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the NOCD Community

Has anyone else been in therapy for over a year and still struggling?

i don’t want to be gay as i’ve always imagined life with a husband and have been attracted to guys since elementary. i don’t think i had any ocd tendencies before this. i just woke up one day and was like what if im not straight. i just want to know for sure if i am. does this sound like ocd

Does anyone else have mental rituals to check whether your friends still have u on social media and if they don’t then they hate you? I have to check multiple times a day that they still follow me , even people I haven’t spoke to in years . Today one unadded me from a private story even though I haven’t spoke in over 2 years but now it’s triggered me and made me feel like they hate me and I’ve done something wrong. Could anyone offer advice on how to feel in a situation like this. Like should I be panicked and concerned? Thanks

This is my first time on here, and I’m just hoping to find a community that understand what I’m going through. I struggle with severe existential thoughts that cause me to dissociate near daily. Does anyone else go through this?

Do anyone else’s intrusive thoughts sometimes take up entire days where you feel completely dissociated and detached from reality? Lately my thoughts have been so scattered and intrusive that it’s like I don’t think about anything BUT my obsession. and unfortunately because i suffer from retroactive jealousy, my obsession is my boyfriends most recent ex. i feel like a creep that i’m always thinking about this person, whether they had sex, whether they held hands, etc. no matter how many times he tells me that it wasn’t a good relationship and they had no connection, it still eats me alive. I feel consumed by my thoughts and like I can’t even hold a conversation with him or be present in the moment. I want relief. 😢

So like all of you guys, I get intrusive thoughts. I’ve gotten them to a point where they aren’t super debilitating but they still occur. The thing is, I don’t ever want to tell a partner about these thoughts as I don’t even want them myself. However, A part of me feels wrong for not telling them. I fear they may judge me or not want to be with me if they knew as they are sexual and inappropriate although they aren’t pedephellic. I’m not sure how to deal with this situation.

why me why me that’s the question I ask myself every day every moment every minute every second of my life, my sexual orientation, obsessive compulsive disorder has been driving me crazy, I don’t know what to do no OCD for session is $170 and I live in UK. I am living in on benefits I can’t pay $170 for each session and I really need my OCD therapy like that way. I don’t like girls that way I don’t like girls that as the question I asked or rather say to myself every day every minute every second every second I get I only love love boys love men why is it so hard for my OCD to understand that? I don’t have a clue. Please can you help me I’m not asking for reassurance but I like to put everything in a writing message, so I can be with the unwanted thoughts I get about my sexuality, generally hate girls in that way my urges, my images and my unwanted thoughts are killing me right now

OCD and anxiety are back in full swing due to something I have absolutely no control over. My brother has been a drug addict for a long time. He’s been able to get sober a couple times but this time is the worst I’ve ever seen him. I know there isn’t much I can do. You just basically sit and watch the demise of the person you used to know and love. He tells us he wants help but he just needs to get high one last time then he’s done, of course, neither I or the rest of my family help him with that request. We don’t give him cash, we will get him food and that’s it, maybe my dad will buy him cigarettes. I don’t sleep well, I am constantly over thinking, I have images going through my head constantly, I’m planning events that haven’t even happened yet. The OCD thoughts are terrible, and although knowing what the thoughts are helps, it brings me extreme guilt. Today I feel like I’ve just been floating through the day, I can’t remember the last time I’ve dissociated this hard for this long without being able to snap out of it. It was easy to ignore his situation but this time he asked me for help, good help. Help to get him out of his situation, what do you do in that situation? Of course I’m gonna help him. Of course he wanted to seek help then after saying he wanted to stay at my house till he went, but now it’s been 2-3 weeks, he still would’ve been at my house if I had said yes cause he clearly isn’t ready to leave this chapter behind. I’m so tired of dealing with this. I’m 23 in 3 days. He is gonna be 27 in March, our parents are no better than he is at this point, and no help to me or him. My brother won’t talk to my mom cause he’s angry with her for kicking his gf out, he talks to my dad but my dad doesn’t think he’s in any position to tell him anything (which is true, he really isn’t but he can try at the bare minimum) so it’s basically on me to figure this out, our sister offered to help with the charges up against him, but he didn’t ask for a PD so he needs to do that too. I’m stuck, I’m tired of dealing with this, and I don’t want the anxiety that comes with it. Thanks for listening to my rant :)

For as long as i can remember i have always been boy crazy. I have always had crushes on men, had sexual interactions with them, etc. I’ve never thought about a woman in that way. I remember around 2021 I had a “what if I were gay?” thought but after around a week it went away. Now the thought is back but 100x worse. Mid December 2023 i suddenly got the thoughts again. I can’t really pinpoint what triggered it, but it may have been the TV show I was watching. In the show a woman around her 30’s dated men and even married one but then all the sudden ended up marrying a woman later on. I starting to think “what if that happens to me?” I couldn’t fall asleep for days and would cry throughout the day. I eventually told my mom about this as I kept having anxiety attacks and she said well if you don’t only like men then that’s ok. But the thing is that I want to like men. I’ve always imagined my life with a husband and kids. I don’t understand how something like this could happen basically overnight. I used started therapy for my anxiety but how do I bring this topic up? Does anyone who has soocd/hocd think this sounds like ocd or could I really just be in denial. My days now consist of these persistent thoughts. I’m always on here or reddit/quora looking up my symptoms to see if anyone else feels the same. i don’t wanna feel like this anymore. i wanna go back to november when i didn’t have these thoughts. I’m still having the thoughts about a month later but the anxiety isn’t as bad which is making me feel worse. i feel like i should be more anxious considering i want to be straight. this isn’t me.

Hey, so my therapist missed our session yesterday and isn't answering any of my messages, could she be in holidays and forgot to tell me, or do you think I should contact someone in case something happened?

Hii! I hesitated before posting this but here I am.. Ocd are a living hell rn to me. I barely eat or sleep anymore because of it, I’m just scared of everything, ruminations are here every night leading to panic attacks, sh, psychosis,.. it’s like « what if I’m/or do something bad, what if I did something wrong and I don’t remember,.. I store my studies because of all of this..I can’t do this anymore I’m so tired of compulsions and everything I have more ocd but rn it’s the most debilitating for me, if someone have experienced the same things or just have tips I take it!

i’m so caught up in figuring out my obsessions because i don’t want them to come true. i have been obsessing over the devil and whether or not he can possess or control me and it won’t go away. i don’t know what to do. i’m so tired all the time and i don’t feel like myself anymore. i can’t keep up with my schoolwork and can barely take care of myself. i’m also in college so it’s hard being on my own.

I can’t find anyone that can help me and I feel hopeless

Hoping to find others that suffer with similar issues.

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 have an extremely overwhelming phobia of the germs of other people's mouth germs entering my mouth. I have a phobia of mold as well and the last time mold touched my skin I washed my hands over and over again until they were bleeding and I kept washing them even after that. I essentially took layers off my skin from how hot the water was and the aggressive scrubbing. I quit the place I worked, where it happened, that very week bc of it. I can't imagine what would happen if this happened with my mouth phobia and if I'd be able to even eat after loosing myself like that. Examples are sharing straws, sharing cups that hasn't been washed since someone used it, kissing or placing my mouth on something someone else may have placed their mouth on. I originally thought this stemed from a traumatic experience where I was essentially kidnapped for an entire day and half a night when I was 7 years old by my 16 year old neighbor. He locked me in his shed and wouldn't let me out unless I kissed him. I came home crying and my parents, specifically my mom, always invalidated my feelings, told me to stop over reacting or to get over it. I told them immediately and my mom said, "oh I didn't even know you were gone." This hurt because it instantly felt like she didn't care and her first reaction was her reassuring me that she doesn't care what happens to me. My dad went over, the neighbor immediately admitted to it and was forced to come over to our house and apologize. That was it. Nobody asked if I was okay, nobody asked if I wanted to talk about it. It was slid off like it was just something that happens. My that day forward I've had this phobia. It's only gotten worse as time goes on. To the point that I don't really share straws with anyone. The only person I will kiss is my spouse (obviously) but I don't think if I ever had kids I will kiss them or share food / drinks with them. About 5 years ago I was just dating my now husband. I didn't even start sharing straws with him until we got married I think. But, we were at a restaurant with my roommates and their boyfriends. They all knew I had this phobia. None of them knew I had OCD as it's completely misunderstood and even after years of trying to explain it to my spouse, he still doesn't get it. I went to the bathroom and one of my roommates decided to take a sip of my drink out of my straw. Which is easily the hugest no to me. She even announced it to the table, "Hey you guys I'm going to take a Sip out of her drink, haha it will be so funny don't tell her don't tell her" Everyone told her not to but she did it anyways and again said, "She's not even going to notice and we can ethier not tell her or tell her in a week and she will see she is fine!" I came back to the table and her boyfriend and my boyfriend immediately told me. I felt like I was going to black out and tried to stay with reality as much as I could. Luckily I hadn't taken a sip and I asked her if she really would do that to me. (At this point she had already tried to cheat on her bf with my bf and my bf said no so I didn't really consider her a good friend anyways) and she admitted it with a smile. I asked, " I respect you enough to not cross your boundaries. This is my boundary and you crossed it. Are you going to do this again?" She said, "I don't care about boundaries. You can get over it." So I raise my fist and asked, "Yeah? You don't care about boundaries? You wouldn't care if I beat the shit out of you and you'll get over it?" She looked at really scared and said, "No no no I won't I'm sorry." And my boyfriend pulled me back. Idk what happened and I still feel bad for it bc it's like I left my body in that moment and went into full protection mode. She ended up leaving our table and sitting at another table with a family and they kept asking her to leave the table. But she was kind of crazy like that. 😭 Over the years tho this has developed more and more and I fear it's going to get to the point where I no longer kiss my spouse as I generally avoid kissing him for this very reason.

Hello I am a 27 year old male who has battling with very aggressive intrusive thoughts, it is not letting me sleep or not letting me live my everyday life because I feel as if I could hurt myself or someone else, can someone please help me out, ever since I got the flu I haven’t been the same, I was rushed to the emergency room thinking I was going to have a heart attack, they just pumped me with Ativan and gave me a prescription, but I’m also a very heavy drinker at night, and when I drink heavy and wake up the next day, I have uncontrollable thoughts and anxiety all day! Someone please help me!

So I really need to do some cleaning in my room and the mess is so overwhelming that I'm not sure where to start. Like there's trash and clothes all over the floor, there dishes all over my room. Plus my bed is covered in clothes that I can't tell if there clean or dirty. I've tried cleaning by category ( ex trash, laundry, dishes) and it only helps for a few minutes then I get distracted by another task. So does anyone have any advice on where to get started? At this point I'm open to anything.

I experience OCD in what feels like cycles. I have a couple of good days or weeks and then something out of the blue will trigger a flare up. I’m just wondering if anyone else goes through the same thing or if it’s kind of a constant state for you.

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.