Welcome to
the NOCD Community

this is probably kinda jumbled but over the past almost year or so i've slowly realized i have ocd (i'm diagnosed audhd but over time i started feeling like those alone didn't cover the whole issue yk?), and recently i've been kinda worried i guess. it’s just that i’m turning 21 in 6 months and i’m afraid that this disorder is going to rob me of joyful adult milestones in my life. honestly being 20 has sucked, i can’t even remember wtf being 18 was like, and my childhood in general wasn't the best either, but i've been struggling a lot as of late and i don't want how i feel now to be the same as how i feel next year. my meds have helped quiet my compulsions a significant amount (i literally felt like i was going kinda cray cray when i was off them 😭) but they’re not completely gone. sometimes it just seems like this is all it's ever gonna be forever and i’m always gonna feel ashamed of myself for just like… existing. my 21 year old self deserves to be happy but idk if i’ll be able to give that to her 🥲🥲🥲

Can you share a time you’ve seen God use your story with ocd for good? I don’t mean your experience with it was good in itself, but has there been times your life story has helped others open up, you’ve learned something about God’s grace in the process, or something like that? It’s one of the hardest parts of my own story, but there have also been so many times I’ve seen good come out of the hard stuff. I just would love to connect with others who have also seen this!

Hi everyone. I need someone to talk to right now. My parents won’t like to what I have to say and it is making me feel hopeless. I really want to have a life this year if examples in person school, doing a job, or doing something that will make friends. I don’t have anything. For the past 15 months I have been all alone in my room. My parents forced me to do online because I had ocd. And I have gotten a lot better over this past year. And I feel 100% confident to go to in person school. My parents said that I can’t. And that you can do a program and online school again. I said to myself that I will have a life this year. And I am trying to make that happen. I am begging my parents to let me have a life, but I just feel trapped in my room and in my head. I want to go out and live. I don’t know if I should leave or stay. But at the same token I want to be able to have a life and not be in my room, but then I don’t know if my parents are right or not. Someone please say something cause I think I am about to give up

i feel depressed. i’m so tired of living with constant guilt, fear, and pain. i feel so lost and lifeless. i feel like i’m not living for myself anymore. i'm so done with my life. i really hate myself. it’s all my fault. everything that goes wrong and everything that keeps happening to me is all my fault. i feel sorry for the people who have me in their lives. they don’t deserve someone like me. this world doesn’t deserve a person like me. i can’t do this anymore. every night, i keep crying. i just don’t want to wake up the next morning, yet i keep waking up. for me, another day is another suffering. i hate myself so much. i don’t deserve anything good. i hate my really bad and dark thoughts, and i can’t tell whether they are truly mine or not. the guilt is eating me alive, and i feel hopeless and undeserving of forgiveness. my family doesn’t know about my struggles, and i don’t want them to. i don’t want to be a burden or make them feel like they failed as parents. i don’t want to make their lives any harder. i just hate my religious ocd. sometimes i think i’m just making it an excuse. i feel sorry for God and Jesus for being this kind of person. i wish i wasn’t born into this world. i can’t continue living like this. i feel like i’m going insane. i’m just accepting that i’m horrible, and that all those bad thoughts are mine. that i'm disrespectful and a terrible person. i'm not suicidal. i’m just so tired of living like this. i'm not expecting happiness or anything good because i don’t deserve any of it. i feel like a disgusting person. i hate that someone like me still has the courage to show up every day around other people. i deserve all the pain and to drown in it. i just want to vent about what i really feel right now because it feels so heavy and unbearable. i don’t want to make others’ lives miserable or hurt God anymore.

I have this idea that if i stopped my current ocd it will comeback again in another form. Forexample, when i was 9 by the help of a doctor i stopped washing my hand every 10 mintues but then ocd switched into another theme, which is religious, and when i stopped that it again changed. And now i have prefction and mental ocd. So my question is why bother trying fix something isn't fixable? It takes a while to notice that the thing you have been doing is ocd, double the time to treat it, is there a permenant treatment or is it just tourture ? P.S sorry for my english i'm not from the U.S

Like your life is coming to an end and you just can’t keep going because no matter what you are alone and nothing works out except a minor few. Like what is the point of being here if no one even cares about you and just uses you to their advantage. I’m done. I fucking hate this world and all the people living in it.

i’ve done so many horrible things and i’m just so scared that i don’t deserve anything good in life

Im not religious or anything I do believe in God I guess that would be Christianity but I don’t call myself a Christian due to me in life seeing a lot of Christians are such hypocrites and something regarding to this on TikTok has been very triggering for me I don’t know has anyone seen those people inducing fear by basically telling people that they will be going to hell if they don’t give their life to Jesus Christ because of the end times ? Like I don’t understand if our religion is about love and etc why are most Christians hateful and just bad… and what is the end times it seems like they say it’s the end times every year and how would you even know if it was the end times your not God like I think a lot of Christians think they know everything because who even gave you the right to start telling everyone the end times are coming … and like now I’ve been scared I’m go to hell so now my thoughts has me freaking out on me going to hell

Before I start this let me preface with this: My dad was abusive and would scream and hit me. Me and my girlfriend just came back yesterday from a long trip in the Bay, surrounded by family and getting little to no sleep, even before we went to the Bay. I had work today, a long, stressful shift. I come home and find out that not 1, but 3 of her friends are spending the night. This would be fine but they are spending the night in our small, hot, stuffy room, on the second bed. I am getting so upset. I feel like I havent had a break at all from people and I'm getting so overstimulated and angry at myself. I keep getting the visions and compulsions of screaming at them like my dad would or straight up just snapping at them. It's all in my head. There's just a pit of rage in my stomach. I don't want to hurt them but my brain wants me too. I'm so mad at myself for even thinking about this. If it wasn't 100 degrees I would have taken a walk but the heat just stresses me even more. I don't want to be my dad. Ever. He always told me that I got the darker part of his brain and inherited his mindscape, and he always said it with pride and I feel so upset.

Has anyone had horrific experiences with seeing a psychiatrist? This past week I had my initial appointment with a new psychiatrist. When we approached the topic of my prior OCD diagnosis, she asked me what it looks like. I told her all about my ROCD and harm OCD. At the end when we went over what she was diagnosing me with, she said that all of the OCD examples I gave her but one just sounded like generalized anxiety. The one she agreed on she said was “classic OCD behavior”. I talked the whole interaction over with my therapist and we approached the situation of if I should switch or if I could use this opportunity to push this psychiatrist to learn more about OCD and that compulsions aren’t just strictly external. After some deep thought I came to the conclusion that if I can help advocate for myself and potentially help someone not experience the same dismissal it would be worth it. Has anyone else had a situation where they felt dismissed or not seen by a psychiatrist? Did you stay with that provider and advocate for yourself? I would love to hear others experiences and any advice you may have when advocating for myself. PS I don’t believe her bc she didn’t do any sort of assessment on me and just made that assumption based off “what my OCD looks like”.

I understand the concept of ERP and it makes sense for other subtypes, but I just don’t get how it can work for contamination OCD. I’m very early in my therapy journey, so I only really have the info I’ve gotten from online research, but from what I’ve seen, there are things like “don’t do your compulsions!” And it’s like…but my compulsion is washing my hands? And people should wash their hands! And I saw a few “challenges” online that recommended touching things in a public restroom and then touching your face??? And touching a public door handle and then eating without washing your hands between??? Those are things my non-OCD friends and family wouldn’t even do, so I don’t understand how that could possibly help me. Ugh. Maybe I’m just ranting because I’m scared of ERP in general, but I really don’t get it. Ok byeeeeee!

In the last few days I have managed to drastically reduce compulsions. I have made good progress but the brain fog that I may be a bad person and that the world and my interactions aren’t real still persists. Any tips to address this? I’m not reacting to any of it which is uncomfortable.

In no way am I trying to say anyone has it easier than anyone else, becuase I know how exhausting and distressing any theme can be. But I’ve been struggling with pocd and false memory so bad the past few months and sometimes I just wish I had health ocd the worst or something because then I couldn’t be considered a monster. It couldn’t get me in trouble. I wouldn’t be an awful person or question myself then. I just feel so unworthy and ashamed so much for having these thoughts I hate it.

I’m having some trouble believing that reducing skin picking is really achievable. It’s been part of my life for a long time. Is it really possible to get it under control?

How do people with ROCD deal with the guilt? I recently started ERP but feel so guilty sometimes when I talk to him or think about him knowing I’m stuck dealing with these thoughts. It hurts me so bad because I love him more than anything in the world but my OCD keeps trying to make me think of leaving him or hurting him.

For me, sitting with it feels like there is a storm going on inside my body. It’s such a challenge to just sit there and continue about your day when your body feels like there is a threat and your brain feels like it’s being pierced. I wanted to share/ask because we are told to “sit with it” but never told what that actually looks like or means. At least for me anyway.

I’m new to NOCD and just wanted to share my experience to see if anyone else can relate or has any thoughts or advice. My thing is needing a system or some kind of digitally saved reference (online article/notes app) to make decisions on how to live my life and spend my time- then I get super caught up in what is the objectively “right” system to have which never really leads anywhere- over the last 6+ years I’ve probably changed this system over 100 times because at some point I realized it wasn’t “right”. At best, I stick with a system for months and be pretty free from OCD but at worst I can go months where I only experience intermittent periods of living free from OCD and spend hours and hours putting my life on hold trying to figure out what the right system is or to answer and figure out impossible answers to completely subjective things. I get a lot of regret over all the time and life I’ve wasted in this cycle, and feel kinda like everything I’ve done in previous systems was “wrong” so I try to fix that by undoing some of those actions. I think part of the root of this is wanting to control so many parts of my life and the fact that there are other parts of life I could be experiencing, ways I could be improving, and that there is so much out there that I could never ever do or experience all of it leads me to try to figure out some system that gives me a better feeling of control over this. If anyone reads all this that’s awesome- lmk if this resonates with you at all

Anybody else struggling with harm OCD?? Father here, mainly goes for my wife and son. It’s been very debilitating. Just started with nocd, anybody going through the same thing or has gotten better??

discovered mold in my a/c right before bed last night. we've had weeks straight of constant high temps and high humidity. the relative humidity in my room never really going below 60%. well, as such, mold started growing in my portable air conditioner. its probably been there for awhile and I never noticed. well, I'm absolutely freaking out. mold spores are now likely on every square inch of my room. not to mention the hassle and nastiness of having to clean the a/c itself. I was never worried about mold before but now it is a huge concern for me. where else is it that I just don't see? how will I know if its gone? what if its elsewhere in the apartment? how much of it have I ingested in all this time? it feels like theres just too much to worry about to bare. need a dehumidifier now so my a/c doesn't get moldy, which is just another reservoir and filter that needs to be cleaned or else IT will get moldy. on top of the maintenance for the a/c. on top of literally everything else. like is this really what life is? go to work so I can afford to clean the only apparatuses that keep my sleeping quarters safe? how am I supposed to conquer ocd when literally every facet of existence ties to it? I need clean water. good food. exercise. sunlight. all my vitamins and minerals. sleep well and regularly. and now i have to add on keeping an eye out for mold? on both food and just basic appliances? I'm fucking tired of it. its just one thing after another in life and I've had my fill.

Does anyone else find it hard to make eye contact with people? (it makes me feel like they can somehow see through my brain, and read my thoughts, ) that’s something I struggle with especially when I have flares ! And does anyone else feel like their OCD spikes when they’re experiencing there period ☹️☹️☹️