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the NOCD Community

I started lexapro a week ago and I feel that it’s making my anxiety worse. Does anyone have experience taking lexapro? Did you notice the same? Thanks!

Hi there, I’ve been dealing with OCD (harm) most of my life but was just diagnosed at 30 years old.. I am now a mom of an amazing 2 year old so when my OCD flares up it’s a bit more disturbing to me than it was in my past.. news stories have always triggered me. And most recently there was the story of the nurse mom who strangled her 3 kids and tried to kill herself. I’m obsessing over it, comparing myself to her trying to convince myself I would never do that, looking into the story on the internet, the whole 5 yards… I just can’t stop thinking of this woman and I’m so disturbed and scared, it’s making my OCD so much worse. I just started treatment last week and I can’t wait to learn the tools I need to help. But I wanted your guys opinion as well. And was curious if there’s any other moms on here that struggle and how they cope ♥️

Any automotive techs here with OCD?

My husband aged 39 died to suicide in September last year, leaving me alone with 5 children. We'd been together 20 years since teenagers. He developed an addiction to cocaine and prescription drugs after 13 years together when he was in his 30s. Really random as he was tea total before. Anyway my grief has been horrendous lately, the realisation he isn't coming back. He was my best friend and sole mate. I don't agree with drugs, so kicked him out hoping he'd change. Our relationship turned toxic in 2018 due to all the fights about him lying regarding drugs. I threw a mug at him and he left me calling me a psycho, he randomly added loads of girls on Facebook telling them they were attractive. He invited himself round to ones house and basically ran me down to her and she said he was off his face and made him leave. A counsellor told me drug addicts do all kinds of things in the grips of addiction they seek solace and support all over the place and told me to see it as part of a bigger problem ( drugs) in which he needed help. I stool by his side and he did get better for the next 4 years, he went to AA and had periods of sobriety. He returned to his lovely self, and was ashamed of everything he'd done in the past. He was always a great husband and father prior to addiction. He text me the night he died, saying to remember whatever happened to know he loved me and the kids more than anything. It was too late by the time I got help. Now I'm trying to process everything, people keep saying to remember the person before addiction. I have ocd and for some reason I've developed the thought he could have cheated on me in the past before addiction. Although I have absolutely no evidence. A girl I disliked years ago told my friend she didn't know what my husband seen in me as he was so good looking and I was irritating. So I blanked her next time she tried to speak. She then told me she seen my husband in our car with a girl with dark hair. I confronted my husband over this at the time and he phoned her to ask why she was lying. She said she wasn't sure it was definitely him but seen our baby on board sticker on the car window. Anyway he looked like he was telling the truth. And later she accused another friends husband of sexual assault. On my hen night walking home my niece took my bride to be sash off me and wore it. My sister said a group of girls walked past and said I've slept with the brides husband. We were all drunk so I never thought about it. Plus I trusted my husband impeccably. I thought my sister could have misheard, it could be my niece, they could have been joking. Basically all these things happened 17 and 14 years ago. My husband rarely went out, I would check his phone and all he used to look up was sport. He didn't ever act guilty or nothing to indicate an affair. All his friends said he was a proper family man. I always think cheating comes out in the end anyway and we live in a small town. A lot of people say I'm doing this to try and stop the grief by painting him out to be an adulterer. I'm so upset with it all. I want to be able to grieve but now I have this in my mind it's making it hard. My ocd is making me phone family and friends to ask if they think he cheated, everyone has said no. He loved me too much and wasn't that type of person. But as soon as I feel reassured my head starts thinking that I'm being stupid there is two clear cases of evidence and I dismissed them over the years. My therapist said there's no evidence as it's both hearsay and hearsay isn't evidence. I really don't think he would ever have cheated before I remembered these two stupid things. I'd like to think I'd have trusted my gut, my gut at the time would never suspected him. Help please.

I am struggling with living and trying to function in a normal life. I am married, have a great house, no children but three dogs who are everything to me, and work part time while finishing my doctorate degree. I struggle with obsessing that something terrible will happen to my dogs every time I leave the house. Because of the fact that we never had children, my dogs are everything to me in the thought of some thing happening to one of them is so overwhelming that I have a hard time coping when it comes to leaving them, even if it’s just for a short time. I had a traumatic experience from the loss of one of our dogs seven years ago, due to negligence of a veterinarian neurosurgeon who made a mistake and caused the death of my dog. I blame myself for this every single day and I probably will for the rest of my life. I also have a lot of anxiety, which started when I was probably around five or six years old. My parents would travel a lot and I was constantly afraid they would die in a car crash or plane crash. I am terrified to fly or take a train. I have to drive all the time and sometimes it becomes exhausting. Every time I leave my house I have the check, check again, and re-check again to make sure everything is “OK.“ I check to make sure every door is locked, I make sure the knobs on the stove are off, And when I lock that front door and leave I jiggle the handle several times “just to make sure it’s locked“ even though I know it is. While I’m at work I’m constantly worried that something will happen to my dogs or at my house. If my husband comes home a few minutes late I panic that he was in an accident. It causes a strain on my marriage because it takes me so long to actually get out the door, it constantly makes myself or my husband and I late for any event. I’m not doing it on purpose I just can’t feel calm until I complete all these “rituals.“ I would not wish this on my worst enemy.

Help, my new bf just went away for the weekend. We talked for hours yesterday, and today he texted me 7 hours ago. I haven’t heard from him since then. In these 7 hours my brain has gone from normal content about him— to my heart racing thinking about how we probably actually doesn’t even like me that much/maybe he’s cheating/he has all these character flaws I ignored beside/writing breakup texts to send because I can’t stand to see him tomorrow anymore. I can’t stand my brain!!! I can’t tell if these thoughts are real or just my nightly ruminations where I always think everyone hates me and is trying to leave me secretly.

I put things off because it's the only way I can allow myself to imperfectly complete a task. I can just say, I ran out of time and it's good enough even though I hate 'good enough'. I feel like because life is imperfect, I'll never finish something to my standard, which makes me really angry.

Everyday I feel extremely down and I don’t know how to snap out of it. Intrusive thoughts are always playing in my head and won’t stop. I’ve been feeling down for the longest time to the point where it doesn’t feel right to be happy or do anything positive for myself. It’s as if I want to be miserable and don’t want anything good to happen to me. I don’t deserve it and I don’t think I can truly overcome this. I get eaten up everyday and lil by lil, a piece of myself slips away to the point where I don’t recognize myself anymore or care for myself. I don’t want to feel like this anymore😔I feel so detached from reality.

Hi all- My psychiatrist recommended for me to start on TMS therapy. It is traditionally used for treating depression but has lately been used to treat ocd. Has anyone gone thru this treatment? Any advice or comments? Naturally I’m anxious about it

So I try my best to accept uncertainty, however with Real event ocd I have constant memories of things that did actually happen. I find it's harder to accept the uncertainty of being a good/bad person, or the world is mostly a good/bad place. Mostly because these memories serve as "evidence" of the bad. Ruminations and the mental or online search for truth, or the unbearable urge to confess or seek reassurance are my compulsions. How do I accept that I may or may not be a bad person because of mistakes I've made? I just don't know.

Does anyone else deal with unsettling thoughts like “What if Gods wants to me to go to another country as a missionary?” “If I don’t do x,y,z, then God won’t accept me?” When I get these thoughts I get very anxious, pain in my stomach, sometimes panic attacks.

My ex and I broke up a few months ago.I learned his license plate number while we were dating as it was silly, and I had some joke about it with him. Anyways now I find my self checking license plates as cars drives by ( as I live on a small island ) worried I’ll see him. But like even cars that aren’t his make and model. Also… what does this even mean.

So I'm fairly new to OCD and Intrusive Thoughts. It all started about 8 months ago for me. I had health anxiety and generalized anxiety and got put on meds for that. I read side affects of meds could cause su*cdal thoughts and it freaked me out and lead me to think what if I started having thoughts of harming others too and instantly for the last 8 months I've had horrible intrusive thoguhts about harming others. Now the other day I ran across a post about how ocd can lead to psychosis, reading about it freaked me out so bad that I'm now scared I'm gonna get psychosis. Paranoid thoughts is a sign of psychosis so I started watching myself I guess to see if I'd become paranoid. And now every thought I have seems paranoid. I'll think things like what if I start becoming paranoid of my loved ones and think they're out to get me? That leaves me questioning if I am paranoid and if I actually do think that. Anyways, I guess I'm just wondering if anyone else has had this happen to them? I pray someone can relate because I'm terrified.

Hi everyone, I just wanted to share something really quick that I believe relates to Relationship ocd. For a while now, I’ve liked this guy and at some point, I felt that he probably feels the same way or had at some point. Not sure how he truly feels because he has never admitted how he feels and I haven’t either, but just from picking up the signs he’s giving me and how he acts around me, that’s how I’ve been able to determine how he feels, which has been a bit confusing, but recently, he has been trying to get closer to me by opening up to me about some personal experiences from his past and trying to develop a closer connection. Noticing this, it has made me only want to shut myself away from him bc I’m afraid to get closer for many reasons and a part of it involves ROCD I believe. I’m afraid to get close to people in general whether it’s in romantic or platonic relationships bc I feel as though I always have negative energy from my ocd that I don’t want others to be affected by or even know about. I’m afraid to open up to people about my personal experiences with ocd, especially a guy that I like that I can see myself having a relationship with. I’m afraid I’ll only scare him off or bring him down with me and he won’t be able to understand me or accept this aspect of myself and view me in the worst ways and at some point leave me if we were to ever become something. I fear this with any potential partner I may encounter in my future. I feel as though I may never find love bc who would want to be with someone that has ocd? So this causes me to not reciprocate the same energy back to him. I close myself off from him or barely say anything bc I don’t want to reveal too much about myself that involves my ocd or anything I’m ashamed of from my past. Then this thought will start to go to other thought process and insecurities I have that make me feel like I could never be loved by someone or specifically he would never like me bc I don’t feel like I am a good person or will be good enough for him and that he could find better bc of my struggles with ocd and i just feel there’s other women that are above me in many ways that he would rather be interested in and give him the happiness he’s seeking. I feel as though I lack so much as a human being and that I’m not interesting enough or beautiful in any way. Because I struggle with self love and have a fear of getting close to people bc of my ocd, I prevent anything good that could possibly happen, such as becoming vulnerable with this guy and possibly getting closer to him. All I ever feel is not like myself and I feel crippled, disabled, and lost everyday from my ocd. I don’t feel I deserve love or happiness bc of how negatively I view myself and how unforgiving I am for my past experiences where I’ve screwed up or could’ve done better with something. I’m so hard on myself and the ocd experiences I have with my thoughts only make me feel I am a bad person in many different ways based on any ocd subtype I’m experiencing with my thoughts that are scary to think about or that make you hate yourself and feel shame and distress towards. I also even doubt how he feels about me even when he’s giving me clear signs that he most likely feels the same way bc I doubt that I’m that great of a person for someone to like or even love. I don’t feel I have the potential for people to love, whether that’s in a romantic way or platonically. Maybe it’s best if I continue to close myself off from him so I won’t bring any negativity into his life bc of me. All I ever feel is that I’ll only bring negativity into peoples lives. I just don’t want to feel like this anymore and ruin opportunities for myself that could become something worthwhile. If you guys could give me your honest opinion about this, I would really appreciate it. Btw, I’ve noticed myself become like this in the past too when I’ve liked someone or been in a relationship with someone, but back then, I didn’t know I was dealing with ocd or I wasn’t experiencing so many different subtypes of ocd.

I have been with my SO going in 13 years now. We met in college and have been together ever since. We got married in 2021 and welcomed a baby girl in the world last year. I had a severe mental breakdown in 2013 that landed me in the hospital because I was contemplating suicide. That breakdown nearly destroyed our relationship. I had severe intrusive thoughts and felt the need to tell him all of them. I felt like if I didn’t tell him, I was lying. I destroyed his self esteem, telling him all of the mean thoughts I had about him. I would feel the need to tell him anytime I saw an attractive guy in public, I questioned our relationship and told him I wasn’t sure if I loved him anymore. It was bad and very dark. Fast forward to now and I feel like I’m letting him down in different ways. I don’t feel the need to tell him every thought I have now but since having my daughter my OCD and depression seem to be getting worse. I just feel like I’m no longer happy and my daughter should’ve had a mom that wasn’t damaged like me. Didn’t have the abusive childhood like me. Wasn’t broken like me. I feel so much guilt. It’s putting such a strain on our relationship and I feel like my husband deserves someone better. Someone whose happier.

Why do I worry that things will be bad if I don't worry?

Is this OCD existential? So started last week, I began to have OCD thoughts about our faces. This may sound silly to some of you, but my mind trying to get me to panic about how our faces look. It's like, it is trying to question about, "wow, our faces look like that. That's how ppl look." I'm freaking out right now and trying to calm myself down and think logical or realistic here. My heart is beating really fast and I can't concentrate. Please help me what should I do. I'm trying to tell myself, like "it just OCD, calm down". It's like it's trying to trick me into believe our faces look weird. I was okay yesterday and trying to managing it, but man I had panic attacks all today. Off and on all day while I'm at work. Its not making it any better when I look at ppl faces. Please, please tell me how I can I deal with this. I thinking about getting on medication. Have y'all ever had this experience before?

Hi there! I’ve just recently received my OCD diagnosis and found out that I’ve just been raw-dogging OCD since I was a young child. Im considering taking medication to help me and my therapist suggested Zoloft. Has anyone taken Zoloft for OCD/anxiety? Any side effects that I would want to be aware of from personal experience? Thanks !!

I get very anxious when I forget someone’s name or a memory that I can’t remember. I spend a lot of time searching until I find the name and memory. I purchased a 360 pages notebook to write down names and memories so I won’t forget; it temporarily relieves my anxiety. I have always had the urge to remember names and memories but I didn’t have anxiety until now. My first panic attack happened 4 weeks ago due to forgetting a person’s face and name. I hope someone can relate to this or help me understand what’s going on. I booked the 15 minutes free consultation. I’m feeling sad, scared and exhausted!

To the ones who have been working with their OCD for awhile now and feel somewhat experienced in handling symptoms, I have a question… If you could go back in time and tell your younger self (pre awareness of your condition) one thing, what would you tell yourself to help with your condition? I have no means to treat my OCD, and only have just joined this app and acknowledged my condition and my, now, desperate need for help. Anything will help and I honestly am needing some sense of community to feel less alone. Thank you for everything!