear, but my main fear would be illness. I know that this is usually linked with contamination OCD and that I deal with that kind of OCD the worst. I’m terrified of getting sick, specifically regarding illness that affects the gastrointestinal system but any sickness is scary. Since I was 11, I’ve had this crippling fear that controls my school life, work life, my diet, my friendships, relationships, my home life, the medicine I will take and treatments I will allow, and overall, my happiness. On top of having OCD I’ve been diagnosed with clinical depression and GAD (generalized anxiety disorder), I believe that both of these, although having a genetic factor, are severely worsened by my OCD. Things only got worse when COVID happened. It was like the world was ending and honestly I wish it had because that would’ve been easier. My fear was solidified during those years. On top of not wanting to interact with anyone, I lost someone very important to me from complications due to COVID. I miss this person greatly, and going through that grief was immense putting my fear at its peek. With that being said, I also deal with intrusive thoughts that are violent in nature, sometimes to others, mostly to myself. Those thoughts can be anywhere from hatred, disgust, anger, and just straight violence. I have lots of shame surrounding the intrusive thoughts I have because it’s hard for me to recognize that those thoughts aren’t a reflection of my real feelings of others or myself. I also have a hard time in relationships, including friendships, because I constantly question my feelings toward that person, not knowing how to differentiate between the intrusive thoughts I have about them and the actual feelings I have for them. During this time, I’m growing and learning new things about myself, exploring my sexuality and gender as well and becoming who am I today. I’m 18 now and a senior in high school and I feel like I’ve missed so much of my teenage years hiding from the world in fear. In person schools are hell for me, when I go I’m constantly on edge, overwhelmed with the fear of sickness and people and even just breathing the air that the other students breathe. Being there makes it so hard to learn, think, or complete assignments and because of this, my education looks a lot different from most. I’m in an online school, it’s still a public school but online. This school has been a positive experience for the most part, I can learn and get good grades that I couldn’t before, it also gives me a sense of independence and control of my education. However, it also means I miss out on a lot of things. My school does hold a prom and graduation for students but I have no friends at this school because most people aren’t here to socialize but to get an education and move on. So, I’ve never been to a prom, my only friend lives in a different state than me, I don’t experience parties or sneaking out or relationships outside of the non-serious ones I had in middle school, overall, this disorder has made me very lonely. My parents are amazing, they truly do their best to accommodate to me but they will never understand the extent of what I go through. I never want them to fully understand what it’s like to have OCD the way I do. I wouldn’t wish this disorder on anyone. They have gotten me doctors that want to help me and a great therapist but I still struggle. I will say in recent months I’ve been making some progress however there are still bad days. I understand that this disorder is for life but I hope that one day I can live in spite of it. I often think back to a time where life was so much more enjoyable because I wasn’t constantly anxious. I miss a time where I was living instead of surviving. I hope that this app can do me some good, I’m an adult now and I want to change how I’m living. I want to find more independence and happiness and most importantly, peace of mind that everything will end up okay. Now, this is only a summary of my story but I hope that if you got this far you understand that you aren’t alone in this. We aren’t alone. - Jay (he/him)

I have been struggling with pure ocd symptoms for years, constantly fighting with myself and ruining relationships because of things that aren’t real. I’m not physically strong and I’m introverted and quiet, yet I constantly have intrusive thoughts about hurting my friends and family. I’ve had sexual images pop into my head or my dreams about every person, relative, animal that I’ve ever known. At 14 I had my first sleepover, where I locked myself in the bathroom all night because I thought I’d hurt my friend in her sleep. It didn’t help that I didn’t understand I was gay and that liking her was normal. I thought I was sick and twisted. At 21 I did the same thing, I was dating a girl and at her birthday party we shared a room for the first time. Even though we slept on different sofas, I still didn’t trust myself so I stayed awake all night. At 22 I went to a tattoo place and a massive storm happened, where all the roads closed due to crashes everywhere, so I couldn’t get a taxi home. My tattoo artist let me stay on his sofa. For the next few weeks I had intrusive thoughts that we’d had sex, or that he had watched me sleep and done things to himself at the same time. At 22 I slept with someone I thought was out of my league. I convinced myself for weeks that I never got consent even though I did. At 23 I was home for Christmas and had to share a bed with my little sister. I begged my parents to let me have the sofa to myself. I’d been having multiple pocd intrusions for a couple of months. At 24 I’m in my first relationship and I still continue to have these nightmares about everyone I know. It makes me feel like I’ve been unfaithful. My partner doesn’t trust me either. She wakes up and tells me she’s had dreams of me cheating on her, whilst i did indeed, have dreams about cheating on her. After drinking heavily one night I blacked out, and convinced myself I’d cheated through false memories. Cheating is the worst thing in the world to me so why would I do it.

I have violent intrusive thoughts of killing my mom or killing people or harming my pets. I’ve been dealing with this for 10 years now, but it keeps getting worse. I keep taking medication but it’s not working.

Hello I have been struggling with ocd since I was 19-20 years old. I am now 29. At first I thought I was mentally insane and it was the scariest time of my life. I never have opened up to anyone about this stuff. Just suffered in silence. I still haven’t shared any of this stuff to anyone in my life because I don’t want them to look at me like I’m a monster. There’s just no possible way for me to explain that without sounding absolutely insane. My ocd has come in waves over the past 9 years. It gets really good and I think it’s gone away but then when I’m having high stress in my life it returns and I feel crazy again. Lately my theme has been thinking I have schizophrenia & looking up all the signs because my ocd has made me feel so crazily insane that I question if it’s even ocd or something else. There’s someone that I work with that I found out has schizophrenia and it completely triggered me back into a nasty cycle of ocd and scared me so bad FOR NO REASON. can someone please relate? I’m also in a relationship and they know nothing about this. I tend to isolate when I feel this way. I have also went through different themes the past 9 years. When I get over one & feel okay about it, another one appears.

It’s crazy how OCD can latch onto anything we see or hear. When my episode started back in early August it was initially HarmOCD. Then i joined the OCD Reddit group and read about someone else’s experience and it triggered POCD. Now that this has been going on for months, yesterday I got curious as to how this individual was doing, if he’s gotten the help he did for his POCD. Managed to find his profile and in his post recent post history he admitted to doing inappropriate things to a child. It was downright disgusting and disturbing and scared me. OCD did the whole “well if he didn’t really have OCD then maybe you don’t either.” I know it sounds irrational but I think my mind is only making that assumption because it was initially his story that triggered my POCD from HarmOCD. So now instead of the regular intrusive thoughts I’m now fearing consistently if I really have OCD, despite me having nothing to confess because I’ve never done anything to anyone but still. Anyone else ever have a similar situation?

any fellow queers leave me some advice for dealing with soocd and rocd ? im queer and in a relationship with my boyfriend and going through heavy ocd revolving around soocd and rocd. thank you!

This passed weekend felt amazing. Nothing special but I felt normal. I actually convinced myself that my long nearly 4-month-episode was over. The intrusive thoughts and images were still coming but I didn’t get frozen in terror, I was able to actually enjoy little things like playing my Xbox and binge-watching YouTube videos. Until Sunday night, the backdoor spike struck. I just hate myself a bit right now for thinking it would be over that easily, I look in the mirror and I do wonder in my head, “will I ever see my old self again?” I once heard someone say that everyone has their own trial to battle in life, mine is just OCD. Well I don’t want this one, I want a different trial. I’m posting this because I feel isolated, OCD does really make you feel like your thoughts are your “true” self trying to emerge from years of trying to be someone else. OCD really does make you feel alone and like the worst person in the world. Worse than Dahmer, Gein, Gacy, why? Because like my mind always says to my soul, “you’re worse because you’re not locked up, they were, so they couldn’t hurt anyone anymore. You’re out here and who knows how many you will hurt.”

I Have (i hope it’s ocd) soocd ( I am scared that I am lesbian) and rocd for 3 years. Before ocd I think I was attracted to men but now it feels so foreign. I am also in a relationship for 3 years and I even don’t know how I would be in my relationship without ocd. My ocd started after 3 months of a relationship so before ocd we were still in this honeymoon phase but now we are long time together and I don’t know how I am in a real serious relationship. Maybe without ocd after being in a serious relationship with a guy I would also decide that I don’t like men? Maybe I liked men only at the beginning, in the honeymoon phase, during dating time because I only liked the attention?I never was in a serious relationship before ocd and I even cannot compare it…

Does anyone else obsessively check their email, especially when waiting for something 😭 I struggle SO much with this because I know that I don’t need to check it this much and I know that people are busy and things take time but when I’m waiting for something I can’t stop waiting and it’s just so frustrating. On a regular day, I check my email frequently throughout the day because the notifications bother me but also because I get overwhelmed if I get too many/if I feel inundated by the volume of messages. I remember once I was out with a friend and had been checking my emails at the table and then again at the bathroom and she even brought it up to our server and was like “can you believe this girl checking her emails at the bar” (she is a sweet loving bean, I don’t want this to make her sound insensitive, she was trying to be funny)…but on days where I’m waiting on something it becomes so. much. worse. For example, I recently interviewed for a program in India and they told me it’ll likely take about a week for them to get back to me, however I’ve been obsessively checking my email since immediately after the interview (the interview was yesterday). I can’t get it out of my head and I try to remind myself that today is a holiday, tomorrow is the weekend, and they still have to reach out to my references before I hear back, but it doesn’t stop me from checking. It’s so frustrating because it’s sort of paralyzing in a way. Like I literally will sit on my bed and scroll on my phone so I can check my email every five minutes when I know I should be and WANT to be doing something productive but I just feel like I’m stuck in waiting mode and I don’t know how to get out of it. It’s concerning because it interferes with my daily functioning and focus and quite honestly it poses safety risks too because I even obsessively check while driving. I don’t know what to do or how to work through this issue, it is something that brings me SO much distress and I just really needed to vent about it. Please please please share if you have any experiences of this what has worked for you in decreasing the feelings of paralysis and the need to obsessively check even when you know nothing will have changed. I greatly appreciate anyone who took the time to read this. Thank you 🤎

Is it normal to feel like a liar or that you are in denial, even though you have confessed and gotten reassurance? I know that I have shared everything to therapists and family and friends but it still feels like I’m hiding something or living a double life. Is this normal?

I've been seeing a new psychiatrist for three months now. Or rather, I was supposed to have my third appointment recently. I deal with a lot of other issues on top of OCD. Last month, my psychiatrist ended up prescribing me the wrong medication, and not the one I was on. Thankfully, I had extra from an older prescription, so I've been taking that for the past month. I told CVS to request a refill for the right one and he never responded. So I was going to talk to him about this on Monday, because that was when the appointment for this month was supposed to be. On Monday, I got in the telehealth waiting room and he never showed up. Finally called the office to see what was going on. Receptionist told me he changed his availability. No one told me. I got a text reminder three days before that appointment that I had an appointment. Apparently, he is now only in office on Thursdays and Fridays, days I almost always work long hours. So they managed to find a time he was available on Friday that I could fit in. I mentioned I really needed AT LEAST one of my meds, lamictal, because if I run out I have to start at a low dose again due to risk of serious side effects. I managed to get to CVS on Friday before my appointment and it wasn't there. Legit started crying when I got out of the CVS. Especially since it was Friday, meaning he was in the office the day before and did nothing about the prescription. I called the office again and the receptionist said she had no guarantee he would respond before the appointment, which was in a couple of hours. Pharmacist was at least nice enough to give me three pills to get me through three days, had two left, so I can make it five days. Decide to go home, I take a depression nap, and then make myself get up for appointment. He never shows up. Call the office number, no one picks up because it says they're closed even though it's 6 PM and the site says they don't close until 9 PM. I have no clue what to do because I need those meds. I called the psychiatric ER that I had to go to to get started back on my meds a few months ago and they say to call my PCP. PCP doesn't open until Monday. So I'm just really hoping that my PCP will be willing to write me a prescription until I can find a psychiatrist who gives any semblance of a fuck. I am furious but can't call until Monday. I need those meds. I'm finally able to function again. I don't want to lose that because some idiot of a psychiatrist can't be bothered to communicate with me.