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the NOCD Community

How is medication working for y'all? I'm thinking of taking it to maybe help me because the anxiety and physical symptoms pull me back. I've never taken medication before and am scared and don't really even know where to start. Is it a journey to find the right medication?

Does anyone else’s Harm OCD have cannibalism as a theme? For example, having a random intrusive thought about eating a human being. Traditionally, the person being in front of you and then the intrusive thought attacks? TO BE CLEAR, I DO NOT WANT TO BE A CANNIBAL NOR WISH TO PARTAKE IN ANY FORM OF CANNIBALISM! Unfortunately, I watched the movie Hannibal Lecter at to young of an age and my undeveloped mind and what ultimately turned out to be OCD/Harm OCD brain; unfortunately had it ‘Stick,’ as they say in OCD language. That being the case, my Harm OCD evidently latched onto the theme/movie and my biggest fear would be ever becoming a cannibal. And those of us with OCD in general/in this case Harm OCD; it attacks our biggest fears and goes entirely against our morals, values, etc. I’ve honestly never voiced this in any public forum before and have only spoken about this in private with my NOCD therapist, but I feel that exposing this and ‘Letting go of it,’ in a sense will truly start the healing/recovery process. Any/all feedback would be greatly appreciated! Sending love, compassion and support to all those battling the monster that is OCD (Harm) 💌

Hi, any other bisexual people struggling with SOOCD or ROCD on here? (Don’t know if this is reassurance or not)

Happy #FloofFriday everyone! I took a break from posting for a few days, I've just been incredibly down. Could use some words of encouragement idk. I'm pretty bummed today, but I am working on self care and I hope all of you wonderful people are too ❤❤❤ Idk why gyps looks like this 🤣 but she was posing this morning so I was like why not ahaha

I am scheduled to have the COVID booster later today. Getting the original vaccine was traumatic. Not because of the vaccine, but because of the anxiety. I am SO tempted to cancel my appointment. But I'm going to treat it like an exposure. I am having a ton of intrusive thoughts and my anxiety is through the roof. But I am going to do it.

Guys has anyone had a pocd thought thay was so disgusting but you felt like you would like it and now your whole life feels ruined completely? I'm not sure if i can move on from this

I dont understand how we're supposed to ignore "intrusive thoughts", when they honestly feel so real. I mean, how am I supposed to just accept the thoughts, when my brain/body is telling me something IS wrong. It genuinely feels like something needs attending to & my thoughts dont come in the form of "what if", they come in the form of "something is wrong and you need to do something". How are you supposed to know if something needs to be done or not?? I dont get how we're supposed to dismiss fear when it's telling us to do something.

Can ocd come through your dreams? I dreamt tonight that my partner broke up with me and i also had to move out. It was sooooo real between the crying etc and then my partner texted me and acted like everything is normal So in my dream i questioned if the break up happened or was i going crazy. I woke up feel on edge, feeling crazy and keep telling myself its ok and told myself to get up for a glass of water to break the laying in bed cycle. Its 4 am now and i feel a bit of relief but im now with a severe headache and just mentally exhausted.

Okay I feel stuck so much on this issue in my relationship about past stuff that I don’t know how to solve or if I should even talk about to him and I have the urge to blurt everything out because it’s bottling up inside me and I don’t know what to do and this happens often and I can’t even go to sleep it always takes hours for me. It’s like do i ask him about some stuff and just accept the answer because I feel like I need to do that to move on and I don’t know if it’s ocd or do I just accept that it makes no sense. If I just got an answer that he is sexually attracted to girls then I know I’d freak out but I’d accept it and not have to worry about things that don’t make sense. He told me that because I can’t handle the truth well he will change his answers up and so I wonder if the things he told me that he isn’t sexually attracted to girls is true or not. So it makes me want to ask to get clarity on the situation since we are talking things out about all of our relationship problems to get clarity from one another and move forward and heal. Anyone have any advice? The feeling I get when I say stuck is like claustrophobic type of feeling in my body.

If the goal of ERP isn’t to make the OCD go away, what is the end goal? What can I hope for?

I’m so confused right now. I feel really calm about my intrusive thoughts and I feel calm overall. I can still get moments of feeling uneasy but overall I’m calmer. Yesterday was really difficult. Does that mean I don’t have OCD? I just don’t get this. Even today I was scared with the thought of what If I’m lying about my intrusive thoughts and my experience with OCD and I’m really just a crazy person.....and then later today when I felt calmer I was like omg what if I really don’t have OCD and I really I’m just making it up. I feel so calm right now. I’m kind of guessing maybe because I talked to my mom about my some intrusive thoughts have and have had in the past and I was worried about telling her but she understood and so I feel a weight lifted off my shoulders. Is it possible to suddenly feel ok?

I hate feeling normal… I feel like I know my answer but I don’t wanna admit it… I am so depressed I hate it… I’ve gained so much weight… I’ve kept my weight off for 7 years…. So I am depressed about that now… but eating is the only comfort I have… I don’t have motivation to do anything… I say I love you to my partner and I know it’s true bc yes I love him but now I obsess about him leaving me… which is something I know I don’t have control over if it did happen… but I am scared it will that my obsessive behavior can’t handle it… I am seriously unhappy… I know I love him and I know I don’t wanna leave him. I’ve never had a clear mind in over a year well… in 9 1/2 years… how can you choose to love someone if you are just constantly doubting ur feelings for them? How can you even make love to them if all you hear is that you don’t love them or aren’t attracted over and over again… and when you hug them it feels fake each time… All I do is think about him… I am just so mentally exhausted… i wake up feeling nothing and go to bed feeling nothing at all… how can I be happy anymore feeling like this 24/7… I don’t even feel attractive to myself at all… I didn’t have the greatest confidence before this but I was happy with my weight before the depression… Like right now I am depressed I ate four slices of pizza… I am just truly unhappy with myself…

I recently have got it stuck in my head that I WANT to go down on a girl. And would prefer it more than a man. I have been ruminating for like three days now and comparing and check and I’m really exhausted. Does anyone have an idea for erp that I can use to work through this fear ?

I actually made way TOO many horrible mistakes in my life and my real event OCD seems to never shut up. :( Pls someone save me from my own past mistakes. I'm only 16 and my life is hell

I would love to see more recovery success stories, or people on the road to recovery on this feed. I know people are in desperate times, but we need to lift each other up. We are a community for a reason. Let’s all have one goal in common & that’s to find help & HEAL from this. How can we take steps to do that today?

HOCD I’m so done with you. You’ve taken everything away from me and every day you make it harder to disbelieve you. I was so happy in my relationship, I was happy with my career. Now I wake up anxious and just don’t want to face the day. Now every little action that goes on in my life is sexualised. It’s become my life… just checking. And the worst thing is all I’ve got left is my compulsions. Because if I didn’t have them I’d probably fully believe you. People on here talk about suppressed sexuality/fluidity. Well I don’t want mine to change, I was perfectly happy going through my life with confidence, OCD was manageable to the point I forgot I had it. And the worst part is you’ve dug up all this stuff that I don’t even see how I can to back to how things were. How will I ever have my old life back when you’ve convinced me it was all one big lie! I had just got to the happiest stage of my life, ready to settle down, I wanted it so badly. And now You’ve taken that away as well, I don’t even know if I want it anymore. Sometimes you even make me resent my partner, telling me that if she wasn’t there I could go and live my ‘gay life.’ Well I never asked for that and never wanted it, had never thought about it. But months of HOCD later it’s all I can think about, now it feels like I do want that, like I do resent my partner. I can’t even kiss her anymore without you filling my head with thoughts. I want to be intimate with her but I can’t, I want to find the excitement and spark again but I can’t and yano what I’ve given up on it coming back! Thanks a bunch brain

Does anyone else's POCD get affected because of their preference of woman? Like I dont find myself too attracted to woman with HUGE boobs like most people do. I prefer around medium sized which makes POCD trigger.

Is it ok to tell people I have OCD? I feel guilty when I do. Only my mom and one of my friends knows my theme but I told my other friend today I struggle with OCD but I didn’t tell her my theme or what my thoughts are about. I’ve been told by my mom to not talk to anyone about it. Just her and my therapist. So when I end up saying “yeah I was diagnosed with OCD” I feel guilty. I don’t want anyone to ever misunderstand me or twist things and think I’m a monster. I don’t want people to hate me. I feel like my own friend that I told kind of treats me different ever since I told him. I guess I just don’t want the same thing that happened when I told my mom to happen again. She called me names and screamed at me. She told me I would end up in the “looney bin” and some other things and I don’t want that to happen with my closest friends that I literally work with almost everyday

GUILT Hey everyone, first of all, My ROCD journey stemmed almost two years ago from my previous relationship with my ex. In the end, she cheated on me and left me for someone else. In January, I got into a new relationship ship with my amazing girlfriend. I literally can’t describe how much I love this girl. She literally does everything to make me happy. We have the best bond and relationship ever which obviously OCD loves to destroy. Lately I’ve been dealing with the obsession of “wanting others” feeling. So basically this is where my mind latches onto other girls and convinces me I want/ would rather be with them instead of my girlfriend with no actual reason given. It doesn’t matter how ugly or how unlikely that chance could even be it will literally give me the feeling of wanting another girl. Unfortunately, it has latched onto my ex who bare in mind I hate the guts of which obviously makes it a bit more difficult as I’ve been fighting against the feelings even more than other girls because I know what type of person she is obviously because I had a past with her and she showed me her true colours. OCD is now making me feel guilty and trying to blame me for why she cheated. It could literally be the tiniest things. She cheated on her other ex partner who she was in a relationship for 5 years with him so I know that’s bullshit. Then it goes to “yeah well she never cheated until she met you” so tries convincing me it’s my problem instead of hers. Anyways, the other day I was on tiktok and noticed when I was seeing my current girlfriend before we made it official that I had liked some other girls tiktoks which is making me feel super guilty because for some reason I don’t do it anymore and would find it an issue if I did but why didn’t I back then. This is making me feel like a cheater and like my ex girlfriend and is giving me thoughts like we must be compatible if we both cheat even though I didn’t even realise at the time I was liking other girls tiktoks until now and is giving me false memory OCD making me believe I liked it for other girls to talk to me. I was also talking to another girl before I met my girlfriend on tinder who bare in mind I had never met nor dated just talked and she found out I was talking to other girls and went mad at me so it’s making me believe that I’m sort of cheater and is making me feel guilty for it. Please help all I want is to spend the rest of my life with my amazing girlfriend without having OCD and being manipulated into getting back with my ex when I prefer my current girlfriend who treats me right. It makes me feel like I’m a cheater or that I will cheat on my girlfriend which I believe is totally wrong and then it says you didn’t think it was wrong to like other girls tiktoks when you first started seeing her

Hi guys, I just had an extremely long discussion with my boyfriend about my cheating ocd, what I believe I've done that constitutes cheating on him, and he told me everything is okay and that I'm focusing too much on small things (I'll think brushing past someone attrattive in the shop is cheating: "you did that on purpose" - and my bf said, even if you did, it's so small etc). However even though I am somehwat feeling better, that was obviously just a whole load of reassurance, so doubts are obviously going to follow, and I'll be up all night thinking "but I left this thing out!" "but he meant it that way, ok I have cheated then, I need to go back". I KNOW that this is OCD but it feels extremely real and it's very distressing. Does anyone have any tips on getting through this time period when it inevitably comes? I do my best to distract myself, but I know I'll end up going over things eventually, and I'll find something to question. Even if I don't think of these things, they -literally- pop into my head when I'm trying to distract myself. I will be playing a game and suddenly: "remember when you did that?" out of the blue. I'm just scared bc I know soon I'll have a new thing to worry about. I guess the question isn't how do I avoid this, because avoidance makes OCD worse (like reassurance, so I've kind of put myslef in this situation), so more, how should I manage through this?