Welcome to
the NOCD Community

I have to visit a place tomorrow which triggers my contamination ocdand false memory ocd really bad, can anyone help me in this panic situation. Tips needed!

Hi! I’m new to the NOCD community, but I’ve been dealing with OCD since I was 12. I’m almost 29 now, and my biggest issue is health anxiety. It’s gotten to the point where getting work done is nearly impossible because i can’t stop spiraling. I’m lucky that i work remotely, but also makes it easier to be in my own head… Asking for advice - how do you all deal with the intense anxiety and are able to make it through a 9-5 work day? Any suggestions on how I can actually be productive? Thank you!

I am married and neither,my husband or children understand what it feels like to have OCD. I have had it for some time now. Sometimes ig gets better while other times it acts up and feels just awful!! During these especially awful times I worry more, voice what I am worried about, and just feels depressed. I got even more depressed whwn my family members insult me because of my ocd. I know I should not voice my worries etc ask I am thinking that is a,compulsion but sometimes I do. I regret it afterward,cuz nothing food really happens as a result. More often I am judged, called names and then I really get depressed!!!! It sometimes tanes me days to feel better acter one of those wpisodes! I guess besides not viucing my worries what can I do in a family that does so ma y things that upset me....and it would wvwn if I did nit have ocd!!! I meant WE all have to live together and trust me....there are things they so that for sure woyld have bothered me way before I had o d! ,They would bother the father and son on the TV show Sanford and Son!!! How so I just,live in same house,all the,whike pretending those things,don't bother me? I meant I am the mom. Don't I get some say so without being called names etc?

Hi again :c I’ve been having terrible thoughts of hurting my loved ones I’ve stopped watching horror movies which is my favorite genre and can’t even watch or read anything related to violence even if it’s just a video or movie talking about it, I get triggered so fast I really miss feeling that relief with my mom I miss my mom so much and I just don’t know what to do anymore I almost committed last weekend from how scared I was and Ik your thinking will you try again? idk I’m not sure, one day I might say “no” next I’ll plan it out, but truth be told I don’t want to die I want to live a normal life, I want to stay with my mom and my family, I love my family and my grandma and my older brother..I’m so sick of feeling this feeling, I’m tired of arguing with my brain, I want to be with my mom and spend time with her like I used to, but I can’t stand that thought of hurting them it makes me shake and I feel this pain in my chest, my OCD has been trying to convince me all those crime docs and stuff I’m into turned me this way but that’s impossible since I’ve never thought like this before I’m just tired that’s all Idek know what I’m looking for saying this..prolly just to vent or to know if this will ever go away..

I look back at various past events in my life where I said or did things that I feel really guilty, disgusted, and ashamed about. I replay them in my head for hours. I feel anxious about crossing paths with people that I've hurt or upset in the past or who perceive me badly, to the point that I will avoid going out in public as much as possible. I go out for work, errands, appointments, and occasionally to eat (even though those all give me a lot of anxiety), but I avoid community events where people might recognize me and I tend to isolate myself. The only people I see regularly are my boyfriend, my parents, and my coworkers. I live in a small community and I'm worried about people confronting me publicly and proving what a bad person I must be.

any help is really welcomed and appreciated. I tend to hyper fixate on men outside of my relationship, they feel like crushes but I’m like 60% sure they’re meaningless dopamine rushes that happen with people I find interesting, friendship worthy, or physically appealing in some way. My hyperfixation recently shifted to a supervisor, not even an hour after meeting him :/ that’s fine, whatever, I can’t do much about it. I daydream and create like this drama romance in my head. Like good content for a movie or a book. Comparing it to that makes me feel less disloyal, and more understanding of why this might happen (I am a hopeless romantic, I adore stories). I’m home now and I was thinking of wearing a cuter shirt for work tomorrow because I went in an oversized hoodie today. This is a thought I had this morning before even meeting this man btw. But then my brain went to oh yeah I want to look attractive for this hyper fixation. It felt exciting to think that. I felt excited. Then the huge wave of dread hit me. I wanted to look good for another man? For a specific person? I can’t stop panicking I don’t know if this is normal, disloyal, a distortion, or what it is. I’m so confused. I felt happy when I got that thought. Maybe it was a dopamine hit or something I’m Colombian and we’re really big on looking our best 99.9% of the time. Even if it’s just to go to the gas station. I just feel so scared that I felt excitement over this one person. It’s extremely different for my boyfriend’s culture. Almost the opposite. I feel so disloyal and unworthy of my boyfriend. I doubt this was intrusive, it genuinely felt like me and I’ve had thoughts like that in the past. I just feel like a huge monster right now Please help :(

TMI!! Hey everyone, I was coming on here to ask if anyone has experienced this before! Im in an amazing relationship with my boyfriend so in this post I wanted to ask this question because this is how it felt to me! I remembered earlier today I was watching this movie, etc. and there was this spicy scene in it (iykyk) and it got me feeling some sort of way. This has happened before especially if I’ve played a game or watched a show with some content like this. I felt really in the mood and started to imagine my boyfriend and I doing those things together and I sort of decided to (yanno, the m word) hopefully everyone understands because I just don’t like saying the word😭, but I found that every time I do that, that’s when my ocd is at its worst/peak. Every time my mind has tried to convince me I’ve cheated, when I self pleasure. I get in the mood if I think of my boyfriend and I doing those things I see in movies, shows etc, and that’s when I’ll do it, But literally I realized after I’ve done that at times my ocd is at its worst because my mind will attack me constantly asking “Is this cheating? Does this make me a horrible girlfriend?” If I self pleasure, I also want to add that I mentioned it to my boyfriend at one time and he told me it wasn’t at all and that everything is okay, but constantly I feel guilty for it and extremely horrible. Just wanted to see if anyone else has experienced this?

I don’t understand how my boyfriend can love me so much after everything I put him through. He constantly shows me how much he loves me, yet I feel like I can’t fully appreciate it. I can’t explain how badly I behave towards him when these thoughts take over, how often I lash out because of them, and how many times I’ve told him exactly what’s on my mind. He tries to use logic to help me, but it never seems to work. And now, even as I’m writing this, I feel like crying—yet at the same time, my mind tells me that I don’t care. This horrible feeling inside me won’t go away. I keep thinking, “What if I don’t like him?” That thought is always there. I wonder if I had unrealistic expectations about this relationship from the beginning, since he is my first boyfriend. What if I convinced myself I liked him just because I wanted my first relationship to be perfect? And now, I just can’t accept the truth? It scares me even more knowing that he moved to my city for me. I feel like I’m constantly upset, constantly sad. And despite everything, he’s always there for me. That makes me feel even worse because I don’t know what to do to feel okay again. Every time I talk to him, I get this strange feeling inside me, and I’m terrified that it means my thoughts are actually true. He tells me that my happiness shouldn’t depend only on him, that I should focus on more than just this relationship—because for over a year now, my mind has been stuck in an endless loop of questioning whether I love him or not. He asks me, “Who are you fighting? Why do you care so much? You’ve been asking yourself the same question for over a year—shouldn’t you know the answer by now?” And my response is always, “Because I want to be with you.” But then, when I try to answer whether I like him or not, more doubts take over. I start thinking, “Maybe I just can’t accept that I don’t love him. Maybe I just want to keep this relationship perfect.” The worst part is that he has never done anything wrong. He has always been patient, kind, and loving, yet I feel so lost. I don’t understand what’s happening. I don’t understand what I feel. And I don’t understand why I can’t understand what I feel. He also tells me that ever since I started reading so much about relationships and OCD online, I have gotten worse. And he’s right. I have become much worse than I was before. The problem is that before, I thought I was at my worst, but looking back, I was still able to feel happiness at times. Now, I feel completely stuck. I don’t know if I’m crying because I hate this feeling, or because I don’t want to think this way about him. It feels like I don’t even know what’s happening to me anymore.

Hi everyone, I’m reaching out for support. Right now I feel like OCD is “winning” in my life and I feel suffocated and alone. This is my story and I would love any support, guidance, or advice. Long post, but I appreciate anyone that reads it. I’m a 28 year old Muslim middle eastern woman. My family immigrated to Canada when I was a kid. I’ve never been very religious but I consider myself a believer. I also believe that religion is extremely personal and that my relationship with God is mine only. My faith hasn’t always been strong, it goes up and down. My family, although not super religious, has always valued tradition and my parents have always wanted me to marry someone Muslim and Arab. They are very adamant about that and very against mixing with other cultures and faiths. My father passed sway in my early twenties, and I’ve always struggled with doing things that he wouldn’t approve of and having him be disappointed or ashamed of me. I was very close to my dad - his death was really traumatic and I miss him everyday. I am in a relationship with a kind, caring man who loves me and takes care of me. We were friends first and I tried to not let things progress past friendship because I knew my family would never approve. But eventually we both confessed feelings and that led us to a relationship. He makes me happy and has healed many things in me that were wounded from past relationships. He’s Punjabi Sikh, so our cultures and faiths are different. He is not religious at all. When we first started talking about dating, he said to me that if he had to do an Islamic marriage to be with me that he would do it. If that’s what it took to be with me, he’d do it. That for me was the push I needed to go for it, and let myself get into a relationship with my friend and now lover. He even says that he’s open to our kids learning Islam. He just wants our kids to also learn about where he comes from, of course. I knew that my family wouldn’t approve, but having the Islamic marriage would be extremely important to maybe eventually have them accept my decision. My boyfriend has always been aware of my OCD and is always willing to do whatever it takes to support me. As we’ve navigated dating and being in a relationship we’ve had some challenges with my ROCD, and we’re actively working on it with exposure therapy. We’ve also had general relationship obstacles that we’re learning to work through, like communication and having different love languages. I tend to be anxiously attached and I get panic attacks when I think I’m losing people close to me. So even just the idea of a break up makes me feel sick. In all honesty, being in a relationship has been really hard on my mental health. My therapist says it’s like being in constant exposure- which can be exhausting (I always have the thought “being single is so much easier because there’s way less triggers” but I don’t want to believe that or let it dictate my life). My big struggles right now are guilt from hiding my relationship from my family, and dealing with constant ROCD intrusive thoughts like: “is he the one? You want someone from your own culture, your mom is right, this is never going to work and you’re going to be unhappy and divorced. You don’t want to mix cultures, you’re going to hate it, stop pretending to be open to it… your aunts and uncles are going to disapprove and cut you off, you’re going to be judged by everyone, your kids are going to be so confused about their identity, travelling back home is going to be so weird and not the same, so you should break up with him”. Often, this causes me to “test” the relationship or look for problems and create arguments. It’s a toxic cycle, and I’m so ashamed of it. I also often struggle with thoughts like “you’re lying to yourself, you want someone from your culture, you’re a bad person for leading him on, you’re a liar”…. “You did this to yourself by dating outside your culture”. Ultimately, I feel torn. How am I meant to know if I actually want to be in this relationship or if I want to do what my family approves of (and what would be easier)? How do I manage the thoughts that tell me opposing things? I have frequent panic attacks and when things are bad, they happen daily and are very debilitating. This is where I’m at right now, and this is the part that terrifies me. I don’t want to be stuck like this. I don’t want to lose my boyfriend. That thought terrifies me and I don’t think I can handle that. He means so much to me. I also don’t want to be suffocated by thoughts - if I have them every day first thing in the morning, does that mean I need to listen to them? I’m struggling so much and I feel so hopeless. I wouldn’t wish these feelings on anybody, ever. I want to feel at ease, more than anything.

I feel so lost. My boyfriend tries so hard to help me, but nothing seems to work. Every time he reassures me, my mind finds another doubt. He asks me, “So you’ve been questioning if you love me for almost 2 years?” and instead of feeling comforted, my mind jumps to “Maybe I just can’t accept that I don’t love him.” I keep telling him every thought that comes to my mind, hoping for relief, but it never lasts. I feel anxious, disconnected, and stuck in this endless cycle. He tells me that if I truly didn’t love him, I wouldn’t care so much about these thoughts. But still, my brain won’t stop questioning everything. I don’t understand why I feel this way. Why does it feel like I’m forcing something? Why do I feel like I can’t just know how I feel? I want to feel okay. I want to be present with him without analyzing every moment. But no matter what I do, my mind keeps telling me “What if you don’t love him?” I feel like I’m stuck between wanting clarity and being terrified of what that clarity might mean. It feels so real, and I hate it. I don’t know what to do.

Something I haven’t shared on here is that when I get anxious and my OCD is really bad, I end up spending a lot of time in the bathroom. My family isn’t supportive when it comes to mental health, and I don’t have any privacy at home. So, when I realize my butt is numb for the I don’t even know how many times today, I know I’m not doing okay. :( All my panic attacks happen in the bathroom. Even when I’m out shopping or doing something, I run to the bathroom. It’s like I have an emotional support toilet instead of a support system. I’m crying, feeling so anxious, and I can’t stop doing compulsions that I thought I had gotten past more than a month ago. My streaks are broken, and I feel broken. I want to get out of this bathroom, be normal, and be productive, but I just can’t. I can’t stop crying, and I can’t even breathe properly. I didn’t even realize what time it is, the day is nearly over and I’m still in here :(

Everything will be okay. No matter what. Whether you feel amazing right now or like scum of the earth, it will be okay. Instead of engaging with my ocd I will just write kind message. I hope everyone is doing okay. I understand the struggle.

I want to rip out my uterus. Only my hormones can make my OCD and ability to manage it go back to square one. I am spiraling *so* hard. I cannot breathe. My PMDD is going crazy. I’m having a panic attack again. I feel so scared. The POCD is going absolutely insane right now. It feels undeniably real, and my mind keeps drifting to those awful thoughts and what feels like exploring them?? but I can’t for the life of me stop some of these compulsions right now. I was trying to watch something to get my mind off of this but ended up getting triggered twice, so my anxiety is a 10 and I can’t seem to calm down. This panic attack is tuned all the way up.

My NOCD therapist (who has been awesome) and I are both struggling to identify ways in which I can practice exposure therapy while in-session, because the vast majority of my OCD symptoms are mental compulsions. For example: indecision and inability to commit to a choice; seeking reassurance on decisions from friends and family; mental review of things that have just happened / social situations; over-thinking and catastrophizing. I also have some other hallmark symptoms (contamination fears, moral scrupulosity, etc) but those tend to be inconsistent too. It’s hard to really practice these during my sessions because so many are in the moment and fleeting. By the time I join my session they are no longer active. How can we establish exposure responses during my sessions, if most of my OCD involves mental rumination and overthinking patterns/thought loops that only occur “in the moments - rather than specific or consistent compulsions (such as hand washing)?

i dont say i love you to my bf, only when i say good night out of habit, he pointed it put multiple times. i feel sad bc i cant say it amd i want to say it but i feel bad bc i always think that i dont like him. im so sad. im scared i dont love him and he uses logic in me that sometimes dosent work and then i still think i dont like him and i never did.

Hey I'm new here... Married for two years, not formally diagnosed with OCD but over 25 years, I've dealt with obsessing over my sexuality, then it has shifted to obsessing over my relationships. In my first marriage, I would notice other attractive men and at one point I started to obsess over one man at my church. Eventually it went away but I divorced for other reasons. Fast forward 15 years. I meet my now-husband, but we break up twice while dating. I was terrified. I have learned I do struggle with fearful/avoidant attachment, but I made it through to get married!! But now, the obsessing over other men is happening again. I work with a lot of men. If I notice one who may be handsome, all of a sudden I feel weird sensations in my body, my mind races, and I fear I want to cheat, or wonder if I'd be happier. It has happened with a guy at my church, several coworkers, my husband's best friend...so I know there's a pattern. But as of late, it has gotten worse with one coworker. I have to see him every day. The thoughts are loud. They feel real, like they're how I feel (I like him, he has nice eyes, I love you). I am a Christian, and when I pray about it, it's almost like something inside me says, 'don't fix this, this isn't OCD, I want this guy' blah blah blah. I feel awful, like a whore, like a cheater, like a double-minded person. And I feel so far away from my husband. I've dealt with feeling the need to confess everything early in our relationship. I've gotten better at not doing that, but I feel like I carry this private pain that no one understands. It really hurts. I guess I just needed to vent and let this out. Sometimes it feels so lonely. I feel crazy. I'm in my 50s, I have a full time job, I take care of my home, yet I feel paralyzed by this sometimes. Thanks for reading.

I’ve had this issue for a veryyyyy long time, but I never really put it in the same world as ocd. I flex my stomach, and can’t stop. To explain that a bit better, I feel like my skin is in the wrong position and I squeeze my stomach tight to try and “ fix it”. It never gets fixed really and I keep flexing my stomach until I A, fall asleep or B, forget about it. I keep think loosing weight is the answer, because where I feel uncomfortable has a little more fat than other places in my body. I want this to stop because it’s painful and really exhausting but when I try to leave the feeling alone I end up squeezing harder. Does this sound like an ocd thing? Please have an overweight raccoon for your troubles today.

i dont know where no ask, so im going to ask here. Do you know anyyy method to delay my period in the following months? in july im going to a festival, the festival is from 9-13 july and my period is coming up 11 july. i want to know how am i supposed to delay it every month with one day or two so it can delay it until july😔😔

Sometimes I catch myself looking at people, specifically men, a little too intently. I feel like I do it to seem prettier or more attractive, but I also think kinda enjoy seeing how they get flustered, I’m not sure. Even though it never goes beyond that, I still feel like I have cheated on my boyfriend, or at the very least, that I am being disrespectful to him. I feel like I’m almost flirting. I don’t know if this is some sort of distortion and or if this is normal. I’m really freaking out to the point where I’m nauseated. Please help. I can’t stop panicking.

My spouse is my best friend. A few months ago I basically worshipped the ground he walked on. He’s the best partner in the world so no “maybe he’s not the right person” commentary. Lately my fear of going psychotic has brought back my intrusive thoughts about harming my husband. Now, whether it be from emotional dissociation or medications, I can’t feel any emotions so I’ve developed ROCD. This is ruining my life and has been a month from hell since my spouse/comfort zone makes me feel nothing. My therapist hasn’t given me any info on how to do anything about this other than reading a book (didn’t help). Any ERP suggestions? I haven’t done ERP before for these types of OCD