Welcome to
the NOCD Community

Why is it when I wake up, the first words that go through my head are "I'm a les..."? Followed by scenarios, and then a guy I like. (I'm a girl) It's like with all the ruminating I've done it's convinced me. A long time ago I heard that the first thing that goes through your mind in the morning is what you want. I don't what that.

i think one of the most interesting things i’ve learned when it comes to sexual themes is how rigid society’s views are on sexual attraction. i’ve learned this specifically from spending a lot of time in asexual forums (mainly because i feel that i’m demisexual or something of similar likeness) - despite popular belief, just being physically aroused by someone is not what sexual attraction typically is. having the desire to actually be physical with someone is sexual attraction. it doesn’t even have to be the whole “i want to sleep with them” but rather a desire to be as close as possible to them. many asexual people can feel sexual arousal because of a person, they just lack the desire to actually have partnered sex - despite popular belief, porn preference can actually have little to do with real life sexual desire. you can be turned on by things you don’t actually desire. - despite popular belief, you can be very aroused by the idea of real life sex while actually not desiring it when the opportunity arises i just thought these points could be helpful for those who experience sexual themes.

Having trouble resisting compulsions

18+ Sometimes my eyes rest on intimate areas I don’t know why. It’s been worse lately because I’ve been having ocd about it. Sometimes my eyes will rest on someone’s crotch of like the part of the shorts where they’re like separated from the skin and there’s like an opening. And one time I was on the train and my eyes rested on this persons crotch and they were in a dress. I looked away but then I had an urge to look again. I didn’t see anything private. They were sitting down and I was looking down because I was standing up, the dress was relatively short too. But then I realized the person was a kid. Then I started freaking out and crying. I had to be comforted by my girlfriend because I was so distraught. I’m kind of feeling bleak right now and irredeemable. I don’t like anything about myself. I’m really tired of feeling this way.

How does one overcome POCD when it’s tied into/influenced by actual events in my life? I feel like there is almost a pattern for me :( My events involve researching/googling disturbing things I shouldn’t have out of morbid curiosity (and seeing truly horrible things/images on the internet as a result of this), having thoughts about girls in their late teens sometimes being attractive (it’s happened multiple times that I thought a girl was attractive then learned she was like 17 or something. It always disgusts me, but I feel the need to test to make sure they aren’t attractive to me upon me finding out their ages. This causes even more distress and discomfort). I have certain and uncertain memories about pleasuring myself to things that are morally unacceptable (one of those things being a scene from one of those films on the Disturbing Movie Iceberg that I watched and I’m unsure I may have m*********d to. It involved CSA and was one of the first catalysts for my POCD. I am only about 40-50% confident that this didn’t happen). I’m even going back and remembering a time where I was 12-13 and read fanfics about a 9-year old anime character being shipped with a full adult. However all but the last event happened between the ages of like 20-23 (I’m 24f now and the thing about worrying about finding girls in their late teens attractive is the only current “active” thing going on. Everything else is based on past events). Every time I read about POCD, it always seems like people’s distress revolves around “current” intrusive thoughts (e.g, “Did I find that child attractive?” or “Did I touch that child inappropriately?”). I rarely see things involving past actual events similar to mine, and it makes me think that this isn’t just POCD. I feel like there’s no other explanations for my actions, this feels like a pattern of behavior. I am so afraid that I am a p***. And I’m leaving for a movie soon. Not exactly sure how I’m supposed to pretend I’m ok and act present when the friends I’m going with would likely hate me if they knew all of this. Im so tired.

My anxiety is spiking a lot right now I have no idea what’s going on my thoughts keep saying your gay I thought I wasn’t but I just saw a post saying even if I get boners to girls I could still be gay I am anxious right now someone please help

I’ve seen a lot of posts from other people going through tough times with SO OCD, who appear to be having similar thought patterns and I was hoping sharing what’s kept me on a good run these past few days may help at least someone. The thoughts that used to have me seeking answers on google, and looking through my past for some signs to string together as to why I’m actually gay, no longer cause those responses. Instead I’m questioning why am I not distressed more, does that mean I like these thoughts? While I’m not as distressed, I still think about my OCD diagnosis and SO OCD a lot! I’m still uncomfortable looking at guys and get the automatic trigger thought “oh they’re hot” or “you’re gay” before I even have a change to really look at the dude. I still get scenarios in my heads when I see a woman other than my wife of how they wouldn’t accept me being in a relationship with them because of my gay thoughts and that I am actually gay, or once those thoughts pass, why are you even looking at any other woman but your wife. I even get scenarios in my head of being with a gay dude and them mocking me for not accepting that I’m gay/don’t know what my sexuality is and pressuring me into doing something with them. I still have my OCD questioning if I really enjoy having sex with my wife every time we do, and my brain try to force images in my head with the repeating though “you know you get off easier thinking about a man” So even though I’m far from being as distressed as I once was, I still am, and I’m sure many of you who don’t think you are as distressed either, and accepting of the thoughts, still are distressed in your own way. I’ve been trying to view this as my OCD just switching up from the previous distressing question of what if I’m gay, to Why am I not freaking out that I might be gay. Still OCD just a different tactic from him to get me to engage in compulsions little my little. And it has worked here and there. I have googled, I have ruminated, I have scoured these threads looking for someone to have the exact same experience as me. While I want to stop doing those eventually, I’ve still made lots of improvements and am proud of my progress, even though my OCD only wants me to focus on my failures Other thoughts I’ve even had during the time that I’ve made improvements have included: I’m just using SO OCD as an excuse or it’s not right or fair of me to choose to reject being gay when others don’t get to (I’ve even learned the fairness thing is another sign of OCD) It’s hard, but I have to accept that I could be. Even having read some stories for ERPs of people not realizing they were gay until after they were married (at least from how they talked about it), did not help those fears, but the one thing those people were able to do was to come to was an answer and move on, but guess who’s brain will never allow that? So while it isn’t fair that I’ll never have clarity, and that it really, really isn’t fair that I’ll have to deal with these kinds of thoughts for the rest of my life, I know that my OCD only wants to take joy in me being miserable and playing his games. And while it’s going to take a while for the distress to disappear with things, and acknowledging that these thoughts will never go away, no matter how much I want them too. I do know from first hand experience in overcoming SO OCD previously, is that they do get quieter and rarer the less time we give them. If you read this, thank you for reading this novel, and I wish you strength and courage in your own battles! OCD really sucks, but think working towards accepting that I have this terrible mental health illness has aided me greatly these past few days and let me become more aware of his tricks and thought processes that he wants me to get stuck on

Hello everyone, It’s going to be a long shot but I’m in distress. I’ve had different themes since I was a child and my first rocd episode was with my first love was when I was 18 ( I’m now 33) when one of my friends asked me if I truly loved him. I couldn’t stop crying for months, it was the most terrifying experience. ROCD left me for a couple of years, I had somatic OCD, Health OCD and when I was 26 with my ex I experienced the second ROCD episode that was absolutely horrifying. I was driving back home when this thought popped in « do you really love him? » and it was the beginning of hell. One and a half year of 24 hours ruminating. I wasn’t myself anymore, I couldn’t function properly and he left me. I went backpacking in SEA and had fun, met a lot of guys and had also couple of one night stands. In 2018 I decided to settle in Indonesia and I was « ocd » free until I met my ex and we got into a relationship. After 6 months in the relationship and finally knowing learning about ROCD (didn’t know until 2018) I realized what I was suffering from. He cheated on me and left me, but the ROCD was pretty debilitating. In 2023, I met my now husband. We met in 2020. He’s the kindest, loving person I’ve ever met. The day he told me he loved me I freaked out because I was just enjoying the beginning of our relationship. I started SSRI’s (escitalopram) and therapy in 2021 during the pandemic and it helped me. But we had to continue increasing my dose because my OCD is so strong. 2022, we decide to get engaged, I go home for the holidays and I started watching atypical on Netflix. One of the main characters left her boyfriend because she fell in love with a girl and I was like « what if this happens to me » and I started questioning my sexuality and since that day I’m spiraling between ROCD and SOOCD. We got married last May, it was a wonderful wedding I didn’t have any distressing thoughts or any doubts. After the wedding I relapsed and I wondered if I rushed the decision to marry him making me doubt about our whole relationship since ROCD didn’t leave me since the beginning of our relationship. What if I married someone I didn’t love truly ? Why am I not feeling any sexual desire for him ? Am I not supposed to at least desire him a bit ! What if I’be been in denial forever and this is why I always doubted the feelings for my partners in my relationship because I actually don’t like men ? I’ve been scanning my whole life and I’m spiraling it doesn’t stop even on 20mg escitalopram and 50mg of fluvoxamine ! I can’t say I’m unhappy in my marriage but why am I always obsessing about everything ? Why am I feeling something is missing ? If it’s not him it’s going to be about my sexuality : I can’t even look at other girls now without being triggered !!!!!!! I’m so tired, I’ve spent the last 25 years of my life in my head ! When will this end ! I married my best friend, yet I’m still unsure if I really love him it’s just horrible and I feel so guilty ! I’m desperate Thank you for reading 😭

I’m so desperate to know who I am and what I’m attracted to, god I’m so desperate to know it’s not me. I can handle the thoughts and images as long as I know it’s not me. It just feels so real

does anyone here also struggle with sexuality ocd as a queer individual? i’ve mostly seen people talk about it from a heterosexual perspective but i haven’t seen or heard much from those who identify as queer or lgbtq and such. i’ve struggled with comphet (compulsive heterosexuality) since i was a kid however have always been confident from a young age that my attraction and desire in romantic relationships is exclusive to women even after trying to like & date men. though, recently, i’ve been having so many intrusive thoughts about the men i’ve interacted with. i am okay with male friendships however the thought of being with a man repulses me and makes me nauseous. i keep going back and forth in my head to “check” how i feel by forcing myself to think about situations that include men. it is becoming incredibly exhausting and i wish it would just go away. i just want to know i’m not alone

I’m coming to terms with the fact that alongside ocd I may have a fearful avoidant attachment style. I wanted to get a better understanding of it so started searching up what it was on youtube. Under one comment section someone expressed how they really liked a guy and then something minor happened and they immediately got turned. I understood her comment and felt kind of seen. That was until I looked at her replies two comments stuck out to me. One said it sounds like lesbianism and the other talked about how the commenter may be gay. This sent me into a spiral, I haven’t flared up like this for a bit. I’ve managed to stay in a state of uncertainty till now all of a sudden. The commenter replied to one of these comments a couple months later saying that she went to seek help and found out they have relationship OCD. Surely this would also make me feel seen and put me at ease? But still I’m ruminating past evidence and among other rituals that I managed to void out before. I’m so scared this will forever be my life, I’ll have a good couple months and then I’ll fall back into an awful loop. I’m 19 right now but I feel as though because of this theme I’ll never find a partner and I’ll forever be alone because I’m unsure. My brain keeps on telling me that I’m using this attachment style as a ‘cover up’. I’m just so over this I wish I could go back to before I had this theme. I rarely come on here because I found that sometimes it worsens my ocd but I feel so alone…

My intrusive thoughts with my SO OCD have been flaring up horribly for the past couple weeks, I think due to stress. Today has been especially bad. I’ve been experiencing false attractions with every woman I’ve been seeing today and it’s making me feel so gross that I feel anxious and sick to my stomach and that I’m going to cry. I cannot shake all the feelings in the body that make it FEEL like I’m « attracted » to them even though I know deep down it’s all fake!! I don’t know if I’m dealing with it right. I’m trying my best to just ignore the thought but the minute it stops, my ocd convinces me that I am in denial because I was able to stop and then I can’t stop thinking about that this confirms im in denial and I freak out and the process starts all over again. I don’t know if I should respond to the thought or ignore it or if what I’m doing is denial or really SO OCD. I have been ruminating on it so much the past couple weeks and it’s starting to take a turn to where I don’t remember anything except my intrusive thoughts and feelings and I am having a hard time getting things done at work and showing up to things and being fully present. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong and I just want it to stop. If i was bi or gay or whatever, that’s fine!! I don’t care. But the thought of being with a woman when the fake attraction I feels makes me want to vomit makes me feel dread at the idea of dating a woman. Im currently dating a wonderful man who is a great fit for me and makes me incredibly happy. It feels like if im in denial and my intrusive thoughts are right, i will have to break up with him and that thought alone destroys me. I could go on about how I have only liked, loved and been attracted to men my entire life and have never wanted to be with a woman in any other way besides a friend but I feel like that will just make my anxiety worse. I have been dealing with SO OCD on and off since puberty but it got incredibly more severe the past couple years. Does anyone have any constructive advice about how to deal with the rumination? Should I ignore it? Should I sit with it and accept the fact that it might be true? Anything would help thank you!!

I'm in such a dark place with SOCD or HOCD, I don't know what to do at this point. It's literally the only thing that I focus on all day and I don't even know who I am anymore. Some days I worry that I'm gay and the other days I worry that I'm asexual because I want to be with women so bad. Ever since this started I've lost pretty much all my sexual attraction to girls and now have crippling social anxiety. I used to check both gay and straight p*rn to see what I got excited by and now that I quit doing that things are so much worse. This has negatively affected pretty much every aspect of my life and it's made me suicidal. There are times when the thoughts get so bad I start to hit myself. No medication that I have tried has worked at all and I'm pretty sure they just give me side effects. I feel so lost and helpless, I can't even get therapy on this site because my insurance doesn't cover it. If anyone has any tips for me or resources that I could use that would be awesome.

Help! If you can’t picture yours or your partners body parts and bodies perfectly in your head does that mean you’re picturing someone else’s body or body parts or that you’re turned on over someone else? Please let me know I worry because I would never get off or feel turned on by anyone else but I feel confused when I haven’t pictured something perfectly 100% does it mean what I’m worried about??

Does anyone else think TikTok is the biggest trigger, for all my themes! I also get triggered so much by ‘late bloomers’ I just watched a tik tok of a women who came out later in life and the comment section was full of so many comments like I was married for 10 years, 40 years, 20 years etc and it just triggered me so much I feel like I want to cry, even thought right now I don’t feel like one I’m so scared I’ll realise it later in life or that I’m just hiding it And it brings in so much guilt incase I am because I have a boyfriend and don’t want to ruin his life if later in life I do realise I am

I will be ruminating and checking images/thoughts/ "video like images" in my head and i always feel like some sort of.. what i call an "excitement jolt" inside. This makes me want to check and ruminate more and i start to spiral and think well if my body reacts for this and not this then it must be true or if I react more to one image than the other (for example, being more attracted to women then my boyfriend) I don't know if that makes sense at all but does anyone else struggle with this?

Hi all! I have had a variety of OCD themes such as Relationship OCD, Homosexual OCD, Transgender OCD, etc. I have a few experiences that I'm wondering if anyone has been through/can shed light on as well: -I feel as if I have a constant feeling that I need to analyze whether or not I'm 100% happy at any given moment. For example I think: "Am I truly happy? Am I experiencing life the right way? If I look around am I experiencing life with 100% clarity?" -One of my themes is stronger/more persistent than the others. And as such it makes me more fearful that it must be true. My Homosexual OCD was the first to manifest and as such I feel like it has ultimate power over me. I also used to experiment with Gay Porn when I was younger but I never felt it was "serious" nor have relationships with men interested me in real life. But I feel as if I am hyperaware of when I find another male attractive yet the thought of sexual intercourse with them doesn't appeal to me. (I'm in a very lucky and lovely relationship with my Fiancé btw). And I find myself analyzing moments of emotion with her. When I cry over something out of joy with her I feel like a fraud, like I am forcing myself to do so. But I've had genuine moments when I imagine our wedding day together alone in my car, I cry because I'm overcome with joy. -How to properly do ERP exercises. I usually attempt to let my thoughts flow like a stream and try not to attach meaning to them. I also try to force myself to imagine scenarios that are incredibly fearful in an effort to desensitize myself which only makes me feel as if I'm actually starting to like the thoughts and then they become an overwhelming, confusing wave. Thanks so much for reading! I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts and I sincerely love and appreciate your time. I hope we can all be in this together! :)

I’m struggling a lot today with a theme that hasn’t been at the forefront of my mind for about a month. I’ve always had a strong morbid curiosity. In the past, if I heard about a terrible crime, I just HAD to research it (and even look at photos). It’s awful because I feel like I have contributed to the exploitation of the poor victims in their final/worst moments. I try my best to not do this anymore, and if I feel the need to satisfy some morbid curiosity, I try to watch more educational materials like documentaries instead of random people posting about such things online. But I am haunted by what I’ve seen, specifically crimes regarding children. My POCD was partially triggered by people online talking about how a specific actress posed nude for Playboy when she was like 10 years old. I looked this up out of disbelief and morbid curiosity, and unfortunately saw the photos. I think I even kept looking for them after seeing censored versions (which bothers me extensively, like who would do that?). I was absolutely horrified and sickened by what I saw and the image still haunts me to this day. It’s unbelievable that those photos are still circulating online, and have even ended up in museum exhibits and art books on Amazon. Absolutely disgusting. I feel like it doesn’t matter that I googled this (and other related cases) out of disbelief or morbid curiosity. It doesn’t matter that I was disgusted and in no way attracted to what I saw. I feel like I contributed to the victimization of these poor people and that alone makes me a p*** regardless of attraction. I’m too scared to talk about this with my current therapist as we just started our sessions together. I wish I could go back in time and beat myself senseless. I feel like a monster. My main reason for posting is that I’m not sure if this is even POCD related because it’s attached to actual events that happened. Idk, I’m sorry, I just needed to vent. Please let me know if this post is out of line and I’ll remove it. Thank you to anyone who reads this, and I’m so so sorry.

How do I know if I’m gay or it’s actually ocd?

Hi guys, do you ever feel, even when the anxious feelings are gone (and your not in the back door spike window) that you still dont know who you are and what you're afraid of ( for instance in this case, not being straight) is actually true and that whole OCD cycle you're in might or might not be OCD but it doesnt matter because you're just using it as a way of proving that what you're feeling is normal and not actually face the truth? these are my thoughts right now... I was doing well, but even when I am doing well I still think about those stuff idk... like how do I know what true love is? am I faking my love for my bf and one day I'll be tired and actually just "want to accept the truth because its lighter?" becaus at that point I really feel like I'm in a movie and just playing the role of someone. Between renée rapp coming out as a lesbian after saying she was bi and sophia bush an Chrishell stause falling in love with women after being with men all their life its been kind of a triggering week (even tho when I learned it felt like I was happy like yes! they're a part of the lgbtq+ community as if I was part of that community too which triggered me even more) PS : no disprespect to anyone I'm just really triggered and confused!!