Welcome to
the NOCD Community

So I watch daily videos of a mother and daughter that do make up and talk. They are so funny. The daughter is about 10-13. She always talks about her school crush in almost every video and her mom always rolls her eyes and they just make me laugh because I have a daughter that age. So I was watching their new video today and after watching their videos for so long and listening to the daughter always go on and on about this boy she likes, I simply thought to myself I wonder what this boy she has such a crush on looks like. As soon as I thought that, my ocd has me questioning myself telling me I am inappropriate for wondering that. I know I wasn’t thinking anything wrong but why does my ocd always make me feel like a bad person? Am I? I hate my brain and living. I can’t do or think anything normal without questioning it and feeling like a horrible abnormal unworthy person.

I’ll start - Worried I was a zoophile because I enjoy eating octopus - Thought I was dying of a brain aneurism because my head hurt - Thought that because my towel touched the hand towel that my family uses that I had to wash them both so that way my family wouldn’t become attracted to me.

So my ocd has found something new to obsess over, sadly. I’m the oldest sibling and I’ve always struggled with my anger. As a kid, I would take these feelings out on my siblings whenever they made me mad and i feel terrible now just thinking about it. My brother admitted to me a while ago that he felt so sad and depressed because of how rude I was. Thinking about it now, it makes me feel so ashamed. I was so mean to him. I’ve changed and he doesn’t feel that way anymore toward me anymore and our relationship is actually so much better. I guess im just obsessing over the fact that I caused my own brother to be depressed and sad. I wasn’t even worried about this before because I’ve changed. And I’m really scared because my ocd has been terrible lately, leading to a lot of stress. What if this stress leads to health issues like heart disease?? I’m really scared. Please help me

I recently revived my award for conquering my OCD. I was feeling great, having improved significantly. Previously my OCD was mostly focused on constant debilitating fears that something bad would happen to my loved ones. Now I can’t even remember the last time I had a thought like that which is great. I am preparing to move across the country to live with my boyfriend and now i’m experiencing ROCD which i’ve never had before. It’s been days of this now and am afraid I won’t be able to get it under control. It is also making me so sad because I have never had thoughts like these regarding my relationship before. Any suggestions on how to tackle this before it worsens? I am trying to use the same strategies I learned in therapy that I used for my other themes, however i’m struggling.

i think I'm developing relationship OCD. i keep feeling like I don't want to look at my partner because I'm worried I won't be attracted to him. so many people online say that if you don't feel physically attracted you have to break up. i think that's going to happen. please don't reassure me even though my head's saying this might be real and not OCD. i want to always treat it like it's OCD

I feel like OCD is ruining all of my relationships and I hate it. My symptoms have been significantly better since I started on medication but recently I’ve been struggling with just constant thoughts that my friends don’t actually like me. I also reassurance seek a lot and so much so that I had a friend say we needed to take a break from being friends because she couldn’t deal with my excessive reassurance seeking. I just have this anxiety surrounding every single one of my friendships and this fear that they don’t care about me and I hate it. I’m scared of loosing more people because of OCD. I’m still young and I’m worried that I won’t ever be in a meaningful relationship because everyone I try to get close to will push me away because of my anxiety. I just hate OCD and I wish it wasn’t affecting my relationships to the point where I don’t feel like I can even reach out and talk to them.

I was wondering if anybody had any tips for how they personally deal with rumination? Certain things (usually relational if that matters) can keep me up through the night. There will be some times when I can sleep for a few hours but the anxiety wakes me up on and off through the night and sometimes it takes me a while to fall back asleep. I try to do the method of recognizing when I’m ruminating and telling myself that it isn’t helpful and redirecting my thoughts but some days/nights it’s relentless no matter what I do

i find myself constantly thinking about breaking up with my girlfriend. even if nothing is ‘wrong’ and i do think i love her, but this constant thought is just so confusing i can’t tell what’s real or not. how do i know if this is an ocd thing or if i should really be paying attention to this little voice in my head?

After that triggering dream where the worst thing could have happened, I don't feel legimitated anymore to feel genuinely distressed by triggers, to call compulsions as such. It all feels disingenuous. They don't feel valid anymore. Like crocodile tears. Because the one thing I didn't want to happen probably happened, that undoes everything else. I feel like a hypocrite, to feel distress and worry about those things, being anxious of that particular fear because in that dream it happened. I felt arousal and probably genuine attraction, I'm afraid that I could have agreed with it. Maybe it isn't true, maybe it didn't happen, maybe I'm misinterpreting, but then why I was left with that impression? All because of a damn dream, because ocd, all my triggers intrude even in my sleep, because I can't even be safe in my dreams. This is the worst mental illness.

So I’m in a relationship with an amazing guy, like he’s literally so great, and yet there have been a lot of moments of doubt and worry over many different things, some of them I know are small and insignificant, and yet they feel so big. But right now, I’ve been experiencing thoughts and feelings that don’t necessarily worry me, but I still try to understand them and analyze them to no end. For example, I’ve realized that I become a little irritated and weirded out by my bf’s overly hyper and cringy behaviour around his friends. I sometimes think he’s just a little socially awkward and he doesn’t realize it. I can’t quite explain it or put my finger on it, but it’s irritating, and a lot of it has to do with his voice. I don’t want to be irritated by this stuff tho, I don’t want to feel irritated by his voice or his hyper and cringy behaviour, but it can be a bit much sometimes, and I worry that it’s bad for me to feel that way. I just wish I could make that feeling go away. But even with this, I’m not feeling worried as much because I know I really like him and I want to make this relationship work, and yet I still feel the need to analyze his behaviours, trying to make sense of why he acts and sounds the way he does when he’s with friends, trying to understand how I feel about it, and how I would feel if it was done/said differently or by a different person. It’s all just a mess, it’s so confusing, and it’s even more confusing when I’m not feeling anxious or worried, but I’m still finding these quirks bothersome. I really just want this to work out, you have no idea how badly. It’s all just so confusing and I don’t want to let those flaws become dealbreakers. I’ve always been worried, even since the very beginning, that his minor flaws would become dealbreakers, it was like I was fighting a part of myself that felt it should be a dealbreaker, but I don’t want it to be. I just want to stop feeling this way about every little inconvenience, annoyance, or flaw. I feel like I’m constantly fighting myself.

Ever since mother’s day i’ve had doubts about my feelings towards my partner of almost 2 years. We don’t have anything problems, i am attracted to him. There are a few things going ti be changing in my life we will be going to different universities and we hadn’t been hanging out as much due to conflicting school and work schedules and he went to washington for mother’s day weekend and it caused me to spiral and doubt my feelings for him. I’m not sure why i’ve had doubts in the past but they were just the usual doubts that would go away but these keep coming in waves and i tell him and i know it hurts him and i feel so guilty about it and I know i love him and i know i want to spend my life with him but at some points i get a twinge that says but what if you don’t and i just don’t understand.

My OCD has kept me from Getting serious with a guy I really loved because I was afraid he wouldn’t want me when he realized how bad my OCD was. I married somebody who wasn’t right for me. I took a job out of college that I really didn’t want because I was afraid of getting an important job and getting fired over my OCD. my whole career path was affected . After I had my son, I had so much postpartum anxiety and OCD that I didn’t have another child and I really wanted one.

anxious because I’m always annoyed at my bf and I know it’s just ocd in the form of anger but read a comment on TikTok saying your body is rejecting ur bf if you’re always annoyed and now I’m so scared :))

Who has had challenges with this and how have you coped? I have found this extremely tough in my 6 year relationship.

One thing that I’m struggling to bear with, is how isolating this feels… I spent all evening yesterday ruminating over intense groinal responses in response to intrusive thoughts. And then I had a dream where I experienced sexual arousal due to being in bed naked with someone… Not sure who, and I didn’t touch the person in the dream… But now my ocd is putting the two together and I’m triggered to the next level right now… I’m trying so hard to dismiss this as a stupid dream but I’m finding it increasingly difficult. I’m so lost, I don’t know what to do…

well, we had a good week! and i’ll be seeing him as soon as tuesday! but i was up a lot of last night, feeling anxious and worried about all the things i want to talk to him about. about loving me, choosing me over other people. i just want us to be perfect. but i also can’t ask too much bc that’s too much stress on him. why does it bother him so much to give me reassurance! like… it’s not hard and i would give it to him, and do when it’s necessary. all i want is for him to like me, love me, care about me, and choose me other all other people. yk what? he called me his favorite person. and when we listened to a podcast, someone in the podcast was talking about the husband not wanting to spend time with the wife. and we were both like “you should want to hang out with your person.” stating that when we are together, he wants to be together. he likes that. i hope he tells me he loves me soon.

Hey guys 😞 I'm drained..I like to use that word a lot and it's truly how I feel. Sometimes it's hard to distinguish ocd and depression in certain circumstances. I feel like I have a lot of negative self talk going on like I tell myself aside from family no one cares about me. It comes in full force and I feel like I'm trying to figure it out and I'm engaging with the thoughts. It's bad. Sometimes it's so hard to be mindful when overwhelmed and hit with all these emotions. I wish I could dump my brain in the garbage. I've done erp in the past quite a bit..actually a lot. I was relaxed for awhile because I was functioning pretty well. Then I took some big steps in my life. I started socializing more..I love doing that but my self esteem isn't great at all. I took the initiative to ask someone out and I recall the anxiety that struck shortly afterward. Thoughts do I truly like her? What if I don't like her what does that say about me? I felt she genuine about her though so having these thoughts were so distressing. Was my first true relationship ocd hindered my so much in the past. I'm 29 and very much ashamed that that I haven't been truly intimate with another partner. I never got involved in anything as a teen like recreational drug usage because it was a core fear of my ocd. I would say I'm pretty fortunate though in a sense I didn't really go down the route. Addiction runs in the family. I would say my biggest issue now is how quickly things turned..I am plagued by ocd and depression most of the day. The things that help me is interaction if I can muster up the strength. My job is a good source of interaction but it's also highly stressful for me now. I work as a life coach for adults with autism spectrum and developmental disorders. I legitimately feel like work is going to run me into the ground. I wasn't able to get a leave from a doctor despite expressing my concern and I feel like not be about to take a little leave from work scares me. I have another 3 weeks until I see him..maybe a little more. I'm just holding it together but I feel so alone. My mood is up and down and I hinge my happiness too much on others unfortunately. I want to give my whole self to people..I just want want to feel like someone cares about me. I want somebody to text me and actually check in with my aside from family. I've been so much more social but it hasn't been easy. Sometimes I feel a little bitter. The world doesn't owe me anything in any sense and people go through there own stuff. I'm pretty apologetic for expressing how I feel and I assume what people think too often. I get the sense people are sick of me bringing up my struggles..I honestly try my best to get to know other people. The thought runs through my head though..do you even care about others?? Would you guys consider that moral scrupolisity? Just the fact I wrestle and it's a tug and war with my mind reminds me so much of my past days of severe ocd. It's returning with a vengeance. I really want social relationships I want an intimate relationship but I get this nagging feeling that I'm just a burden no one wants to take on. I took off from work today it's been hard. I've been doing that a bit more. In my past I used to do it a lot when my anxiety was terrible. That's my verbal vomit I just wanted to go into a little detail I've only really posted once in here. Be well.

Hi everyone, I’m new on this app, got recommended by a friend. I struggle with obsessive thoughts, mainly focused on ROCD but also obscene sexual intrusive thoughts. Recently, I broke up with a guy I was seeing because I thought I just ‘wasn’t feeling it enough’. Now in hindsight, I think that I was struck by relationship OCD. It started with what ifs like ‘what if I stop liking him at some point’ at it started snowballing from that point to constant anxiety and worries about if I liked him enough. At some point I also started wondering if I was attracted enough to him, and this one especially distressed me the most because I felt like I was an awful and superficial person for even thinking about this. Like I said, eventually I broke up with him because I just felt too stressed out. Thought I’d feel relieved after that, but I’ve been in doubt ever since. I miss him a lot, but my main worry is now that I might have just broken up with him because of how he looks. This thought is so distressing to me, I keep trying to go over everything and find arguments why this would or wouldn’t be true, feeling like I can’t live with myself if this would be true. Don’t really know what I’m looking for by posting this, maybe even some reassurance… I was wondering if anyone else has ever had this experience before? Or just has some advice? Thank you so much ❤️

Hi!! I've been doing pretty good lately but the thoughts haven't stopped the anxiety is less now. But tired of hearing the thoughts. I'm a confident straight woman and all ai want to be with is a man. I've been single for years and i have been wanting a boyfriend. The thoughts are making me feel like I'm just lying to myself and it's annoying and frustrating.

Does anyone else experience false attraction and if you do can you explain what it feels like to you?