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the NOCD Community

At what age did your OCD begin to develop? I've had mine pretty much ever since I can remember.

I have my first appointment next Monday and I’m basically just trying to bide my time til then. I’ve struggled with OCD for my whole life, but I’m 42 and am in a deep valley at the moment. I’m headstand to share my struggles on places like this because I’m afraid I’ll pass my fears on to others. (Which has happened to me before). Any comments about how quickly ERP will start to show results?

I'm the middle child of 3 siblings. My older sibling is getting married this year, and my younger sibling is working to get into nursing school. And then there's me. The one with the Problems. I feel like my parents deserve a better middle daughter than me. I feel like such a disappointment that they have to put up with me and my constant crying. I hate feeling like I kill the good mood/transfer my bad feelings to them. No matter how many times they comfort me, no matter how much they support me and accept me, I still feel like an annoyance and a burden on them. I feel like a f^cking baby because of my mental health problems. I'm normally unstoppable, and have my own unique strengths and abilities, but THIS is what stops me. Anyone else feel like you're just a dumb, dependent child because of your OCD?

im just questioning my ocd and myself as per usual. i just wish i could taste life again. i think i forgot who i am and how to live. every time i have a moment of peace, it's destroyed by remembering my ocd. "this is not normal, why am i feeling okay? what if it's bad? what if-?" or some shit like that. i dont like this and i dunno what to do about it anymore. oh well.

How do you battle your reassurance seeking? I think I’m driving people crazy with all my questions, constant bothering, and phone calls. I just can’t stop asking “how do you know?”, “are you sure?”, and “what if”. It’s like it just comes out without thinking about it because I HAVE to ask the question. It’s constantly burning on the tip of my tongue waiting to be asked.

I'm terrified that my biggest fear happened on a night I drank too much and blacked out. I now keep finding/looking for evidence to try and prove/disprove and it's terrifyingwhen I find something that supports the belief. Does anyone else experience this. So angry with myself for letting myself drink to this point. Have been so depressed

I am in my third year of university for my law degree, and I finished and submitted my essays without a proper proof read. I read over one of my essays and realised I made a mistake using the wrong word, it auto generated the wrong word and I must have clicked on it. Anyway then a whole obsession stated about me worrying that the university are going to think that I have used Ai. The thing is, I used wordtune to enhance my writing (reword my own words) but I didn’t use it to reword other people work and pass it off as my own. Anyway I’ve just terrified myself that I’ll get accused of using Ai to cheat and basically it’ll ruin my life. I can’t stop obsessing over it. I obviously haven’t cheated and it is my own work, I just used wordtune to improve my sentence structure where if needed more clarity. I don’t know if that is considered cheating or not. I’ve read up on if and it seems to be cheating if it’s used to paraphrase someone else’s work (which isn’t the case). I had to rush my assignments so that’s why I’m worried. My brother says I’m being ridiculous. I honestly can’t stop worrying.

I don’t know what to do anymore. Anytime I feel the highs OCD ruins it and I feel like I can’t be happy. Im 20 and I can’t imagine living the rest of my life like this. I have no idea what to do, im so hyper aware of my actions (blinking, etc) a complete hypochondriac and I cannot enjoy life anymore. There is no quality of life with horrible OCD.

So with my ocd I have realized that over the years my obsessions switch out like one week I’ll obsess over this and the next week I’ll obsess over that. I have one obsession that really scares me and it’s zombies because I’m severely terrified of them. I know it sounds childish but it’s making it hard for me. I feel embarrassed being scared of them. I’m currently obsessing about them now. I’m so scared of them and the walking dead show. A couple years ago I watched it till season 4 and I was fine the entire time. Then I realized how terrified I was getting so I stopped. Now it’s just a cycle that I can’t get to go away. And I have this cycle with many other obsessions too. I just wanted to talk about it to let it off my chest. I think it scares me because I also obsess over death and sounds like alarms. Alarms scare me as well. It’s just really taking a tool on me so I wanted to share. :)

I don’t really know what to do anymore I feel bad all the time and when I take my medicine I feel bad for not feeling bad all these memories are on repeat in my head and it doesn’t stop. I’m convinced i’m the worst person ever and I deserve everything bad that happens to me and I think I do. I did things that are actually bad and I don’t know how to fix them and the guilt eats away at me i feel like i’m living a lie and hiding my dirty secrets from everyone. It’s like how could I have not realized these things were wrong. I feel disgusted with myself and I don’t know what to do

i was extremely scared today, a bunch of little kids were around me and i was scared to be near anyone because i would do something horrible. i feel like a terrible person that no one would want to be around. i don’t deserve this support, i just want to be rid of these terrible disgusting thoughts.

Hi, I'm writing this just to see if someone else can relate. I've always been very confused by the difference between regular therapy and ocd therapy. What I mean is that, at least in my limited experience, regular therapy involved examining your feelings and thoughts (why you had them) and I was told that you can only process something by getting to the root of it. However, since I developed ocd and was diagnosed with it, therapy has been about tolerating anxiety, guilt, fear, sadness, etc., while forcing myself to not analyse the thoughts and feelings that I have. I feel very weird about this. It's like I went from "everything you think and feel has a reason (i am not talking here about fleeting thoughts and emotions, I am talking about recurrent and persistent ones) to "whatever feeling or thought you are having is not who you are and you should just observe it and not get involved with it". Am I the only one who is so confused by this? Also, if I am not my thoughts, and I am not my feelings, and I am not my sensations, who am I then? I mean, what is supposed to define me? I know some people say "your values" in response to this, but values are thoughts as well, and they can change over time, so, I don't think that this makes anything any clearer. Others say that it is our actions that define us. I can agree with that, but aren't our actions based on our thoughts and feelings? Anyway, I am not saying that therapy for ocd is ineffective, I am actually finding it very helpful, however I am still very confused about many aspects of it. I hoped that some of you could help me understand it better. Thanks. I wish you all a good day.

I will preface this by saying I understand the goal is to not get rid of the thoughts but instead learn to tolerate the anxiety and uncomfortable feelings. But the thoughts/feelings/urges are getting worse. It’s to the point where it feels like I either want this or that there’s no way around it. I’m starting to feel like I’m not inside my body which is making it even scarier. I cannot even describe the amount of fear I feel right now. I am absolutely terrified. It feels like I’m about to snap at any moment and I just want to tie myself down. On top of this, because I'm having this experience, it feels like I need to be locked away. It feels like reality is slipping away. Please give me any advice you have. Logically I know all of this is just a thought but I cannot get over it.

does anyone ever feel really guilty about having thoughts of offing yourself. i try to not let it get to me. but if im sitting with my family i feel so guilty even though im not going to do it. i’ve had such immense anxiety in the past from it and i ran to my mom in the middle of the night and made her sleep with me because i was so scared. i feel like now when i don’t go to them and don’t tell them how im feeling i feel like i don’t care anymore and im not anxious and that causes me even more anxiety. i have the thoughts of am i happy? do i want to die? and what if i did this? omg you just thought that you’re suicidal. you want to die. and i freak out and i feel so alone because i feel like if i go to my parents for reassurance again the cycle will get worse but if i don’t go to my parents about it my ocd tells me that im just accepting the fact im going to do it now because im not seeking reassurance. i always have these thoughts that oh you’re just using ocd as a way to cope w the fact youre suicidal and i don’t know what is real and what isn’t someone help.

I had a relapse in August of last year with my OCD (extreme intrusive thought). I was off my medication; I went off of it in March of last year. I got back on my medication on August 19, and I’m just curious if anyone here been on medication, done therapy, and had complete Remission from OCD intrusive thought? I look back to several years ago, and I feel like if I had intrusive thought I dismissed it immediately. Has anyone gone for years without intrusive thought? 

How do I stop engaging with the thoughts or stop ruminating when I can barely think of anything else without it turning into something it’s not?

Does anyone else struggle with always searching for something to be wrong, especially in good times? When things are good or I get good news I am looking for the next terrible possibility.

I'm paranoid that I have several things neurologically wrong with me, and my psychiatric NP made me feel so insulted and infantilized this week at our appointment that it triggered an extreme OCD episode that I've been stuck in all week. I'm dumping him, obviously, and I'm trying to get in with a psychiatrist ASAP. My father and I are being more serious than ever about getting me help. It's been an extremely tough week. I feel absolutely insane and psychotic for believing everything my OCD is telling me, but I can't turn it off, and I feel like everything I do to try and help myself is just a mental compulsion. I don't know what to think anymore, and I don't know when this episode will end. I miss feeling like myself. I feel like a completely different person and it's both horrifying and embarrassing.

i keep getting thoughts of molesting/ doing sexual things to people (that i’m close to) and children, every-time this happens I extremely disturbed and have panic attacks bc i’m a horrible person. i’m honestly just contemplating just k*lling myself because i feel like a disgusting p3do who doesn’t deserve anything in life. i’m already diagnosed with anxiety and depression but i’m not sure if this is OCD or not. i hate my self so much- this thoughts won’t stop happening and i never want to do anything like that ever. :/. i’m not sure what to do, i’ve talked to my therapist but none of her methods worked on how to stop these thoughts.

I had these horrible nightmares that covered the most disturbing of my ocd subtypes and intrusive thoughts. They were so vivid and all disturbing and I just woke up. Thoughts of what if it’s something you want or other what ifs. And I’m so uncomfortable which is an understatement. I don’t even want up get up because I’m so uncomfortable. This is awful