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Make you feel like you actually do? I’ve always checked my feelings to try and find my “real” ones and now…when I check, my brain runs away with the thought and makes me feel like I’d actually enjoy hurting my dog. Please help.

Hi community! I’m new to NOCD and OCD treatment in general. I recently started seeing a specialist for what I suspect (and hope) is SO-OCD. For context, I have happily and comfortably identified as a lesbian for the past 8+ years (i.e. since late adolescence, have only dated women, dreamt of a life with a woman, etc). It always seemed natural to me and how I saw myself. Up until 2 months ago, I had little to no problem acknowledging a guy’s attractiveness when - seemingly overnight - boom…then I did. Relentless intimate/sexual intrusive thoughts, groinals, constant false attractions to strangers and platonic acquaintances, total loss of genuine attraction as I knew it, and so on. I had no idea what was happening to me. The possibility of OCD didn’t even occur to me at first as I hadn’t experienced these nonstop intrusive thoughts and compulsions before. Rumination accelerated quickly. It was devastating, disorienting, and felt like death. I couldn’t stand to be in my own mind. Discovering this app/community was a crucial turning point. It gave me language for my experience as well as direction for treatment and hopeful recovery. I’m not sure where I am in this journey or what I feel now exactly. All I know is that these months have drained me: it feels like my memories have been distorted, like I‘ve been cut off from the person I used to be, like I can’t even imagine being that person. It’s all doubt. Even with a diagnosis. As I type this, there’s a little voice telling me I’m lying, that I’ve been wrong about my life, but I’m trying to push through. I wanted to write about my experience here partly because I haven’t found posts from other gay/queer people who seem this deep into “the spiral” so to speak. Just to say you’re not alone if you are. <3 Huge thanks to everyone who posts here, across themes. As a newbie, your courage is admirable and very appreciated. Thank you for helping me feel less alone. Wishing you all well in recovery!

I was diagnosed with ADHD years ago but have found that most of my day to day struggles are dominated by OCD behaviors. I have contamination and health O and find that in my work and household with roommates are where my compulsions to clean are most present. ADHD is easy for me to talk about with people, but I am scared that if I talk about OCD with people in these spaces, everything they see me do will be filtered through a less-educated perspective of OCD, and I will be judged for it. I don’t want people to assume how I feel about the cleanliness of things and label me “overly perfectionist” or “too careful” bc I am fully aware that I cannot impose my fears on anyone and how unrealistic the fears are. Yet I still want people to understand what I’m going through 😔

Is it normal in OCD to test yourself to see if you like something (POCD specifically) Sometimes I imagine scenarios or things to see if I have a reaction to them but then feel guilty about imagining it afterwards…

I have been to a handful of therapists in my life since 2019, some who were helpful and some who were not. I have been categorised my entire life as a “perfectionist” by my friends, have blood relatives who are diagnosed with OCD, among other things, and I’m just lost. The overlap of symptoms that I have with various other mental disorders is confusing me. Is there any definitive document I can refer myself to? Is my only hope to see an OCD specialist to find out? Does anyone have advice as to what to ask a CBT therapist? I’m in a financial bind, and just need some reliable resources and answers.

I want to share some thoughts that might resonate with those of you grappling with intrusive thoughts or lingering regrets from the past. First and foremost, it's essential to remember that our thoughts are not definitive representations of who we are. They often stem from random electrical impulses in our brains and can feel overwhelming at times. It’s important to acknowledge that these thoughts do not define us. Instead, they are just passing moments that we can observe without judgment. Secondly, it’s crucial to realize that past events would have unfolded regardless of our actions. We often believe we are the main cause of certain outcomes, but many events occur independently of our choices. Think of your life as a storybook; while you can read and reflect on the pages, you did not write the narrative that led to those moments. This perspective can help alleviate feelings of guilt and self-blame. Lastly, let’s remember that we are all human, and making mistakes is part of the experience. It’s vital to forgive ourselves for past errors and recognize that these experiences contribute to our growth. The mere act of reflecting on our mistakes shows that we have learned and evolved. To foster healing and personal growth, consider incorporating some positive habits into your daily routine: Get Outside: Aim for daily walks in the sunlight. Nature has a remarkable way of uplifting our spirits. Pursue Hobbies: Engage in activities that bring you joy and fulfillment. This can help redirect your focus and energy. Volunteer: Offering guidance to others who may be facing similar challenges can be incredibly rewarding. It not only helps them but also reinforces your own lessons learned. By taking these steps, you can create a meaningful path toward moral repentance and personal development, freeing yourself from the burdens of the past. Remember, healing is a journey, and every small step counts. Embrace it with kindness and patience towards yourself. Have a great day all 😊

I was at my aunt’s birthday party today & I actually socialized (with my aunts/uncle only ofc). anyway, while I was on my phone to the side, I think I heard one of my cousins use an ethnic slur. but other people were talking so I can’t tell if I am imagining shit or if she rlly said it. it sounded like she did even though I didn’t hear it clearly. and I’m just disappointed, upset, angry, etc. my other cousins say the slur as well which is why I don’t like going to parties and talking to them bc I don’t fuck with that. I’m not surprised at them for using it bc they say it religiously. but I am surprised to hear it from this particular cousin. and the reason I’m upset is bc years ago we realized (when we were kids/teens) how bad the word was. I won’t deny that I also used the word back then when I was 14/15 but stopped at 15 & corrected myself. I took accountability and everything. we both agreed that the word was bad to say and we would stop. she was actually the one that caught me using it when she stopped and pointed it out to me. I think shortly after that, I stopped using it. (but she wasn’t the first person to tell me to cut it out. she was just the last one to tell me it was bad.) moving on, I’m upset bc I rlly believed she changed and would never say it again. I guess I was wrong. I had a lot of trust for her because she was basically the only one in our family (mom’s side) who understood how wrong it was. now I feel like I’m the only one that has truly changed. I’m fucking mad. like fuck. and just genuinely upset. I can’t trust anyone. I want to throw shit around. how many times am I going to keep hurting finding out who people truly are? now I won’t say she’s a bad person, she’s good but fuck man. why?? why say that word?? I believed in her. literally broke my trust just like that. I am very observant and don’t talk to people until I find some confidence that they won’t disappoint me. now after this event, it’s just fueling my morals even more. I can’t seem to talk to anyone without thinking “are they racist? do they hate gay people? what do they think of trans people? are they friends with good people or enablers of bad people?” and so on. I’m so fucking tired. and I’m scared of wondering what my friends (the ones that are close to me) think of certain topics. these are just my online friends. I don’t rlly have irl friends. it’s like I can’t have friends. and ik u can have different opinions of stuff but when it comes to politics, it’s just overwhelming for me. I can’t even think for myself. always obsessed with what’s “good” and what’s “bad” I’m tired of it all. fuck all of this. fuck bad people. fuck the world. fuck me. excuse my language. good night everyone. stay safe & take care.

Anxious my husband cheated after ten years with a woman he was engaged to several maybe 15 years before I moved from the big city to a small farm town and they are around one another all the time and everyone told me even in our ten years of marriage he’s never gotten over her and he blames me for the cheating and when I quit my job due to stress and a child I was withdrawn and was crabby and not the most pleasant but I didn’t go out and look for someone to talk to at the bar down the street for 4 months like he did I took care of our family

i have always kept my struggles with ocd from friends and family, except for my parents, but they don’t know everything about it either. i guess what im looking for is advice, reassurance, someone who can relate, or someone to explain what is going on with me. recently i have had a terrible problem with grinding my teeth a certain way on the left side and then the right side to make it “even” and it has become a habit. i can never put my right sock on before my left sock and i can never put my right leg in first when putting pants on… if i don’t always put my left before my right i can’t help but feel like it is a part of some sort of butterfly effect where everything will spiral if i don’t follow my normal steps. i constantly pick at my skin and my eyebrows because i can’t stand feeling unkept. i take 2 showers a day whenever i feel “dirty” and i have a very specific routine. whenever i look at windows, doors, doorframes, picture frames, tvs, or anything with an outline i count it. i count how many sides there are, how many corners there are, how many panes are in a glass window, etc. in school i have trouble focusing because i count ceiling and floor tiles. i struggle taking tests occasionally because if i read the directions or question in the “wrong tone” in my head, then i will most definitely get the question wrong and fail. this causes me to re-read over and over again until it feels right, and i end up running out of time and having to make up tests that i didn’t finish. i believe my ocd and perfectionism ultimately lead me to bad places in my mind. i struggle with standards and expectations mentally due to my ocd. i fear that i will never be understood, even by my own self. sometimes i scare myself because i get random images of people inflicting harm on others or on me. years ago when i first acknowledged my ocd, i became very depressed. i felt different in a bad way, like people could read my mind and know what was going on and think i’m a bad person. i am generally popular with people now, i am an excellent student, and i am beautiful, but i have always struggled. i have no idea how to take care of myself and i have no one with similar experiences. i just downloaded this app and i am really glad i get to rant so i hope someone listens to me and my struggles with ocd. thank you.

Did you have any intrusive thought that was such absurd that you can laught now about it even maybe it was really terrified for you in that moment?

Do you ever meet a guy that treats you so well and you fall in love with him but then all of a sudden you get hit with thoughts of self doubt on weather or not you do love him or even find him attractive? I’m going through this right now and these thoughts overtake my emotions and any time we do lovey dovey things my stomach drops and I get anxious when I can’t feel any lovey dovey emotions. It also makes me want to run away or makes me question that I don’t wanna be with him and it’s stressful to deal with these thoughts daily. Anyone relate?

Hi all. I’m still really struggling with harm themes towards my dog and I wondered if anyone else has had this happen. The images, thoughts, everything that I get - they all go against anything I’ve ever felt towards her. At all. But now, it feels like that’s my new normal - and my actual values, like loving her, not wanting to harm her, feel fake. I don’t know how else to explain it. It feels like I don’t care, don’t love her and wouldn’t be bothered by harming her yet I know that’s not true in anyway. But it scares the hell out of me. Like I walk around with it all day and have to remind myself why it’s not something I would want to do, vs the other way around! It is the worst thing. Am I alone?

OCD makes me feel like i am the scum of the earth and i believe it is true. i’ve done horrible things in the past when i was younger that i am not proud of. i know people say that we have to forgive ourselves for our past mistakes/know that our mistakes don’t define us or what not, but i feel like what i’ve done is irredeemable. although i was young back then, it dosent make it an excuse bc i am old enough to know it was wrong. why would i do that?? i’ve tried to forgive myself, but i keep going back in a loop bc of my OCD. what if i am using my OCD as an excuse? i don’t know what to do, please help.

it’s always like this. I get to talk to someone, we chat, then stop chatting or get very slow replies. but I can’t complain when I said that if I don’t reply, I’m busy or dealing with stuff. everyone has their life & no one is obligated to reply to me. I have learned that I really am just alone. I don’t want to force anyone or be obsessed. this goes for online friends. I only have 4. but they haven’t replied to me in days/weeks/months maybe. honestly, this has helped me not becoming dependent and wait for a reply like I used to. I would go on worrying for a while if someone wouldn’t reply for a certain time. I wouldn’t tell them ofc but I would become anxious. as for real life, I guess I can say 1. maybe 2 but one of them was a friend from elementary and we only met up once after sophomore year of high school. we’re now in college (actually, she graduated already) & have met up with her that day. we updated each other on our lives. it was nice, but I don’t think it was the same ‘best friend’ friendship we had as kids/teens. we don’t talk anymore. (only if I view her stories on instagram and say something) the other one I could say is half online/half real life. I met him online and we met irl a month in. he’s a good guy and honestly the first person that I like as a friend. someone I can trust, I guess. not fully, but definitely can be a lot of myself around. he’s been busy with life as well. he’s not obligated to reply to me. this one, I rlly like talking to but again, life happens. so I stopped being ‘excited’ for a response. in the end, it’s just me. my pain and myself. if I can’t make any friends irl (or maybe new friends online)(don’t get me wrong, I like the 4 online friends I have. they’re dear to me. they are just busy) at the end of this year during school, I will just give up. I tried before in my previous semester but it never happened. I am just going to accept my solitude. all I want now is either to not be here (sometimes), get a bike and ride by myself, or I don’t know. I don’t find anything appealing at the moment. sometimes there will be a spark but it goes out quickly. I genuinely do not see a happy life in the future. even after I told my dad of a ‘plan’ I had to retire early and keep learning in college to feed my curiosity, I just think maybe I’m not fit for living. I’m just tired. I try. I don’t find joy in many things anymore. it’s just not interesting. I just want to crawl up in my bed (as I am now) and move to a different place. I just want peace. will it be death that I find peace? or maybe living by a lake? who knows. life needs to let me rest.

TW for mental health issues, death, ptsd, ED i guess ill just start off by saying that i have struggled since i was young with severe anxiety and panic attacks since i was about five but an onslaught of CPTSD worsened a lot of things for me. i developed an eating disorder in my teens and was hospitalized for it. i’ve been in and out of therapy since i was ten and while i do my best without medication to live my life to the fullest, i often feel like i don’t deserve the successes and support i’ve received in the last few years b/c i feel like i don’t deserve to be happy at all. i saw a video recently of a girl talking about her obsessive hypochondriac thoughts that i resonated with and when i read the comments, a lot of people pointed out that it might be ocd. it hasn’t ever been a thought that crossed my mind and now im wondering if im twisting that video into some sort of self diagnosis for myself. im wondering if it’s just my high anxiety that’s causing these severely intrusive thoughts. for example, i have had a really hard time sleeping recently because the thought that i or my partner might die in my sleep keeps me up. if i have an aneurysm or a heart attack in the middle of the night and die, or worse, if my partner has an aneurysm or heart attack, is it because i don’t deserve to be happy with him? i don’t deserve a wonderful relationship? another thought i have is when i drive with us both in the car, im going to crash and severely injure both of us or kill us both. i have never once crashed my car or gotten into an accident btw, but for some reason i just get this extremely morbid thought that im going to crash and it’ll be the end. i had a weirdly spiritual experience/revelation in 2020/21 about the multiverse and i keep thinking that every night i actually die or that i get into accidents or something morbid happens and im somehow timeline jumping and going to a different multiverse and that’s been my odd way of coping with these thoughts. i guess im just trying to figure out if this is even remotely similar to OCD or if im just over analyzing it bc of my anxiety/hypochondria i guess?? i dont know i just want help. if this isn’t OCD, please tell me and i will delete this post and app and ill sincerely apologize to everyone who actually suffers. 🙏

Hello yall! So… I keep looking through my girlfriend’s phone. We have been together for almost 2 years. However, she was with someone else for a year. She says it was super toxic, but my OCD doesn’t let it go. I have worked so hard to stop looking through her phone. When we first got together, I started looking a ton. More than once a week trying to catch her in a lie, but all it did was end up in fights. I haven’t looked at her phone in months, probably around 4 months. I literally avoid to take her phone near me. Unfortunately, it got the best of me. I was watching my nephew & I didn’t have my phone anywhere. My gf gave me hers, to turn on our TV so he can fall asleep. But after turning on the television, I couldn’t help myself. I’m so angry, mad, embarrassed, guilty. However, my intrusive thoughts are going wild & I feel a compulsion coming on. What do yall recommend? Should I tell her? I don’t want her to leave me, I know she will not, but I’m scared it’s gonna be a final straw for her & our relationship.

I know it’s pitiful for me asking for help but idk what to do. Ever since I did something bad like a few months ago (check my recent post for backstory!if you want) I felt so much guilt and then started looking back at my past and feeling guilty about that stuff then I started thinking what if I s@d my 4yr old cousin or 2 yr old cousin and it feels real like it actually happened like I actually remember it but I can’t remember it if that makes sense and I’ve never been diagnosed with ocd which makes it scarier I’m starting to think I did do that I mean the thought feels like it’s on the tip of my nose if I keep searching it’ll appear in my memory. I felt so much guilt and fear of what will happen if it turned out true I tried to commit by doing 0v3rd0se but it only made my memory fuzzy of what happened when I was overdosing and it made my guilt worse cause my cousins were over and my thoughts amplified since I barely remember what happened my mind told me I probably s@d them when I was overdosing (this was yesterday) and it sucks cause I can’t ask my baby cousins if I did or not they probably don’t remember at all or even thought it was bad what if I traumatized them what if they commit cocsa because of me I’m a monster.

have none of my posts been public??? is NOCD erasing them??? or are people avoiding me??? I can’t tell. someone PLEASE reply. I’m genuinely getting upset & I need help

can ANYONE see this post??? I don’t know if my posts keep getting removed or something because I still see them but don’t know if people can. if that’s true, then that sucks. but if people did see them & no one replied, I’m going to think I’m an actual evil person and will have to take action to game over myself. I don’t know if this post will be removed bc I tried to censor/reword what I wanna say. someone please, for fucks sake reply if u can see this. I feel like I’m going crazy

What do you do? When you want to leave it all because you’re afraid you’ll hurt people