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the NOCD Community

i'm going to lose my life one day to this illness i never asked for. it could've been beautiful.

I am uncertain where to start, as I’ve only self-diagnosed myself with having OCD tendencies. I can look back into my childhood, adolescence, young adulthood and now, and I see pockets of when OCD was alive and well. I have been learning about somatic healing the last few years because I’ve been wanting to connect with my body to understand. I want to feel more grounded. During this process of wellness, I’ve learned that I have OCD and ADHD qualities that I’ve lived with my entire life. Could that be true? Was I good at hiding it all, or making it appear as part of my personality? Was I masking? I think that’s a term that’s used these days. Here’s a story that involves what may be OCD. My sister and I, aged 14 and 16 at the time, just took our first flight together to visit our aunt and uncle in Seattle. While there, intrusive thoughts kept popping into my head that something was going to happen to my dad. Where were these thoughts randomly come from? Was I thinking them, did they magically appear, was it my intuition? It was an unsettling feeling and I had frequent thoughts that my dad was going to die. At that time, my life felt so beautiful. It felt so full of love and happiness. I loved my family. I had my very first boyfriend. It was summertime and as I was taking a walk down the ocean shore, I wondered if life is supposed to feel that happy. I just genuinely felt full of light and love and all the good stuff. And thoughts kept coming about what I could possibly learn in this lifetime if I haven’t experienced pain. Why was I having such an existential crisis at age 14, on a summer vacation with my sister? It was just two days later when we tried calling our dad and he wasn’t answering. I had a gut feeling that something happened. It wasn’t until my dad’s sister answered my home phone that I knew. My sister and I held hands and collapsed to the floor in pure shock. My dad died of a heart attack. It was such a blur of a time, as my developing brain couldn’t process it at all. Anyway, fast forward to me being 36 years old, I still fear that my thoughts could have caused his death. It plays in my head when I get to thinking about that summer vacation. So now, as a mother of three beautiful children, I get intrusive thoughts and worries about anything happening to them. My heart starts to race, my eyes fill up with tears and I just can’t imagine it. Is it OCD? Is the fear causing these OCD thoughts? I have nightmares sometimes of these terrible things happening to my loved ones. I guess what I’m asking is, could this be OCD. What type of OCD? I also have this repetitive string of things I say in my head when I get intrusive worries. It’s along the lines of “God please protect my loved ones. Keep them safe. Surround them with love, protection, health.” And the ADHD symptoms are a whole other part of my life. I have felt this thing inside of me forever thinking something is wrong with me, not knowing what. But seeing peers living their lives so freely and doing things that feel harder for me have left me feeling crippled. And nobody would know this about me. If you saw me from the outside you’d think I have it all together- a husband, three kids, etc. But truly I have felt so alone and unable to fully live at my core. And I just need to know why or what or how. I just want answers so I can truly heal.

people here say that their ocd isn’t completely gone but it’s not ruling them and it’s in the back of their mind still but not ruling them. but i don’t want it on the back of my mind. i want clarity about what i believe and who i am again. i don’t want a shred of doubt. i want to be freed. i feel like this is impossible.. like the ocd doubts are apart of me now.. i don’t understand why this happened to me.

I’m literally shaking panicking that I’m paychosis, sometimes I feel so weird very weird feeling and ugh I know it’s ocd but I’m scared of not remembering who my husband is or like acting crazy or having to go to a mental hospital like I don’t want that and like psychosis and ocd have very similar symptoms. I was diagnosed with OCD but I’m scared I have that and I don’t want to I’m like ugh sometimes I feel so out of myself I wake up feeling weird I feel very weird symptoms in my body I wanna be fucking normal I thought I was okay but ugh I feel so horrible right now and it also doesn’t help that I’m on my period but I just saw the word psychosis and decided to search it up and now I’m scared I have it.

Hi there, I’ve recently been diagnosed with OCD after seeking help because of worsening performance at work. I’m a nurse practitioner and work in a busy clinic. Throughout the past few years I’ve become slower and slower as a clinician because I’m so scared of making a mistake. I constantly recheck things that I know I know, recheck my charting and make it as perfect as possible, re-review medical history, obsessively follow patient’s charts, consult the on-calls even though I know the answer, and call patients outside of working hours to check in on them. I’m wondering if there any other healthcare providers who have OCD on this platform? I feel like my OCD symptoms have in someway made me a great provider but it’s getting to a point now where I’m afraid I’ll lose my job because I’m not meeting my patient numbers. Since I can’t see as many patients my coworkers have to pick up the slack and I feel horrible about that. Curious if anyone has similar experiences. Thanks so much for reading :)

It feels like it’s just true. Like it’s officially a fact that I’ve become THAT, somehow in someway. It’s hard to just think otherwise cause of everything that’s went wrong in my head and my body. What else am I supposed to think about myself? And the worst part? It feels like it’s normal, when I know for a fact that it’s not. There’s just this lack of anxiety and fear and disgust, it only makes it feel like it really is the truth more. It feels like there’s this…presence in my head. That’s the best way to explain. Like something has grown and taken root so deep in my brain that it’s become one with it. It’s just always there, not just the thoughts, but this “presence” of it being apart of me, apart of who I am and what I want. Like it’s there in the front of my mind no matter what. And my own sexual interests, the ones before, they feel like I feel nothing towards them anymore. Just pushed to the side. Like I no longer feel excited over men anymore. Sure I find them attractive, and there’s a man I have a crush on, but it doesn’t change how I feel and see myself, and what it may mean. It’s so easy to find myself identifying with non-exclusive/no -offenders but that’s the problem I DONT want to identify with people like that. I don’t wanna be that person, but it’s hard to think i’m the person I was before when it feels like all these things that have happened just add up to me being a pedo. How am I supposed to live my life when it doesn’t feel like there’s a life to live?

Hi! I'm Kelly. I'm new to this. I am posting this...after having written it five different times because I would read it and think "I'm such a faker" and then I'd exit out and think "oh. Well actually, that's the OCD talking, let's try again." I had no idea I had OCD though someone probably should have noticed at some point. I have known I have had depression since I was 19, and had been on medication for ten years before I finally decided to do TMS therapy. And it worked so well! It calmed that depression down in that part of the brain. However, with the depression finally quiet, OCD really took the spotlight and I lost 60 pounds over the course of 6 months because I couldn't eat from a deep fear of contamination. For a while we thought I had somehow developed an eating disorder at age 30, but after some serious investigating, my doctors and I finally settled on OCD. Now my husband says "it makes so much more sense now, you always saying your mean thoughts out loud so it won't hurt you." So that's fun. Anyway, I can't trust my own brain and it's frustrating and I hope maybe I can find a friend to talk about stuff like this with.

I just need help. I’m in a spiral right now! I feel like I offended God with an intrusive thought. I’m scared. I know it’s not rational. My brain is making me think it’s me, but I don’t want to think that way. I’m scared.

Hello, I am not diagnosed with OCD but started researching it as a child bc I know I had deep mental obsessions. I think I never opened up to anyone about it bc I also have a savior complex and believe I am the only who can help myself (I have been learning this not true (it’s true in a sense but not in a practical sense)) only through the power of Jesus Christ. Anyways, for as long as I’ve had social media I’ve struggled with obsessive updating changing and checking of my profile/posts. I think this stems from a fear of being perceived wrongly by others (whatever that means). I would have a literal fear that something would get posted on my accounts that I did not post and it would be horribly offensive or embarrassing or both, and I would genuinely believe this fear even though that’s impossible. I have gotten better in the sense that I have more confidence now so I worry less about “fitting in”, but I still obsessively check what I post multiple times to make sure it’s “ok” (meaning to make sure what i actually posted is there and not something different). I think this might be somewhat normal as far as ppl viewing their own content repeatedly I just think the reasons why I do it and the compulsive nature of it is a result of ocd. Even when I know rationally there is no reason to keep checking I repeatedly give into the compulsion to do it. I also notice I have an obsession with “starting over” on things and purging. This includes social media as I have a strong tendency to go back and delete things in order to make everything “just right” and this hurts my self esteem bc I feel like I can’t follow through with anything and will never be “sure” about anything. This is a common theme in my life— I purge possessions regularly and then regret it later, I post excessively on social media and then feel satisfied by deleting it later on and the cycle repeats. I want consistency in my life and do feel there is a pervasive need for “just rightness” that overshadows my life and it can be disruptive. I can suddenly feel the need to purge things from my life, even relationships, and sometimes regret it later. I’m honestly not sure anymore how much of it is rational and how much is not, the lines can be blurred. I just know I want a change and I want to feel that I can commit to things, without feeling the overwhelming compulsion to change things in order to feel satisfied. Ik rational changes are a part of life, but I’m afraid my ocd fuels some of these decisions. If you’ve read all of this and have any advice or relate at all I would love any feedback. I’m really desperate at this point. Is this a legit type of ocd?? Is this common?? Thanks.

Does anyone else hate when people use ocd as a characteristic? I’m involved in a community service group that builds things and the supervisor of the group said “I need my ocd people to come check this straight line”. This girl walked over who is a perfectionist and I’ve watched her closely trying to figure out if she does have OCD but I can’t tell so I don’t want to say she doesn’t bc she very well could but the supervisor saying that made me upset. She was using it as a characteristic of someone. It’s like she was saying “I need my artistic people to come paint this for me”. My ocd isn’t a characteristic. Yes it’s a part of me but I don’t want to be defined by it. I really wanted to say to her “hey that isn’t something people who actually struggle with OCD want to be called.” I don’t want to be called the “ocd girl”. Bc yeah I have ocd and yes I’ve been working extremely hard in exposure therapy and yes I take medication for it but do not define me by it. I find it rude and inconsiderate. I’m not sure how any one else feels but it just made me upset the rest of the day and I’m still thinking about it.

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.

My brain is obsessed with the idea that my dad could get cancer so I keep praying that he won't. This is what my prayer looks like: - 'finish praying within 15 minutes, or else ur dad will die' (this I think on purpose because it used to twke 3 hours) - then i begin the same prayer I do every night - then I reach the 'god please help my dad not to do develop cancer bit' and I realize I need to go down and pray 60 times that he won't because earlier I did this and got distracted so I need to go down again and did it properly. I ended up doing it like 300 times because I lost my train of thought - then I come back up and all of a sudden I'm convinced that this is the night where God will help my dad to never develop cancer - so I pray well and I go to the symbol of God in my brother's room and my brain thinks 'pray another 4 ti s here, and only 4 times on your dad's life' because otherwiee it would be like 300 again. I get really scared I'm about to do it more than 4 so I rush the last 2 and come back feelinf super guilty that it's rushed and I come back trying to redo it -when I finally come back to my room I tell myself to pray the next 4 slowly so God knows I am devoted to him. My brain starts wondering to a movie I watched- a literal romantic one on purpose and it keeps disrupting my prayer and when I think of what will feel right to fix it, it's another 60 times of doing the prayer slowly- not even rushed like downstairs. I've done it slowly but still got distracted so now I need to do it another 100 times. Even this post my brain convinced me that if I reach for help when they scan my dad on his appointment it will come up with cancer instead of something non life threatening so I better just do everything properly until his appointment. It's flared up so much and I don't know what to do- I don't even know if I have OCD Also this is a really long post so I am sorry if you had to read all of that

I know I have had good days and even months, but I always have a relapse. I feel like I will never be “normal” or have a “normal” life. I am constantly lost in my compulsions. Every day I wake up and worry about what I did, what I felt, or what I thought. My family tells me to be stronger, but I am trying so hard. Does anyone else go through the same thing?

Does anyone else get worse OCD symptoms (for me it’s my obsessive and intrusive thoughts, my two big ones that i struggle with). These thoughts seem to bother me so much more the few days before my period and throughout it and it feels like clockwork that is slowly gets better as time goes on. This week was so bad. Some of the worst. I have nearly made life altering decisions that I would not normally make due to these thoughts that feel so real at the time. It is hard to work on them since they are really bad for about a week every month. I cannot explain it very well. I have obsessive thoughts often but on my period they become extremely debilitating. please does anyone else have this. PS i’m 21 and have had issues with my period and my doctors think i may have endometriosis so idk if my period and hormones are just awful and the reason for this.

Hey all, I was recently diagnosed with OCD and MDD a few months ago. I’ve been experiencing symptoms for the past 11 months though. I used to be a person who would downplay depression, reasoning that if someone is depressed, they should be able to snap out of it. This year has taught me the truth behind how debilitating mental health conditions can be. My OCD has been absolutely tearing my life apart. For the past year, I’ve been coping with excessive guilt over past and recurring mistakes, my anxiety of which has recently been causing me panic attacks and throbbing headaches. I’ve also been coping with feeling unnatural sexual attractions, to those of the same sex and to children, which contradict the values I hold at heart. At one point, even simply shaking someone’s hand would cause sexual arousal, due to my hyper-vigilance surrounding physical contact. My OCD and depression nearly led me to take my life a few months ago. There are no words to describe the amount of pain I’ve had to endure. My thoughts and feelings have been absolutely tearing my life down, bit by bit. I feel like I lost who I was, and like it’s impossible for me to know who I am. This isn’t me. Over the past couple weeks, I’ve been feeling constant sexual arousal, it’s so easily triggered now. I don’t know if it’s because of the OCD, if it’s a result of the SSRI I’m on, or if it’s just a product of me being a young adult—Or maybe a combination of all of the above, but it’s debilitating. How easily I get aroused causes me so much guilt. There is a girl in my life that I love, but it doesn’t help that I get aroused around her because of the simplest of things. It’s not what I want for us. I want to be able to hone in on my self-control. I can’t help but constantly compare who I am now to who I was just over a year ago. My happiness has suffered, and my endurance is draining. I know there is a long road of insight and recovery ahead of me, this is just the beginning. If there’s anyone who can relate to me in any way, feel free to let me know. Comfort begins with feeling understood.

Theres so many effed up things i’ve done or said in the past which still bother me to this day. One day i’ll have one obsession, like ROCD over being scared i’m cheating on my partner, then another day i’ll have POCD because of a past experience with an underaged friend, and im just so burnt out from all the thoughts and overthinking. I feel like the most horrible person each and every single day, a constant urge to confess, a constant feeling like im a traitor, and then thinking im just using OCD as an excuse for everything. Im so SICK OF IT ALL. I can’t catch a break. There’s too much going on in my head, like this constant rumination and analysis and then compulsions to search up these obsessions. However searching up things relating to it is probably the most harmful and worst mistake for me, because then I see stories of allegations e.g like dream being exposed for grooming a minor and people exposing others for other vile acts and it just triggers me so much, because it feels like I BELONG on there but never in my life would i actually want to do such things, and if everyone knew what i did then i feel like everyone would agree i quite literally deserved to be burned at the stake. Should i just get a therapist at this point or can i get through this myself with the use of some mental gymnastics like i’ve been doing the entire time? I feel too much guilt, it’s eating me up alive.

Hi, I just joined this app. I have OCD, I’ve been diagnosed for 7 years. I’m 18 years old, and live with my parents. One of my most prominent compulsions is to confess everything to my mom. We have a very close relationship, which makes it difficult to not confess to her about random things my brain makes me think I need to. It’s not like she makes me tell her everything, it’s my brain that does. That stupid little OCDemon that makes me feel incapable of having any privacy. Anyways what I’m getting to is the fact there are things I don’t want to share with my mom, because I don’t want to scare her. Which brings me to why I’m writing this. I was hanging out with my friends in the back of on of their trucks. We were parked on the side of the road. About a block down there is a strip of city life, but back where we were it was quite dormant, minus a few passerby’s. I should also mention none of us were drinking or smoking, we were just chatting, nothing else. Around midnight this lady walks up to the truck absolutely hammered drunk. My friend, trying to asses the situation says hi. She responds with a “hi” but then pulls her phone out and starts recording us. Again we were literally just talking to each other, nothing else. She begins to creep in closer and that’s when we all disperse and get into my friends car. The whole thing was pretty scary and I was convinced we’d be safe because one of my friend is 6”2 and a man. But it was still an extremely uncomfortable situation. Anyway I’m writing this because I feel this compulsion to tell my mom about this experience, but I don’t feel there is a need to do so, because it would only scare her. Granted, I’ve learned my lesson and will never be in that part of town, at night, outside regardless of who I’m with. So I feel there is no need to tell her, but my OCD makes me feel I have to tell her. What would you do in this situation? Or do you think this is just the OCD talking?

i get anxiety attacks for everything ugh i hate it!!!😕just now i got anxiety over accounts i blocked in my tik tok and im overthinking why i blocked them in the first place and wondering if they said anything to me for me to block them :( even though i know i never talked to those accounts i keep overthinking it’s so tiring :( my anxiety doesn’t let me be calm