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the NOCD Community

It all feels so real… HOCD and ROCD… I know I love my husband but I don’t feel anything rn not even talking about HOCD. I know it’s the worst thing I can do but it starts to feel like the right thing to do..

Think logically. Literally. Take me as an example. I have hocd and my obsession is “what if I’m gay”. I’ve liked girls my whole life, I can still get aroused by them and I can’t get the same instinctive reaction from a guy. So I can’t be gay. Sometimes ocd will go to something else once you prove it wrong. Maybe like. “What if I’m bi” again I can only get aroused by girls. Sometimes when I’m not thinking about it I can even get aroused when sitting next to a girl or when I’m sitting next to one or even when I’m touching one in a non sexual way. Something that never happens or has happened with a guy in my life. Don’t start panicking. Just “realise” who you are and who you’ve been.

content warning: MRI results I got prescribed MRIs done on my lumbar and cervical spine over the weekend, and several things came back abnormal in the report. I started to google when I saw a word ending in -oma, got a basic definition of this particular kind of t*mor (probably benign/non-cancerous), realized that googling in this case was for sure a compulsion, caught myself and put my phone away. I told myself, "I have an appointment with my specialist in 2 days. I trust this doctor, so I will delay/not do my own reading until after I talk to her, and only if she recommends further self-education." I stuck to it and I was proud of myself. Cut to the appointmet today. I got lost in the building where her office is and arrived 14 mins late. The receptionist said there's a 15 minute grace period, so I would have to reschedule. No availability for 2 MONTHS, even for telehealth. First of all, I am so ashamed of being late (that's another trigger for me), and so hurt and rejected that they wouldn't talk to me, even very briefly. Now the urge to google is so extreme. There are objectively concerning things in my report, based on what she said ahead of time that we were looking for, and what would affect treatment. I also have a LOT of c*ncer in my family history; 3/4 grandparents, an aunt on each side, and 1.5 bio parents (1 was skin c*ncer, 1 was prec*ncerous polyps removed but considered high future risk to be monitored), so "-oma" and "t*mor" are big red flags in my minds. So while normally I am actually pretty good about living and making peace with my chronic conditions, and health ocd is really only like 5 on my hierarchy, I know that I actually do have to be vigilant about c*ncer in some ways. My balanced solution is sticking to recommended observation scheduling, and then entrusting the research and checking to my trusted providers, so that I am not being negligent nor being compulsive. But now what? I hate waiting. Idk if/when I'll hear from her. Chronic pain in those regions due to curvature and degenerative discs are the reasons I have to get MRIs every couple of years, and now I am so somatically, obsessively aware of that pain and wondering what's going on. This post is a vent, and is my choice to express the anxiety without giving into the desire to google. I'm not seeking reassurance on whether I/my test results are going to be ok. Still, I think just some understanding and/or advice on holding myself accountable for not compulsing would be deeply appreciated. Thanks.

FND has caused some major problems in my life and has made my OCD flare up horribly. Here's what it is: Disease Overview Functional neurological disorder (FND) is a medical condition in which there is a problem with the functioning of the nervous system and how the brain and body sends and/or receives signals, rather than a structural disease process such as multiple sclerosis or stroke. FND can encompass a wide variety of neurological symptoms, such as limb weakness or seizures. FND is a condition at the interface between the specialties of neurology and psychiatry. Conventional tests such as MRI brain scans and EEGs are usually normal in patients with FND. This had led, historically, to the condition being relatively neglected by both clinicians and researchers. However, it is now established that FND is a common cause of disability and distress, which may overlap with other problems such as chronic pain and fatigue. Encouraging studies support the potential reversibility of FND with specifically tailored treatments. New scientific findings are influencing how patients are diagnosed and treated, which is creating an overall change in attitude towards people with FND. Older ideas that FND is “all psychological” and therefore always associated with stress or past trauma, and that the diagnosis is made only when someone has normal tests, have changed since the mid-2000s. The new understanding, including modern neuroscientific studies, has shown that FND is not a diagnosis of exclusion. It has specific clinical features of its own and is a disorder of the nervous system functioning in which many perspectives are necessary. These vary a lot from person to person. In some people, psychological factors are important; in others, they are not. Signs & Symptoms FND patients can experience a wide range and combination of symptoms that are physical, sensory and/or cognitive. The most common include: Motor dysfunction • Functional limb weakness/paralysis • Functional movement disorders including tremor, spasms (dystonia), jerky movements (myoclonus) and problems walking (gait disorder) • Functional speech symptoms including whispering speech (dysphonia), slurred or stuttering speech Sensory dysfunction • Functional sensory disturbance includes altered sensation; e.g., numbness, tingling or pain in the face, torso or limbs; this often occurs on one side of the body • Functional visual symptoms including loss of vision or double vision Episodes of altered awareness • Functional seizures (also called dissociative or non-epileptic) seizures, blackouts and faints: these symptoms can overlap and can look like epileptic seizures or faints (syncope) Dizziness Functional dizziness is often called persistent perceptual postural dizziness and has its own set of diagnostic criteria Cognitive Symptoms Functional cognitive symptoms include difficulties with memory, concentration or word finding difficulty where there are typical features consistent with an FND diagnosis Symptoms often fluctuate and may vary from day to day or be present all the time. Some patients with FND may experience substantial or even complete remission followed by sudden relapses of symptoms. Other physical and psychological symptoms are commonly experienced by patients with FND although they are not defined as part of the disorder. These include chronic pain, fatigue, sleep problems, bowel and bladder symptoms, anxiety, panic attacks and depression. The exact cause of FND is unknown, although ongoing research is starting to provide suggestions as to how and why it develops. Many different predisposing factors can make patients more susceptible to FND such as having another neurological condition, experiencing chronic pain, fatigue or stress. Childhood abuse, maltreatment or neglect and life stress, particularly around the time of symptom onset, is also more common in people with FND than in the general population. However, many people with FND have none of these risk factors which are also unfortunately common in all, including healthy, populations. As with most complex disorders affecting the brain, it’s likely that genetic factors play a role in the condition, but it is not a problem that someone should expect to pass on genetically. At the time FND begins, studies have shown that there may be triggering factors like a physical injury, infectious illness, vaccination, panic attack or migraine which can give someone the first experience of neurological symptoms. These symptoms normally settle down on their own. However, in FND the symptoms become ‘stuck’ in a ‘pattern’ in the nervous system. That ‘pattern’ is reflected in altered brain functioning. The result is a genuine and disabling problem, which the patient cannot control. The aim of treatment is to ‘retrain the brain’, for example by unlearning abnormal and dysfunctional movement patterns that have developed and relearning normal movement. For seizures, the aim is to unlearn the seizure program that has become stuck in the brain, and which activates typically with very little trigger or perhaps just in response to being relaxed. One way of thinking about FND is looking at it as a bit like a ‘software’ problem on a computer. The ‘hardware’ is not damaged but there is a problem with the ‘software’ and so the computer doesn’t work properly. A different analogy is a piano that is not broken but is out of tune. Conventional structural MRI brain scans are usually normal in FND unless the person has another neurological condition. Special functional brain scans (fMRI) used in research, which show patterns of brain activity, are starting to provide early evidence for how the brain goes wrong in FND. fMRI scans show changes in patients with FND which look different from healthy patients without these symptoms as well as being different from healthy people pretending to have these symptoms. Functional imaging is still just a research tool and is not developed enough to be used in diagnosing individual cases of FND. Scans support what patients and researchers already know – these are genuine disorders in which there is a change in brain functioning, which is out of the control of the person with FND. Historically, FND has traditionally been viewed as an entirely psychological disorder in which repressed psychological stress or trauma gets converted into a physical symptom. This is where the term conversion disorder comes from. Psychological disorders and stressful life events, both recent and in childhood, are risk factors for developing the condition and can be relevant for some patients, but they rarely provide a full explanation for the cause of the condition and are absent in many patients. Patients do not have to be depressed, anxious or the survivor of adverse childhood experience to develop FND. Modern theories propose that FND has many causes, which vary from patient to patient. One comparison is to think about heart disease. There are lots of causes of heart disease – smoking, genetic factors, diet and even stress-related/psychological factors such as depression. Smoking may be a factor in heart disease in many people, but it is not in everyone. The same analogy can be made for FND. In some, psychological factors such as past trauma or stress at the time of symptom onset in FND are important in understanding how the brain has gone wrong. In others, the presence of a problem like migraine or a physical injury may be the most important thing. Affected populations The exact prevalence of FND is unknown. However, research suggests FND is the second most common reason for a neurological outpatient visit after headache/migraine, accounting for one sixth of diagnoses. This means FND could be as common as multiple sclerosis or Parkinson’s disease. FND can affect anyone, at any time, although it is uncommon in children under 10. FND is 2-3 times more likely to affect females than males for most symptoms, although when patients present over the age of 50, it occurs equally in both groups. Disorders with Similar Symptoms It is common for FND to co-exist with other illnesses. FND can have similar symptoms to most other types of conditions seen in neurological practice such as multiple sclerosis, stroke and epilepsy. Some patients have another neurological disease diagnosis such as stroke and FND. A neurologist is normally required to assess which symptoms relate to FND and to monitor where required for any new symptoms. Anxiety disorders and depression can sometimes cause physical symptoms which overlap with FND symptoms. For example, panic attacks can present with symptoms such as pins and needles in the fingers or mouth and depression often causes poor concentration or fatigue. Anxiety, panic attacks and depression are common in patients with FND, but many patients do not have such problems. Other psychiatric conditions are more common in people with FND including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and emotionally unstable personality traits (often related to past trauma). There is also some emerging evidence that obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) are more common in FND populations and might predispose individuals to developing FND symptoms. Chronic pain is also common in patients with FND including fibromyalgia, which is also related to disturbed nervous system functioning. Pain disorders are also usually associated with fatigue, sleep disturbance, and poor concentration. Migraine and chronic headaches are also common. Other functional disorders including irritable bowel syndrome or overactive bladder syndrome are more common in patients with FND. There is some newer research suggesting that joint hypermobility spectrum disorder (which includes Ehlers Danlos type 3) may be more common in people with FND as well as other functional disorders. It should be remembered, though, that in these studies around 10-30% of healthy controls also had hypermobility. It is important that new symptoms not automatically be considered related to FND and other causes are considered and investigated as appropriate.

What are your goals or dreams for your life? What would you love to do if nothing would hold you back?

I don’t have an official OCD diagnosis, but I will be asking my doctor tomorrow if I can get referred to a psychiatrist to get an official diagnosis. The way I came to the conclusion that what I’m dealing with is OCD is because a month ago I just started having the most horrible disturbing intrusive thoughts that go against all my values and beliefs and attacking the stuff/people I care about the most. Mind you, I have never had anything like this happen in my life. I feel that I have always been someone with a peaceful mind and one of the worst intrusive thoughts I can ever remember having before this happened, was “what happens if I cut my finger right now” while I was cutting fruit. That’s pretty much it. After this whole horrible intrusive thought spiral started happening I was so scared because I have never had such awful intrusive thoughts like this that were the complete opposite of me, it just quite literally started out of NOWHERE, and that’s what was so scary and terrifying. It was like my whole life got turned upside down because of this and I’ve been mainly isolating in my room, feeling so much anxiety and dread and guilt/shame. I get four of the same thoughts and one intrusive image repeating over and over again even if I would not try to think about them, and it caused me so much distress and anxiety that I would be so anxious and cry everyday just thinking how I could ever possibly think such horrible intrusive thoughts like that. It’s caused me insomnia which I’ve never dealt with before and I went three days in a row without being able to sleep no matter how hard I tried (even while taking melatonin). Other days I struggle so much to fall asleep due to the intrusive thoughts being much more present at nighttime, and even when taking melatonin that doesn’t do anything because of my mind being so active and having so much anxiety. Is this what they call an OCD flare up? After constantly looking up all the symptoms of ocd (the more and lesser known ones alike), I noticed there were some symptoms of it that I displayed in childhood when the ocd could’ve been more dormant or mild you could say (skin picking), because once again I have never had such horrible intrusive thoughts like this out of nowhere and constantly repeating in my mind that felt like they were out of my control. I noticed that these intrusive thoughts started on the second day of my menstruation when I was in a lot of pain and was feeling very emotional/stressed. One of the things I’ve heard a lot is that during the menstruation cycle is when ocd flares can happen more often due to the increase in hormones during that time, and I wonder if that’s what happened to me? I’m also overall such a big over thinker and have been for as long as I can remember. I also have had anxiety and depression since middle school as well. Any insight would be very much appreciated 😭

I have just recently realized that I had SO OCD. This began whenever I was watching porn and had an intrusive thought about the guy in the porn. It was more minor at first, it was a majority of what I was thinking about throughout the day but it didn’t feel as distressing at first. If I had downtime to think about it, it would affect me but if I was just going about my day I wouldn’t notice it. I began going through the compulsions of checking myself. This lasted for a while until another obsession occurred. Then it seemed as if my SO OCD took a step back. I would have flare ups but they would seem to pass. Recently, I had a very bad night of constant compulsions and looking at pictures and imagining things to check myself. After that night it was very distressing, it affected me to the point where people around me began to notice and ask me if I was okay. One of the big reasons I was so upset was my girlfriend, we have been together for over 3 years and I want to spend the rest of my life with her. I was thinking “Oh my god, if I am gay I can never be with her.” I would sit and cry about it thinking I would lose her and that might life would change because I was gay. I finally had enough and talked to her and my parents. We did some research and I was so shocked to find out that I had a form of OCD, it was like a weight being lifted off my shoulders just knowing that other people have been where I am and that I’m not gay. However, I may have naively expected the compulsions and obsessive thoughts to go away now that I knew I had an actual problem. But I found that the compulsions and thoughts were still there and I was going to put some effort into getting better. I have researched and now know what to do when experiencing intrusive thoughts, yet I still have been performing the compulsions which is just feeding into the OCD. I find myself having intrusive thoughts and then start performing compulsions to see if they are true. What really bothers me is when I have an intrusive thought that tells me that I do like something. But when I think about it I have no desire to pursue those thoughts. However when I feed into the compulsions they just seem to feed into each other. It is like my OCD ignores all the things that I know I like and goes straight to panic mode. I am also trying to do ERP and am going to start doing my best to get better. Does anyone have any tips for not performing the compulsions no matter how anxious you are feeling and no matter how real the intrusive thoughts seem to feel?

I’m freaking out right now really bad right now. Long story short: nutritionist and therapist want me to start higher levels of care for my disordered eating. My eating habits have been shit and i checked my iron levels like a couple of days ago and it was super low, but i haven’t been having any symptoms up until a few days ago. I have been having a light period in between my regular periods. Just a few minutes ago i started experiencing weird light headedness that comes and goes and now im freaking out so bad. I feel off and the anxiety does not help. Im scared of telling my parents i need help. Im scared that i really screwed myself over. Im scared that i really let myself go and im fucking scared of asking for help…….i just want to be ok.

any help is really welcomed and appreciated. I tend to hyper fixate on men outside of my relationship, they feel like crushes but I’m like 60% sure they’re meaningless dopamine rushes that happen with people I find interesting, friendship worthy, or physically appealing in some way. My hyperfixation recently shifted to a supervisor, not even an hour after meeting him :/ that’s fine, whatever, I can’t do much about it. I daydream and create like this drama romance in my head. Like good content for a movie or a book. Comparing it to that makes me feel less disloyal, and more understanding of why this might happen (I am a hopeless romantic, I adore stories). I’m home now and I was thinking of wearing a cuter shirt for work tomorrow because I went in an oversized hoodie today. This is a thought I had this morning before even meeting this man btw. But then my brain went to oh yeah I want to look attractive for this hyper fixation. It felt exciting to think that. I felt excited. Then the huge wave of dread hit me. I wanted to look good for another man? For a specific person? I can’t stop panicking I don’t know if this is normal, disloyal, a distortion, or what it is. I’m so confused. I felt happy when I got that thought. Maybe it was a dopamine hit or something I’m Colombian and we’re really big on looking our best 99.9% of the time. Even if it’s just to go to the gas station. I just feel so scared that I felt excitement over this one person. It’s extremely different for my boyfriend’s culture. Almost the opposite. I feel so disloyal and unworthy of my boyfriend. I doubt this was intrusive, it genuinely felt like me and I’ve had thoughts like that in the past. I just feel like a huge monster right now Please help :(

TMI!! Hey everyone, I was coming on here to ask if anyone has experienced this before! Im in an amazing relationship with my boyfriend so in this post I wanted to ask this question because this is how it felt to me! I remembered earlier today I was watching this movie, etc. and there was this spicy scene in it (iykyk) and it got me feeling some sort of way. This has happened before especially if I’ve played a game or watched a show with some content like this. I felt really in the mood and started to imagine my boyfriend and I doing those things together and I sort of decided to (yanno, the m word) hopefully everyone understands because I just don’t like saying the word😭, but I found that every time I do that, that’s when my ocd is at its worst/peak. Every time my mind has tried to convince me I’ve cheated, when I self pleasure. I get in the mood if I think of my boyfriend and I doing those things I see in movies, shows etc, and that’s when I’ll do it, But literally I realized after I’ve done that at times my ocd is at its worst because my mind will attack me constantly asking “Is this cheating? Does this make me a horrible girlfriend?” If I self pleasure, I also want to add that I mentioned it to my boyfriend at one time and he told me it wasn’t at all and that everything is okay, but constantly I feel guilty for it and extremely horrible. Just wanted to see if anyone else has experienced this?

Woke up this morning feeling so good, then I had this thought of “what if” I touched my son inappropriately last night while I was sleeping. I’ve been dealing with Pocd and I never thought something like this before. A little back ground my son is 5, nonverbal and sleeps next to me every night. For me, I am not much of a deep sleeper. I am somewhat of a light sleeper. Is there someone who has been though this? In what ways can I manage this? TIA

tw . . . . . . I don't want to trigger anyone, so please be warned before reading. I'm feeling pretty hopeless. I don't know if I deserve... anything. I've had two therapists now tell me I'm normal and I don't need to worry so much, but I find it hard to believe them. Just when I think I'm doing okay, thoughts flood back in. I feel like the world is better off without me in it and that others would agree if they weren't a paid therapist there to give me reassurance. I'm tempted to break up with my boyfriend because he doesn't deserve this. I want to pretend I'm okay for the sake of my parents. But if they passed away, I'm not sure I'd have much strength to live for myself. This feeling is pretty bad right now. Overwhelming. I have absolutely no love for myself. I can't even distract myself by watching TV or shows I love, because all I can think is, "Look at those people. They deserve to live and be happy, and I'm not one of them." Gah, this is bad. I'm an adult, and I feel like such a baby for feeling this way. How dramatic am I? How can other people have similar (if not worse) thoughts than me, and then still be ok with themselves? I miss the person I used to be. I miss feeling okay. I feel ok momentarily, but then it all comes crashing down. I can't stand it. All I want is for things to go back to how they used to be.

My pocd makes me feel really lonely. I have friends who I love but they also struggle with mental health too, and when I'm there to listen and support them sometimes it's just too much and I feel like a bad friend. I can't help but feel like it's not the same, I know you can't compare your struggles to others but sometimes when my friend is telling me how they feel a lack of motivation and depressed I honestly wish I was just dealing with that instead of that and fearing that I'm a pedophile ontop of it. Like at least the thing you're dealing with isn't something that will make 90% of the population despise you, you know? I know that sounds bad and isn't very mature but I'm always the therapist friend for other people, and I'm the only one actually seeking help and trying to get better and I arguably have the worst thing to deal with. I feel like my friends only want to talk to me when they're depressed or need advice and I'm so tired of it.

So I’ve talked to a couple of gay people and they all told me the same thing. They ALWAYS knew they liked guys and they have ever gotten aroused by a woman in their life. In fact they told me that they always found a woman’s body disgusting. Looking back in my life I’ve been attracted to girls for as long as I can remember even before puberty. All my fantasies were about girls and I can’t remember a time where I felt the same for a guy (because it never happened). At the end I can still get aroused by women and you can clearly see how much stupid this obsession about being gay is. Gay people can’t get instinctively aroused by a woman and like it. Groinal responses and sensations don’t mean anything because they simply do not bring joy or a feeling of desire. Instead they bring panic. I once got a groinal when “testing my reactions” and I was sitting there crying like my life is over. That’s not how genuine attraction works and no one has woken up one day feeling different and no one has been secretly gay and never noticed it and spent his whole life into women instead.

So I have an issue..My roomate doesnt wash her hands after going to the bathroom.And this trigger my ocd so much.I told my mom and she said she can transmit anything.She told me to talk with her...But idk how.I want to move and go to other room and idk how because we moved togheter because she had a troubling roomate.And we are collegues at university.I want to talk with her but idk how...she will ask herself what she did wrong and she is already in a bad state.She will ask me over and over and get upset

Does anyone else experience a moment of clarity where you feel strong relief that the intrusive thought isn’t true, only to then immediately start questioning if you’ve only convinced yourself that because you don’t want the thought to be true? I’m pretty confident it would take some crazy mental gymnastics to actually successfully convince myself I didn’t do something that I deep down knew I did, but every time I resist the compulsions and try to sit with the uncertainty or tell myself to think about what is logical, I usually briefly know that this probably didn’t happen but am unable to move on out of fear I’m just in denial and have convinced myself of that.

I don’t understand how my boyfriend can love me so much after everything I put him through. He constantly shows me how much he loves me, yet I feel like I can’t fully appreciate it. I can’t explain how badly I behave towards him when these thoughts take over, how often I lash out because of them, and how many times I’ve told him exactly what’s on my mind. He tries to use logic to help me, but it never seems to work. And now, even as I’m writing this, I feel like crying—yet at the same time, my mind tells me that I don’t care. This horrible feeling inside me won’t go away. I keep thinking, “What if I don’t like him?” That thought is always there. I wonder if I had unrealistic expectations about this relationship from the beginning, since he is my first boyfriend. What if I convinced myself I liked him just because I wanted my first relationship to be perfect? And now, I just can’t accept the truth? It scares me even more knowing that he moved to my city for me. I feel like I’m constantly upset, constantly sad. And despite everything, he’s always there for me. That makes me feel even worse because I don’t know what to do to feel okay again. Every time I talk to him, I get this strange feeling inside me, and I’m terrified that it means my thoughts are actually true. He tells me that my happiness shouldn’t depend only on him, that I should focus on more than just this relationship—because for over a year now, my mind has been stuck in an endless loop of questioning whether I love him or not. He asks me, “Who are you fighting? Why do you care so much? You’ve been asking yourself the same question for over a year—shouldn’t you know the answer by now?” And my response is always, “Because I want to be with you.” But then, when I try to answer whether I like him or not, more doubts take over. I start thinking, “Maybe I just can’t accept that I don’t love him. Maybe I just want to keep this relationship perfect.” The worst part is that he has never done anything wrong. He has always been patient, kind, and loving, yet I feel so lost. I don’t understand what’s happening. I don’t understand what I feel. And I don’t understand why I can’t understand what I feel. He also tells me that ever since I started reading so much about relationships and OCD online, I have gotten worse. And he’s right. I have become much worse than I was before. The problem is that before, I thought I was at my worst, but looking back, I was still able to feel happiness at times. Now, I feel completely stuck. I don’t know if I’m crying because I hate this feeling, or because I don’t want to think this way about him. It feels like I don’t even know what’s happening to me anymore.

If anyone is free I really need to talk. I’m panicking

Hello all, I delayed a compulsion today for 5 hours, but my anxiety never went down. It kept getting worse and worse until I finally did it. Is this unusual? Is this normal? How long of a delay is typical for it to go down naturally?

I think when people are saying OCD is egodystonic is really triggering me and I was just wondering if this has happened to anyone else? I’m going through a really bad relapse and right now I’m trying to figure out if my thoughts are truly egodystonic, like I how do I know I won’t act on them, how can I trust my emotions and everything. I feel really confused and I feel like I don’t know who I am anymore or how I carry on with life because it’s so long and I’m so unsure of everything that’s going on in my head. Like how do I know that this is OCD and true desires/urges. I’m so confused.