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the NOCD Community

I honestly don’t try to be up here a lot because it’s become a compulsion of mine. But I wanted to come up here because honestly I’m just so tired. I’ve seen so many disheartening comments about the color of my skin on TikTok like almost in every comment section regarding black people doing a crime. It’s to the point my people have started doing the same thing because of so many comments we get about our skin color on the daily. It’s to the point so many creators are getting exposed for being racist like just the other day Joey was caught being racist I honestly liked his content. Even other races don’t like us and of course there’s the trump supporters I really can’t be friends with people like that honestly and truly because they voted against my rights. But it’s to the point I have to think in the back of my head everytime I want to defend a white person or show support or even friend one it’s like I have to think do they even like you ? It brings me genuine tears that I have to think like this and I can’t be that little girl anymore that would be friends with everyone even then my white friends would tell me about their parents not wanting them to date black people but I was a kid so I wasn’t even listening Frl it’s all just sad man maybe in the next life it all won’t be so complicated.

I really need help rn but I feel like a horrible person. For context: I am on my period right now, 2 hours of sleep last night because cramps were so bad, haven't eaten until now and it's 7pm, had to work all day, so it's kinda just a perfect storm. On top of that my ROCD has lots to latch onto: 1) Me and my bf of almost 2 years just renewed our lease for another year and that just is obviously triggering for ROCD. 2) Somehow the biggest trigger is the fact that he shaved his beard last night, and he often wears a thick beard and when he shaves it's like he shaves 10 years off his face and I feel like I'm dating a teenager. My ROCD is really latching onto this and I'm struggling to feel attracted to him and that's opening a whole Pandora's box of ROCD fixations for me and I HATE that my brain blows up such a tiny thing into the end of the world. On top of that, I'm feeling the INCREDIBLY STRONG URGE to confess (which is a compulsion) to him that I'm having these thoughts but I know that would only give me temporary relief and would make him feel deeply insecure about himself for no good reason. I hate myself and I feel like he loves me unconditionally regardless of how I look and I'm just being so nitpicky and shallow.

So a few months ago a suffered with a really bad panic attack (I didn’t know what it was at the time) and my anxiety has never been the same since. It’s almost like I had to relearn living life with this new anxiety. I have had to force myself into uncomfy situations to remind myself that this will not over come me. It seems that my anxiety stems from being in a place I’m not familiar with or have this feeling that I may be stuck and can’t get out back to a place where my body feels at ease. I wanted to expose myself to a very uncomfortable situation to prove that I will be ok. So I took myself and 15 year old brother on a 3 day long trip to 2 major cities NYC and Philly. I did have some small moments where I felt heart palpitations or that I couldn’t relax (mainly driving into these cities/ being stuck in traffic is what spiked it) But over all I’m feeling really happy with how I managed the trip. I think I’m just mourning the person I was before this anxiety. A few years ago I would’ve never felt that kind of anxiety on the trip. Maybe leading up to it. But I’m hoping the more I continue to force myself out of this bubble that anxiety wants to put me in, I will begin to regain the ability to be away from home and relax again.

When did you get diagnosed and what was the reason you knew that wasn't,,normal,, behavior and how did you handle the diagnosed and felt after you got it? I got diagnosed with I think 12/13? And it's bcuz I would arrange tables and my mum found it annoying. But for me the diagnosed was somehow relieving bcuz I knew I wasn't a freak ,but on the other hand I was sad getting the diagnosed bcuz it was written on paper that I am mentally ill

My boyfriend of 3 months is leaving for college in 2 weeks and I am terrified. He is picking up a girl on his way that is 12 hours away from where I am and they are driving together to the college. What if he realizes that I am not the right person for him? What if he falls out of love? What if he forgets what me and him have built here? It’s all about the “what ifs” and I don’t know how to stop. I have been praying for weeks now and I know the Lord will work in us to help this but what if my boyfriend is not in my future? I am terrified and have no idea how to stop the spiral.

this is how my google search history is looking like. do i know its bad? yes, can i stop it? no . i cant, it feels to real i dont have that “i know i love him” feeling that i used to have its like the thoughts and fears became true, i dont feel love im never happy i dont have moments of clarity, i have changed drastically, im not as living as i used to i never say i love you. I have too many thoughts. maybe this is not rocd. i always make my bf upset, i feel like i dont care, im scared that maybe im just scared if change and this is denial. i camt imagine a future together, i cant be happy. i used to be happy, i am thinking i never loved him, i cant remember how it felt to feel love for him. i dont understand what “chose love” means, when i dont k ow if i want to chose love. am i forcing myslef to feel? i cant stop please help me

Hi everyone! It’s been a very long time I’ve been here but it’s only in matters it means most that I reach out to my community! So I’m a huge car guy, and have had quite a few fun cars. However i have been plagued with the OCD bug and cars “having” issues or “vibration” at certain speeds (sounds crazy) Now regardless whether or not the car vibrates or shakes or NOT at all. I’m fully convinced my car is completely and utterly broken. It sucks the joy out of me and it’s all i can think about when driving. My question or “topic” is what would you do in this situation to “expose” or face this head on. It’s (my ocd who I’ve named Karl) is telling me my car is “vibrating” above 80 mph and that the car is broken entirely. Any help would be great! In the meantime enjoy a picture of the car in question 😂

I just recently realized that this whole thing with asking about my partner’s past was a compulsion. At the time, I thought that the more I knew about his sexual past, the better I’d feel. I genuinely believed that having all the answers would bring me peace. But the opposite happened. The more I learned, and the more I pushed for specifics, the more it hurt. I pushed him to give me really detailed answers—and now I feel like my OCD has so much ammunition because of it. Now I’m trying to stop asking, stop analyzing, and stop hyper-fixating. Even though I feel intense discomfort and anxiety, I’ve been doing my best to sit with it and not give in. But my mind still races—it imagines him with those people, replays things I know, questions how graphic or emotional those moments were. It’s torture. And what’s hardest is that my partner has reassured me over and over that he’s never felt for anyone what he feels for me. We’ve committed our relationship to God, we got baptized, and we’re planning to get married. But the damage from all of the questioning and the OCD spirals has taken a toll. Now when I bring things up—even if it’s not about the past—he assumes it is. And it ruins date nights or intimate moments. It’s like this issue has taken over everything. We both love each other. We’re not giving up. We’re in therapy, and we’re trying. But it’s heavy. It’s draining us both. And I don’t feel like I’m choosing this—this feels like something I’m suffering through, not something I’m doing on purpose. He’s starting to understand that more, but I know his patience is running thin. So I guess I’m just asking… has anyone else gone through something like this? Has anyone pushed for too much information and then felt stuck—like you know too much and can’t go back? How do you rebuild your relationship when anxiety and OCD have already caused so much damage? Any encouragement, tips, or even just hearing that I’m not alone would really mean a lot.

My partner told his therapist about my OCD compulsions and his therapist basically said that I’m not being accountable for the role I play in our arguments even after my partner said that I am. His therapist just said I’m insecure and need help. I feel really dismissed right now and down.

Hi everyone This is my first post been going through rough 4 years many many themes but my current theme is fear of psychosis this is the roughest one so far and actually believed I was in phycosis and still doubt it sometimes when it was at its worst I was jumpy and questioning why my mind was suddenly hyper analysing things I don’t normally care to notice my normal floaters in my eyes kept playing tricks on me and still do when the odd one jumps up or moves quicker than normal, feeling like I was seeing shadows or mistaking any faint noise as a whisper or something to be alarmed at, vivid patterns and pictures in my mind when I shut my eyes for bed and bothered me so much made me feel like I had taken some sort of drug, having to get reassurance from everyone that they would see the same fly I saw just fly into the room. It has become abit better the more aware I have become but it’s still a fight sometimes to not want to check or google or question this theme was the key to getting an OCD diagnosis. Finally in therapy and trying to label it as often as I can now. My takeaway is lack of sleep and hormones really do make it worse or even trigger it but now the fear is here, it is all the time even if it’s more mild when getting better sleep and at certain times in the month ! I’m finding it a hard battle now I’m aware it is OCD I’m doing emdr hopefully it helps. There is always that underlying fear that I’m missing something or I’m in that age bracket I hope one day I can look back and say I got through this particular phase but at the moment it seems hard to think my brain will ever “relax” again I would like to start enjoying my life again. I’m from the uk and would love to find a person to chat too in a similar theme to me it would be nice to help each other out on those bad days and even be able to make some light out of our similar experiences if that would help I’m 26 female.

I'm doing ERP to beat my 3.5 long POCD with groinal responses. This implies walking near kids and trying to loosen up my hyperfixation on groinal responses (not caring about what I feel there). Obviously ERP is distressing. In fact, being scared is probably a good sign in this context, because it means I'm doing my exposures correctly. However, what's much more scary is that in all of these years of OCD there were countless times when I experienced actual muscle contractions/retractions in groinal area. And I can't tell if all of those were accidents. Sure, I don't want to do it (except if I'm relaxing muscles in order to avoid groinal sensations), but was it really an accident? And that's what is destroying me. I'm actively having those feelings near poor kids, even though I always believed myself to be a good person. Now there's no turning back. And I'm turning 18 in two weeks. How can I be enthusiastic about anything when I know that my OCD turned me into an actual monster. I want to continue ERP, but I can't imagine myself living on happily even if I somehow cure OCD

Ruminating is such a sneaky compulsion. It feels like the only “reasonable” thing to do in the moment because your brain is screaming at you that something is urgent, important, and absolutely essential. It’s like your mind is sounding sirens, telling you that you have to think it through right now because everything looks so black and white in the moment. The trap is, if I don’t ruminate, it feels like I’m just ignoring reality and living in some magical fantasy world. But the truth is, even when things feel the most logical and crystal clear to me with OCD, they are almost always totally irrational to everyone else. Someone said something on here that stuck with me: “nobody ever ruminated their way to certainty.” And that’s it. Rumination is just an attempt to feel certain, but with OCD there is no such thing as enough certainty. The more you chase it, the longer you stay stuck. The work, as uncomfortable as it is, is learning to sit in the uncertainty and stop feeding the cycle…even when everything in you is screaming to figure it out. That’s the way forward.

i am 18 years old and a couppe days ago i posted about the state of my house (cat pee, cat throw up, grime, dirt, etc everywhere), and how my parents dont clean/are used to living this way. im trying to clean the kitchen, i was cleaning it and cleaned majority of the counters, the stove, the dishwasher, now my clothes have a faint cat pee smell, the house is basically drenched in cat pee. i feel stuck and really isolated, i hate living here but at the same time, its my fault too for not cleaning. it is just hard for me to clean, i dont know why, and the house has been this way since 2023-2024 or so. idk what to do and i feel so alone, i wish my mom would help. idk what my girlfriend would think if she knew the state of my house

Triggered 7 days ago. No relief yet. Suggestions please, Im running on fumes now from fatigue, on ways to reduce my mental stress?

Hi! I’m trying to say this story as short as possible. I started realizing I was having an ocd flare up a long time ago and I chose private psychotherapy because I thought it would be better. I had a bunch of other issues and I wanted one quick (I had tried 2 before) and when I met someone that I felt was kind of okay I trusted them with my ocd. The thing was that she was NOT specialized in ocd, in fact, looking back I realize that she barely knew how to handle it at all. I had a really good one when I was younger and I was not having symptoms when I quit years ago, so it surprised me a LOT that all I had learned got unlearned because I trusted a bad psychologist. I have currently Rocd and a bit of compulsive staring as well, plus tricomania. I really really want to warn you, DON’T LET A NON OCD SPECIALIST GIVE YOU ADVICE OR ERP!!!!! It has taken me a while to realize all the damage she did. But I was so desperate for a solution at the time that I ignored the signs. She had no idea what she was doing and she actually asked me what we should do! She also made my staring worse, because she told me to try to not look (which is actually wrong), she also asked me if I was really in love with my partner, EVEN THOUGH I HAD NO DOUBTS AT THE TIME!!! She thought that I actually wanted sex with someone else and was like yeah it’s normal some people do that, instead of understanding my feelings and that I actually didn’t want to, but it was an intrusive thought. (It was very different from the classic: you know what maybe maybe not erp thing) She misunderstood everything and I now have to rewire my brain.

i saw a trigger in a instagram reel. i noticed the face immediately, i guess that's because she had a unique beautiful face and that's precisely what ticked me and made me alerted. and my brain started telling me that meant something, the cuteness and so on the potential danger that i felt, it seemed like a cue that something was there. and my brain started testing me with intrusive se&ual images. and im afraid that they weren't completely distasteful to my brain even though i didnt want it and i was freaking out. im afraid there might be of component of truth that makes something in my brain wrong. why did it feel like there was a potential "allure" in those intrusive images? why did it feel like i could like it? was it because the more taboo is something the more it feels "alluring" automatically? something in those se&ual intrusive images felt affine, akin, feasible to maybe my preferences? was it the association between intrusive pretty face + the intrusive image of a private area overlapping in meaning making me think that there could be some likeness? some potential attraction towards it? or is it really true and i have something in my brain that ive been in denial this whole time? maybe i'm a danger. im utterly worried abt this. why was i able to feel like there was some affinity towards those se&ual intrusive association-images? please if somebody knows, tell me, because until then i don't think i can rest in peace. and it's not a matter of uncertainty, this is something untolerable. i cant live like a guilty person and act like im innocent and that is all ocd. it feels perversed.

I had an "OCD episode" several months back from NOT doing the compulsion. Or at least not "resolving" / dealing with the intrusive thought. What if "Not" dealing with it creates an issue that never subsides or makes you worse? This sounds dramatic, but I literally feel and believe like I was psychologically traumatized by not doing a compulsion --- which for me has been ruminating and "problem solving" to "deal" with whatever "challenge" / intrusive thought comes up. When I wasn't able to "deal" with it properly in a kind of stalemate, the "anxiety" last for at least a month. And it was severe -- brain fog, sundowning, cognitive difficulties, I think maybe even disassociation. You could even call it a mental breakdown and burnout (from OCD itself). Even went to a neurologist 'cause I think thought there was brain damage or some sht. I'm STILL recovery from that. I feel worse cognitively, and even think it that episode pushed me into some type of clinical depression. So isn't that lovely that "not dealing with the OCD / not doing the compulsion" is actually a shtty choice (for me) as well.

I'm trying to get my head around ERP. What is the best way to describe how it's a "solution." Imo I think OCD happens with people who are very concerned with their own genuine integrity and probably their own "morality." So when something (like an uncomfortable "real event" that actually happened) messes that up, it's hard to grapple with that...hence the endless rumination and trying to "problem solve" it. But the mind doesn't let you sleep (i.e. OCD) if something is controversial and doesn't sit with you. Or if you obsess over something and it's based on a rooted fear. You just can't "let it go," it has to be addressed and dealt with. But what happens when it is NEVER dealt with? How does ERP address that dilemma as a permanent solution? Or does ERP only address compulsions and anxiety, but it doesn't actually deal with the issue causing it. Do you ever get REAL peace of mind? Or is just something to make you feel "less anxious" etc? Thanks I just want peace of mind. I haven't had true peace of mind in several years.

I have OCD and C-PTSD and so sometimes having a different opinion makes me feel like I'm automatically wrong or like I'm a bad person for thinking differently. I feel like this is esepecially true with social media and Tik Tok when you see other people's opinions from a lot of different perspectives and people get labeled at a bad person by strangers who don't know them. I don't want to feel like a bad person for having a different opinion than friends and/or the internet. I mostly think the same as them in a lot of different ways, but one or two things I think differently (examples of my thoughts I see are different sometimes: I think people can change but that doesn't excuse their actions and they should get therapy; I don't think all AI is bad, it just needs better regulation and shouldn't be used to replace people, I think it can be a helpful tool; I think just because someone uploads something that's considered "weird" on a public site (like cosplay, or a fashion choice, or etc) doesn't make it okay to make a video about them and making fun of them or be mean (like the teen/child who did the "bad" red lobster cover)) How do I learn to be okay with having different opinions than other people?

On Reddit, in a porn subreddit, I saw a NSFW post about a Japanese actress that was found having made a porn video, and a commentator alleged they made it when they were way too young to have done so and that made me really scared. Even though another comment said they were likely older, I can’t rest at all. I didn’t even know about that info beforehand and I don’t want to go back or check on the post and the comments more than twice. If that commentator was right, how could it still be posted up on reddit??? What do I believe????