Welcome to
the NOCD Community

I feel really crazy because I know I need help and support but I don’t know who to work with because I feel like it’s an intersection between spirituality and mental illness and I don’t want someone to invalidate either perspective because I think both are important for like learning how to manage this in a healthy way does anyone have any tips or resources?

As soon as I wake up, all the thoughts come rushing in. I try so hard to go back to sleep but I can't. I end up just laying there being swallowed up by my thoughts. It hurts. I feel like can't get out of bed until it slows down. Does anyone have any tips/advice how I can make this easier?

does anyone else experience this… "lost" or "empty" feeling after decreasing of anxiety and fear? the last 3 months i’ve been struggling with pocd + harm ocd + existential ocd and i felt terrible but those feelings and thoughts fuelled my productivity (because of the fear of this hell to never end) and so i practiced meditation, studied a lot (to distract myself i guess), and always have been busy with something. and now, around a week ago, the thoughts got quieter and anxiety feels much less severe. and i know that i have to feel relieved but instead i feel… empty. these thoughts were all i had been thinking about these 3 months and now i feel very weird because i don’t know what to do now. it feels like l have built my entire personality around ocd and now, as it faded away, i feel almost nothing. i feel so very unproductive (and therefore guilty) and without any purpose in life. i’ve spent these 3 months fighting but now it seems pointless and exaggerated (like as i made it all up). so yeah. it may sound very confusing as english is not my first language but i hope you understood my point

I’ve been through a really tough year, especially with OCD, and I want to be open about it in case it helps someone else feel less alone. If anything I share resonates, feel free to comment. My OCD first showed up as sexual-orientation OCD while I was studying abroad in Spain. My program had mostly girls, and my home university is also a very LGBTQ-friendly campus. Being in spaces where sexuality was talked about so openly made me feel pressured to “figure out” my orientation with certainty, which fueled the OCD spiral. At the same time, I was dealing with health OCD around concussions, so everything piled up. In August 2024, after a confusing conversation with a friend, I met a man I have a very deep emotional connection with — a connection that honestly has never gone away. I believed, and part of me still believes, that it was a “twin flame” connection. But the intensity of it triggered multiple OCD themes: sexual-orientation OCD, relationship OCD, existential and religious OCD, and magical thinking. I went down a lot of rabbit holes trying to make sense of it. Around the same time, I started noticing more dysfunction in my family, especially with my mom, and things eventually blew up. The fight we had escalated, and while I don’t want to go into detail, it did get to a point where I felt like my personal space and property were being invaded. I didn’t feel emotionally safe, so I wanted to leave. I ended up staying with my grandparents in Nashville, where I fell into isolation and depression. I put a lot of emotional weight on the man I have the connection with, which led him to set boundaries, and I spiraled even more. My grandparents eventually said I needed to return home, but my mom would only let me come back if I got off Prozac and signed papers giving her control over my medication, which I’m not comfortable with. So now I’m staying at a friend’s apartment on an air mattress while I try to get into a PHP program for OCD and figure out insurance and independence. There were also moments when intrusive thoughts felt like psychic “visions,” which scared me and led me to say things I now regret. My family doesn’t understand OCD and thinks I’m faking or self-diagnosing, which has been incredibly painful. I’m not in the best place mentally, emotionally, or financially, but I’m sharing this because I want this space to feel safe for others too. I also wish I had gotten help sooner. My biggest compulsion right now is using ChatGPT for reassurance before making decisions — which is even why I’m using it to shorten this post. But I’m trying to break that cycle and focus on real recovery. Thanks for reading if you made it here💓💓

Hi all, I’m an 18 yo girl, been diagnosed with OCD since I was 14. My OCD has mostly been intrusive thought heavy moreso than compulsions. Recently I’ve been obsessing over the fear of death and aging. I keep having intrusive thoughts that since my teen years are almost over, I basically just have nothing but downhill after that. This has been in my mind since my grandfather passed away in April. Most of my thoughts center around the fear of becoming unattractive as I get older, and in general a fear of everything that comes with age like decline in health etc. If anyone has advice on how to cope with these thoughts or deter them I would greatly appreciate it. :)

I’ve had OCD since I was nine, diagnosed along with several other things because of co-morbidity. I always associated my OCD with order and symmetry, and any other “problematic” thoughts were categorized in my brain as part of my anxiety. I am recently learning that all of the internal/mental issues I’ve been facing: intrusive thoughts, doubts, reviewing every action, word, or thought I’ve ever had, health fears, morality, the constant compulsive apologies for absolutely nothing, etc. are also related to my OCD and not just my anxiety. My reaction to that was to laugh and for once be glad that I have no original thoughts, because it proves I’m not alone or absolutely losing it. Reading through the articles on this platform has given me so much peace that I am not broken. OCD can feel so incredibly isolating because you are gaslit by your own brain constantly, and terrified that nobody will understand you, so why bother trying? I’m also deeply frustrated that nobody ever warned me about this. I’ve been seeing neurologists since I was a child, and not once did anyone ever think to mention I might experience all this one day. I’ve spent years forming my mind into something I can navigate if I just stay on my game all the time. I’m mentally exhausted from walking through the maze everyday, avoiding the traps and triggers, and trying to get out unscathed. I have learned how to talk myself down and argue my way out of my own panic attacks and use any form of logic I can to stay grounded and not topple my brain and my ideas of who I am. I function through all my fears and worries, to the point where, when I bring myself to disclose even a small part of what happens in my brain to others, they ask me how I’m able to get up in the morning. It’s completely draining and I’ve built it up to this level because I believed this is what I had to do to survive, since none of this could possibly be normal. It was never mentioned by my doctors and never addressed by my therapists, so it has to be something I need to cope through alone, right? I never considered that it was something I needed more help for, something that could be helped. I recently started therapy again, and I was so done with all of this that I just charged forward and disclosed everything that happens in my brain immediately, and it was such a great weight lifted off me when she accepted me as I am and told me that there is nothing “wrong” with me. She gave me scary, thought-provoking homework and a long list of things to try and work on, but no judgement, so we’ll take it. I am sure there are other people like me, who have spent years coping in this tiring methodical way because they didn’t know anything different, and I guess I just wanted to share in case it helps anyone. Reading through everyone’s posts has helped me immensely.

I was at the gym and got really triggered by a lot of the hot guys there. I just felt bad; I feel bad about my body not being where I want it to be yet, I constantly compare myself. Being a gay male I often compare myself to others especially on social media. I want to be an OnlyFans star at some point and i really look up to and envy the lives and bodies of many people on social media. But i feel that my envy and desire to be perfect is what is holding me back; I get so defeated just thinking about the amount of work and time I have to put in to get where I want to be. I feel alone. It is so much easier to just sit under my cover and watch youtube or play video games. Even showering feels like too much sometimes. I go down rabbit holes on social media that I don't know how i feel about. Sometimes I start reading and considering right wing content, like Nick Fuentes or other propaganda. I also jack off to some questionable content (its legal, but causes me shame unfortunately) and sometimes doubt whether or not it is just a kink or means something more about my identity. I feel less extreme and socially justice focused these days and maybe that worries me? Maybe I have a fear of being cancelled? I don't know. Maybe it's cause some of my close friends are conservative or maybe it's that I look up to my parents a lot and they have different political beliefs than what I do (or did). I don't like feeling that rift with my family, and I don't think that having different opinions should cause a rift. I also question how much of my beliefs are from my OCD and fear mongering, and what do i truly believe? I feel I am supposed to think a certain way because I am gay, but that sentiment doesn't sit right with me. I just wish I didn't overthink everything all the time. Sorry if this post is TMI but I am a mess and i think talking in hypotheticals does not help others understand how my OCD is affecting me. I just want to focus on going to gym and taking care of myself day to day, but i seem to be getting triggered by SO MUCH lately. I feel like I cannot be myself because my brain constantly tells me I'm wrong or I can't think a certain way or do certain things. I'm a freaking mess!!!!

Well, not entirely new. I am a gay, cisgender male. About 10 years ago, I struggled with the OCD fear that I was trans, but I recovered from that. I’ve had many other themes both before and after, (perfectionism, SO-OCD, POCD, and so on). Last Monday, after wondering if I made a mistake cutting the blonde highlights out of my hair and letting it go back to natural brown, I wondered if I wasn’t expressing myself authentically. (Authenticity is very important to me.) That quickly turned into questions like: am I just dressing heteronormative because I’m too afraid of the backlash for dressing more androgynous? I had never wanted to paint my nails, wear heels, skirts etc., but now, in a matter of a week, it feels like I do and that I’m living a lie. Idk what to do—for the last ten years of my life, I have felt very comfortable and content in my identity, and that has felt amazing. I am a huge Lady Gaga fan, and I’m obsessed with all her wigs and outfits, but for the last ten years (and after dealing with the trans theme), I’ve never wanted to wear them myself. But now I’m afraid I’ve just been suppressing the fact that I do—and that if I don’t dress like that (or paint my nails/wear makeup), I’m dressing boring and living a lie. :(

So my dad has been in the hospital the past month because he has this uncommon blood circulation disorder in his brain that causes his brain to flow too much blood in his head it has caused a stroke seizures blood clots fistulas and he has had two embolisms in his brain since he was born which apparently I now have to see the doctor next week about because it could be hereditary. His symptoms haven't started until recently. He has had five operations in the past ten months for it. My mom also had a liver biopsy this week to see if she has chirrosis and my step grandmother died in the middle of all this and I was going through a severe OCD flareup and episode while this is all going on. I have exams and college assignments to study for and I'm currently studying for an exam and worried about failing because the extreme stress from everything is causing me to have visual hallucinations again like I did when I went through psychosis several years ago. I'm also having a hard time focusing. I'm seeing shadow people walking around my house and weird shadow shapes it's in my direct line of sight it's not like when you see something out of the corner of your eye, it's literally a shadow people walking around the room I'm looking into. I know theyre not real but I get nervous walking into the room they're in. I have severe OCD and panic disorder and some other stuff.Life is really hard right now.He also has to repeat. How to do everything his personality is there but his voice is very different and it makes me cry. He will have to learn how to do literally everything from the stroke he had but the doctors say he has a lot of hope for recovery and they are apparently the best neurosurgeons in the country so I'm trying to quiet the what ifs that my OCD is trying to tell me. I also hope the hallucinations go away as the stress does down. I'm not looking for answers I'm just venting and wondering if anyone else has ever had issues with seeing things that aren't there during extreme stress or have any advice on how to cope, uplifting quotes or nice words are appreciated as well thank you for coming to my ted talk lol.

Soocd. Still awaiting help. Been talking to ChatGPT all this time. I just really don’t know myself. I don’t know. I’m young, so I know there’s lots to figure out, but why am I so adamant that I must be into dudes and not girls? Why can I not just be ok with it???

i literally just cannot stop doing them. especially mental ones. doing things that i didn’t even realize were technically compulsively behavior. all i do every day is ruminate about my mistakes, play them in my head over and over again, envision the worst case scenarios, and then compulsively search on the internet. i’m so tired of it. i feel like i can’t live my life because the second i stop worrying, something bad will happen and it’ll prove my ocd right. that i can’t move on and seek out experiences or relationships because i don’t deserve them and nobody will want me when they find out who i really am. i’m just living in fear every day and it seems like whenever i feel like i’ve “moved past” something, i come up with more evidence that i’m really just a monster that will be “found out” and have to face repercussions/be ostracized. and maybe i really do deserve that. i know it has to get worse before it can get better or whatever but i really don’t want to live like this for the rest of my life. i can’t even tell anyone what’s bothering me because i’m so disgusted by my own thoughts and my past actions. every day feels like a loop and i’m so scared and tired and lonely all the time.

I feel like it’s so hard to understand everything going on with the world right now, I’m 15 and lately my mental health has been so bad and I feel a lot of it is due to how the world is currently. Sometimes it’s hard to believe I have a future, like a home, a car, all of the things I wanted because of the way the world is right now. my OCD has been nonstop up and down for the past few months, I’m trying to defeat OCD right now, and literally everytime I try to talk about it with my mom she just throws it to the side “think about something else, something positive” it hurts so bad because now involved with school and friends we all have to plan out what we will do if AI takes over and it took away everything I wanted to be. Now I have nonstop OCD loops about it as well. I stayed home from school today because I just couldn’t handle going.

What I’m about to write is going to be pretty long winded, but if you need some positivity, I’d encourage you to stick around and read my story. In January of 2025 I found out I was pregnant with my second child. With this began some of the worst, most debilitating anxiety I had ever experienced in my life thus far. And I have had quite a few seasons of extreme anxiety throughout my life, which I know now were OCD. Whether it was the hormones or anticipating another life change, my harm OCD thoughts were all consuming and had me in extreme fear of myself. I was afraid I would hurt my daughter or my husband. I was afraid I’d hurt myself. I found it difficult to function in everyday life. The counselor I had been seeing for years wasn’t cutting it anymore. I then embarked on a journey to find a new mental health practitioner and would see 4 different therapists in 3 months, all of which didn’t understand what I was going through and couldn’t help me. Then, I came across a post from NOCD on my instagram feed and a lightbulb went off. Reading posts about harm OCD and some other themes made me realize this is a condition I may have. I saw a psychologist who finally gave me the diagnosis, but even then, her therapy methods were not helpful. In July, I finally decided to pursue therapy with NOCD. In the beginning of my treatment, it honestly felt like I was getting worse. There were so many ups and downs and I would feel better or worse depending on the day, even the hour it seemed. But I continued to meet with my therapist consistently twice a week and noticed the thoughts getting quieter and not scaring me as much. Don’t get me wrong, it has not been easy. I have had new themes emerge throughout the therapy process, like existential OCD that got pretty bad at the very end of my pregnancy and early postpartum. But, just like when I first started therapy, we kept meeting consistently and now, my thoughts and fears are quieter than they have been all year. I feel the best I have felt since October of 2024. Of course I still have bad days, with backdoor spikes and OCD trying to latch onto new themes, but I feel more equipped to handle whatever OCD has to throw at me now than I have my entire life. Therapy with NOCD has changed my life. It has given me my light back and given me the tools I need to work through anything that may come my way. I’m a better wife, mom and person because of it. I truly feel like I am getting myself back — not necessarily who I used to be, but a new and improved version of myself. All of this to say, if you are in the trenches, keep going. Fighting the OCD battle is the hardest thing I’ve ever done and I want you to know I see you — I am you. It feels like it will never get better. It will. It feels like you can’t do hard things. You can. ERP will push you to your limits and be incredibly challenging. You will question if it’s even going to help. It will. Do not give up. There were many days I had no hope that I would get better. I thought this was my new reality. It doesn’t have to be. There is a life you can live where OCD is a small part of who you are — something you manage — and not something that consumes you. If you’re still reading, thank you for sticking around. If you ever need someone to talk to my inbox is open. Don’t give up hope. It’s there, even when it doesn’t feel like it. ❤️

Hi. One of my biggest fears is that after e.g., a successful therapy lasting a couple of years, I will NEVER be able to return back to the old myself. These days I'm really struggling much with the idea of therapy changing my brain — like the more I will heal, the less there will EVER be a chance to go back in the healing journey. I have meta-OCD so I'm afraid of them changing me violently to be "a normal one" with NO possible steps back. Is it really true that after a successful therapy there WON'T ever be a way to come back to the old days? I hope I'm not the only one experiencing this.

i’ve been in a state of panic all night, when i tried to eat, this intense feeling of panic & dread came over me and i had to put my food to the side. and when i get this panic feeling, my immediate response is ‘i can’t deal with this, im gonna have to kms’ - which then leads to more panic that im losing my mind, and then MORE panic that i need to go to hospital etc etc it’s just never ending. the anxiety is so incredibly intense and i feel it so much in my chest. it’s so bad right now that everything feels like a trigger, if i move, i get that panic feeling, a random sound or something that ive read that has no correlation to my panic, will make me panic. i’m sorry this is so long, im just hoping someone can relate :(

Yesterday was one of the worst ocd attacks of my life I have a huge fear of believing delusions like it's not even funny I've had crazy intrusive thoughts like What if clouds aren't real What if the people around me aren't real And now the crazy one, what if I believe people are lizards like the stupid conspiracy theory, and I don't believe any of them. Never did the one I'm currently on, is the stupid lizard 1, and I'm having thoughts when I went on with my family, like I would like to be around du,mb, and then I'll get some intrusive thoughts. What if I believe there are lizard aliens? And then I hate it so much. Obviously, I don't believe that, yeah, and I don't want to believe it. I just hate it so much. And something I say jokingly me back to the o.C.D is then I'm also a lizard too But has anyone else had a crazy** Thought like this or crazier because I really hope I'm not alone on this. I don't believe the thought, but I'm just like so many fears and anxieties. What if I believe it? What if it's honestly horrible? Where did I get from hocd to this? Like I mentioned before I had health OCd Did it all start with a fear of going crazy? Then a fear of getting cancer, then a fear of schizophrenia, and then a fear of delusions. I have a fear of going crazy. That it's not even a joke heck. I think I'm in the early stages of schizophrenia. I'm scared i'm honestly scared

Hi guys! I have a question because this is something I’ve been struggling with recently. Does anyone else have a fear of feeling regret in the future? Whether that be over mistakes or things you never ended up doing in life? I’m only 19 and I feel like this fear shouldn’t really be showing up in my life right now.

i am a trauma technician, a job i love very much. i’m in nursing school and i wouldn’t change my career for the world. anxiety? she would love to change everything i want to do. sometimes i experience the expiration of patients and that is triggering for my brain. i will obsessive over other patients who are no longer with us and it will be a constant cycle of *image* “i am safe” *image* “it’s okay its over with now” *image* and that’s the mentally exhausting cycle i go through. menstruation is making is increased at the moment, i am trying so hard to give myself grace and try to find peace in the moments. i just had a really hard 12 hour shift yesterday and i am overall scared of expiration anyway so it’s definitely a hiccup i have to manage sometimes. my coworkers are super aware about it and my therapist is too. i just haven’t been on here much? but now i know i need to seek support because the ocd is isolating and i haven’t found a support system or group that truly understand the intrusive thoughts and images. does anyone else think of a traumatic situation and almost put it into steps? for example first, this happened, then this happened, then i made it home so that HAS to mean i am safe that HAS to mean it’s over with now.

Recently, i've been really hyper fixated on death. I saw a video of a really bad car crash and i get intense anxiety everytime i drive. all i can think of all day are the possible ways i can die. i'll get very vivid images of myself dying in the worst ways possible, and it's making me miserable. everytime i leave the house i make sure to give my family a good farewell cause it feels like that'll be the last time ill ever see them every time i leave the house. i do compulsions related to these thoughts as well. for example, ill do the typical "do that action a certain amount of times or you'll die" compulsions. the butterfly effect also really gets me, because i always overthink everything i do, thinking it'll somehow affect the future and lead to my death. like this morning i made myself stop and count to ten before i got into the car so i could avoid an accident i supposedly would've gotten into if i left ten seconds earlier. i get into mental crises every time someone mentions death or an event involving it. i can't watch the news or horror movies anymore. just now, i was in public and getting into my head imagining an intruder holding me at gunpoint and shooting me, and a stranger asked if i was okay (i guess i was making a worried face lol). but it's affecting everything i do and i cried all last night convincing myself i was going to get into a fatal car accident on the way to work today. i think a lot of this got triggered when i watched the final destination movie. i'm never watching anything from that franchise again cause that movie messed me up and ive been having these intrusive thoughts ever since and that was like 5-6 months ago😭 but i need help on how to combat these thoughts because i can't even hear the words "death" or "manifestation" without going into a crisis.

It's a damn shame that those instruments are good for studying as it creates flashcards of subjects and explain stuff you dont understand very well... but upon reading how they're relying on cobalt mining in congo it feels iffy, like Google is involved in a case with child labor in Congo, as well as chatGPT as they all rely on cobalt. I really want to use it to enter in university but i'm torn from the moral side. It's not like if i stop anything is gonna change, the rise of AI is inevitable. i don't know if i should sacrifice a part of my conscience so that i enter in the university and i can help people afterwards to atone.