Welcome to
the NOCD Community

Hey y’all! Starting Zoloft today, I need some encouraging & reassuring words. I’ve never taken an SSRI before but it’s gotten to the point where I want to try it. I have intrusive thoughts surrounding taking new medications because of an incident about 6 months ago so im so extremely nervous.

Does anyone know how to deal with uncertainty when the false memory is something really awful. I just feel sick and depressed all the time thinking about it :(

everything’s been really terrifying and loud lately and i found myself not leaving the house if i could avoid it, missing classes and appointments etc. i don’t WANT to give into the illnesses; i don’t WANT it to take my freedom. so i started going to class again. i haven’t been doing much else - i don’t eat out very much anymore, i send other people to the grocery store, and i’ve moved important meetings and appointments online. anyways, i’m sitting in class right now and battling the urge to leave. i made an agreement with myself that i could leave at the break if i still needed to. but i recognize that that is ALSO giving into the illnesses, and i don’t wanna concede more than i already have. i just feel so afraid all the time, and home is so much less overwhelming than anywhere else. i’m looking for people who have also experienced this. do y’all have any tips on how to manage? i feel like i’m going absolutely insane.

This is so hard. I know recovery is a roller coaster but I am tired of going in circles, you know? I think am getting better but then I over think that and it makes me feel bad and I sure. Today was a tough day. Tomorrow is my birthday, I hope tomorrow is better then today. All the best ❤️

I'm unsure if this is even an actual intrusive thought, but occasionally I go through batches of intense insecurity over my appearance. Last night in particular, it got really bad, as I was scrolling through social media and looking at reels of different women and compared myself to them. I felt intense self hatred over my face and hair consuming my mind, and I fully believed that I am genuinely so ugly, especially compared to everyone I know and that there's nothing I can do about it, which lead to me having a big melt down. Before that, I had originally felt fine until I started having intrusive thoughts about different things out of nowhere. Usually when I feel bad, I text my boyfriend and he tries to help me feel better, but he wasn't responding much because he was playing games with his family. I tried to play some games myself to feel better before that happened, but it didn't work. I feel like I can never make myself feel better on my own. I'm also worried because I was having intrusive thoughts of the act of trying to talk to him being me seeking reassurance itself and I shouldn't do that and that he wasn't responding to me because he doesn't care and he's tired of listening to my problems and all that. I know those are intrusive thoughts and I try to ignore them. Everything all at once was just getting to me and I'm unsure of what the right thing to do was. I worry that anything I might do could be a compulsion despite atleast a majority of my compulsions being mental and worrying about how he feels about me or if he even likes me or wants to talk to me and I worry about my face and not liking it at all or if I'll ever like myself and it's all just a jumble of different things. I don't know what the right thing to do is, genuinely. Usually he will call me and we talk or play a game together so I get distracted and not worry, but when I'm by myself I can't get myself to even want to do anything besides lay down and ruminate with all my worries, making them get more extreme and make me feel worse but I couldn't even enjoy anything I tried to do last night enough to stop focusing on the thoughts. I can't get therapy for a while at least so I'm just at a loss, I don't know how to cope with it sometimes and I worry the one thing I do that does help me isn't helpful at all, especially because I was at such a loss when he couldn't call me. I'm sorry that this is all kind of scattered, I tried to explain it as clearly as I could. Mainly, I just want to know a good way to cope with these thoughts that isn't harmful. I know I do seek reassurance to my boyfriend sometimes (I try not to when it comes to my doubts about him but I still do sometimes), I don't know if our calling and playing things to be distracted counts as that though. I don't know if the self hatred is intrusive thoughts because I believe it or what it would even be categorized as. Are there good ways to deal with these, though? I have a really hard time feeling better with out calling someone and I know I should probably have some way to cope on my own, but the ways I end up doing it when I am on my own tend to lead to me feeling worse. (I believe I have a compulsion that I feel and/or have to express how I'm feeling or ruminate with it, so sometimes I end up posting about it on my Instagram oftentimes or I'll write or talk about it somewhere, sometimes constantly talking about it, journaling seems to not be good for me for that reason because when I write about what I'm feeling or thinking, it feels like I'm getting worse rather than actually feeling better.)

If anyone else wants to vent about ocd or about life in general, do so if you want! When these intrusive started when I was in my 20s (now in my 30s). At first it was harm thoughts, such as towards my cats. I would also think that I would drop the child as a way to harm them when I would see a parent holding them. When I watched pretty little liars, I would think can I be capable of being like the character A. I remember asking my sister if I could be like that. During that time I also had false memory of did I or did I not have sexual relationship with my TA in college. That drove my to think that I was delusional. I would look up information about different mental disorders and take quizzes online .It moved from those thoughts to thinking I'm I a p*do. The reason for that was because I thought I liked one of the students (elementary child) that I worked with. It caused a lot of distress and me going online to look up if I was a p*do. Another sexual ocd thought I would have was if I was sexually attracted to a family member. I again would look up information online to try to "figure" out if I was or not. Also, I had intrusive thoughts about being scared of plagiarism (which I knew I did not). I was also scared of not turning in all income information for my insurance. I would ask multiple time, even thought I knew the answer, because of being scared of getting fined. I was told by my the therapist through nocd during my first appointment that it was(fell under) just right ocd. Now when I think of past intrusive thoughts, I cannot help to think that I am lying or making them up in my head. I do spend some time looking up info on ocd and writing down all of my intrusive thought so I do not feel like I am making them up. Thank you for listening and for reading! If you want to vent, I will listen.

I’m trying so hard not to post on here because i know it’s a compulsion. However I’m just so beyond scared. And this is health related and i know most of you are going to say you need to see a doctor or something along those lines but I’m just wondering If others have experienced anything like this and how to overcome it. I’m so beyond scared of having a brain tumor. Like it’s taking over my life. I’m scared to death of having a seizure because i know seizing is apart of brain tumors. I honestly don’t know what to do at this point. I keep feeling pains and sensations in my head particularly on one side. And because i know that brain tumor pain is normally localized in one spot i am freaking out. My mind keeps telling me “what if you are forgetful” so i keeps repeating my name, where i work, families names, etc to make sure I’m not in confusion and forgetting things. My eyes keep twitching, i am anxious 24:7. And normally being anxious would make me feel better in a way but now I’m scared to be anxious because anxiety could be a symptom of an underlying brain tumor. I don’t know what to do. I’m to scared of going to the doctors. What if they tell me i actually do have a tumor. Would i want to catch it early, of course i would but i am wayy to scared. These pains in my head are so beyond scary. The only thing making me feel somewhat okay is the fact that they come an go (and sometimes all over head as opposed to one spot) Like this morning i was fine with no pains but now they are here and I’m sick to my stomach. I’m also scared of feeling any nausea or stomach cramps because i know that vomiting is a sign of a tumor. And This morning i woke up with intense intense anxiety and i literally had a vision of me in the hospital getting a tumor removed. And it was beyond scary 😭😭😭

I have an obsession with having a clean house BUT I can't clean it if I don't have the perfect routine. I will research for hours on different routines/methods, but I don't actually clean. Most of the time, I'll avoid/procrastinate until I know my husband is coming home and then I try to clean and get totally overwhelmed...which usually leads to me "raging" at my kids (and myself...more myself but that spills over into my kids because they're "keeping me" from being able to clean the way I need to. Or I'll start cleaning and I can't stop. I'll cancel plans, late taking my kids to school or even picking them up, etc. I have high expectations of what my house SHOULD look like, but because they feel impossible to obtain especially with 4 small kids, I just avoid, procrastinate and then ruminate more often than not. I feel like my house reflects the type of person i am-more specifically they type of mom and wife i am. Which usually because it's not clean, I'm a terrible wife/mom. I often think my husband must hate being married to me because our house is so messy and I'm ruining my kids. Ironically, because I see more often than not that those with "cleaning obsessions" actually clean excessively, I doubt that my obsession is actually OCD. I can find a million other triggers that I know undoubtedly are OCD and i can trace them back to when i was very, very young, but this is my biggest, most anxiety provoking obsession and its the one I'm so unsure about actually being OCD.

It was very relieving to find out what intrusive thoughts were because it was very hard for me to understand what I was going through without legitamently assuming I was crazy or evil. I believe my earliest intrusive thought (if this counts as one) that I knew of was when I was about 8 or 9, my parents were arguing and I had the urge to bite myself to feel better (I believe, I don't remember the exact reasoning except that I did it). Since then I've had a range of recurring themes, the first theme I remember is when I'm in a car I vividly see myself throwing my phone out the car window and I usually have to make sure I'm holding onto my phone so I don't do that, I believe that one has been around since I was around 10 (I still have it occasionally but not as common as it used to be). Besides that, my intrusive thoughts weren't particularly unbearable until I was 12 or 13. Family stuff happened during that time and it must've effected me a lot, because after that I started getting horrible Hocd and Pocd thoughts, which would cause me to panic especially because I had no clue what they were and didn't want to be a terrible person. I had frantically searched some things I felt like were going on and convinced myself that I might have schizophrenia at that time, and it was an incredibly scary time. I don't believe I have schizophrenia now though, I don't have hallucinations of any kind, but I mistook intrusive thoughts to be a part of that because I wanted to pinpoint that the horrible thoughts weren't my real thoughts. A more odd thing was I developed a specific theme where I felt I'd die in a car crash and even linked it to it happening in a February, so for a while I would be scared riding in a car and for a while I'd also be scared of February in general. Ever since I found out what intrusive thoughts are, it was actually very relieving for a while, until I realized that people would describe them in ways that they might not be too serious and they're simple to get to go away, which was for sure not the case for me. That lead me to frantically search OCD a few weeks ago after finding out they're mainly associated with that and I really feel like I can identify with many of the symptoms a lot, though I think I mainly have mental compulsions. I can't get a diagnosis right now though since I'm a college student, don't have a job and I currently don't want to try to explain what's going on to my dad for many reasons, I don't believe he could afford that anyway. I worry about self diagnosing and I don't want to but it feels better to identify with this because it really seems like it describes exactly what I've been going through for years.

I have been struggling with rumination. I know it has to do with ADHD. The rumination is showing up as real event OCD. How do I learn from past mistakes without feeling like a total jerk for them? How do I move on but still take accountability for my actions?

I'm gonna get straight to topic. So when I was in high school.. i had this boy in class..i was usually very quiet and most of it was because of social anxiety. So this boy is very mysterious, and is quiet too. But knows tons of things and hobbies. We somehow began to get along well with each other. I wanted to know him better, i still want to do. He introduced me to kpop and BTS. And i think that has helped me a lot during my hard times. We never really talked a lot about things, but just rather shared some words about our hobbies and tv shows etc etc. And as far as i know .. he caught some feelings towards me.. idk how to else to explain. I am definitely ace The usual staring and stuff. I was scared. I don't even know why. I didn't want him to do this stuff. I just only really wanted to be very great friends. And then i kept ignoring everything he did. The staring and following me after classes . I ignored all of it as if it was very normal. And idk why but I'm still scared. Mostly scared of being in a relationship. I don't have a particular reason. He never actually confessed tho.. after we graduated school, he texted me the same year when i was in college. We had a smalll talk. And then i texted him after a few months.. again a very small talk .. and he didn't seem interested. Or just felt like he was either mad at me or probably just bothered by some personal stuff. We haven't talked after that. It's been more than a year i guess. Idk I'm just a bit worried. I have OCD and im sort of depressed as well. I Feel like it was me who dragged him into it because i was the one who somehow i initiated a conversation. And as usual the people I'm attracted to, when they're attracted to me, i begin to feel scared and afraid and don't really feel the same attraction. I feel guilty that i dragged him into this, and then ignored him completely when he wanted to talk about it. And I'm worried about him too, i don't know how to contact him. I don't have his number now.amd it'll be too awkward to contact now after this long. But my guilt won't stop. It's probably because of ocd but i just don't know. I keep feeling guilty that i didn't show any care. Tho I'd love to know him even know. He's an amazing and beautiful person!! I know even if we didn't talk much. But i can't get back to it because i made things more awkward. But these thoughts keeps coming back to back to me. Why is this so?

at this point i cant leave my room. Im going into a deep depression, i just got prescribed Zoloft yesterday and im gonna start taking it today. Im having intrusive thoughts about anyone and everything i see. I cant even bring myself to hug my family or be around them bc im scared if im gonna “lose it” and go crazy. I cant even look or hold scissors or knives bc im afraid ill hurt someone, i just want it to go away. Whats wrong with me? am i alone on these feeling? Does anyone have any experience with Zoloft and does it help quiet your mind down?

Before I got married, I had gotten Botox around my eyes because I have pretty deep lines that I don’t like. My husband and I met and he told me he did not like it, but we came to the agreement that I could only do it once a year. Fast forward to now, being married, I have an appointment to do a small amount around my eyes again because just the 2 treatments have helped a lot. My appointment is in two days, and now he tells me if I do it I am not being submissive as a wife and I am disrespectful, spoiled, and I don’t care about his feelings. I feel angry and I know that this is a first world problem. I don’t want to cancel my appointment, but when we’ve had arguments he has told me how selfish I am and I don’t know how much more I can take. Just need some guidance.

i first learned i had ocd in mid-august. i’ve been dealing with so-ocd since early july. i could tell you the exact moment it hit me: it was a comment a friend of mine made about my dating life. they said they thought i might be aromantic. i cant tell you exactly why, but i freaked out over this. i suppose the idea of being perceived differently than i saw myself struck me as significantly threatening. i remember walking into the bathroom in a panic, mentally reviewing every crush i ever had to scour my brain for any proof of my friend’s observation. i remembered a boy i liked in second grade. i remember thinking he might confess to me and being so nervous that i ran away from him. looking back now, it seems so obvious. i was a kid. of course i was nervous. i was 8. but at the moment it hit like a lightning strike. a bomb went off in my brain. i hunched in on myself and asked, so anxious i was nearly nauseous: “am i gay?” and was sucked inside my own brain for the next several months, completely detached from happiness or reality. i don’t have to tell you guys how awful it was. you all know. i did everything. i went on lgbt+ reddit forums, desperately trying to compare my experiences to them or to see where we differed. i compulsively watched porn. i read the lesbian master doc upwards of maybe twenty different times. i cried. had panic attacks. couldn’t eat. took every single sexuality quiz i could find. read up on sexual fluidity. ruminated constantly, imagining different sexual scenarios and seeing which ones i liked best. all the while, i was so confused. i knew, logically, that i was acting completely irrationally, but more than anything, i wanted to scrape the doubt from my chest where it lingered persistently, taunting me. i *knew* my answer, yet at every turn, it was snatched away from me. it was like sisyphus rolling a boulder up the hill. everytime i was 99% there, another “what if” question had me back down on the bottom, hopelessly confused. it wasn’t until i accidentally came across an ocd article that i realized what i had been dealing with. i remember bursting into tears when i saw it because i finally felt seen. i was looking for the perfect label to encompass the truth of my sexuality (because why else would i have these doubts if they were not, on some level, true?) but it was in reading about a mental disorder that something resonated with me. still, though, i was so stuck in the process of rumination that getting me out of it seemed almost impossible. i was of two minds: on one hand, i knew i had ocd. i was diagnosed. i was proactive about getting diagnosed. on the other, what if? what if, what if, what if? what if it wasn’t ocd? what if it was ocd AND a sexual identity crisis? didn’t i owe it to myself and my future partner to know? it was irresponsible not to, i told myself. like dr. greenberg said, i was only justifying my addiction to certainty. i was willingly and happily making myself worse in the name of “self-discovery.” i’ve been here for a while. many of you have probably seen my worst moments. my ocd has ebbed and flowed between being absolutely unbearable to being moderately okay. but it wasn’t until recently that i really, really started to see the futility in this. i was driving myself insane over hypotheticals that literally may never happen. i was putting myself in every single imagined scenario to see how i would react, knowing that those situations were fake, a product of my neuroses. i was engaging in some kind of twisted form of self-harm, deliberately making myself uncomfortable and distressed in the name of problem-solving. and for what? because i didn’t trust myself? because i didn’t trust my wants? because i was scared of making decisions i know i didn’t want to make? it was futile. all of it was futile, almost laughably so. i knew myself and yet i engaged in this torture anyway because, what if? what if, what if? it was stupid. i hear a lot from sufferers and specialists alike about acceptance and uncertainty, and i get it. those are important. but in this case for me, at least, it was understanding that i didn’t need to give a shit. i needed to get over myself. i had to stop being such a control freak. i had to learn to trust future-me to do what she wanted to do. i had to take the stick out of my ass and see the forest for the trees and dedicate myself to living again. i won’t lie to you and say that the instinct to check isn’t still there, but everytime it rises back up, i tell myself: what’s the point? what’s the fucking point? i’m not gonna be satisfied with the answer anyway. i wasn’t the first few thousand times i did it. and i won’t be the next thousand times i do it either. so yeah. i still can’t tell you with 100% certainty what my sexuality is, but that’s okay. i also cant tell you with 100% certainty that i won’t die immediately after posting this. it’s fine. it’s all gonna be fine. you all have the strength to see past your ocd’s taunting and return back to yourselves. i believe in you💖

I’ve experienced being blocked, I was shocked because I was only trying to help someone because I understood what they were going through. (Religious Scrupulosity) Nevertheless we all have our own unique journeys and I shouldn’t take it to heart because you’ve got to do what is right for you. Self awareness is good and if I’ve ever offended any of you, can you please make me aware. No one can be a better person if they don’t know their wrongs. I’ve attached screenshots of the conversation.

What’s there to even hope for? Because it feels like there is no hope at all for me… my POCD, HOCD, and real events OCD connected to the two subtypes hurts me so much… I am in agony and in constant anguish every single day… and people ignore me in real life… people block me on here… people say they will always be there and never are… what is there to hope for? If I disappeared right now… I would prevent so many peoples pain… if I ceased to live right now… then people would be happy… people would laugh… people wouldn’t care and want me gone… for my POCD and real events OCD based on porn when I was 17-18, and extremely horrible real events when I was 13… my HOCD feels so real too… like it makes me feel like I want it when I don’t… I hate my life so much…

Support from others is instrumental in the OCD recovery process. That’s why we have dedicated Member Advocates available to support every NOCD Therapy member. NOCD Member Advocates have experienced OCD and completed ERP at NOCD Therapy themselves. When you begin NOCD Therapy, you’ll be able to directly message with your Member Advocates easily and confidentially through the NOCD platform. This provides a more seamless NOCD Therapy experience for you, making it easier to connect with your Member Advocate team conveniently and securely. Member Advocates act as personal agents to support you throughout your treatment journey, like a virtual concierge. They’ll address hesitations you may have before meeting your therapist, make sure you maintain a safe and healthy therapy experience, and point you in the right direction whenever you have questions about NOCD Therapy.

Curious. Some people obsess and worry about things that they believe to be unique. What is your theme? What are some of the things you’ve obsessed about?

I am struggling a lot right now with ocd convincing me I want to hurt my partner when I know deep down I don’t. It’s more so a feeling then a thought. I’m just scared that one day I’ll be convinced or give in into the thought. I don’t want to feel like I would hurt my partner anyone else ?

When I was 13 I hung out with a friend a lot. He was the only friend I had in the US. And I had this constant feeling in my chest this one time I hung out with the guy. I wasn’t attracted to the friend at all and he was someone i just hung out with. My HOCD is saying that the feeling was attraction when I wasn’t attracted to him at all and never fantasized about him or any guys in any way… plus my HOCD is giving me intrusive thoughts about kissing my male co-worker and it’s making me feel like I’m not anxious about it… what do I do… 😞😞 I don’t ever want to ever be homosexual or bisexual in any way shape or form….