Welcome to
the NOCD Community

How do I stop the thoughts of false attraction towards a family member like my dad it won’t stop and I feel like such a bad and manipulative person

I’m in a really bad panic at the moment re my ocd. I’m trying so hard to accept the thoughts/feelings and accept how real and true it all feels, despite the panic and anxiety. I read somewhere that you can clearly tell the difference between a thought about your sexuality being true vs an ocd thought. It said if the thoughts/feelings/narrative makes you feel panic, anxiety and dread, like you don’t want the thoughts, then it’s ocd. If they make you feel warm, content and normal, then they’re likely not ocd. Is that how people and psychologists differentiate? My situation is that I’m a 36 year old male that never questioned or had to question my sexuality until one day at 26, I had the question pop up “are you gay”. Since then, it’s like I don’t know who I am anymore. Questioning, checking, anxious 24/7, wanting to escape myself. Help :(

I have had bits of OCD and anxiety as long as I can remember but never in this way. I am in a 3+ year relationship with my now fiance. About 8-9 months ago I started heavily doubting our relationship.. doubting his love for and intentions with me and that we'd inevitably split up. That turned into me questioning my love for him. Questioning if my amount of sexual desire was "normal", if it's "normal" to find other men attractive if youre with the "right" one and that would go in and on. Then came the SO-OCD. These worries, fears, and doubts made me questioning EVER bit of my sexuality and that being the reason why I've felt a lack of contentment in my very healthy, stable, consistent relationship. I feel as though this is my body going full on protector mode!! I've had my share of trauma growing up and in adult relationships that have left me with tons of relational wounds and then pile on a lifetime of fantasizing about what it would be like to find "the one" (thanks Hollywood and social media lol). All of this to wonder if anyone can relate to all of this and how you've been working through layered traumas and OCD

If I could just go back in time and prevent myself from being so hooked on sexual things my life would be so much better. This has caused so much problems for me. OCD overall, anxiety, very bad sleep, intrusive thoughts, extreme stress, worrying, no motivation, and no enjoyment of life. I feel like a disgusting person and I don't feel like I'm getting closer to where I want to be. It's so hard trying to live my life without this stuff bothering me so much. I can't even envision a life without it besides my childhood. But that's only because I didn't know better. I don't know how I can just live life with all this anxiety and physical wearing and tearing. I was planning to see my therapist today, and I have little to no sleep. I can tell in how red some spots in my eyes are. Those red spots are always there. I'm never not stressed. I just feel hopeless and it feels like I can't keep going further. Nothing suicidal at all, it's just that I'm tired of this. I'm tired of waking up and dealing with the same thing over and over again.

I've been dealing with a sex addiction for many years now. I've been constantly googling about my situation, desperately wanting to find someone in a similar situation to mine just so I don't feel alone and have someone that understands. I haven't found an exact situation but similar ones and it still doesn't help. I can't help but do this compulsion because I need a distraction from my bad thoughts and physical symptoms. Everytime I try to Google about my situation I get strong groinals and I don't mean to be aroused by this stuff, I just want to find someone that is in the same boat. I read so many different stories just to feel less alone and it sort of helps in the moment but not long term and I just end up coming back to the posts. Several nights I've been struggling with insomnia symptoms and I can't shake them off. I've been worried about this for months now and I just hope it goes away completely and never comes back. Because of this now I'm worried I'm going to develop prostate cancer in the future because of this prostate infection that I have. I don't know if it works like that but now I'm just scared for my health and I don't think it will ever go away

My ocd was already kinda bad today, then I saw my bf and he started talking to me about us moving out (which I wanted at some point…I think 😞) and I’ve never been so anxious. I know I love him, I know he feels like home. But I feel so uncomfortable now and now idek if I truly want to have a future w him. Like I do. When I think about it, I do I know I do. But when I’m with him and the anxiety starts it really feels like I don’t 😭 and then after those feelings started I started having images of being w a girl instead and now i feel like I’m just fighting it and I’m in denial.

Hi, just wanted to post to see if someone can relate or can help me. I’ve had intrusive thoughts about my sexuality here and there, ever since I can remember. But I was always able to move on from the thoughs as I knew deep down they didn’t align with my values. I’ve recently moved to another country to travel with my long term boyfriend and on the first day here I had an intrusive thought that I couldn’t brush off which triggered my first ever ocd episode. Since then I have convinced myself that I must be bi. I’ve gone through past interactions with women and my brain has changed them into reasons to support being bi. I’ve also thought that because clips of girls in couples came up on my tiktok it must mean the algorithim makes me like these videos. I’ve also remebered times in the past where I’ve been worried about being gay so have done an online sexuality test that came out as me being bi … and at the time that gave me relief because it meant I could still be with my boyfriend and I moved on from the intrusive though. But now I’m thinking back on this and freeking out because I don’t actually consider myself bi. Can anyone else relate to this? I’m having the worst time travelling at the moment because of all of this. It’s as if I don’t know who I am anymore. And because of all this it’s actually made me develop Rocd and made me think horrible things about my relationship with my boyfriend who is my absolute rock and best person in my life and who I want to be with forever. Thanks in advance if anyone can help me with this. Posting this is also making me very anxious as I’m scared of the responses I might have.😭

I am so happy with my girlfriend, but every time i see a good looking guy i start having thoughts about liking the guy and feeling guilty cause i am in a relationship and even if i would be cuddling with my girl, a random thought about a guy could ruin my mentality, it would make me feel like an impostor and i wanna know if this is normal, i know my ocd can make me question my SO, but i dont want it just to be denial, idk how to differentiate denial from my ocd.

I feel like I don’t know who I am anymore. Loss of attraction, constant running thoughts, groinal responses, intrusive thoughts, while trying to function like a normal person throughout all of it. I feel like I’m not a lesbian anymore :(

Does anyone else get these feelings that they don’t even trust calling themselves their correct orientation anymore? Like I just feel like I’ve lost myself and deep down I’m not really a lesbian. Even though I was once so sure that I was :(

I struggle worse when we leaves for work in office. I’ve been struggling with this for so long and I’ve made no progress. I keep pushing back therapy again (I tried ERP twice) and I got a little better but not much. I’m scared, hopeless and unsure. I do not care if I am bisexual, but I just really want to be with my husband and have kids. I do think women are so beautiful and get turned on by them in porn. Although, I just can’t actually picture myself being sexual with them or in a relationship. My brain gives me this deep feeling I’m just in denial. But when I get out of my head, I realize I love him, his humor, his intellect, his values, and kissing and cuddling him. So why do I have this strong nag I’m gay if I love all those things? I just want to live peacefully😔 we are trying for kids soon and I am getting freaked out. I really want a family with him. He will be the best dad. I had a not so great dad so that’s all I want for my kids. He’s also the BEST to me too. This makes me suicidal when I think of not being with him. On the outside to everyone I look fine, but truly I am not (usually) 😔 again I even accepted I’m bisexual but even that feels so odd at times. Please help or give ideas/insigt.

Ok so I’m freaking out right now guys this has really got me , I’m reading up about urges etc on the internet and like how people with harm ocd might want to harm themselves , so what if u have pocd do u urge to want to do something sexual with a child ? Surely then that does make you a pedophile or are the urges compulsions ? I’m so confused and scared about this

You know what I really hate about this stupid disorder? That up until my first stuck intrusive thought (when I was 26), I knew who I was. I was happy. I had goals. I had friends. I was the most confident I’d ever been. Then from that very moment, it’s been 10 years of me being anxious, losing my life, losing just about everything. Not even sure who I am anymore. Questions after questions after questions of wether I’m attracted to someone, sexuality, ROCD, SOOCD. And not once have I felt myself. How can a healthy, happy 26 year old man go from one day knowing themselves to the next, 10 devastating years of not being able to think about ANYTHING OR ANYONE else except my theme? How?! I hate it.

Hello im an 15 yr old boy and i think i have hocd. I think i got it because of the Bohemian rhapsody movie(this is so random sorry). But yea i know to myself that i am not gay and I'm not attracted to men, And my whole life that i only have romantic feelings to women and i already have a gf, i love her so much to the point that i dont want to leave her and have children with her and marry her, and go to heaven together. but after watching that movie i got scared because i didnt know freddie was bisexual and i was shocked.And thats when it started i got scared i ask myself am i gay or not i simply answered that im not gay but i was so scared that im in denial can someone please help me i prayed and prayed and talked to God. And i cant stop crying please help me i want this to end and i want to be normal again. And i dont really want to lose my gf.

With erp I’ve been doing better these past few days, I used to love reading but I haven’t been able to with the fear of feeling like I’ll enjoy the man’s perspective of being with a woman, instead of the opposite. But I just started a new book and I’m being triggered so much :( it feels so hard to try to imagine from the woman’s perspective, I can’t even put a man’s face to the characters anymore. It’s like all of sudden I feel even more like I’ve been lying to myself about deep down not feeling like I’m gay. Fantasizing about either sex doesn’t work anymore, I feel like I enjoy the thoughts about the woman

I have a fear of intimacy, like, if a boy that I like likes me back, I get terrified. I did some research and ended up getting triggered. Someone in the comments of one of the videos I was looking at said to someone with the same fear that they could be "lithromantic"? So i researched this, and while, yeah some of it applied to me, my soocd was telling me that I wasn't straight and that I'm lithromantic and that I'll never achieve happiness with a man because of this. It makes me feel in denial and just as scared as I was about being gay. Like, i'm straight. And I just think my ocd makes me think that my fear of intimacy means I'm lithromantic, but I want to find joy in a man's compliments, I just can't because of the fear of intimacy and hocd. So it makes me prefer men not saying anything. Can someone help? X.

I did the gay poem test but I actually got a boner without anxiety, but I don’t get it. I didn’t really like what I was seeing but I had a boner, I took it off because I got disgusted but feels like I forced myself to get disgusted. What do I do? “Accept uncertainty” but then that’s just suppressing your sexuality and hiding from it. It’s like telling someone “don’t think of sex” it’s impossible, I can’t stop. How can I just say “maybe, maybe not.”

Anyone feel like they wake up one day and don’t feel the same anymore?

Hello everyone, It’s the first time I’m writing a post about my health condition. I’m suffering from OCD. I diagnosed about 17 years ago. It was extreme in the beginning as I didn’t know anything about it. So I went to many therapists, tried a lot of medications and it had it’s ups and downs. I am now 37 years old and the last years I take fluvoxamine and I believed I was in a good condition until 10 days ago. My main OCD intrusive thoughts were about harming myself or others and most importantly sexual thoughts. Some years ago - I really don’t remember how that started - a thought stuck into my mind that I might like men with circle beards. I know that I don’t like men and I have a girlfriend for almost 10 years now. Sometimes I also have this thought when I see someone: He is handsome, could I like him? And that causes lots of anxiety. Additionally I have an extreme anxiety about some specific numbers. So in some days from now I was about to start a new job but unfortunately the interview was on one of these dates causing me EXTREME anxiety. I tried to do every compulsion possible but it just wouldn’t work. I was worse every day, I wanted to sleep only as this was the only time that my mind wasn’t thinking. A total torture. I reached a point that I thought: I wish I die so this ends. I can’t take it anymore. To make this even worse, the father of my girlfriend had sometimes a beard like the one on my thought. So the last the worst thought was that I should avoid my girlfriend because she’s his daughter and I can’t have a relationship with her. I would be gay or something. How is it possible to think like this? I love my girlfriend so much, she’s my other half. Last days I tried to do ERP on my own, exposing myself to these fears. The first hour I felt I was free and then suddenly everything went a lot worse. So I don’t really know what to do, continue ERP or do compulsions so I would feel better? Obviously I can’t start work in a few days in this horrible condition as today I couldn’t get up from bed and I was only thinking: I want to die. I’ll be sad losing this good opportunity for work but losing my girlfriend from OCD as well will be unimaginable for me. I’m feeling hopeless right now. I’m sorry for my long post and I would like to thank everyone who reads it. I’m wishing all the best to everyone.

Ok so I'm just wondering if the compulsions are what's making this worse? The checking and need for certainty? I get groinals alot especially when triggered and it always makes me do a compulsion because I don't want to feel it, it makes me so I comfortable. I got no desire for sex with a man neither have I ever wanted it or had a crush on a guy but ever since this I'm so triggered by any gay feminine looking man. All my relationships since I was 16 has been ruined because of this I always had crushes on women, always loved women and fantasies about them all the time I only wanted women not men I respected others sexualities since I'm not homophobic but me myself I wanted to be with a woman that's my preference but if that's true why do I feel things below when I check porn? Why do I get false urges that cause me distress? How do I stop this it's been years and I'm still not willing to give up fighting I'm still holding hope that one day I can be happy with my girlfriend I love her so much and I feel like I need to breakup when I deal with this ): I hate it so fucking much I'm alwaus so happy when i feel straight and don't have these doubts. I'm happy admiring men and finding them handsome time to time but sex and romantic stuff I don't want win men its not desirable for me it wouldn't make me happy I want those things with my girlfriend ): pls someone help I need advice I got no one to talk to and it's getting bad again.