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the NOCD Community

I felt like my OCD was in control for a while about a year and a half or so. Recently i’ve had a flare up and i have been very anxious. I have mental compulsions mainly. I want to hear about anyone else’s experiences with a flare up?

Does anyone feel like they’re fully convinced that they’re gay/lesbian? Along with loss of attraction to the opposite sex?

Not sure if I should be doing this cause at this point idk what’s real and what’s not. But I keep asking myself the same questions and imagining the same scenarios as a regular person who’s questioning their sexuality would, and it’s starting to feel like I really am lesbian :( I’ve asked myself “could I go my whole life without being w a woman (romantic or sexual)” or “if there were no men left and I was surrounded by women for the rest of my life would I be content” I either can’t confidently answer the question or it feels like I’m just leaning towards women :( the scenarios I play in my head now feel like I want them. not sure if it’s just because I’ve been thinking about it sooo much that my mind is everywhere, but I feel nothing for men anymore .. I don’t know who I am anymore. Before the ocd I was perfectly happy with my bf. Sexual and everything, everything was great. I hadn’t even thought of being with a woman :( I don’t understand and the thought of leaving my bf makes me want to cry. But now it feels like I’m going ti be forced to be with a girl, or if I stay with my bf and recover then I’ll actually realize I am lesbian.

does any one else have an intrusive thought and you go over it in your head and try to see if you react in a good or bad way? i’ve been having bad intrusive thoughts but i sometimes have this feeling inside that i like it? and i feel it’s right and i agree inside but my other thoughts are saying no i hate it ?!

I have to put my cat down soon, I can't even really put into words what this cat means to me. I adopted him just under 2 years ago and in that time weve had a ton of fun together. My girlfriend and I treated him as a son and he absolutely adored attention. He would follow me into the shower and just vibrate because he was purring so much. He sleeps in between us every night and every morning he headbutts me awake so ill feed him. He's always hungry all the time and will begin meowing like crazy if he hears the rustling of a bag or the tap of a can. He waits for me by the door when I get home and meows at me when I'm about to leave. Everyone that's met him tells me he's quite abnormal for a cat he's overly trusting allows belly pets and will hop into your lap immediately. He meows directly at strangers and rubs on them and prefers the company of people to other animals. He's highly unique I'm told and that's what makes this all the more painful. I'm no longer going to wake up to his beautiful green eyes or his headbutts but instead an empty space in my bed. I've always hated cats since I was young I thought they were inherently mean. Owning one has shown me how wrong I was and how much I wish I met my cat sooner in life and how much more fun we could of had. I love you with all my heart BB and I'm dreading the inevitability of having to say goodbye to my family. Thank you for loving me and guiding me through the darkness of my mental illness and making me feel loved even when I hated myself.

Hello all! So I’m taking Clomipramine as well as managing OCD via ERP practices I have learned in therapy. I know that Clomipramine is an old medication prescribed for OCD, but I wanted to share my experience and encourage anyone who is hesitant to take Clomipramine, or other antidepressants. You may react to medications differently than I did, but you don’t know if it works for you till you try it! I hope my story helps someone. (: Initially, I was hesitant to take any antidepressants, I didn’t like that some have lasting effects and it honestly scared me. I was also scared because as a Christian, some Christians were being very judgmental of people who take antidepressants. But, mental health is just as important as physical health, and if medication helps you or me, what others say about it absolutely does not matter. It’s okay to have Jesus AND a therapist. It’s okay to have Jesus AND antidepressants. I started off with Sertraline last year, and it did work great for my OCD, but I ended up being allergic to it and my lips and neck swelled a bit and I got rashes. It made me superrr tired when I took it for the week and a half that I was on it. I researched OCD medications online, and I decided that with my particular health conditions and allergies, I don’t want to take any more SSRI’s. I found Clomipramine, a TCA, and after researching it a little more, I decided with my doctor that I want to try it for my OCD. I started Clomipramine around March 2023, and the first week I took it I just noticed my pupils were very dilated (which made my vision a bit blurry) and I was also very tired. I started on a very low dose and slowly went up a little and it worked great for me. At first, my OCD felt a tiny bit heightened, and then after the first 2 weeks, it really started working for me. It made my OCD a LOT more manageable, and my intrusive thoughts felt like background noise. Flare-ups were almost nonexistent on Clomipramine. Other benefits I’ve noticed: I have PMDD, as well as mixed anxiety-depressive disorder, and Clomipramine has helped a ton with those for me. With my PMDD, I get binge eating urges around my period, and being on an antidepressant has helped suppress those urges, because in my case, the reason I binge eat is for a temporary serotonin boost. Being on a medication has really helped regulate that, my PMDD does still make me very emotional, but it’s SO much more manageable. I just wanna give people hope, even if you don’t take this particular medication, please know there’s no shame in taking medicine for your mental health. Your mental health is JUST as important as your physical health. Whatever you decide to do, I hope my story is encouraging to you. Much love and God bless. 🩷

so like my intrusive thoughts are harm themed usually. today my thought is just repeatedly saying “i don’t wanna hurt anybody” and even this is giving me anxiety ? so it’s got me like what if that means i do ?? has this happened to anyone before?

Hi guys, i struggle with ROCD and i’ve been in a relationship for the past 3 and half years with my bf. Me and my bf had an incident about 2 years ago? where he was watching some *videos*, it wasn’t p*rn, it was just like tik tok videos, and he was open about it, and told me some stuff about his past relationships and how it was normalized, he hasn’t done anything like that since we talked about it, but yesterday i seen that he had looked at this girls page, it was just work out videos, and i asked him about it and he said yes that he did click but immediately clicked off and wasn’t looking for arousal, or anything of that sort, we talked, and he expressed about how he was feeling and i told him how i felt, and we worked on it. But our relationship is perfect and he never makes me doubt his love for me, he’s always so sweet, compassionate and caring, and our relationship is healthy, other than the occasional picture he looks at, but my ROCD is gone nuts. I know guys are gonna look, women do as well, we’re human, but like my ROCD is freaking out

For a week now i try to do what i need to do for recovery but it doesnt work, and its not the "it gets worse" i dont expect to suddenly just go away, thats not what we suppose to do. I try to just move on and let the thoughts and emotions be but i make myself react even more than i used to. It used to work and i was able to sit with the emotions and thoughts, now it just works me up more and i react more, which makes me angry and frustrated which makes it worse and worse. Im kinda tired now, idk whats the problem.

Sometimes when your intrusive thoughts are especially loud or scary, you can start to feel "fused" with them, and it can be hard to separate yourself from the thoughts. If it feels like your thoughts represent who you are as a person, or if it gets challenging to differentiate between what the thoughts are saying and what you actually value or want, these are some ways that being fused with your thoughts can show up. In this case, adding some distance between your identity and your thoughts can be helpful. We call this “defusion.” ➡️ Swipe for some strategies to separate, or defuse, yourself from your intrusive thoughts!

I was spending time with my family and I wanted to give one of my family members a beer but when I handed it to my family member an intrusive thoughts came across my mind and it scared me because of the urge the thought generated which got me scared in the moment and I can’t stop thinking about it keeps ruminating in my mind. Any tips

Does the feeling of love comes back in? Does clarity and “certainty ( the certainty we all actually want during the rough days of suffering) ” comes eventually? Does it. ?

Surprisingly I went to sleep mostly well even after my slips from last night. Last night made me realize that I'm not ready for a relationship yet even though I like someone. I like this person, yet sexual content is still a problem for me. I caught myself slipping from time to time and I was about 170 days away from it all. My mental health was pretty bad. The worst that it was in a while because of so much stress and worrying. That was the only thing NOT making my feel like that and actually made my mind feel different. But I don't want to keep this up. It feels like such a huge burden on my body. I woke up today feeling rested but I instantly remembered what I had did last night. I've been struggling with this for years and I would prefer not to keep it up even if urges and temptations keep saying otherwise. I feel like a bad person for doing this because it feels wrong to still have this problem while I have a crush on someone. I don't know if it's OCD or not but it feels like I'm already not being faithful to this person even though we don't really know each other and we aren't exclusive. My body keeps shivering because of all this due to the fact that it's cold and that this came up.

Hi there, I am looking to get some support and advice, I recently started to suffer from SO-OCD due to tiktok. My feed started to have videos " if you did this or thought this you are gay" or videos of girls coming out later in life. I have never questioned my sexuality and have always been with men, I find it triggering as some of the things mentioned in the videos, I agree with but never thought it could mean I was gay. It had made me question everything and made me try to look back on the past to see if there were any evidence of this. I am nowhere near homophobic, but this is not the life I want for myself, so why is my mind so fixate on these thoughts if this is not who I identify nor want. I also struggle with ROCD Any advice or support would be greatly appreciated! xx

Why am I noticing alot more handsome men? Is it my insecurities? I've noticed I have no desire to have sex and I've asked my girlfriend what she thinks and she said it's normal because she finds her friends pretty and beautiful but even then finding another man handsome is extremely uncomfortable and makes me feel bisexual. it's causing me alot of anxiety and discomfort right now ):

It’s the beginning of the year and I’ve been feeling good for a couple of months but now that the years started I feel really bad. I’m scared my thoughts are going to last forever and I’ll always have these off and on mood changes. Idk how to explain these thoughts to my family or the people I love because Idk how to explain how I feel. Sometimes I start to have thoughts that I don’t deserve good things and I start to distance myself but I don’t want to. Do you guys have any recommendations for what I can do to not think of these thoughts or how I can go back to where these thoughts never existed?

Has anyone with soocd thought that they looked Lesbian and then just obsessed about it and then thought that must have meant that they were a lesbian and they all the times they though they were going to marry an man just all of a sudden though about it would be a women. It’s like a switch!!!!! It’s horrible and I don’t know what the truth is. I want a man and to have kids but now I’m question all of that and freaking out.

Does anyone look at the mirror and not recognize themselves? This could be derealization or disassociation not sure?

I have had OCD my entire life and my obsessions have changed one after the other. As a child I was afraid I was going to overdose on pills, stab family members, then being transgender and gay, leaving stove or iron on, and now my dominant obsession is getting the wrong degrees and going to wrong school. I’m 39 and it’s very debilitating. When the intrusive thought comes about my education I feel so bad and I feel like I’m being held hostage. It’s very intense and I wasn’t able to hold a job and I contemplated suicide many times. I feel a tremendous amount of guilt because the major and university didn’t align with my values or who I really am. I would seek relief by googling the university etc. but it never helped. My OCD has taken over my entire life. Whenever I think about my education I don’t like it and it doesn’t sit well with me and I don’t even like discussing it with anyone. I feel dead inside and I feel like I’m just surviving. I carry a lot of guilt and shame and I always feel like the worst.

Any tips on how to not constantly worry about getting sick during flu season? My contamination OCD has never been as bad for me as it has been this year and even after being in therapy, I’m not sure how to cope with the anxiety and paranoia. 🥲