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the NOCD Community

i really need to know if God is real. It’s the root of my existential ocd if god isn’t real nothing makes sense.

The more you realize how fake OCD is The easier and faster recovery becomes.

I have a question. Is excessive note taking an OCD thing? Like if I have to outline a chapter I leave nothing out. Sometimes my outline is more pages than the chapter. Also I heard that constantly using new materials is an OCD thing. Like always starting new notebooks, getting new pens, restarting imperfect flash cards, etc. I never really struggle with perfectionism but maybe I do on a mild or moderate level. It does affect my functioning a little bit in terms of things taking forever to do but it’s not severe mental distress.

How to stop ruminating when your thoughts make you unsure of what you believe and you feel like you have to figure it out or you will never know or you will start doing things that are bad and will get you in jail because you stop believing what you've always believed and what you've been taught bc other people your age do and what if you do too but like worse and don't do normal rebellious things like drugs but awful things (harm ocd thoughts or even pocd thoughts) I am so scared and anytime I hear of someone rebelling I get anxious or think that I will or might want to 😫😫

Anyone have any tips for dealing with uncertainty form suicidal thoughts with harm ocd?

This is very troubling to me and seems to be something that’s going to crush me does anybody have an experience where they’re talking to somebody maybe while trying to fix an OCD compulsion and then hang up the phone with them and a little while later they have this thought Of the person saying something to them so it’s a thought it’s not audible but the thought is kind of in the other persons voice if that makes sense and then it’s very troubling

So I messed up the other day and read a statistic online regarding a percentage of people with harm ocd and mental/anxiety disorders as a whole harming and/or killing themselves... While the percentage wasn't huge, it was still a percentage/larger than I wish that I hadnt accidentally seen... I'm sorry for the huge trigger, but that currently has me still stuck in a panic mode right now.

anyone else’s OCD surround a weird thought they had as a child?

i need some help. i have hocd as well as a porn addiction. from a young age i stumbled upon porn, specifically lesbian porn and watersports. let me just tell you now i am straight but because of stumbling upon the porn it has turned my whole life upside down. its made me think that im gay, and that i have a pee kink. im 10000000% straight. im in a relationship with a boy who i adore. i see women as sisters and im not attracted to them, but for some reason my hocd has come back stronger than ever after! i was doing so well and now after months of battling it i’ve relapsed in watching lesbian porn, and done the thing that im most ashamed of, i was masturbating to daddy kink videos and my ocd told me to look up peeing instead and then i got aroused and peed. i feel ashamed and so disgusted i feel like dying :( i feel like i have to confess it to someone or i will explode and have. a panic attack. is this ocd doing this? I can’t go back to feeling like this again. it was so hard to beat this the first time. my ocd is a mess. i have a spending addiction, porn addiction, and now this godawful gross pee thing :( is anyone else going through this or have been through similar with porn addiction and ocd thinking you like pee kinks? :( i just need some advice because i don’t know what to do and contrary to what my ocd thinks i don’t like the addictions it just makes me think that i do and I can’t live without them. but i can :( i need help :( i don’t wanna feel like this disgusting person. i was doing so well :(

One of the hardest things about OCD is that people who don’t have it NEVER understand it. It can be so frustrating. I’m so upset right now because I was talking to my friend, who is aware that I’m in therapy for OCD. One of my themes is a fear of illnesses. My friend started to tell me a story that began with “OMG, I know someone in the hospital who died because of —“ I cut him off and told him I can’t listen to the end of that story because it will freak me out. What did he do? Finished it anyway. “No, let me finish, I was just going to tell you that...” as if his desire to tell me was somehow more pressing than my anxiety? Now I’m freaking out about the story, of course. This was completely preventable. I’m both angry AND anxious. Great.

Recovery story :) I had untreated and undiagnosed ocd that ran my life from 5 years old to 20 years old. I had every theme, so intensely. Sexuality ocd, harm ocd, cleanliness ocd, health ocd, organization ocd and body dysmorphia. I had multiple panic attacks daily for many of those years. I truly truly stopped doing all of my compulsions about 4 weeks into nocd therapy. Until that point during those first 4 weeks I was stopping physical compulsions, but i was still reasuring myself i wasnt going to do or be my fear etc. However, once I stopped all compulsions, reassurance seeking, self-reassurance, avoidance, EVERYTHING, I experienced terrible anxiety. Possibly the worst in my life for about a week. I was doubting everything. Then came the relief. I faced my fears. I accepted the real possibility that my worst fear could come true. I welcomed it even. This sounds terrifying but bear with me... If we give ourselves true permission to be or do what we fear, our ocd has no power over us. It attacks what we love and makes us think the opposite, but the only. The ONLY way out is to accept it might be true. To accept my worst fear might come true. I welcomed it even. And in a moment all that terrible anxiety went away, all the terrible intrusive feelings ceased, and i was brought back to my normal feelings, my normal wants and needs, my normal self. I was me. I was safe. I have been in recovery for weeks now, and things pop up every now and then but I feel so much more normal. And it is thanks to 3 things.... .Accepting my worst fear may or may not come true. My ocd thoughts may be real thoughts, and they may be ocd thoughts. .Resisting all compulsions (I did this in phases but its better to do quicker than slower) .Exposing myself to my fears .Feeling that intense INTENSE distress that comes with resisting compulsions and accepting uncertainty, and letting it fall naturally (it takes a bit) but it will fall. And now, I have hope, I have peace, I accept all that is and might be, but my ocd has been rooted out through feeling anxiety without compulsions, and so my brain is re-wiring itself. It is healing. That pain you feel when you resist your compulsions? That is your brain trying to heal from ocd. We can re-wire our brains from ocd. We can, and i did. I had severe ocd for 15 years. If I can, you can too. It takes alot of strength to resist compulsions during INTENSE anxiety during exposures, but this is in your hands. You have the power to heal your own brain. So, try to identify any and all compulsions, (mental and physical), and resist them, feel that terrible pain and anxiety, ride the wave and feel true, beautiful relief from ocd when the wave falls. Recovery works 100% if we agree to stop 100% of our compulsions. It will be the hardest thing you will ever do, but it will be worth it. Don't give up, the peace in recovery is worth this agony. Sending love to all of you beautiful people. You. Can. Do. This. 😇

Reminder to self: 1. My brain can and will generate “intrusive thoughts” at anytime. 2. I promise to accept them as OCD related thoughts and to realize that they are false alarms. 3. I promise not to allow these false alarms to trigger me to respond by turning these thoughts into feelings of self-doubt and fear. 4. I promise to be kind to myself by not allowing uncontrolled thoughts to run rampant causing me anguish, fatigue and pain. 5. I will not be critical of who I am and will not compare myself to others. I understand that life is precious and that I have a lot to offer everyday.

I cant win with myself. I feel like im too fragile minded to be hanging out with people that may be negative at times but then I don’t feel good not playing with them. I feel like I’ll lose myself if i do though? And that i already am by our interactions today? Is this ocd? Or just me watching out for myself

Been feeling rlly sad ab not being able to recover...I just want to turn back time & be happy again. Also afraid It’s never gonna get better

I stg I spend more time being afraid of being into women or feeling that weird arousal ocd feeling than actually living my life. What the heck ocd, I have things to do🤡 I almost stopped reading this book because of all the sexual references but I think the exposure, even if I get “aroused” or feel uncomfortable and have that weird feeling, I need to keep going. It’s a good book. I won’t let ocd ruin my reading time

My boyfriend and I just broke up. Anybody out there have successful relationships with OCD?

Whats the most stupid thing you ever heard from QUORA about Hocd? I know one

Hi! I need advise ASAP please. I have been making someone uncomfortable with my staring ocd. I want to have a chat with her today to explain my anxiety but also don’t want to go into ocd or staring ocd. I just want to explain that I’ve been struggling with my anxiety lately and I’m finding it really difficult to look at people in the face. Any advise on the best way to do this? I just want it to be short and sweet.

Kinda big spike tonight 😐 I was feeling pretty good today not gonna lie, had therapy this morning that went great, hung out with my family and my thoughts were at bay for the most part. Then this evening I wasn’t feeling so great I think it was something I ate. One of those things where your stomach is hurting in waves and sending you to the bathroom. Plus I was worried about my cat not feeling well either and thinking about a potential trip my family was talking about where I was peak OCD suffering so I guess I was vaguely reminded of that. So anyways I’m in the restroom not feeling great and I got an intrusive thought about my usual theme (suicidal OCD) and it scared me because I was like “what if that was a real thought “ etc. And I’ve been in therapy for months now I know I shouldn’t have reacted like that but I did. So I went to lay down and took a nap. When I woke up I was like whoa I’m feeling super panicky and anxious. It literally felt like how it was in the beginning of my OCD onset. I went to shower and I was terrified. However, I started implementing the skills I learned in therapy and have slowly started to calm down. But omg why did it all come and hit me so bad. Like it literally left like day 1 fear pre-therapy. Welp 🤷‍♀️

Is Break-Up OCD a thing? I was with my ex-girlfriend/fiancée for eight years, though we knew each other for ten. She was my first and only *real* relationship, and I thought she was my soulmate. This woman wrote me legit love letters. She admired me so much that she once said that she’d “ride into Heaven on my coattails.” She said she couldn’t wait to have me beside her when she gave birth one day. We even had a little running gag of proposing to each other at special spots...I used to joke that we held the record for how many proposals were accepted in a row. But after a few years, she faded out of the relationship. It’s hard to be 100% certain, because in the last few years she stopped sharing her inner world with me, but I’m pretty sure she suffers from pathological workaholism (like, a legit addiction to working on which she hinges her sense of self-worth, not just a lot of overtime) and PTSD (her mother was abusive, her father neglectful, she Saw Some Shit while in the foster care system, and she admitted once to being sexually abused, though she never gave details) that she either never had a true handle on, or that she lost her handle on. We had always been long distance to some degree, and in the last couple years of the relationship she would stonewall me when I tried to arrange visits (not respond to my attempts to make plans), not pick up my calls, take anywhere from three days to two weeks to answer texts, decline sex...everything that basically says she’s just not that into me. But when I finally forced myself to call it quits, she told me that she loved me and always would. Though in the intervening time, she hasn’t changed her communication (well. really, her lack thereof) at all. The last time I saw her in person was 2016, and the last time she communicated with me at all was Christmas 2019 (I’ve reached out to her since, to either plead for her to talk to me, or to arrange for me to send her some of her things that I have in my possession, but she never responds). I used to get heavy OCD episodes in regards to my behavior during the relationship, fearing that I had unwittingly sexually abused her. Since going on Prozac and getting a better handle on my thoughts, I’ve come to terms with the behaviors I feared were abusive (namely that if I DID in fact ever hurt her, it was due to my inexperience, inability to mind-read, and neurodivergent cognition, and that punishing myself for honest mistakes was an inappropriate response). I’ve gotten a better handle on ALL of my OCD, actually..the POCD, the Contamination OCD, the Real Event OCD, the Responsibility OCD. I’m still working on it all, but I haven’t lost myself in obsessions or experienced the soul-crushing agony I used to live with 24/7 in a long time. Which is why the fact that, after all this time, I still shed tears over her and pray that she’ll be like she was when we first met and come back to me, is so troubling to me. Is this inability to let her go a manifestation of OCD? If so, why am I recovering from literally every other manifestation, and not this one? And if it’s not OCD, what IS wrong with me, that we haven’t even been in the same time zone for four years, but I still want to cry when a song she put on a mixtape for me once comes on the radio at work? Is this enduring grief, yearning for closure, and feeling of sickness when I consider dating someone else normal or pathological? Is Break-Up OCD even a thing? Should I be applying ERP?