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the NOCD Community

I've been with my boyfriend for 1 year and a half and I genuinely love him. I love him consciously, even despite his faults. I've been dealing with false attraction for almost a year now. It has been bothering me day and night; my only comfort was thinking that it is false although as time went by, I started doubting that too. Now, I think that I've started dealing with cases of real attraction to other guys and that just completely terrifies me because I cannot tell for sure. I don't want to feel this way. I feel like my love for my boyfriend is not real when this happens and it just hurts me so much. I've put so much effort in my relationship and I feel like everything's ruined. People say that they can tell the difference between false and real attraction but I can't, whatever it is, it doesn't make me feel happy yet my mind is in such a state that I cannot distinguish my feelings, everything feels the same. I also have a lot of difficulty accepting that attraction to people outside of one's relationship is normal. I just can't accept it. I don't know what to do, I just feel helpless.

I’m 18, turning 19 in April on the 23rd. I’m so scared not to be a teenager anymore, 18 was already hard enough. Graduated May last year, I still live at home, but I am looking into college classes around here as well as public transportation specifically for people with disabilities like my OCD and autism. During high school I was honestly too depressed to even think about anything but the past and present. I couldn’t fathom the future. But now I am here. I cried during graduation, not happy tears. Becoming an adult feels like a safety blanket being taken away, I know 19 is still a teenager but what’s after that? I’m gonna be 20. Then 21, 22, 23, it goes on and soon I’ll be 40. Not a child. I still feel like a child, I act like one. I’m hardly independent despite how much I want to be. During the summer I am hopefully going to be attending a 1 week program at my current dream college, I want nothing more to live in a dorm and experience the university lifestyle but the steps there now that I’m out of school are difficult. I feel like I’m wasting my life. I don’t want to be 20 and living in a dorm because I feel like I’ll be too old and not get to experience the teenage college lifestyle. Does any of this make sense, I don’t know. I’m just dumping this all out.

So, it’s all brand new I’ve only been on 2 dates but we’ve been talking for over 2 months. He’s been really quite recently and I know he’s had a lot going on (family, friends, work) so I’m trying to cut him some slack considering the fact he deals with burnouts, but I’m starting to think he’s really not interested in me. Out second dates was a sleepover, he booked a night away and invited me to go with him. He’s always been really good and explaining what’s happening, if he disappears he apologised and explained what was going on and how it wasn’t personal but recently, in the last week since we had the sleepover, he’s been a bit distant. When he does message it’s great I get the vibe he’s into me but then it’ll take him a day or hour to reply and it’s making my nervous system freak out and I can’t seem to work him out. I’ve asked for date 3 this week, and we’re discussing it but he’s left me on delivered again. Is this just an ADHD thing I’m gonna have to get used to? If date 3 happens do I have very right to voice my anxiety about him drifting? Am I overthinking the entire thing just because we don’t talk 24/7 and that’s a really modern disgusting way of thinking about it? Social media tell me all of this! That it’s right and it’s wrong, that he likes me that he doesn’t, that it’s his ADHD that it’s not. I’m trying to just listen to what he’s told me, but it’s rough. People keep looking at me like I’m making excuses for him but it’s just what he’s told me! I’m beyond stressed I just thought we clicked and I guess I was wrong

Does anyone ever get new ones something that feels like it’s healthy but really is harming you instead of? I went from having trouble cleaning due to depression and no sleep and bad ocd to compulsively cleaning to help with my ocd it’s so hard not asking constantly for reassurance and really thought i was getting better and that am but now to combat intrusive thoughts I clean my hands are chapped and hurt so bad and I’m upset I can’t keep house because I have 2 toddlers and I feel like a bad mom because I get upset when they tear the house up and I wanna be more active spending time with them but I get burnt out so quickly I don’t know what to do I feel like even at my best I still fail 😭

Hi all - does anyone have suggestions for managing compulsive googling? For me it’s related to my health OCD/panic and I end up spending hourssss every day basically convincing myself I’m dying by nonstop googling and reading about symptoms that are typically “just” panic symptoms. Any advice is welcomed. I try to distract and do other things but then it just feels like my symptoms intensify and become unmanageable. Thanks in advance!

Lately I’ve really been struggling with my thoughts in my relationship. The guy I’m with is seriously an amazing guy, he’s patient with me and he’s even taking the time to understand my OCD and how it works. Sometimes I feel like I’m really sensitive to his jokes, even though I know logically that he loves me and he’s not trying to hurt me. I feel like I will look for a lot of reassurance and little things in my mood can change quickly by a movement of a brow. I’m just wondering if other people will go through a phases like this because I noticed that sometimes it’ll fade away and things will be great and then all it takes is one small thing to get me to spiral. The hardest part is that I know of this about myself, my mother and my sister both struggle with OCD so we’ve definitely taken the route to understand it. But it still makes it hard because sometimes I don’t know if it’s me or my OCD, which makes me feel like I have identity crisis. Just wondering if other struggled with this as well, I’ve heard that it can be a common thing and OCD. Also, I will say that sometimes I can be sensitive to feedback, even though I know that people are meaning the best. I feel like I’m very easily influenced by other people’s opinions which also makes my OCD a struggle as well.

Has this happened to yall? I had a severely emotionally distressing day yesterday. Was fully convinced I was going to break up with my boyfriend but mourning it and freaking out all day long because of how I can't do it. i just can't. I love him too much and am in denial of how bad my life feels because of it. Crying uncontrollably too. Today I woke up with extreme stomach pain, went to the bathroom and started blacking out, ears ringing, body shaking, goosebumps etc. I thought i was dying. This has happened to me one time before. But i forgot about it and now im more concerned.

Hi all, 20 year old daughter has OCD and has had increasingly worse intrusive thoughts as the years go by. She went through a very low point a few months ago but has come out the other end. She had weekly therapy at that point and increased her meds, sertraline. She is attending therapy monthly now. When she went through the bad patch she was prescribed valium which gave her such relief. She had a break from the intrusive thoughts at last even for a short time. She wants her doctor to prescribe it again. She is so upset that they won't prescribe it again. I can see why they won't as the last thing she needs is an addiction on top of OCD. I am not sure how to help her. She is finding daily life hard, even though she is doing so well. She is amazingly strong. But she just wants some relief from the thoughts. Any advice?

I can’t focus on anything that is important to me, especially work. I am typically such a high achiever and have such big aspirations for my small business but now I can’t focus on anything since my days are just filled with worry. It makes me sick to my stomach. When I get these intrusive thoughts they literally take the life out of me. I just want to fall down and weep when they enter my mind. Or when there is something I know I want to do but for some reason it feels like I don’t want to do it, i immediately spiral. My anger has also been worse because I am so anxious and on edge, even the smallest thing really makes me frustrated. This has been hard because without OCD I am a very even tempered person. Anyone else have a similar thing?

18 + only (Mentions of p*rn) I use porn compulsively, I don't feel attraction it's just a crutch to prove I'm not my thoughts and I have people I consider safe and fit my guidelines like not doing the disgusting step thing or having the word teen in the title, stuff like that but I hate all the degrading language used in even the things I consider safe, it's objectifying and weird and I hate that this is my main compulsion, it makes me feel like I'm doing something wrong when I'm specifically looking for more safe things and I hate it so much. Then today/last night, I had a really dumb dream that I was forced to break my morals and do the compulsion to something I find immoral and I actually believed it had happened for a bit even though it made no sense.

So I’m extremely germaphobic. Thing is though, I don’t get that uncomfortable around (potentially) contaminated surfaces. I don’t wash my hands or disinfectant more than the average human being. However, whenever the people around me are sick, I become hyperaware of the pathogens I’m breathing in. I tend to take shallower breaths/hold my breath (so that I inhale a lower concentration of pathogens). I also try to breathe through my diaphragm and cover my mouth with my hand if I need to breathe normally. Why don’t I just wear a mask or avoid people that are sick, you ask? Well, wearing a mask would not be societally appropriate, and as for avoiding people that are sick, I’m more scared of losing my friends than getting sick. It’s getting more and more problematic. Like I was taking a test, and the person sitting in front of me was sick. I did not breathe normally for the entire test and was about to pass out afterwards. Like your girl was hyperventilating. I got my grade back tonight, and it was well below what I usually score 💀 My friends have also started to call me out on my germaphobia. Some of them have noticed my odd breathing patterns, but I usually hit them with the “you take my breath away” and they back off. They’re more upset that I don’t check on them when they’re absent. I usually send the notes that they missed but don’t ask where they were. I promise it’s not because I don’t care; it’s just that if they were sick, I don’t want to know. So I’m wondering if what I have is contamination OCD.

I want to get the PEP vaccine for rabies because I believe the exposure I had was reallll but I know I shouldn’t :///

My ROCD theme (one of them) surrounds this person I hungout with a few times and kissed right b4 my partner and I started dating. It’s been almost 2 years. My fear is that I like like this other person. Anyways, someone I’m close to was texting this other person and such and I think I felt some type of way about them potentially hanging out? what does that say about me. I would assume for others that means they probably still like or have feelings for that other person so I’m freaking out. I’m so in love with my partner!

Today after school I was walking home with my boyfriend and he told me he had taken mushrooms earlier. After hearing that I got really anxious about contamination. I didn’t want to drink from his water or kiss him because I was scared something could get into my system. At one point he accidentally touched my lips with his hand and later we also kissed. After that my brain started going into “what if” thoughts like what if there were mushrooms on his hands or saliva and now it’s in my system. I started checking my surroundings to see if things were moving or if I felt different. It almost looked like things were slightly moving, which made my anxiety worse. I’m not diagnosed with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, but I’ve been struggling with a lot of contamination and “what if” thoughts like this. When something like this happens my brain keeps trying to make me check my body or my vision for signs that something is wrong. Has anyone else experienced OCD fears around contamination or substances like this? How do you stop the urge to keep checking if something got into your system?

Whenever I try to do exposures on this obsession, I freak out and end up doing a gazillion compulsions because I just don't know how to sit with the distress it causes me. It's like no matter what I do, my mind won't stop lying to me about this thing. If I don't engage with it, I get extremely anxious and don't know how to feel okay with the possibility of this. I'm scared and I don't know what to do. My OCD has grabbed onto my parents in the past, but never this badly. It's trying to convince me I don't love them or if I did love them, I don't anymore. And when I feel clarity, it doesn't last long. I know I can't ask for reassurance, but I'm just wondering if anyone else deals with something similar. My OCD has always been strange and given me obsessions that just didn't make any sense. I hope to be able to ground myself soon.

How do you manage the grief of losing your pet when you have OCD? I had to say goodbye to my golden-hearted kitty a few days ago. He's my baby, and has always been such a light in my life. I'm going through the waves of grief, and sometimes I get hit so hard by imagery from his last moments at the vet. My OCD seems to latch onto it and replay it over and over and over again. I'm trying to look at happy photos and art I've made of him to try to at least balance it out, but it's a struggle.

hey y’all. I want to talk about this since it’s something I’ve been thinking about today. this is not the usual little life moment post I put out there. while doing hw today, I ventured off to search up things that randomly came up my mind. most quite tied to the thoughts I’ve been having. basically, I looked up on how people with chronic illnesses can live better lives. the stories I’ve read broke my heart. it’s so unfair. these people didn’t ask to be sick. I’m upset that they got a shitty deck of cards. and for some reason, my mind is now trying to focus on them whenever I do something fun/relaxing. things like “they can’t do this. some can’t walk. some can’t even take a shower” & other stuff appear on my mind & I feel guilty. like I should be ashamed or something. and I feel bad that there are people out there that don’t have the ability to do simple things. it makes me wish there were cures for sickness. & if we were to be able to pick some cures and not all, I’d go for the worst ones. I wish these people could live their lives to the fullest, without having bad health. I searched a way to make their lives better and didn’t find much I think. since most results went to people who were sick talking about their stories it makes me sad & I wish I had some power to take it away. I’d rather prefer for the diseases to exist but have cures rather than them existing with no cures. ideally, no diseases but if I had to choose, I’d go with the cures. it’s just so unfair. and some people are too young & deal with such issues. I hope in the nearby future, with technology advancing, that scientists/researchers find cures to these nasty diseases. and I hope that there will be cheaper and accessible healthcare for all. I will be doing my best to vote for these changes from now on. I just want the world to be a better place. I have hope. I won’t let it die. I’m just sad that these people have to go through this. any comments would be appreciated. how do I enjoy present moments without feeling guilty that others don’t get the same opportunity? I’m just down :(

I spent most of my life without knowing I had OCD. It certainly was always there in the background, but it wasn’t potent enough to come into my conscious awareness as something that needed correction. I would say I started experiencing severe rumination at 27, and have been fighting it non stop practically every minute of everyday for 18 months to date. It felt as though my reality was in the background, and my obsessive thoughts were in the foreground. The content matter of the thoughts has to do with how others perceive how I look and my overall worth, and figuring out a way to quantify my worthiness. I believe it stemmed from being insanely burnt out after 5 years of non stop work for my own business (in which I actually channeled the OCD in a useful way), but then feeling like my business and family fell apart as a result of it, and existing in the hyper competitive and vapid world of social media. I noticed that once it felt like I solved any one fixation I had my attention on, that the problem with shift immediately. Relevant topics included body, face, overall appearance, masculinity, ethics, purpose, and many others. Most of the time it triggers when I look at other people and I think I must then scan myself and compare where I exist in the social heir-achy based on the person I am looking at. Sometimes I would even look at other pages followers and get triggered. I have been in therapy for over a year, going twice a week. I have seen a psychiatrist, tried many different medications, eventually settling on fluvoxamine which I think has genuinely helped. I am about to see an ERP and CBT specialist this week for the first time, due to my insurance I couldn’t afford it before now and I finally got off the wait list. Good news is after a year and a half of straight torture I am actually much better than I was, the improvement is night and day. I still deal with it here and there but I can definitively say that I will come out tougher after this experience and that’s with me not even being healed yet. Dealing with this has been a nightmare but I willingly chose to confront the underlying thoughts that were running my day to day life, and in turn opened Pandora’s box. Nonetheless I’m proud of myself for choosing the hard thing because I know I am on the path to liberation. I just want to enjoy life again and do good work and I know I’m close. I am grateful to have found a community like this that makes me know I’m not alone. Has anyone else experienced similar thoughts or rumination like I have?

Get anxiety when your partner brings up sex? My biggest fear around intimacy is that I won’t get aroused and I have to be hyper aware. But when I’m not anxious I do desire it and enjoy it with my partner. Do you guys think the anxiety is because I’m anxious I won’t get aroused or that something is wrong with me and that maybe I’m subconsciously lesbian? Because I haven’t seen this is a common theme with SOOCD?

i just went on a week long vacation with my boyfriend and i almost broke up with him mid trip. it breaks my heart because i know who i can be and who i want to be in this relationship but it's like i just can't. i can't escape my head. i can't even reminisce on our memories without wanting to cry because of this feeling that it's still not right and im just continuing to get in too deep with him and his family. i feel like a fraud. im always wanting him to respond or treat me or make me feel a certain way, and expecting him not to which confirms my suspicions of him being wrong for me, and then remaining unhappy but being incapable of leaving him. i blame him but ultimately myself. my thoughts tell me everything i've done is wrong and that i chose him because i was lonely and just because he's a good person, but not because he's who i actually want. i feel like i didn't give myself a choice. so many things make me questions if he's right for me, half of which are my own fault. i envy my sister who is picky when it comes to relationships and i compare myself to her in everything. i've been in a lot of relationships back to back, and they've never worked out. i always leave, but have never regretted it. this time i fear regretting the choice to leave so much. ive always had this obsessive fear that my boyfriend (no matter who i am dating) will find my sister attractive and fantasize about her, which is where the root of my comparison to her stems from im sure. one of the reasons i want to leave him is because being in this relationship causes my sister to be a trigger for me no matter what, which drives me away from her and ruins our relationship. she is my best friend and it feels like i have to ignore her in order to not feel dissatisfied with my life and with who i am. i finally told him about this fear and he gave me the best reassurance i could imagine, yet i don't feel better. i feel irresponsible and like i haven't given myself the time i need on my own in order to be in a healthy relationship. but how can that be a real reason to leave the person who shows up for me every day, doesn't back down about my OCD, who wants a future with me, and who will never stop choosing me? the first guy who i've wanted those things with too and who i can't just throw away. i seriously don't know what to do anymore. i make him so happy and im not even being my full self because of OCD. it breaks my heart because he feels like he can't make me happy, and honestly i wonder if he can, because i am so unhappy with myself. it's so hard to know what to do when the only thing that gives me relief from all of my shame is imagining being on my own, but that very same thought is devastating imagining us not being together. and it feels like it's all my fault for not knowing who i was before entering this relationship. i can't tell if he's truly not right for me or if all of this causes me to view him as such. i feel lost, don't know who i am, furthest from God I ever have been, and like no matter what i do is wrong. which ultimately makes me blame it on him being wrong for me and like he's the one taking me away from God (even though he is a Godly man)