Welcome to
the NOCD Community

Any tips for guilt in ocd having the need to tell your partner or parents on something you did or saw because you think they will be upset about it but it’s not that big of a deal

I cant stop thinking about past mistakes.I remember constantly about horrible things . I also cant stop thinking about something I did as a kid. I so scared. Also at the same time I think that I was a kid and I need to forgive myself.But then I feel like I am making excuses.I overthink.It's better because I dont ruminate so much but I need an advice.I think that all I can do is to be a better person and apologise

Hey everyone. So I have ocd, as well as everyone here of course, but! I’m having a bad issue. So I deal with fear of psychosis very badly and I got a lot of anxiety from having dpdr a few years ago that have lingered . Well Ive been dreaming very badly and having terrible nightmares and in my dreams I’m screaming to wake up. I don’t understand it. But its like in my dreams im so so scared of dpdr and psychosis and scary stuff happens in them. It’s causing a lot of distress , to the point I dread sleeping. Now in real life I’m scared sometimes I’ll see or hear things and I’m scared I’ll be stuck in dpdr forever and everything. But I’ve been doing better at calming down. But my dreams are so so so bad. I mean I’m waking up sweating and then being scared to get up bc I’m having horrible nightmares with weird shit happening in them. Anyone experience anything like this. And now my heads like what if I’m getting psychosis 🤦‍♀️. It’s like no break for me. It’s horrible.

My daughter is almost 9 and she was diagnosed OCD almost 2 years ago. I am looking for support on how to support her. She has reassurance compulsions, always needs to know everything is okay. This can be from touching something or smelling something or walking by something. She asks me like 400 times a day.. she also needs the house in perfect order all the time. She is the 2nd oldest of 4 and can’t handle anyone playing with anything or things being out of place. She won’t ever relax and is constantly cleaning and reorganizing the house. She also is very fearful of being sick and is scared that everything will make her sick. She also has a really hard time making friends because it’s hard for her to hide what is bothering her. I thought she might have hfasd, and her psychiatrist agreed that she might but I figure if I can start helping her OCD then maybe I can help her as a whole. She just has a lot of anxiety attacks and I am burnt out on what to do. I feel helpless in how to help her. There are 3 other kids I am responsible for and she consumes almost every moment of my day, except for when she is at school.

Hey all...so I just had this thing happen a couple of days ago. I wrote about it earlier, but have been obsessing and can't sleep. Please help if you can... I have a fear of numbers, mainly 6 which is a religious thing. We were having this fun drawing for picking gifts. 1 to 25 was written on tiny pieces of paper. I was the second to draw. In my head, I kept saying, " please don't be 6" and of course, it was. I drew the freaking number out of the remaining 24. Now I feel as if I am evil or can conjur this bad stuff to manifest. It has reinforced this feeling of evil. I say I'm a believer in Christ but this has scared me so desperately bad. It seems as if there is no relief. With ERP you choose to expose yourself to your triggers. This feels as if it was chosen for me...by something malevolent? Oh God, please help! My mind is out of control...

Although I’m in “recovery” for my OCD, I’ve been dealing with intrusive thoughts lately and a lot of anxiety and depression, which is not something I think I would’ve ever let myself admit before. My life situation is 100x more stressful now than when my OCD was at its peak, and although my obsessions and compulsions are not running my life anymore, I also realize I’m in a rut that I haven’t been able to get out of in months. I lost my job last June, and have not been able to find work in a year… I moved out of my apartment and am living with my toxic/narcissistic parents again, and I barely have a social life anymore due to living so far away from my friends and trying to be extremely frugal about money. I’m really struggling with feeling frozen right now and not being about to move my life forward. I’m considering medication for the first time and wanted to know if anyone has any experience with low symptom anxiety/depression meds or SSRI’s in general. what’s been your experience and has it helped both your anxiety and OCD?

Hello guys, I’m having a hard weekend. Of all the what ifs. I hate how ruminating causes me a lot of depression. Sometimes I feel so trapped in my own body idk if anyone else can relate. I’m so tired of telling others about how I feel because I know that: 1) Is getting annoying 2) Is not helpful So I’m stuck feeling this dread. And guilt that I keep ruminating. Any tips or advice about this?? I feel like I’m disappointing God sometimes by paying too much attention to what the thoughts and feelings I’m getting but they’re so hard to ignore. Feed back would be greatly appreciated.):

Good afternoon, Background: I am a 34 year old male who has a wife and two kids, four and one. I have had anxiety since I was in elementary school. In the third grade, I would go to the nurse every school day because I thought I was sick. I also struggled with thoughts about burglars entering the house, my family getting hurt, etc. I got "passed this" (not really), but then I became obsessed with rituals when I played sports or was in high tense situations and felt tremendous anxiety when I didn't do them. I graduated high school and moved to college. While at college, I was officially diagnosed with OCD. What brought this on was I couldn't walk past a certain crack in the sidewalk without thinking an intrusive thought. This repeating helped take away the pain and sadness of the thought. After talking with the licensed school counselor, I started taking Sertraline and continued to deal with repeating. However, I was able to live my life and came to the understanding that repeating would just be part of it. At that time, I thought "I would much rather have anxious thoughts, repeat, and move on then try to face them." What Led Me Here: I had ups and downs regarding my mental health in adulthood, but I never really put much thought into it. COVID 19 happened and my son was born in 2020. I found an OCD therapist that helped me deal with intrusive thoughts about my newborn son. I would ruminate and think about whether my son would get hurt or die. I didn't feel bodily anxiety in this situation, because I would just repeat and the thought would go away. I worked with my therapist until the negative feelings went away. It seemed like everything was fine, until 2024. This past winter, I began to feel bodily sensations related to anxiety. I reached back out to my OCD therapist in January and started working with her again. At the end of February, I had an anxiety attack for the first time in my life. The feeling of anxiety I had never felt before lasted for a week and a half and it was extremely difficult. I was always proud of myself when I told people, "My OCD has never affected my ability to complete tasks or do important things." This wasn't the case anymore. I had to take a mental health day for the first time ever. I was able to get through that experience. Two weeks later, it came back. It lasted for about two weeks and my therapist helped me get passed those feelings. Instead of working with her every week, we moved to every other week. Fast forward to my current situation. I had not felt that bodily anxiety sensation for a while, but it came back when I got home from a five-day golf trip. Intrusive thoughts about not wanting to be a father or husband filled my body when I got home. The anxiety feeling returned and now I am here. **If you have read this far, thank you. I feel like it is important to know my story. These three encounters with anxiety and OCD has shown me that I have not been doing my part in getting myself better. I am always looking for short cuts and ways to barter with my anxiety and mental health. Now, I am attempting to not argue with my OCD and let intrusive thoughts in. My therapist and I are working on I-CBT (Inference Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) and I wasn't following through with the plan my therapist and I came up with together. Why I Am Writing this Novel I am trying to be positive and believe my core values (wanting to be happy, be a dad, be a husband, etc.), but I no longer have repeating to fall back on. Now, it is just rumination, obsession, and assurance seeking - the battle within. These past couple days, I have struggled mightily with my happiness. It is constant negativity in my head: - "Why bother? You will never be happy" - "You are a horrible parent. You would rather watch TV then be with your kids." - "You are a horrible husband. You are putting your wife through all of this." - "OCD will always win and dictate the life you have." - "See! You are feeling anxiety, so all of your work is worthless." I know the answers to my obsessions. I know the tools I need to use. I am just very afraid that I will not get better. My son, daughter, and wife deserve a present family member. I simply cannot live life like this. It is not a life full of happiness. It is just a life of continuous worry. I mean, I am already feeling dread about my kids growing up and graduating and they are four and one! Again, thank you for reading this. I just want to be better.

Does anybody else feel like therapy just doesn't help them? I first went to therapy when I was 8 and that was when I was diagnosed with high levels of anxiety and ocd. I went for a few months but then I didn't want to go anymore and didn't feel like I needed to so I stopped but then everything got worse when I was 11-12 I became anorexic because I was so scared of eating/getting sick . I went for a couple months then my therapist got fired for talking about other patients to other patients and vaping. So I got a new one but after about a year she said a "didn't need it anymore" which might have been true but it still made me confused. Since then I haven't had in person therapy until about a year ago so I went online for it on the better help site for a couple months . But I found that just telling the therapist about my life and ocd just wasn't helping because she was a little old and everytime we had a new meeting the next week she would forget everything I had told her and I would have to say it all over again which frustrated me. I want to get better but therapy just hasn't seemed to work for me . It just seems like the therapist is judging me and i feel like I can't even tell them my true thoughts and problems cause I would be judged or sent away (to like a mental hospital or something). Everytime i have been therapy I was very self conscious about what I would say and some of it wouldn't even be true , because I felt like I couldn't trust them for some reason. And I was wondering if anyone else had this same problem.

I have a question. I feel like im convinced now that i do not need any treatment or visit a psychologist/therapist. I do have thoughts like : 1.) i just manipulated people around me into believing that i have HOCD and in reality I do not have it??? 2.) I even manipulated myself and made myself believe that i do have OCD, but in reality i do not. 3.) That i do not need any treatment, because RIGHT NOW i feel okay. That im not OCD enough. Not sick enough. Not anxious enough. Not feeling bad enough. Thoughts that therapist would be unnecessary for me. Or that therapist wouldnt even believe me that i have an issue. And sometimes it even makes me laugh when i think about it. Like why the fuck do I laugh? Ive been trough a hard times, so why this response?? My question is : Is this another OCD trick to not get any better? Or am I creating another reality for myself that this whole time this was just a whole big lie and i do not have OCD? Even though my diary is full of my repetitive thoughts. Again and again the same ones. So I HAVE LITERALLY AN EVIDENCE THAT THIS IS OCD CYCLE. Whats going on with me? Am I crazy?

I'm afraid that I'm just in denial. It seems to be the most reasonable and obvious answer. I tried to rationalise these previous triggering episodes, what happened july 5th. I'm afraid that I might have felt attraction. Did I even get triggered? I know I ruminated about it, but I might have ruminated because I'm in denial and I was trying to justifying myself. I'm practicing ERP but I feel guilty.

Anyone’s periods make them super moody and emotional and then your ocd thoughts just like taunt you to make it worse

Does anyone have the type of OCD that feels like it is constantly them? For instance, my mind will generate an intrusive thought about anything in my immediate visual field? A plant… the blinds… literally ANYTHING. Turning something harmless into an instrument or object of horror.

My intrusive thoughts about ending my life have been so active today just constantly going and going and going. It's been exhausting. My brain just constantly makes me doubt it's OCD with thoughts like "are you sure you love your life" "what if you actually wanna die" and I just been so sad all day because I've had a really good week and now this happens again out of nowhere.... I'm feeling so discouraged and so scared. Then when I'm actually enjoying life laughing ect I get the thought "don't be happy because people are always happy before they do it" and that sends me spiraling... Please send me some encouragement or any tips to help I would greatly appreciate it 🥺 thank you in advance. 🤍 sending hugs...

I don’t really know how to keep pushing anymore. Today I went out and I went to the arcade which was fun, but then as soon as I pulled up to my driveway I just felt a wave of sadness because I knew that I had to go back in my house and deal with my thoughts. I feel like that every time. I’ll have a small moment of distraction then I’ll immediately get sad because I know that after this, I’ll just have to go back to sitting in silence and dealing with my thoughts. They just feel so real and it’s so overwhelming. It’s so draining. I dont know what to do anymore. I’m scared that I’m using ocd as a “cover up.” I’m terrified of my thoughts ever being right. And I’m terrified of living like this forever. I was just okay a few months ago. But now I’m stuck in this seemingly incessant loop of suffering. It’s so painful seeing everybody happy because these past few months, I’ve felt anything but happy. It’s like I can’t be happy anymore. All I can feel is stress and anxiety. I just suffer in silence because I can’t talk to anybody about this. I feel like I’m going crazy and I’m scared that I’ll feel this way forever.

My biggest trigger that started my soocd was how it took me time to get into the mood when having intimacy with a partner.. I feel like I always had really severe performance anxiety and if I wasn’t aroused quick enough I’d freak out. I believe soocd was maybe underlying but I’ve been like this since I started being sexual. I feel like I’m the only one that has worried about if they’re aroused or not and how quickly they are even before ocd. Can anyone relate ?

anyone else thoughts don’t always start with “what if”?? i sometimes get thoughts that’s like “you want to do it” “your going to do it” and things like “you might as well just do it because your unhappy now”. these all cause me major panic and makes me think i’m going to snap and do it. i feel like im going crazy from this and just want to get better.

Hi everyone!! ❤️ Quick trigger warning ‼️ I just wanted to know if anyone has advice for differentiating between intrusive thoughts vs true suicidal thoughts. All I want is to live my life and be happy. I want to live so badly. But sometimes in states of distress my brain brings up suicide as a “way out” which I don’t want to take AT ALL but I get concerned that my brain even presented that to me. I have a feeling its OCD because its so not something I want, it just gets hard because I really feel like life is so painful to get through right now. If anyone has been through this let me know! 💕

Before I even knew I had ocd around last year I used to smoke a lot of weed like dabs joints carts everyday like a lot of weed and I used to be completely fine until I did shrooms I took 5 pieces of a shroom bar and had a really bad trip where I thought I died and after that I started to get a lot more of ocd symptoms more than ever before I never even knew I had it before this (but I still had all of the symptoms just not as intense but ever since that trip id experienced really bad ocd the past year) it started when I smoked after my trip and thought I was having a heart attack because my chest and left arm hurt and I googled everything nonstop and had to check my pulse every couple of minutes and having a panic attack because of it and then after that I was like I’m going crazy it has to be psychosis and I just started googling and just convincing myself I had all types of different sicknesses this feeling stayed when I was sober but was intensified whenever I smoked especially the existential ocd when I was high I felt like my thoughts were spiraling just about everything my existence and time especially time time freaked me out so much just the concept of it and how nothing lasts forever and even when I was sober time just scared me it made me sad that was out of my control and nothing lasts forever and everything I do will be a memory and just so many thoughts about it that I just can’t even explain into words I recently heard people using micro doses of shrooms to help their ocd I was wondering if anyone had an experience like mine?

Votes just happened in the uk, and my boyfriend used vote and lent it to a very bad party, unfortunately that is against human rights, racist and all stuff like that. His intentions weren’t bad at all, he didn’t vote because he SUPPORTS the party, he voted because he was lending a vote/tactically voting and KNEW that the party he chose wouldn’t win and didn’t want them to. At no point as he “supported” the party, he just wanted to take votes away from the main 2 (conservative and labour) and vote for the next one down to show those 2 parties that seats weren’t safe and they need to improve if they won. My friend of 4 years has possibly decided to stop talking to me because of my partners decision. I tried to explain that they misunderstood my bf and he doesn’t support the party he voted, but they weren’t willing to listen and accused my partner of all sorts. It hurts so much. My boyfriend KNOWS the party he voted is bad and very much dislikes them, and after talking to him he realised he made a bad choice and there was a better, less problematic option that he wishes he had voted. He explained why he voted to some other people, who were open minded and willing to listen to his explanation. It just really hurts how my friend was closed minded and wasn’t willing to listen to how they misunderstood my boyfriend. My ocd is going crazy about if he’s a bad person, wether I made the right decision, when actually his values are similar to mine and my friends, but because as soon as my friend heard the name of the party my bf voted, they were rude and not willing to listen to anything. My friend mistakenly believed my partner voted for the party because those are his values when they aren’t and think he supports the party. He just wanted to take away a vote from the main 2 parties at the top. Am I right for stopping talking to the friend? I’m an open minded person who is willing to understand why people make certain decisions. My boyfriend has stated he regrets voting the party he did and he has realised how bad they really are. He dislikes people who vote the party and WANT them to win, he thinks they are bad people. In so upset about this and I’m feeling like a terrible person, my friend made me feel like I’m a bad person when it wasn’t even my view/vote and I can’t stop feeling guilty. Is my partner bad???