Welcome to
the NOCD Community

One of my big ocd themes revolves around the fear of passing out. I have agoraphobia and panic disorder too bc of this. It started when I was 5 when a doctor gave me a shot, I passed out. After that any time I went in for a regular physical exam I would get so nervous I’d pass out, it then extended to other types of doctors. To as an adult everywhere I go, I have this extreme fear of passing out. It doesn’t help that I have some sort of validation behind the fear bc it has happened. Throughout my whole life I’ve passed out maybe 10-15 times so idk how to get over this. It rules every aspect of my life and I’m completely home bound bc of it. I also just feel really dramatic talking about it to people who don’t have anxiety, so I don’t talk about it and I keep it in and it’s not fair that whenever I have to do something I have to be brave. I don’t want to be brave, I want to feel comfortable

So after going back to therapy, I’ve been doing really good. I didn’t care about the thoughts or any of my obsessions. But this past week, my mind has just been looping so many thoughts that are scary and sad. The rumination cycle feels like how I felt before even receiving therapy. I don’t know if it’s just because I’m not doing compulsions as much, but I’ve been so afraid this is never going to away, and I’m going to feel anxious and scared forever:(

Hi group, My pre teen daughter deals with constant nausea. She said she felt it for the longest time, however, it wasn't until the start of 2025 that it began to control her life. This led to panic attacks when going to school and not wanting to go to places that were too far from home. She doesn't even want to sleep over her grandparent's house, or friend's houses. It got so bad she missed the last 3 weeks of school, amongst other things we have never seen in her before. She is taking some meds, but they aren't helping with the nauseous feeling like we hoped. Anybody else face a constant nausea feeling that brings about a level of anxiety and panic? The idea of getting tested for food allergies was brought up, which does make sense. -Thanks-

Hey, everyone! Really struggling with my health ocd, again :/ I am stuck on the fear of a brain tumor as I have been having tension (I think) headaches lately. (Which I’m sure my anxiety is making worse due to holding my body tight). I am just feeling quite discouraged and could use some encouragement.

In hindsight, I’ve had OCD my entire life. However, it began to be extremely distressing around August of 2017. I began to have intrusive thoughts and obsessions around health and harm/ losing control. Since 2017, I have had OCD pop in and out of my life. I thought I was losing my mind, but was always told that I just had “anxiety”. This anxiety was irrational! It was nothing like the anxiety my friends experienced. 7 years later, August of 2024, I was finally diagnosed with OCD. That is when I began my ER/P journey. E/RP and NOCD have helped me regain control of my life. I no longer engage in avoidance, due to fear. I embrace uncertainty. I can now sleepover my friend’s houses, travel, watch scary movies, and listen to true crime podcasts… things I once loved to do before OCD convinced me they were dangerous. I am forever grateful for this journey and for NOCD!

I am so incredibly tired of living life in fear. I’m in constant fear that I’m going to have a heart attack or stroke. I’m hyper aware of every sensation in my body and I’m in constant fight or flight. I’m exhausted and I just want to be normal. I received a Covid vaccine Saturday because im afraid of getting Covid but now I’m worried about the vaccine making me sick. I know it won’t I’ve had them before but my mind is just in obsessive mode. I want a good nights rest but now I’m crying and scared because I don’t feel good. I’m just so sick of life being so hard. I want to enjoy it. But then I spiral and I’m crying because I’m worried about being alone in life. Thankfully I have my mom now but I worry about the future. I’ve tried erp twice here and just can’t feel like it’s helping. I’m working with a therapist now and we are doing DBT plus starting erp. I’m nervous it won’t work again. I’m doomed to feel this way the rest of my life. It’s been almost 2 years of this constant fear, worry, and spiral. And when it’s not the health anxiety it’s awful intrusive thoughts that make me feel like a monster.

I never used to really care about my health unless I got sick and just took some meds and went about my day. Last fall I was diagnosed as diabetic. In the winter my car was suddenly diagnosed with cancer and I ended up with extremely bad anxiety and anticipatory grief like I have never felt before. My other cat now is on two medications for health issues. I was in the hospital in march for diverticulitis. I have a pinched nerve from trying to do yoga. A few weeks ago I had a colonoscopy and now I’m having mild tremors and some numbness and tingling in my extremities. My anxiety is through the roof. I went to my primary doctor who thought it was my medications having a bad side effect so she took me off it. The tremors have gotten somewhat better but the numbness has not improved. Okay where am I going with this? Every day I get this gnawing anxiety that makes me feel like I need to go to the hospital but I don’t go for financial reasons and because I’m terrified that they’ll make me stay overnight or I’ll get another bad diagnosis. How do I live like this ? I’ve never dealt with any anxiety or obsession thoughts in my life before this and now it’s a daily struggle. I often find myself crying because I’m freaking myself out. Please help.

I’ve been struggling badly lately. It started with a flare-up of stomach issues that made me go down the rabbit hole. I convinced myself that there was something seriously physically wrong with me even though I’ve been to the doctors numerous times and nothing has ever been found. It made me panic daily for weeks on end. All I could focus on was my stomach and the pain. Now my focus has switched and I’m just as afraid. I can’t really put my finger on it but I just feel like there's something wrong with me. I don't know if it's physical or mental. I almost feel like I’ve broken my brain beyond repair from the constant fear, anxiety, and panic. I just feel trapped in my head all of the time and it freaks me out. The harder I try to escape it the worse it feels. I’ve started to become so aware of my every thought to the point that I can hardly sleep at night. Everything around me just feels so strange. I feel strange. Now I’m just constantly monitoring how I feel and if I’m back to normal. At the same time I’ve been having a lot of existential thoughts like “what’s my purpose,” “what’s the meaning of life,” “do I actually enjoy anything,” “am I happy or will I ever be happy?” I feel like I can’t enjoy anything because I’m always thinking about these things. I’m the most depressed I’ve ever been before. Every second of every day feels like pure torture. My brain tells me that I’ll never get better and that no one will be able to help me. I have no hope.

I’m just realizing I have OCD. I have been diagnosed with adhd, autism and CPTSD but OCD never occurred to me until recently. My OCD manifests internally (pure O) then I seek reassurance for whatever topic I’m fixating on so of course I chalked it up to anxiety but it’s so much more than that. And I’ve been like this for as long as I can remember. Now it’s really messing with my life. Lately, it’s been ROCD that’s been ruining me. I had a couple deep wounds created by my husband a few years ago and I’m constantly fixating on if he’s lying, really loves me, and or he wants to leave me. I’m constantly asking for reassurance and I think he’s getting tired of it. He’s an otherwise great partner but the OCD has really kicked in after I found out he was hiding a porn addiction, he hid it twice and it really ruined my self esteem and trust in him. Now I get triggered by every pretty girl I see, every social media post about relationships, I fixate on how unattractive he might find me or what’s wrong with me. I’m also aging in my thirties so I obsess over if he is getting less attracted as I age . I feel pathetic. Of course he always tells me I’m beautiful and he loves me but I’m always suspicious that he’s not being honest. I’ve always had OCD but this is the worst I’ve been with my relationship. I’m melting down and doubting us often and especially at night. It’s been a few years now and I feel like it’s gotten so hard. When I was younger it was health OCD, then it was existential, and I definitely fixate on if I’m “good” morally too. I’ll confess and overshare to people all my mistakes. And on top of the ROCD, I have pure OCD and get the worst images and intrusive thoughts at work/ random places and it’s horrible because I work with vulnerable people. My biggest nightmare and fear is pedophilia or assault, and I care deeply about my kids and vulnerable people so it’s like my mind hates me and these horrible images and thoughts fly at me l. I would never ever harm my kids or vulnerable people so this is especially disturbing and mortifying. I learned that OCD is ego dystonic and that’s helped but the images still make me feel awful. I also have been the scapegoat and black sheep in my narcissistic abusive family so I will my OCD will fixate on if I AM the narcissist! It’s exhausting. It got worse after I encountered my abuser in my family earlier this year and he brought up a lot of trauma. He is actually a narcissist but my brain will try to convince me that I am, and I will give in to the compulsion then do quizzes and tests and of course they tell me I’m not a narcissist, but then my OCD will make me think I am. I’m very empathetic and terrified of hurting people yet my brain tries to convince me I’m horrible, then the reassurance seeking and anxiety that manifests from my OCD and trauma makes me feel so self absorbed and sick of myself, convincing me I’m narcissistic for thinking of myself so much. I’m so exhausted by this. My brain tortures me. The overthinking is hard to combat. I really try hard to accept these thoughts as just thoughts but there’s always that voice creeping in that maybe the intrusive thoughts are right. Maybe I’m terrible and unlovable. I hate it.

Anyone get this in the beginning and it go away? I posted yesterday how I was feeling pretty good. But realistically it’s only 2 weeks into 5mg so it’s early on and I’ll probably need to move up to 10mg. I’m feeling out of it today like the anxiety isn’t there but it’s like derealization/a calm anxiety if that makes sense lol. Like I just don’t feel real:/

I enjoyed going to the concert and I had just regular earplugs but of course my OCD after it feels like my ears are ringing and now I’m worried I did damage to my hearing or have tinitius. I’m afraid I should’ve got professional earplugs. I have been worried for a week straight

Still learning since getting diagnosed but are there actual symptoms of health OCD or anxiety? What are a few that you can separate from actual situation will warrant a dr visit

I really need help. I am severely dissociated to where I can’t feel joy for anything at all. I’m stuck crying all the time. I have a history of emotional abuse from my father growing up so it’s made it really hard to trust people. He verbally abused me and never made me feel good enough. Then he died when I was 21 and I dont remember him telling me he loved me even then. Or a time when he meant it unless I accimplished something. It always felt empty. I tend to sabotage relationships and don’t mean to and find flaws in everything. I even get jealous of children and never wanted any in fears that I wouldn’t be as loved as much as them. And fear I would bring on the traits to them that my father did to me. I realize everything I do is an OCD compulsion and also I have such deep rooted fears. Fear of the future, but also the past. I loop about my husbands appearance even though I love him dearly and I dont want to think that way and it makes me sick. I think about the past and how he brought up things in confidence after we got married because he trusts me and he felt ashamed, but it still spiraled me out due to my own insecurities and my brain is like “what if you never accept his past and can’t move on from it”. Finding out new info spirals me out even if it’s something I know he legitimately cannot change or control and it was not anything that someone should not have been able to move on from. Even though I have a past myself???? That is 20x worse than his. My brain adds extra meaning. I constantly fear that I’m being cheated on or will be left, or how things can go wrong at any point. I’m afraid of having kids because of what I just mentioned as well as the fear of medical intervention and something going wrong. I’m afraid of people dying. I’m afraid of people hating me and I’m a huge people pleaser. I feel like everything in life I’ve never done for myself, and I have a huge fear of being by myself. I have constant compulsions and have since I was a child. But right now I’m at a breaking point and I’m like what do I want to even live life for if I’m so jealous and afraid of everything. And I never do things for self enjoyment. I have like no self identity at all and I always feel like I have to tell people about my achievements or how I feel in hopes that the little girl inside me will be heard. Am I too far gone with having these thoughts and also complex PTSD with the OCD? I feel like I’m stuck in a perpetual hell. I haven’t had a breakdown this bad since I was 11 years old. I spent 4 months crying and crying not knowing what was happening to me. Then I snapped out of it somehow. But I’m an adult now and it feels like my life is crumbling around me. I’ve been so scared to work because of fear of criticism due to the emotional abuse which I’m just now putting together… and also because of not trusting myself. I always ask for outside opinions. And I fear things going wrong all the time. I quit my last job due to POCD because I was working with children. And now that I’ve reached a point where I feel like there’s just ambiguous questions with no answers I felt a switch flip in my brain. For the worst. All my emotions shut off and it’s just been hell on earth with constant thoughts and dread and self loathing. I’m so tired of feeling afraid and alone. And I know a lot of it is a bunch of inner pain. I’m not even really looking for sympathy I just feel like I’m beyond help because of all I’ve been through. I can’t feel hope right now and it’s really scary. I have had pretty much every OCD theme there is and have lived my whole life in constant fear and anxiety. ROCD (main theme right now), POCD, HOCD, SOOCD, Health OCD (big one right now), existential OCD, religious OCD, fear that my husband and I won’t be together after we pass. Or that I’ll be replaced by another person if I were to die. Or if he dies before me. Plus I feel sad when friends say certain things or anything triggers abandonment. I am so caught up and I know it takes a mindset shift for this to all get better, but how with so much working against me? I’m so terrified. And I’m self hating so bad.

I‘m scared of starting sertraline (Zoloft) for my anxiety and OCD. I am just very scared of the potential psychological and physical side effects. Anyone who takes sertraline and what are your experiences with it?

I have emetophobia. And have been battling with it for about a year and a half now. It stems from a trip I took with my high school where everyone ended up getting the stomach bug. I didnt have it so bad but I ended up feeling nauseous the entire trip (1 week long). And then every time I would eat food I would feel nauseous or unwell and had a strict clean diet for a while. It got to the point where I couldn’t attend school without feeling like I was going to vomit and pass out. I couldn’t even hear the word without getting anxious. I eventually got on lexapro and when that didnt work then I recently got on prozac. I have been talking to my therapist about my anxiety and she had initially thought it was a trauma response from the trip, but eventually came to the conclusion that it was a form of OCD. Like it was where I wouldnt eat something if it touched the counter or I wouldnt eat something unless someone else ate the exact thing a few hours before. I avoid red meat completely because it is slightly raw. I get panic attacks after eating something like a freaking cookie from Crumbl, because I would read reviews about someone getting sick from the uncooked dough. But it felt like before summer I was getting to a point where I could eat most things and not get too much anxiety. Until the other day. On my birthday at midnight I ended up getting sick like stomach flu sick like real bad and ended up in the er. I havent eaten anything since and am horrified to eat something. And my thoughts keep running and I dont know how to be normal anymore. I dont know how to have a relationship with food anymore. I am horrified. I spent the entire year just dreading this one day and it happened on my birthday. I am supposed to be in school but I don’t know how to function anymore. Please someone help, I feel so alone.

Last month I bought a wax melter to plug into my wall because I wanted to enjoy nice things in my empty apartment. After a couple days of having it and using it, one night out of no where I experienced a severe allergic reaction that hit super fast. My throat was itchy and my eyes burned the area under my eyes were puffy. I immediately turned it off and unplugged it and never used it again. Here’s where my OCD took over. A few years ago I moved into an apartment that ended up having bedbugs. I spent a week there and it totally ruined my mental health. I threw out half of what I owned and from the stuff I still had I found out I had some bugs living in my items. I found this out when I moved into an apartment new apartment and found a couple crawling out of my gaming console. I immediately bagged everything up and notified my apartment complex. They had my unit treated and I haven’t seen one since. I haven’t had any furniture in my room and just had trash bags with my belongings sitting in the kitchenette area. Ive lived like this for the last two years and haven’t done anything about because thinking about it makes me spiral and stresses me out. I’ve had episodes where I think I might’ve accidentally torn a bag open and they got out. So I spray 99% alcohol everywhere religiously. I have since taped up the items so they are more secure, and I planned on opening them after a certain amount of time where I was certain they were dead. Another precaution I took was using a powder called Cimexa. This is where the wax melter story becomes relevant. In one of my episodic freak outs, I I dusted the dust into the space around light switches and receptacles in my apartment. This was sometime ago and I can’t remember when exactly I did this, but I know it’s been a while. Fast forward to after I unplugged my wax melter, I’m already stressed about my taped up boxes because I wanted to move on from living in fear and open them or throw them out, whichever one I could muster the mental strength to do. While getting up for work early one morning, I was groggy and thinking about why I was allergic to the wax from the wax melter, when I get hit with an intrusive thought about how maybe the wax melter got too hot and could’ve started a fire because of the dust I had sprayed into the receptacles. After I thought that, I was panicking, freaking out. The only thing that calmed me down was prayer and I was able to go to work. I mentioned it to a coworker whose spouse is a therapist and he mentioned that I’m just fixating on something that hasn’t happened in the time since and probably won’t happen. I tried to come to terms with it just being an intrusive thought when it evolved just a week ago into “well what if that powder around the receptacles is being blown by the AC into my apartment?” Because lately I’ve been feeling a slight allergic reaction to something at home and I don’t know what it could be. I still have the wax melter but it just sits on a table in my room and I haven’t used it since maybe three weeks ago when this started. I think logically it has to be the wax melter maybe, because why would it be the dust if I haven’t experienced anything like this until now? But I’m also freaked out because what if it’s spread to other units around me? I don’t know what to do.

I feel really afraid that I have a medical issue that's either bad or fatal and I just caught it too late. I have some pretty valid concerns about some issues I've been experiencing with my knee, however I am still anxious about everything. My fear is that I don't know if my issue is actually a concern or not. I've gone to the doctors and tried to treat it, however I felt they either didn't understand the issue or simply dismissed it and so did my family. They told me there isn't an issue but I feel like there is and there's nothing I can do about it. There's a lot more too it than that...I'm just lost.

Anyone willing to share there health ocd story with me? I’m really struggling with mine and would like to relate to someone and maybe talk about it. Thanks in advance. I’m new here.

For a few days I was fine now I’m here scared to sleep cuz of my heart palpitations and what if I die scenario I ven dough cardiologist and drs say I’m good is just anxiety and ocd health

Hello! Thank You For Reading this!!! I got alot of fears. OCD. There is 1 fear, that is the scariest fear for me, one that i'm having for the last 5 years, i'm searching for answers. It's all about fears, OCD and Electricity. It would help me so much to get my questions answered. I'm afraid of things and i dont know if its a real fear and threat or OCD. Let me explain. My biggest fear of all time is electricity and electricity shock. I'm afraid that if i do something without knowing it, it will cause something really bad. My questions are: 1. If i put a glass of water or a other drink next to a socket, can i still eat and drink that? Does food and drinks absorb electricity? 2. One of my OCD Compulsions are: Washing my hands, and sometimes even taking a shower after i did something with electricty. Think of, plugging something in a socket. Or putting my broken phone charger into my phone. Or anything else about that topic. May i ask, is this a real threat & if not, how can i conquer that biggest fear(s)? 3. If my face touches accidentally a broken phone charger or a socket or something Electricity, would that be dangerous? 4. Accidentally if i walk out the shower with wet hair, and if my hair touches a light, would that be extremely dangerous for my head and me? 5. Turning on and off and on and off the shower and lights to be safe. 6. Putting a headphone on after charging the headphone. With many fears and compulsions. 7. Putting on clothes/clothing that touched something electricity or a socket. A big Fear. You get the point. As you can read, i'm doing alot of compulsions, because that keeps me safe. I'm doing all of that because my biggest main fear. That is: If something happened, like in scenario 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 or 7. Or something else. Anything you can think of. For a great example, eating or drinking something that accidentally touched the socket. If i would get a shock of the electricity, a small one or a big one, would that change my personality? Let me explain. I love music, movies, guitar, doing stuff i like, and so much more. But after that electricity shock, i change completely. For example, i dont like music anymore and i become very rude, a completely new person. Someone i would never want to be. Or getting thoughts and feelings and doing action, that is never would do? My question is: is that a real fear and threat and is that how it works? How does it work? Reality? Or is it the OCD and is the fear not real? Can someone explain Electricity for me? How do i know if something is a real Electricity threat and danger, and what not? What are the dangers? That would be AMAZING! I'm so thankful for nocd and all the people who are helping other people. Everyone. Thank You! Have an amazing day!