Welcome to
the NOCD Community

I have had such a long struggle with OCD and I have doing good for a long time but it is really coming in full force right now. I’m losing weight because I’m having a really hard time eating. I ate yesterday and then my stomach was hurting. I just convince myself that everything is contaminated or now that I’m not eating much that it’s gonna make me sick because my body isn’t used to it. Idk I’m struggling so bad. I’ve had some snacks here and there but it’s so hard for me to eat right now and It’s making me sad because I was doing so good for a long time. I also keep forgetting to take my meds and I know that’s part of it.

Is it normal when you’re sick that thoughts become more intense and feel more true? But you also feel like you don’t care ?

Anyone else bite the skin on the inside of the cheeks or lips until they bleed? I do it all the time because of my anxiety and I recently learned about the triangle of “D” on your face and it freaks me out thinking I’m doing something.

I have had OCD my whole life and was diagnosed by a therapist 2 years ago. Specifically I struggle a lot with health, contamination and pure ocd. I was doing exposures and really felt like I conquered by contamination ocd. With the health ocd I have an intense fear I will have a food or medicine allergy and go into anaphylactic shock. This takes up a lot of my energy day to day. Within the past year, we bought a home, renovated and recently got married. My husband wants to start trying for a baby soon but I am not ready at all because of how much I feel like I have gone backwards with my anxiety and ocd. This spiked a lot with the stress of wedding planning. I’m scared pregnancy will spike my health/contamination ocd even more and I won’t be able to handle it. I always wanted babies but now that it’s getting closer and I know how much ocd I truly have I am so nervous I will cause myself and baby more stress than good. Does anyone have positive stories of TTC/pregnancy/PP and motherhood with ocd?

Hi everyone This is my first post been going through rough 4 years many many themes but my current theme is fear of psychosis this is the roughest one so far and actually believed I was in phycosis and still doubt it sometimes when it was at its worst I was jumpy and questioning why my mind was suddenly hyper analysing things I don’t normally care to notice my normal floaters in my eyes kept playing tricks on me and still do when the odd one jumps up or moves quicker than normal, feeling like I was seeing shadows or mistaking any faint noise as a whisper or something to be alarmed at, vivid patterns and pictures in my mind when I shut my eyes for bed and bothered me so much made me feel like I had taken some sort of drug, having to get reassurance from everyone that they would see the same fly I saw just fly into the room. It has become abit better the more aware I have become but it’s still a fight sometimes to not want to check or google or question this theme was the key to getting an OCD diagnosis. Finally in therapy and trying to label it as often as I can now. My takeaway is lack of sleep and hormones really do make it worse or even trigger it but now the fear is here, it is all the time even if it’s more mild when getting better sleep and at certain times in the month ! I’m finding it a hard battle now I’m aware it is OCD I’m doing emdr hopefully it helps. There is always that underlying fear that I’m missing something or I’m in that age bracket I hope one day I can look back and say I got through this particular phase but at the moment it seems hard to think my brain will ever “relax” again I would like to start enjoying my life again. I’m from the uk and would love to find a person to chat too in a similar theme to me it would be nice to help each other out on those bad days and even be able to make some light out of our similar experiences if that would help I’m 26 female.

I’m curious if anyone else has ever had this. This is my specific theme in regards to my OCD that has been prevalent in my life since 2022. Quick back story: went to a party college for 4.5 years and had a blast, got as drunk as I wanted on weekends and never once felt bad about it. Then, hangovers got worse and I started partying too much. After graduation, I told myself that it’d be a really cool goal to get to the point where I could go out and just have 4 beers. Enough to enjoy myself, not enough to make me hungover. Well, this simple healthy goal turned into a massive obsession. Now, if I go over my limit of 4-5 beers/drinks, two things happen: 1. I give up and binge drink bc I might as well if I’m already over my limit. 2. The next day even if I’m super hungover, unless I can’t bc of work scheduling, I will perform a check where I drink 4 beers and see if I can still get drunk off of those. If I can get drunk, then I feel normal. If I am not as drunk, then this cycle continues. I worry about becoming an alcoholic all the time bc at this point in my life I am very active in my social scene, and alcohol is very much present. While I certainly do not have any family history of alcoholism nor the personality or drive to become one, I still fear that I might one day despite knowing I won’t. I also worry about raising my drinking tolerance by continuing to feed this obsession/compulsion loop. It’s slightly affected my personality and confidence. I’m aware it’s irrational and the solution is to simply cut back as anyone would and go out less frequently, or drink less frequently when I’m out. And yet, my other obsession with alcohol is experiencing the painful withdrawals that alcoholics experience when they stop drinking!! Despite never having experienced those withdrawals when I’ve not drank on a given night. So, it’s a weird one. Thinking the ERP is just going to be not performing those checks. If I’ve reached my limit and am not as drunk, okay. Alcohol absorption is affected by a lot. No need to check my tolerance nor go overboard since I’m not as drunk. We’ll see. I’m on Zoloft too which has helped a ton with other symptoms but this theme is making it less effective and I need to get control of it now.

I had my first serious anxiety related episode back in April and then once in May. My husband had lost his job due to health reasons and spent six weeks looking for work before he finally found something. It was up to me delivering for spark to make the bills. The stress built up and in May I had a panic attack that put me in the hospital. I started Sertraline, had some rough side effects but still noticed a positive change in the anxiety. I still felt crappy every day, but less and less crappy, if that makes sense. (Nausea, heart palpitations, weak, anxious). The month of June was great, no huge panic moments, no racing heart, etc. In one day I went out of town by myself, drove on the interstate, (that’s always scared me), went to the dentist and took my son out to lunch and dined in. It was great. The next day, I argued with my teen all day, it exhausted me and I was dreading spending an hour that evening talking to my therapist. I was just too tired, you know? About twenty minutes before the appointment my anxiety ramped up. Racing heart, trembling, feelings of dread. Normally I can get it under control with breathing techniques but I didn’t have time to before my appointment. Luckily my therapist had overbooked and called me to cancel, so I just rested for the rest of the night, but that’s been six days ago and I’ve struggled ever since. The day after that I was weak and shaky and could feel my heart beat, the day after that I was tired and really beating myself up for what felt like a failure to me, and the last couple days it’s been on and off heart palpitations (my heart rate isn’t going up high, I’m just super aware of my heart beat) and it’s very uncomfortable. My family keeps telling me it’s because I’m stuck in my head and I know that’s true because I spent hours outside in the heat doing garden work yesterday and instead of feeling even worse I felt amazing for the rest of the night and I’ve felt pretty good for most of today. So I know in my head that anxiety recovery isn’t linear and that anxiety hangovers are a real thing and that i just have to be patient for a few days after an attack, but sometimes it’s so hard to think like that when I’m in the middle of feeling so crappy and shaky and weak. Does anyone else feel discouraged like this sometimes? Is what I just described similar to anything anyone else has experienced? If so, what were some coping techniques you used?

I’m not sure what to do. I have a trip to Disney in less than a week, but my anxiety is debilitating right now. Ive barely been able to sleep or eat in 5 days, and it’s not getting any better. I don’t want to not go on this trip because that’ll just prove to the anxiety that I can’t do it, but I truly can’t go while I’m feeling like this. I won’t be able to do anything. I’ve felt like this before, but I’ve never had an obligation like this during a bad spiral. I really don’t know what to do. I’m so tired of feeling like this. I’m heavily medicated, I do breathe work, I do mindfulness exercises and nothing eases the anxiety. Every time that I think I’m fine I think about Disney and freak out again. If anyone has any advice or even just encouragement I’d really appreciate it. Thank you

Red and bloody from the soap and water I have been putting on for 8 hours each day.

You can laugh at the title if you want, it’s objectively pretty funny. Hi guys, this is my first time on this app and I mostly just wanted to see if anyone out there is in the same boat as me or works in health care and is dealing with this. I haven’t told anyone what’s going on. I’m in my 4th year of medical school and In the past year I’ve developed what I think is pretty bad health OCD. Now health anxiety is a really common thing for medical students to have, I know that. It wasn’t until recently that I realized that the constant lymph node checking, self diagnosing & examining and reassurance seeking could have definitely had crossed the line into compulsions. Both my parents are cancer survivors which is what originally made me want to become a doctor but now every single physical sensation I have sends me into hours or days of rumination that I or someone I love has stage 4 terminal cancer. I spent an entire vacation with my boyfriend having a silent panic attack and convincing myself that he was dying of pancreatic cancer when he just had food poisoning and was fine days later. I had a complete mental breakdown and told myself I had lymphoma for weeks when I realized I could feel some of my own perfectly normal lymph nodes in my neck. My logical brain knows this is completely ridiculous but the emotional brain will not shut the hell up. It seems cruel that I made it this far only to feel like my own damn brain is betraying my ability to think through health situations clearly. I’m determined to get my symptoms under control before I graduate in a year as I don’t want this to affect patient care. Just wanted to get this off my chest and see if anyone else out there in health care is struggling too.

It’s all I think about everyday. I just stare at statistics and wonder and hope and pray that I live. I don’t know how to stop the research. Plastic has become a huge trigger. I just feel terrified.

Hi all it’s been a bit since I’ve posted. I’ve been doing ok ish Today has been weird, idk if it’s cuz I upped my vyvanse to 20mg and it’s making me anxious or if everything is just colliding rn It feels like idk myself anymore. I’ve been flipping between ROCD, soocd and tocd the last couple of days/weeks. Rn I just feel horrible and idk why but I’ve been on my period for 11 days now. My period usually lasts 7. When I’m not on birth control. I’ve been on birth control since October of last year and hadn’t had a period till coming home end of April/early may and now it’s back again. I’ve been ranting to chat gpt (Ik it’s bad, I just didn’t know who to turn to) Rn I’m just really in my head about my gender and I’m anxious and crying and I just don’t feel good. Context for tonight’s thought I was doing my skincare, I’ve been trying to develop a routine cuz I’m bothered by the texture on my face and how it makes my makeup look. I’ve always felt less pretty than other girls tbh. Anywyas. As I was doing my skincare I had this thought just happen across my mind of “what if I dislike my skin and face so much cuz I’m trans? What if the reason I’ve been depressed lately is cuz I’m slowly becoming dysphoric and hating myself?” When in fact I think the issue is: I haven’t seen my bf in a month and a bjt. I’ve been bleeding for 11 days. I’m in summer classes and stressed about the comjng semester and how much work I have to do to catch up cuz I’m in pre med and I’ve been fucking slacking lately and I truly hate myself for it. I miss being hugged by my bf. I’ll admit I need a good dicking down tbh. My brother is a whole other story while I’m home. I just feel. Gross and bad. And I’m worried I’m trans. I’m worried I’m a lesbian or smthn. I’m worried I don’t love my bf deeply enough and it’s all just circling in my head a lot and I just feel like curling into a ball. I’ve always been a tomboy, I mostly hung out with boys cuz the girls never liked me. I was weird. I loved dragons. I had imaginary friends. At one point as a kid I tried a different name, I think it just didn’t fit and I grew out of that and just went back to my normal name. But now I’m worried I just repressed that. But I see a lot of girls who also went through the same thing and are also just women. But I’m so scared that I’m “not letting the TV glow” like that trend (that shit made me so anxious. I have trans friends and I love them but im scared of it for myself) I feel still sorta tomboyish but dress feminine, once in a blue moon ill dress semi masculine and now I’m worried that means im either trans or a lesbian who wants to be masc. but I’m not. I don’t think I am Idk who I am anymore. Idk if it’s just ocd or if im actually discovering smthn Im just anxious as hell tbh. So I don’t think that’s the case. I’m just sitting here. Looping in my head. My typical “drown out the noise” tv shows won’t load properly cuz of our new wifi and it’s really irritating me. What if I’ve been lying every time I try to do a “are you trans/genderfluid/non binary?” quiz. What if I’ve been lying to my bf. My friends? My family? I keep thinking to myself, if I wasn’t with my bf would I dress the same? Yes I would. I’d still wear my cardigans. My sweaters. My dresses. I’d try out new styles like I want to rn with him. I’m just worried that teying smthn would make me realize smthn about myself but I don’t think it would. Idk. I’m just in all these irrational thoughts. Jumping to conclusions Any advice would be appreciated. I mostly just needed to vent about this.

my psychiatrist is starting me on a low dose (10mg once daily as needed) of propranolol in two days. i’m very nervous as i really don’t like experimenting with new meds..it makes me so scared and so anxious. but i think my anxiety has gotten so bad that i need to start using stronger meds. before i was on hydroxyzine which is basically just benadryl. and then i was on buspirone 3x daily, which was basically like taking tic tacs for me. and what i struggle with in anxiety is the physical symptoms it gives me. which causes my anxiety to get stronger. which makes my medical OCD super aggressive. it’s a vicious cycle. so i’m feeling sort of optimistic that a beta blocker can help. i know it won’t take the anxious thoughts away, but knowing that it’ll help the racing, climbing heart rate, and loosen my chest muscles, AND it’ll help with my vestibular migraines? i think that’s a win in and of itself. i’m hopeful 😌🙌🏻 and i would like to point out that i know medications will never do all of the work for you, that you have to meet them halfway, but the medications i previously mentioned ^ weren’t even meeting me a quarter of the way!

This might be super specific, but something I struggle with is feeling the need to consistently look up things for reassurance. I feel the need to look up the same things over and over again just to make sure. Example: googling what to do in serious situations like a car crash, if someone’s having a heart attack, seizure, etc. I’m (soon to be) a healthcare professional and I feel like I know these things like the back of my hand. I feel like if I ever get to these (extremely unlikely) situations, I won’t know what to do. I feel the need to constantly reassure myself the proper protocol for situations that will probably NEVER happen. Anytime I think of this possibility, I can’t help but become trapped in a spiral of googling what to do. It’s come to a point that I’ve started noting down what to do over and over again if these situations happen. I really just want to know if anyone relates.

So I’m severely emetophobic but these past few weeks have gotten SO bad. I had a bad reaction to an SSRI that made me feel like I was gonna throwup, I stopped taking them over two weeks ago but ever since then the fear has got even worse. I haven’t left the house properly in weeks because I’ve convinced myself I’ll be sick. I feel nauseous even indoors a lot of the time (there are hours when I don’t, like for example this afternoon I was fine). But I challenged myself to go for a short walk this evening and omg it was so hard I really thought I might throwup. The thing is I KNOW it’s anxiety and not real nausea because it feels completely different to when I was actually nauseous from the medication. This feeling is more like a tight throat/sensation of a lump in my throat that makes me feel like I’m gonna gag. I also have RCPD (I can’t burp basically lol) so I just feel like I have trapped air in my throat that’s gonna make me puke. The phobia has gotten really really bad. I have started therapy recently but I’ve been scared of throwing up since I was a kid and I’m now 31 lol wtf. I remember last Christmas my mum said someone at her work had been sick and I was so scared my mum had caught it and would pass it on to me that I refused to leave my bedroom without wearing gloves and a mask and wiping everything with anti-germ wipes. But right now it’s so so bad because I have literally gotten to the point where I’ve convinced myself I feel nauseous pretty much 24/7 and I am taking anti-nausea meds almost every day. Has anyone else dealt with/has tips for this??? I’m literally desperate 😭

I can’t stop myself from taking photos of my teeth. I have had numerous fillings and I definitely have staining / some other fillings that need done / one extraction / one root canal. But they don’t look terrible. However I have a lot of decalcification spots by my gums. One dentist told me that if they all broke through I’d need like 20 fillings. I keep checking my mouth of cavities… stains… recession… white spots. Everything. It’s driving me insane. And it got to the point where I was scared to eat… or drink fizzy drinks (I drink carbonated water) in fear of erosion. 🥲 I used to scrub the shit out of my teeth so that’s doesn’t help. I also went through a medical issue and after I was taken off of a medication I was on - my teeth went to shit along with it even worse than before. Genetics at play too. But holy hell. Does anyone have obsessions over oral health / hygiene? I brush and floss daily, too. Other than an occasional depressy day or when my ADHD is ADHDing and executive dysfunction kicks in. Sigh. Almost 28 years old for reference and I feel like I have a monthly subscription to the dentist for how much work I’ve had.

My mom is visiting me and we have been sharing my studio apartment for about 10 days. I was already struggling with this because I have a hard time sharing my space with people—I like things to be clean and orderly and I hate not having total control over these things. She got sick with what we thought was a cold and I was getting very stressed/irritated with her coughing and sneezing in the apartment, even though I obviously know that it’s not her fault. Her illness got progressively worse (probably the flu), so she decided to get a hotel for her last night. I am alone in my apartment, which I am grateful for, and I cleaned everything down with Lysol, but I still feel as though my apartment is contaminated and I just feel grossed out and stressed. I felt fine earlier before I realized it is most likely the flu, but now I am starting to feel congested and I can’t tell whether it is real or just my paranoia

I found out it’s made from recycled plastic bottles. I’m just breathing in plastic fibers all day now, that can’t be safe. And my husband says it’s too expensive to replace. I’m losing it, I sleep in there

Im worried i have a cancer lump in my chest, i cant tell if it's a lump or just fatty tissue im so worried

i’m not trying to ask for reassurance but is this ocd? I’ve had religious OCD Harlow city and pure OCD before and I’m still going through it but basically today I was putting on lipgloss and it got into my mouth and it was like a overwhelming flavor. It tasted gross and then I choked on my spit and I have a sore throat right now, but I choked on my spit and ever since that it feels like there’s so much saliva in my mouth and it feels like hard to like catch my breath like the feeling you get when you’re like, gasping for air after choking that’s kinda how I’m feeling without like the gasping part but it just feels like I’m like swallowing on command and I’ve had like breathing fixation before so I don’t know if this is just like fixating on my swallowing but it’s bothering me and I don’t know if it’s cause I have a sore throat but yeah basically kind of feels like I’m drowning like inside my mouth like there’s just like so much saliva in my mouth and like I have to swallow like every second and I just feel like I can’t breathe when I swallow for some reason kinda