Welcome to
the NOCD Community

Has caffeine made your OCD worse?

Does anyone have any tips on how to get a full nights rest? I had a pretty good afternoon/evening yesterday, yet still found myself waking up every 2-3 hours with anxious thoughts. Also I have this horrible chest pain in the morning, that usually takes me a while to shake. Not sure if that’s contributing to my lack of sleep.

i was at a rehearsal yesterday and i got super afraid of hurting someone for no reason. i wish i could tell someone, but i don’t know how to get them to understand that i don’t want to and i truly won’t? it’s really scary and i can’t really isolate because i’m around other people. instead i just start feeling terribly icky, if you know what mean. like my own skin shouldn’t be touching me. i feel horrible for thinking about any of it.

I’ve only taken two showers in the last month because I can no longer take cleaning the hair trap and the hair and scum and pooh particles out of the tub. I’m afraid of the germs on the walls, shower curtain, floor mat, and grab bar. I can’t even use the main toilet because I’m afraid of what I’ll sit on. I heater being dirty, but I hate the thought of other peoples hair and germs touching me.

How can I tell the difference between avoidance and fighting a compulsion. I thought check ALOT I’m constantly checking the thoughts are there half the time I don’t realise till I’m mid doing it. So I’ve just been really trying not to and even when I’m watching something I’ve been really confused on concentrating and not thinking the thought that I’m not sure if I’m just avoiding thinking at all or trying to fight the compulsion to check 😐😐

How do I not shut down and go quiet and cry when my partner is trying to have an uncomfortable conversation with me is anyone else dealing or dealt with this ?

How do you stop mental checking???? I dooooo this all day to the point I don’t even know when a normal intrusive thought happens becuse I check they are there that often I cause a lot myself. I don’t want these thoughts but feel like I’m making them happen all time because I check for the thought without even realising

I started my OCD journey not long ago, yet for people with OCD or other forms of mental illness, not long can seem like an eternity. For me, OCD has been with me my whole life, but it wasn’t until September of 2023 that I let OCD begin running my life. I was in a constant state of fear, panic, and confusion. Thinking that every disturbing thought I had defined who I was. Thinking that every disturbing or terrifying thought meant I was going crazy or I was doomed to be this way forever. Thinking that, “there’s no medicine, no therapy, no remedy on Earth that could help me and that I was somehow different or worse than anyone else.” And you know what? I believed those thoughts….and I felt like no matter what I did, I couldn’t win. I have been an athlete my entire life. Played football for 17 years and was always competitive no matter what I was doing. So to me, I saw OCD and Mental Illness as something I could just…learn to beat and be rid of forever. Like the big scary boss you face at the end of a video game. But I was wrong… instead, thinking I could just be rid of OCD forever, actually spiraled into many different OCD types that made my life worse. Suicide OCD, Harm OCD, Existential OCD, and this would turn into full blown panic because I thought my mind was just going to break permanently and I’d be ruined forever. And with my competitive spirit, I constantly felt I was losing, and losing so bad you didn’t want to even try anymore. BUT! I decided that it was time to just… do something. I hated feeling this way, and for those of you that suffer alone i did or still do, you’d do literally ANYTHING to be rid of OCD. I took that statement and said, “I and going to do whatever I need to!” Now, everyone is different! And everyone will react differently to different medicines and different therapies. For me, I refused to take SSRI’s of any kind. Why? Because OCD made me believe that if I took them, only the negative side effects would take over and I would only get worse and worse. My thought pattern was, “ya, if I take this, it could change my life for the better, but what if it makes me want to commit suicide or become so depressed that it becomes my reality?” That alone, scared me so badly that I couldn’t take them because I couldn’t control how my body would react to them. If you currently take them and they work for you, I AM SO HAPPY AND GRATEFUL YOU HAVE FOUND SOMETHING THAT HELPS YOU!!! I also didn’t do therapy. Why? Not becuase I didn’t believe in the miracle of ERP or other talk therapies, it is something I wanted more than anything, but couldn’t because my insurance barely covered anything and I couldn’t afford it out of pocket. And my finances was already something that I constantly worried about enough. If you are in therapy, IM PROUD OF YOU AND I PRAY IT IS HELPING YOU OVERCOME YOUR STRUGGLES!! So? What did I do? I learned. I learned. I learned. I learned and studied what OCD is, what it does to you, and how it tricks you. I learned and read many stories of those who are affected by OCD daily and I saw that I was not in fact different or broken. Am I messy? Yes! But humans are messy, and I learned to come to peace with that fact. In addition to learning about others and their stories, I also talked to people about what they did and how they learned to manage. In other words, I sought wisdom of others because I wanted to learn I wasn’t alone! I learned what was making my thoughts worse, and what made my thoughts subside. I learned that OCD is not something I’ll ever be rid of, but rather, something I need to embrace as if it is another piece of me…because it is and always will be. I learned, that while OCD cannot be cured… it can be managed! It can become quieter and you can get your life back! For the past 9 months, all I have worried about is, “what will become of me because I have this incurable illness?” And I know how afraid you feel and how lost and hopeless it can seem. I know! And so does everyone here. I just want you all to know, that you can win! You can overcome! You are stronger than what your mind wants you to think! And in the end, you will become an even better version of yourself for having faced this journey head on.

Hi all, I’m just coming off of a bad cold and I think my husband is sick too and I feel so much guilt around making him sick. He keeps trying to assure me it happens but, I can’t help but spiral a bit about it.

I’m not feeling too well today because these intrusive thoughts in my head keep cycling and cycling even though I don’t want to have these thoughts and I want them to go away. My girlfriend is getting so tired of having to hear what girl I thought abt and what situation i’m reflecting on even though I don’t even mean to be thinking those things. I feel so guilty and horrible these things come into my brain. I don’t want to think things about other women, my girlfriend is amazing and is very patient and has been so patient ever since i’ve been having obscure or other thoughts about women wether it be just a thought or even sexually. It’s not on purpose. It just keeps happening and I can’t explain how my brain keeps doing it. I just came across so much research about Pure O Ocd and I think I have that. I’m very new to this but my twin brother also has OCD and Bipolar and I feel as though i’m the same way. I’m so tired of having unwanted thoughts come into my head. I feel so upset and hurt knowing I have to tell my girlfriend exactly what it is that came into my head. I feel like a failure.

Idk if this is the right place to post this. But i feel like such a burden to the people around me because of my anxiety. I woke up this morning super stressed over a dream that reminded me of some messed up moments from my past. My girlfriends kinda listened but i mostly felt ignored. Then we all got in the car to drive my sister to the airport. And on the way, i started to get anxious cus of al the traffic. But it wasnt rlly that, it was the fact that no one seemed to care or wanna help me when i said i was anxious. So i asked if i could just hop out of the car and walk. I felt like such an attention seeker, and my girlfriend got annoyed and took the next exit and dropped me off. But i feel like such a little bitch cus my girlfriend was able to handle everything n i left her to come back alone from the airport. I dont feel like a man or like im capable of anything right now. I wish i could redo it all so that it never happened. I feel like i gave up so easily when tryna handle my anxiety n im ashamed of myself

questioning everything. I’m having a good mental health day and wondering if I even have OCD. for context, the diagnosis is quite new for me still and as far as I know, I’ve only struggled with real event/false memory OCD with no physical compulsion, just mental review, reassurance seeking, and confessions. I am starting to feel like maybe i just went a little crazy for the last few months but am better now? I know one good day isn’t enough proof of anything but I just feel like I’m questioning it all now, especially because I don’t deal with any of the “typical” OCD themes/compulsions

I won’t go into too many specifics but my mind will not seem to quit today and I’ve had intense anxiety all day. I constantly want to run and run and run. I felt really good yesterday but today is a tough one. I could use some words of encouragement or some advice for how to stick with the extra tough days. Thanks💘

Everything I see I turn it into a sign, I saw a post of someone talking about brain aneurysms, and I took that as God telling me that I’m bout to have one, I can accidentally play a song on Spotify and assume that that’s God way of telling me that my life is going to be just like that song. I could stub my toe and think I’m going to lose that toe in the future. Literally everything I do I turn it into a sign it’s becoming exhausting. I don’t know what’s real and what’s fake. Not sure if this is ocd let me know if you experience this.

Even when I fall asleep feeling really good I will wake up in guilt and scared I have harm ocd and it’s like I’m scared I did something in my sleep so I feel better when everyone in my family is asleep I also lock my door at night and it’s always still locked when I wake up which helps a little but I’m not sure what to do all this stems from an article I seen about a guy who dreamt of fighting flamingos and ended up killing his family and this scared me sooo much

I've been shutting myself away lately because I'm so fu^king sick of this cycle of me turning into a g0ddamned baby and then hysterically crying for hours on end and having my family helplessly watch and not know how to help. Nobody knows how to help. I don't even know what I need. I want to give up and just stare at the wall until somebody can save me. If my brain isn't constantly distracted and numbed I'm spiraling. I switch minute to minute from being super depressed to hyper and talkative yet somehow I manage to hold it all inside. It's getting very hard to communicate/mask. Every night I feel fine. I feel scared and sad, but I feel the most normal at this time. When I wake up, it starts all over again. I wake up in panic attack mode and drag myself to work. I swear to god I can't help myself anymore. Nothing I do helps and it's too exhausting. I think I'm just gonna keep letting myself suffer because I'm so sick of trying to get help and then have it not help. I know this is just an episode but jesus christ it's so f^cking scary. I believe everything my brain tells me but I don't even know what it's telling me. All I know is there's this extreme PUSH to be flooded with extreme sadness and anxiety, and it's very REAL. I feel like I need to be locked up and studied. I truly feel alone in this condition because I genuinely believe there is no one in this world who has been having these symptoms the way I do. Four years of this, several mental health professionals, and I still don't have an answer. When will I be able to rest? Even reading this message makes me think "that's not me. where did I go?" There's not even a specific reason why i'm feeling so extremely horrible. It starts as a pure OCD attack about something and then before I know it I spend a week crying. Anyway I have work in the morning I don't know how I keep going and getting out of bed every day knowing that ending up like this is definitely a possibility. I really don't know how I'm still alive. Something is extremely wrong with me and no one seems to understand just how bad it is. What do I need to do in order to get someone to understand the severity of it all? I wish nothing but healing and peace and permanent remission for all of you tough souls ❤️

I’m aware I have ocd and with logic I can see that I shouldn’t be worried and I have things to do and things I’m happy about but I have what ifs in the back of my mind. It’s like following me around and it’s so scary not to mental check or act on it in some way. I know I should move forward but I’m scared to. I think hormones are flaring it up. I’m just catastrophizing or whatever in the back of my mind. I wanna be happy so badly and move on so I can feel free

Anyone have contamination OCD about there kitten/puppy getting on them and making them dirty if you can call it that it's a unknown contaminate but starts my washing compulsion and trying to keep them from getting on me unless iam already feel dirty,Contaminated hard to explain

I think I have contamination OCD based on what I’ve been able to research. It’s debilitating and I just want my life back. I have to wipe down or clean everything that comes into my house. Yet there are “clean” and “dirty” areas within the house, which logically doesn’t make sense.

I think the reason I have been triggered is because of stress I am SO STRESSED I work 50+ hour work weeks have so many bills and it just feels like things keep happening to make life work like today my tire popped! I can’t afford it so I am stressing out about that I just signed up to start college asap (this month) and I don’t know where I am gonna have time for myself I barely have time to eat and sleep let alone shower but somehow my thoughts make time in my head to be the way they are and I am gonna be honest it pisses me off! What about y’all? Are y’all pissed off? Tell me about it in the comments:)