Welcome to
the NOCD Community

this is probably kinda jumbled but over the past almost year or so i've slowly realized i have ocd (i'm diagnosed audhd but over time i started feeling like those alone didn't cover the whole issue yk?), and recently i've been kinda worried i guess. it’s just that i’m turning 21 in 6 months and i’m afraid that this disorder is going to rob me of joyful adult milestones in my life. honestly being 20 has sucked, i can’t even remember wtf being 18 was like, and my childhood in general wasn't the best either, but i've been struggling a lot as of late and i don't want how i feel now to be the same as how i feel next year. my meds have helped quiet my compulsions a significant amount (i literally felt like i was going kinda cray cray when i was off them 😭) but they’re not completely gone. sometimes it just seems like this is all it's ever gonna be forever and i’m always gonna feel ashamed of myself for just like… existing. my 21 year old self deserves to be happy but idk if i’ll be able to give that to her 🥲🥲🥲

Can you share a time you’ve seen God use your story with ocd for good? I don’t mean your experience with it was good in itself, but has there been times your life story has helped others open up, you’ve learned something about God’s grace in the process, or something like that? It’s one of the hardest parts of my own story, but there have also been so many times I’ve seen good come out of the hard stuff. I just would love to connect with others who have also seen this!

Like your life is coming to an end and you just can’t keep going because no matter what you are alone and nothing works out except a minor few. Like what is the point of being here if no one even cares about you and just uses you to their advantage. I’m done. I fucking hate this world and all the people living in it.

For context: ive been diagnosed with arfid. But my brain refuses to accept it and that i don’t have an issue with eating. So this past weekend has been anything but chill. Today felt like the tip of the iceberg. My mom called me out for having an irrational fear of food textures, food appearances, and smells i find distasteful and told me i just let myself get too carried away by the “what if” “could be” “might be” “looks like/smells like/tastes like..” thoughts. I just have to get over it essentially and stop giving it too much meaning. Its ridiculous. I was taken aback cos we weren’t even talking about food to begin with and it just sort of came up with her. Still in disbelief and so frustrated. Seriously thinking about just isolating myself and not talk to anyone about anything cos i don’t know what to do anymore.

I put a trigger warning because I will be discussing themes of end of times. I feel like I'm not following God's will. God knows ultimately that things were going to speed up end of times wise. A few months ago, I had a random thought to call someone I had affected with past sin and apologize to him although I did not know he was there, my sin affected him. I know he deserves an apology, but I chalked it up to ocd and treated it as such for months fast forward to now I feel like I'm completely against God. Horrifying. It's a complex situation I caused and therefore though I know he deserves an apology I'm really scared as I created a mess of things. I've been praying that God help certain things come to fruition so I could be exposed and help minister to others if that's what He's calling me to do but no answer. Instead horrible images and thoughts and feelings of doom. I see signs to apologize everywhere. I'm at my wits end. Because I tend to get ahead of myself I asked two family members and they said don't and then I see things that say Though people in your life mean well, don't go based on what they say only what God says. I tell God to do His will and I'll follow, do you think He'll listen. I even told Him I straight up don't want to do it, not because He doesn't deserve one, but because last time I apologized to someone else I didn't do it right and it was messy. I feel so evil, like a wolf in sheep's clothing. I also remember looking up morbid things for what???? Only to be disturbed pray about it and leave by why search it up again? I also fantasized alot about guys I've been single forever, late 20s now, I'm trying to go to church and my crush is there and I try to stop thinking about him because I know it's delusional but the thoughts don't leave. I'm so tired I want to stop but stop what? Living? I want to stick to God as close as possible. I'm going crazy.

This is gonna be a long one: So a little over a month and a half ago, my OCD started to spiral again. I’ve had ups and downs with it in the past, my main themes often changing. When I was younger it as afraid I’d run away, in middle school it was germs. But as I got older I started having intrusive thoughts of the meaning of life, suicide, and dying, with those fears being my common themes now I’ve gotten a lot better since it started back up, but lately have been panicking because I’ve had intrusive thoughts that my methods of trying to heal are wrong. I’m 21, and for the last 3 years have lacked ambition and haven’t pursued my dreams or things I want to do. I just sleep, work, eat junk food, and play games or watch YouTube on my time off. Things I still love, but after years of living this way, I’ve hit a breaking point and want to start doing more with my life and the people in it Yet, almost EVERY new thing I’ve been trying to do or start, I’ve been having thoughts that they’re wrong or won’t help. Here’s some examples: I’ve started trying to eat a bit healthier, and my brain is telling me it’s not gonna fix me and I’m just avoiding food I like (junk I know makes me tired and sad). Then the moment I indulge in even one unhealthy food item, it tells me I’m failing at taking better care of myself and that junk food just numbs the feelings Same with video games. I tell myself it’s okay to play them as long as it’s not to avoid anything or they don’t take up my life like they have been. The second I do I feel guilty, say it’s cheap dopamine and hindering me from being productive and that I’m numbing my feelings again Same story for everything. Trying to walk and go outside more. Head tells me I’m avoiding being home because it makes me anxious. Then when I stay home it tells me I’m wasting time I could be spending outside or with people I love I’ll wanna spend time with my family or friends because I’ve been a hermit for years and miss spending time with them. When I try to, head tells me I can’t because then I’m avoiding the issues I have and seeking reassurance, and that I need to learn to tolerate this alone. But then when I stay home too long, I get anxious and sad because it does make me happy being around them even if I’m not seeking reassurance, and they genuinely do help me feel better (for example I saw my grandparents last night and talked about my feelings and desire to actually go out and live life, and they helped me understand uncertainty is part of life and I should do things I want anyways and even helped come up with things I may like to try doing. Now my brain tells me it’s bad to get help or open up about my pain) I’ll have racing thoughts in my head and I’ll be arguing with myself over rather it’s better to face them head on, ignore them, or let them run their course. It feels like no matter what I do, I’m feeling guilty and shame for it. As if any attempt at feeling pleasure or doing something that makes me happy is “avoiding the problem”, like I HAVE to focus on my intrusive thoughts, anxiety, and sadness 24/7 otherwise I’m “avoiding/burying it again” I know not to avoid these things and it’s best to confront them (if they’re real problems I have like relationship issues and insecurities and loneliness) and learn to tolerate the anxiety and uncertainty of life and OCD, but my attempts at “helping myself” are quite literally what I feel is currently keeping me so miserable. They’re sucking whatever joy I have in life out, telling me it’s bad, and that I have to feel this way all the time so I can “learn to tolerate it” I’m just so scared of doing all of this wrong, and I think my OCD I knows that and is currently using that to toy with me. I want to be healthier and happier, but then I feel guilt and fear for not being healthy 24/7 and indulging in not healthy things like video games and the occasional junk food. Anybody else ever felt this way?

I had a really bad nightmare revolving around one of my big themes and I woke up with the panic still left over the dream as if it was real and I kept thinking about the situations. I tried to tell myself it was just a dream, but then it made me question real life. So then it was a cycle of ruminating about the events as though they were real and my reality which really messed me up bc my biggest theme right now is becoming schizophrenic/catatonic/"crazy." I feel stuck in a loop, I've tried saying the "maybes" and even talking to my partner about other things but it just keeps looping in my head "am I crazy?" "I can't differentiate between dreams" "I feel like I'm stuck in my head and I can't even talk". Any tips? I feel like I'm at the crescendo of my 20 years (lifelong) ocd due to stress from moving soon.

so I put this into Gemini a couple mins ago but it just gave me the 988 to text but I feel like I don’t know if these thoughts are genuine or intrusive and just amplified because of how I was feeling. This is what I put in there I’ll just copy and paste. I got talking with my grandma and I felt like I needed to get it out but I just kept thinking deeper and deeper like thoughts like “I can’t do this anymore” or “when will this stop” and I have a lot of suicidal intrusive thoughts and sometimes when I feel in such fear and deep sorrow and dispare these thoughts feel so real that I can’t tell if they’re intrusive. But I immediately push them away of course even though I keep wanting to figure it out or figure out how I can break free from this doubt and second guessing. But it freaked me out that maybe I was actually contemplating or genuinely thinking about it or was close to snapping and giving up. Now I feel like I have to figure out of it was intrusive or not because that’s really serious if it is a real thought. I know it’s apart of ocd to figure it out but I can’t tell if it was my imagination made it seem way more real or when I imagined myself doing something to myself it felt like the probability became higher because I was in a state of severe distress. It’s like a thought when your heart is beating so fast you don’t wish it would stop beating you just want a break from it beating so loud or fast or you want it to get better. Idk I pictured myself just being stuck in my body and it freaked me out too like the fact I cant control what my body is doing. I’ve lost some weight the last couple months bc of stress and it just grosses me out thinking how bad I might be getting. I even started thinking maybe I need to be in a mental hospital. And just admit it and just get more help. The thing is I also felt like I had a decent day today but it took so much out of me trying to resist compulsions and “keeping” the good moment going without extreme fear especially of dying. I get so freaked out by random things even things touching me, certain sounds and wish it could all stop sometimes and I keep running away from things I think are triggers for my anxiety but it feels like it’s getting narrower.

It’s been several days of feeling paralysed with fear and engaging in compulsions by reading so many NDEs. I don’t even know how people live their lives knowing they’re going to die one day. I’m gonna miss my family so much!!! I mean I’m not gonna know because I’ll be dead! I can’t even look at them without feeling sick. What’s the point of life if we all die? GOD!!! I literally can’t do anything! I’m so overwhelmed!

In a weeks I will traver around Europe with an interrail pass. My fear focus in the idea that if I am really tired and anxious will get 1. Depressed and I will not be able to do nothing 2. Start a new OCD spiral so intense that can make me suicidal. Last year before going to an specialist and understand how OCD works I studied in other country for summer, I was living alone and OCD was terrible at a point that I was writing all days to not emergency hotlines because I had this fear that the feelings I was having would be forever This experience has follow me in all my travels and, this being the most difficult, is again, playing with me. I will travel, I don't want my OCD to stop me doing things I really want but the closer the day gets, the more the excitement about the trip fades. So yes this travel is perfect for ERP but at the same time I am anxious about finding balance between resting but without it becoming an avoidance (that summer I also didn't go on many excursions due to exhaustion so I don't want this to happen to me again and spent all my day in the hostel sleeping) When I travel with other people I force myself to be functional which help to enjoy more my travels but alone... like right now takes me 1 hour to wake up in my house because of morning anxiety, being tired will do this more difficult If you have tips or experience I will be glad. Even with fear I want to do this travel

So, alot has changed. I'm Christian and currently believe we are in the end of times. It's changed my whole perspective on life. I quit my job and moved back in with family, starting to go to church, apologized to those I hurt except, one person who I talked to two family members and they told me to delete the message and with my other apology ( that i also believed was God telling me to confess in 2020) i lied at some parts because of shame and confusing myself most likely intentionally. I confessed everything to my dad and he says since i turned from it, repented, that i need to let it go and continue forward. Since then, my minds been saying that I'm outside of God's will and everything's gone down hill. I had also prayed that God exposed me and now it's like all this evil and wickedness that feels like it's coming out of my heart settles into my chest. I've prayed to God, worshipped to God, but thoughts and images of being sent to hell or my loved ones pops into my head and I've gone to sleep twice each night accepting the fact that because of me not doing so may have doomed me and my loved ones and I feel scared that I got so tired and stopped fighting it. I've had ocd since I was 7 but it just is so scary because it's hitting down to the wire and I'm scared that I was never a child of God at all I mean I have iniquity I thought I repented for but people I love still struggle with what I've done and I prayed for them and tried to help them and suggest therapy but I haven't did what I could to make it right like I should've. But these images and thoughts they're horrible. I feel like I'm against God truly and I'm like Lord change the circumstances and I won't resist so that I can preach Your word and everyday I feel like I'm gambling. It's like every thought is biblical for the most part. I don't want to kill myself cuz what if I have a chance that God will have mercy on me but....

Fuck it I'm tired of the ruminations, I'm tired of the constant mental reviews and false memories, I'm tired of the feeling of existential crisis, I'm tired of feeling fear that depression is gonna get worse, I'm tired of the intrusive thoughts, the relentless depersonalization/derealization If one day I end my life so be it. if one day I go insane so be it, if one day my relationship ends with my gf so be it. I'm tired of having these what ifs, I'm tired of shutting my mind and creating prison after prison mentally. Fuck it if my life is meant to suck then so be it I'll take it to the chin. If one day I end up broke and end it all oh well that's just what my life was meant to be. But I'm not gonna suffer over somthing that might or might not happen. I'm tired of it. I keep emphasizing my weaknesses instead of my strength I am a strong person, I was the man that put my self thru nursing school while helping my mom financaily, I was the man that kept the household together and supported my mom when she had a TIA in march, I was the the one that gave my mom money to pay for lawyers, I was the one that my mom rellies on, I am the man of the house I am him. I am a loving boyfriend that supports his girlfriend, I am the nurse that won the award of the year for the best nurse at the department I work for at my hospital. I am the man that has touched so many lives with my profession, I am the man that held the hands of countless people in their times of need, their times of struggle, their times of death and the man that gave those people guidence and support to people in their toughest moments of despair, death, confusion, grief and so on. I am the man thag comforted family members when their loved one was gone. I am the man that's been told time and time again that I've saved peoples lives. Why do I belittle my self and I deminish my accomplishments so easily yet highlights my deficits and mistakes so hard. I've become the judge, jury and executioner of my head creating prison after prison. I'm tired of it, I am bigger than this disorder, I accept it and I will get better with it. I accept that I take drugs to correct my mind , I accept that I am seeking therapy to help my self, I accept that right now I am not In the best place in my mind. But I will get better

My chest is aching from the stress of it all. I haven’t felt this bad in years. Please any words of advice would be most helpful. The fact that I’m going to die one day and I have no idea what’s going to happen next, possibly nothingness, and I lose out on all my memories of everyone I ever loved, everything I ever did, is messing me up. I’m 27, and idk how I never felt this way before. I never had these fears before. I never even thought about death like this before let alone it scaring me. Now it’s just stuck in my mind 24/7. The other thing about death is I have to do it alone! :( I love my mum and brother more than anything, I have to leave them one day. I can’t believe it. And they have to leave me?

I’m constantly thinking about what if I go crazy.No matter how good I’m feeling the thought always creeps back in same with what if no one is real.I used to get anxiety from it but I don’t really get it anymore as much which scares me.How long did this last for anyone who experienced this?I feel like it’s been going on for months and I’m scared it’ll never go away.

Im asking this not in a cheeky way. I want to understand. Once you've been diagnosed with ocd and you understanding the condition, the nature of it. The signs and symptoms. You know it's chronic and you will always have it for life. How can it keep tricking you ? Once you know it's tricks. You've seen behind the curtain so to speak, you know what is going on. Surely this is the closest thing we have to a cure ? How can knowledge disappear is my pondering. I want to know for myself. How can you keep spiralling? You've been diagnosed with ocd. You take meds to treat ocd. Your on an ocd online forum. Your talking about ocd. Your in therapy to treat ocd. You do erp to treat ocd. But you dont know if its ocd ? When you know ocd is even called the 'doubting disorder'? Your full of doubts and you have ocd but you dont know if its ocd ??? Its driving me crazy trying to figure this shit out lol Surely at some point logic can win. This is my hope for myself.

I'm doing a lot better with my OCD episode but I'm finding it hard to cope with what's happening in my country. It's hard because it is scary and people keep telling me I should be afraid. That everything is over and it's the apocalypse. I don't think it's productive to be gripped with terror but I don't know how to calm down.

I opened one of my old bibles and it was mark 13 talking about Jesus second coming which is what I’ve been thinking about a lot recently because it’s a heavy topic right now and my ocd also clings to that and I try and pray and pray but I wonder if He was speaking to me telling me He is coming soon because I never ever read that bible I just felt like looking at it and now I don’t know what to do with the information if it was confirmation that he’s coming soon I don’t know how soon or he’s telling me to get ready and I’m kind of afraid and don’t know how to find comfort.

Recently I’ve been getting these very intense episodes of feeling extremely annoyed, irritable and touchy. I start to think narcissistic thoughts like feeling extremely entitled, envious of others and just overall snotty and rude but also horrible about myself. I take everything personal in these moments even though I know it’s stupid to do so. with harm ocd it also makes it 10x worse because they urges are worsened by the anger and intense emotions and sometimes I feel like just crying or this deep pit in my stomach of fear and dispare about the future like where am I heading and who am I becoming? I’ve excessively been on Gemini asking about covert narcissism, because my family disagrees with the idea of me being a narcissist along with my therapist but I just can’t let it go because I actually genuinely believe it. When I want to make things right it feels so self centered and I don’t know the right way to genuinely care about others. Maybe I already do?? I can’t tell if this is all just anger, intense fear and overwhelm, from med changes (went from lexapro to buspar) or processing grief (grandpa died in February) but sometimes I feel even worse because in my head I believe the grief only effects me and I need total attention and care 24/7. and start wondering if this is a subconscious way of thinking for me that I just assume is ocd and anxiety. I feel so tense and when I get in these moments I feel like I’m about to combust, I dissociate, feel like sobbing, isolating, or yelling but can’t tell if it’s all caused from an “ego blow” or something that someone did that made me feel bad about myself and that’s why I feel such high self pity. idk anymore but this feeling is terrifying especially the more I believe I’m a narcissist everything is evidence. I even start wondering what if this is rage, or hatred or resentment? like deep down dark feelings?

I can’t stop thinking about death today. Not like suicide or pondering how I could die. Just more so I’m going to die. It’s like. I was eating my pizza today listening to music and looking at the clouds. And I was like I love this this is amazing. And then Brain says “ur gonna die one day btw” Or I redid my wallpaper on my phone and I love the way it looks. I unlock my screen and admire the vibe I’ve created. And then brain says “one day you’ll be dead” When I feel a moment of joy or happiness or peace is when the thought screams at me. I’m really unsettled and distraught about thinking about being dead one day. This doesn’t come up often like other thoughts I have but I hate this one because it’s hard to cope with. Because I do the things and “techniques” to make them quieter. But then immediately Brain says “why are u even trying tho. It’s pointless because you’ll be dead one day.” Any advice ??

How do I deal with the thought that my OCD thoughts because of their nature are separating me from God? The one night I couldn’t sleep and prayed about it and just said God if I die and go to hell over this just know I’m doing the best I can. This isn’t me and I don’t want it. — I know that it doesn’t work this way but if you have any advice please share. And also please be nice and respectful of my beliefs. Thank you a struggling Christian.