Welcome to
the NOCD Community

https://www.treatmyocd.com/blog/magical-thinking-ocd-symptoms-overview-treatment-options

Im really off with this strong setback, i start to give up cause i have the same self defeating thoughts and feeling that i had before i knew i have ocd...its like i went beckwards. Also i feel like i have to learn what is ocd and what is not. I feel alot of guilt cause i label every negative feeling as ocd, and sometimes i do feel like it cant be all ocd and i feel guilt. I mean not all but those what gives me anxiety or panic or so much stress i label it as ocd. Sometimes i see it like the thought that comes up is a real problem but then i add a worry to it and then i start to panic and thats ocd, but then im afraid to remove the ocd cause the problem is there... idk its so many variations in my head, i start losing it...sometimes i can deal with real problems but with these ones which are important to me but gives me so much stress idk what to do cause if i start to work on them, lets say i accept that the thought is a real problem like "i might have childhood trauma, or my favourite one "i cant live anymore without that thing,life is just depressing" I take these as this is a problem for me and my mind goes full panic mode "omg youre depressed, you dont want to live,you want to die" so if i take it as a real problem this happens...same with doing something bad "omg im a bad person, if i do that i dont deserve that persons love, how could i do that thing,i couldnt forgive myself" and i say then okay but dont stop talking like this to yourself and my mind says "no cause this is what stops you from doing wrong things". Even now as im writing this im like "okay this second one is clearly ocd but the first one seems like not ocd more like a negative self hatred talk, omg i dont want to have that cause blah blah..." then i feel bad cause its like i just avoid my negative traits to feel better... See this is how confused i am with this... idk which part is ocd and which i have to work on. I still have to learn that. If someone wants to ask me if i am in therapy, i was but i left for the same issue, i was afraid of being a narcissist and suicidal and my therapist said i have traits of narcissism and i want to die but i wouldnt do it... and i accepted these and made me depressed until i realized its a lie...

I’ve very suddenly developed an intense fear of receiving a chronic illness diagnosis that has come from nowhere. I don’t understand it because for most of my life I’ve been completely at peace with the knowledge that life is fleeting and our health is not guaranteed. This fear has developed suddenly about a week ago and the fear feels consuming. Not only am I terrified of being put in that position, but I’m scared of what it would do to my loved ones, and especially of having to mourn the life I thought I could have. The reason I’m not sure if it’s health ocd is because I’ve lost loved ones to chronic diagnoses and have chronic mental illnesses myself. Before this sudden onset of fear, I’ve always been able to handle it. I’ve been angry and I’ve grieved, but I’ve been able to accept it. This feels different. This is an all-consuming fear that makes it hard to function. My concern is that these are some kind of repressed feelings about my life experiences showing up, not ocd. It’s been scary because before this week or so, I’ve always accepted that reality and used it to appreciate my daily life (I even want to be a doctor to help others do the same). Now, it’s like I don’t even have access to that part of my thinking and can’t remember feeling anyway other than I do right now.

Increase in same sex attraction. Loss of my attraction towards men. Why??

Hi, my name is Dedric Silva and I'm from Point Pleasant, WV. I'm 26 years old and I've had OCD for 10 years. It all started with Contamination OCD which I was a sophomore in High School, I washed my hands constantly to the point it dries out and burns easily. This time lasted for 3 years and eventually I overcame that theme. In 2018, I had my first intrusive thought and my theme was Sexual Orientation OCD as my fear at the time was What If I was Gay. It lasted for only a year and eventually I overcame it because I accepted that I wouldn't have a problem if I was gay, but I just don't like Men like that. For a little bit I had Harm OCD where I had fears what if I was to hurt or kill someone when I would never do that ever. It didn't last long and that theme was overcome. But since 2019, I have been battling the scariest theme yet and that is POCD. This OCD theme has been stuck with me as that is my huge fear, my fear is what if I became a Pedophile suddenly when I know in my heart I'm not. This fear has caused me intense anxiety and depressed me for a long time. Since February 2023, I have also been battling two more OCD Themes and that's Real Event OCD and False Memory OCD and they're both connected to POCD. My False Memory Obsessions right now are "What if I harmed a child or a teen in the past?" And my second False Memory Obsession is "What if I saw porn on them?" These two never happened but it still scares me, I literally had to keep replaying the past to check what really happen and I could not find evidence. Now I do have good photographic memory and I usually do remember everything, but these two False Memory obsessions I don't remember and that's where I get anxious and scared. My Real Event OCD is due to my Masturbation addiction, now I don't do Porn as I hate that junk, I don't fantasize in my head because I don't like it either even though I'm attracted to Women. I used to Masturbate simply to relieve stress, but over the years my OCD worsen because of it and I was the verge suicide as I got scared thinking "What if my fear came true?" I had a lot of meltdowns this year and it's been non stop to the point my grandma and mom had to calm me down. I kept saying along the lines of "I'm a horrible person" or "I'm scared my fear might have come true" and even saying "I can't do this anymore, I don't want to go to prison" I know there's others out here that has these three OCD themes right now and I'm looking forward to getting to know others that are going through the same thing. I'm actually going to see my local OCD Specialist this Friday and I'm looking forward to it because the last therapists I had didn't go well and didn't understand my struggles with OCD. I'm looking forward to finally being on this journey more open then ever and interact with those that are going through it.

I made a post yesterday about being unsure of what my thoughts are and have come to the conclusion that they are the result of the development of several new ocd subtypes, probably due to an abundance of life change and stressors. In particular, my thoughts fit with existential ocd, death ocd, health ocd, and mental health anxiety. I’ve struggled with so-ocd in the past and know how long it took for those thoughts to become manageable. It took so long and I feel like I just don’t have it in me to do it. It’s been a week of intense fear, panic, and intrusive thoughts and I already feel like I don’t know how much more I can take. I feel like all of my nerves are exposed and I’ve been shaking and nervous to the point of being sick 24/7. What I’m really struggling with is how to combat these thoughts, or even to believe there’s a reason to. With so-ocd I was able to get to a point that I could tell myself I am not my thoughts and knew I didn’t truly believe what my brain was telling me. I’m finding it a lot harder to do that, especially with the existential ocd. I’m not a religious person and don’t believe there is any greater “point” to life. Before the ocd thoughts this past week, I was perfectly at peace with this. Now, thoughts about what the meaning of life is eat at me all day. What’s been particularly scary about this is it’s really hard to combat those thoughts when I view them as true. My ocd will get me to a point of anxiety and a panic attack that makes me feel like I can’t do this anymore. I try to tell myself that I deserve fight through this and learn to manage this, but my ocd tells me I don’t. As soon as I try to tell myself that it will be worth it to get help or fight to overcome my thoughts, the intrusive thoughts tell me it’s not worth it because there’s no meaning to anything. I fought so hard to overcome my so-ocd and now I’m still unhappy so what’s even the point. Then the death/health ocd takes over and tells me that I could have a month to live so what’s even the point of spending all this time on “healing” and “growth” when it could all be for nothing. It’s really hard to combat these thoughts when they seem so true. I’m someone who genuinely does believe there is no greater meaning to life. It is what we make it and we could die at any second for no reason. I’ve always been at peace with this, but with these new intrusive thoughts, I don’t know how to combat them. When I don’t believe in any higher power or overarching purpose in life, how am I supposed to combat the existential and death related intrusive thoughts? It’s like the ocd is directly feeding off my preexisting beliefs, so it’s hard to view them as anything but true. Before this week I would have told you I was in therapy and on medication because I believed I deserved to have a healthy and fulfilling life. Now, when I try telling myself that, it means nothing. Has anyone else with existential ocd or death ocd faced this? It’s like the ocd itself is directly preventing me from getting help because it tells me there is no point, and I fully believe it/have no argument to prove otherwise. How did you overcome this? How did you get to a point of believing you deserved to seek help when your brain is constantly telling you there is no point because life has no meaning and you’re going to die anyway? It’s like my brain is telling me it’s perfectly possible that you will be miserable for the rest of your life and can die that way regardless of how much work you put in to not feel that way because life has no meaning and it sucks, so what’s the point of seeking help when it doesn’t really matter in the end. It’s like I truly have no idea why I want to beat ocd because I don’t believe there is any point, and my ocd takes advantage of this and says “exactly, so why do it? There’s no guarantee you aren’t going to feel this way forever anyway, so might as well save the effort and disappointment of going to therapy just to go through another in the future anyway.”

I find it so hard to accept I have OCD and question wether I do so much. This entire condition is so hard. I just need to get this out there again. Wether this sounds like ocd. Up until my first ‘theme’, I’d been a happy 25 year old male. I was shy, and always felt I wasn’t as ‘horny’ as my mates, but I Only ever had fantasies about women, had GFs, and simply never had any thought/emotion/attraction about a guy. So I get to 25. I met a girl after trying hard to find a gf to share life with. We date for a few months and I’m feeling as confident and as alive as I’ve ever been. I feel infatuated. We become intimate, and some things go wrong. Performance anxiety from both of us. But nothing that worried me too much. One night I went to bed like normal, woke up the next morning and had a thought: “I feel nothing for this girl.” Instant panic and anxiety. And instant loss of all joy in everything. It was like a bomb went off in my head and body. I just couldn’t accept that. It was like I had to know why. Why would my mind do this, despite wanting to have feelings and loving that I did have feelings? Enter weeks of obsessively asking friends, family, discussion forums, googling for anything I could find that would explain me losing feelings over night. NOTHING explained it. I had to break up with her. Even after the breakup, my head felt faulty. I had constant anxiety about why I had lost feelings overnight. What it meant. Cried a lot. My entire existence was about why I had lost feelings and why I didn’t have the ability to feel anything but anxiety and fear. In my obsessive figuring it out, another thought popped up. “You are gay”. And just like the first thought, this one took off. I thought I couldn’t be anymore anxious and afraid and then BAM, it was like turning it up a notch. Instant googling, looking for advice everywhere. I started to immediately take notice of men, everywhere. Started to have thoughts about kissing guys. Started to go back and forth (writing down) my entire romantic history and childhood. Compared my self and every aspect of who I was to gay people I knew. Even down to how I spoke. It was like (just the same as loss of feeling) that my brain had a thought and was like I believed it on enough of a level that it became real. Ended up seeing my first psych in my life. She said it was ocd. After a few weeks I couldn’t believe it was ocd, so I tried another psych. She said it was just anxiety, and tried logic CBT. I became addicted to that therapy as the days afterwards would always make me feel great. Over time, it was like I completely numbed everything. I wasn’t having the thoughts and anxiety as much, but still felt nothing. I had lost all my friendships and family from hiding myself away from the world. It was like I had no drive for life. I ended up dating a few girls, almost situationships. I barely felt attraction, and I don’t even know what, but something inside me said I wanted to be with a girl. Eventually I met someone who is now my wife. I feel guilty, but it was kind of the same as above. She ticked all the boxes I would have once found incredible. We got along like best friends and it just progressed naturally. I still had these thoughts in the back of my mind that “you don’t feel enough”. Most of the HOCD thoughts weren’t there. Then I had a workshop for work and sat next to a woman that for some reason, really attracted me. The thought popped into my head “here’s evidence you are attracted to someone other than your partner, you never felt attracted or loved your partner.” Enter over a year of the same obsessive figuring it out. Constant anxiety, constant fear of hurting my partner. At this point I was starting to believe it was ocd. And that my brain was broken. I booked a psych that specialised in ocd. She never said it was ocd, but I can see now she treated it like it was. I never got to proper ERP and I became numb again until it went away. Covid hit. And over time, I felt as good as I’d felt since my very first theme. I was having fantasies about women I knew, I was happy with my now wife and life was as good as I could have hoped for. I was content, still with some thoughts but no anxiety and seemingly space to find drive for life. I was on 100mg of Sertraline and decided it was stopping me from feeling completely normal. I came down 50mg. At about the same time I started to feel a little anxious, about nothing. But then the thought that I was gay popped up again. And it has again taken off. I am seeing an ocd psych and have been for around 4 months. I’m back on 100mg Sertraline. The psych tells me it’s ocd. She has clearly tried not to give me reassurance, but said I’m diagnosed with ocd, and that my symptoms are consistent with her other clients. That nothing I’ve told her suggests it’s not ocd. I’ve got myself to a point where I understand ocd incredibly well. I understand that it’s not these thoughts that make ocd sufferers different, it’s the reaction we have to them and the behaviours because of them. I understand that the theme and content of the thought is irrelevant and almost always, an untrue fear. I understand the need to treat the thoughts as noise and force yourself to be OK with the unknown about everything. My issue. - I’m so frightened I am gay and I’ll have to hurt my wife. - I’m so frightened that a part of my brain believes it. - I doubt it’s ocd all the time. And nothing is enough. - that my thoughts seem to want to prove that I am gay in anyway they can. I just want to go back to who I was before this happened. Any advice? Support?

So I'm currently going through shame because of my addiction and how much it's damaged my life. I've come to terms with how this is a problem for me and I'm trying to no longer engage with it anymore. 2 years ago, I was still deep in my addiction and at one point I escalated to a higher point in my addiction to which I deeply regretted. I started crying because of how awful it was truly getting, but OCD had latched onto this event and tried to turn this into POCD. I haven't thought about this event ever since until it came back recently. I just had a moment of clarity just now about it all and it felt great. But I know that the mental compulsions will come back later on. I find it really interesting that I'm able to just find a point where I can truly get over this and be like "I'm not what my OCD says I am, which is being a p and I know that this is another problem besides my OCD. As I'm writing this, I can't even recall how I had this moment of clarity which means I'm not thinking clearly and it's a problem. On one hand this tells me that it's truly OCD but on the other hand I'll just be having doubt and worry

Is it fair to say that there aren’t that many posts about recovery from OCD because those that recover see this discussion board as reassurance/compulsive? And recovery includes removing themselves from positing here? There just doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of posts re people’s recovery experiences. - how bad they were - how they came to accept their theme as irrelevant - how they battled “is this really ocd?” - tips/tricks that worked for them - common issues they had whilst going through treatment?

I feel like everyone is recovering so much quicker than me which is making me lose hope of ever beating this horrific disorder 😢 I just feel like my life is ruined and it’s going to keep destroying every good thing in my life

It sounds legit wrong now? Like why does bisexuality seem to not give me anxiety as it once did before? I’m so confused. I get no anxiety but false attraction. I’m super super confused

Hi. Recently I have been alone a lot which has caused me to overthink. My main theme right now is overthinking my intentions behind my actions. I think back to a time when I did something and if I did it with ill intentions or selfish intentions. I think about things I said at a time when I made a mistake and I wondered if I said it just to make myself look better. I’m not sure if that makes sense but I’m wondering if this is an OCD symptom or if I actually did have some ill intentions that I’m remembering. I don’t know what’s going on and my guilt is getting to me.

Hey guys does anyone mind sharing their experience with medication and how it affected them?

I’m sorry to be annoying but I feel like a horrible girlfriend and I really don’t want to break up with my boyfriend but I’m afraid it’s not fair to him

I’m going through a lot of shifts right now and can’t tell if the way I’m feeling is a new obsessive-compulsive pattern or something else entirely. I’ve recently made the decision to come off my SSRI for other mental health concerns unrelated to OCD. I worked off of it for one week and have been completely off of it for another. In the week since being off of it completely I’ve been stuck in a constant spiral of fear and thoughts that I can’t get out of my head. I’ve dealt with SO-OCD in the past and the fear feels the same as that. It’s overwhelming, debilitating, and there’s absolutely nothing I can do to stop it once it’s begun. It’s been a week of nonstop fight-or-flight response. The only other time I’ve felt the way I do now is at the height of my OCD. Once a negative thought enters, I find myself stuck in a cycle of trying to do anything to make it go away but getting increasingly more anxious when doing so because nothing seems to be working. The reason I’m not sure if this is OCD or not is because the thoughts seem to be based in reality and not a specific fear. It started while I was watching a medical drama and someone was diagnosed with cancer. I felt an immediate intense fear wash over me surrounding death, not knowing what happens after death, and the idea of being given a diagnosis in which I had a limited amount of time left to live. These are thoughts that have never bothered me before and I have no idea where it came from. Now I can’t get them to leave. After a couple of days I began to think this sounds like OCD, but it’s spread to everything in my life. I’m not only anxious about thoughts of death, although it definitely makes it worsen, but suddenly I am so overwhelmed with fear and dread at every single emotion and am feeling this way about things that have happened in my life that I previously haven’t had these feelings about. It’s to the point where I don’t even really feel like I’m in my body anymore. I stopped taking my SSRI because I was numb all the time and couldn’t feel anything, so this has been a huge change. I’m just unsure because I can’t tell if these are feelings that the antidepressant has been muting for years, if this is a chemical shift caused my withdrawal, or if it’s OCD. If these are things the SSRI has been covering up, then I don’t want to go back on them and cover them up instead of healing from them. This is what I thought at first, but now I’ve been spiraling so much I don’t think there’s anything positive that can come from how I’m feeling right now and just need it to stop. I’m especially inclined to think it’s more than just suppressed emotions because of my fears surrounding death and health when those are things I’ve never felt before. I just don’t know why if it is OCD the anxiety seems to be spreading to everything, even when I’m not thinking about death. Does anyone have any advice? Im just not sure what the next steps moving forward should be because I know I can’t keep sitting in this. I don’t know if exposure therapy for OCD, a medication change, etc is the next best thing. Any advice would be appreciated.

I decided to try sobriety for a change.

at 8:34 AM , Jlanden33 <jlanden33@yahoo.com> wrote: Hey folks. I'm in a bad way and hoping I can get some help. I suffer from an "intrusive thought" that no matter what I read about, I've never really seen/heard of anyone else having. My intrusive thought is a "prayer to the devil". I am a born again Christian and I also believe our pets get to go to heaven. I know there's no proof, I just have faith. I don't wanna debate this, you'll understand why I'm telling this as I move forward. So my "intrusive thought" that I mentioned comes anytime I feel like I'm sinning. Here's some examples. #1. I don't care at all about germs. However, I wash my hands probably 50 times a day because I'm always worried I'm contaminating someone else. What follows that fear of contamination in the intrusive thought(in the form of a prayer to the devil) like this...."dear you know who, if I don't go back and clean this or clean that, you can take my beloved pet that passed away to hell or not let him into heaven." That prayer follows ANYTHING I think I'm doing wrong. #2. I may feel like I didn't do my best at work so I'll get home and think of something else I should have done and the prayer will come again....."dear who know who, if i don't go back to work and do my work better, you can take my pets to hell or not let them into heaven". These are 2 examples but ANYTHING i think i did wrong this "prayer" follows it. On top of all this, I have this day trip I like to take on my days off and if I want to go, it'll come in my mind again...."dear you know who, if i take this day trip, you can take my pet to hell or not let him into heaven." Now I'm scared to take the trip because I'm scared my pet won't make it into heaven. And one more thing, I also have sort of a number OCD issue. If i have this intrusive thought/prayer about the dogs, I automatically yet this time on purpose have this thought/prayer about the pets on purpose, because I have to get to a 3rd time of the thought to make it "clean". In other words, having the thought a 2nd time is evil because the number 2 is evil in my mind. So therefore, the 2nd time I have the thought/prayer I feel like is not intrusive because I did it on purpose. I don't want to be praying to anybody but God. I'm just so scared to take this day trip and so scared my pets aren't gonna get to go to heaven(if possible) because of me. I'm so tired of living this way. I want to be thought free, my pets be ok, and only be praying to God. Please

My mind keeps telling me I’m attracted to women and bi and I constantly recite in my mind I’m straight and it feels wrong? False attraction towards woman no longer give me anxiety and confuses me. I feel like I have to identify as bisexual. I had the fear of lesbian and bisexuality years ago and I got over it twice. And ofc it’s back as I’m doing erp with my femal therapist cus I got a thought that said I was attracted to her. Ever since that day, the sticky thought was STICKYYYY. I’m just confused why it’s not giving me as much distress and anxiety as before. These thoughts are always in my head and I have ocd. Like my mind gives me anxiety when I say “ I am straight”… wtf? I’m scared I’m gonna develop the fear of being straight now… does this mean I’m actually bisexual? I have always identified as straight. I’m just confused and no longer want to erp. I don’t know if this a compulsion. When I say “ I am Bisexual” it feels right? I don’t want to be bisexual. I’m sorry for ranting not looking for reassurance but I keep imagining myself about filling out a form asking for my sexual orientation and hence I imagine scenarios. Are these false attractions even false? My brain is buzzing. Why am I not avoiding females as I use to? I keep compulsively checking

Does anyone else’s intrusive thoughts just repeat over and over and over again? I have harm ocd and sometimes the thoughts will just be like “K!ll him” over and over and over again. It freaks me out so bad. 😭 maybe I’m just actually horrible and this isn’t ocd. This makes me feel like it’s probably not ocd because this probably doesn’t happen to anybody else.

A month ago I was feeling so good, i was im a recovery journey, i had some bad days but then i was able to see it as a good thing. Now for 2 weeks now im on a setback and its worse day by day, now i cant even escape from my mind, i was able to see through all of this, and now this is the complete inverse of that... I cant even go back to see what i did so i do the same again to feel better but my I keep thinking that i just think i kept getting better, i was blinded by the good feelings, actually i was still obsessive, and i cant do the same things again cause it will not help... i feel alot of shame cause how I was felt so good for weeks and see through ocd and now i believe everything my mind says and i react to every thought...thats why i think i wasnt even on a good path, then i wouldnt be here. Im tired of always go back to the starting point...