Obsessive compulsive disorder - OCD treatment and therapy from NOCD

Living with OCD

We're creating resources to help people learn about OCD in the many ways it impacts their own lives—not just what it looks like on paper. You can search our resources to determine when your intrusive thoughts may be related to OCD.

8 min read
How To Start Journaling for Mental Health

Journaling, or writing down your thoughts and feelings, has been recognized as a way to minimize stress and reduce depression and anxiety. Also, if you

By Olivia Rockeman

Reviewed by April Kilduff, MA, LCPC

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4 min read
How To Gain Self-Confidence When You Have OCD

Self-confidence is key to having the resilience, motivation, and positive attitude necessary to face life’s challenges. However, mental health conditions

By Taneia Surles, MPH

Reviewed by April Kilduff, MA, LCPC

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7 min read
It Ends With Us Controversy: Are Trigger Warnings Necessary?

If Blake Lively, the lead actress of one of the biggest movies this year, It Ends With Us, is all smiles, telling people “grab your friends, wear your

By Yusra Shah

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9 min read
How Social Media Can Impact Your Mental Health

Social media plays a huge role in our everyday lives, helping us connect with friends and family, learn new things, and stay up-to-date with the latest

By Yusra Shah

Reviewed by April Kilduff, MA, LCPC

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6 min read
Can Diet Affect Your OCD Symptoms?

When you have OCD, managing everyday can be overwhelming. You might be feeling drained by symptoms like cleaning rituals or seeking reassurance, or

By Olivia Rockeman

Reviewed by April Kilduff, MA, LCPC

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5 min read
Can OCD Make You Seek Validation?

Everyone wants to feel heard and understood. It’s just human nature. It's also the reason why we often turn to the people in our lives for validation,

By Stacy Quick, LPC

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8 min read
What Does My Child With OCD Need From Me?

Finding out your child has a mental health condition like obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) can weigh heavily on the heart of any parent or caregiver.

By Stacy Quick, LPC

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6 min read
Disorganized Attachment Style and How it Affects Relationships

Disorganized attachment—which is sometimes called fearful-avoidant attachment style—is characterized by inconsistent behavior in relationships. If you

By Olivia Rockeman

Reviewed by April Kilduff, MA, LCPC

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6 min read
Can OCD Cause Mood Swings?

A mood swing, also known as a sudden or intense change in your emotional state, can happen for lots of reasons—but if you have obsessive compulsive

By Olivia Rockeman

Reviewed by April Kilduff, MA, LCPC

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7 min read
Selective mutism: What’s behind the inability to speak?

Do you speak freely with some people in your life, but find it impossible to utter a word around others? Selective mutism (also called situational mutism)

By Olivia Rockeman

Reviewed by April Kilduff, MA, LCPC

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9 min read
Knowledge is Power: Thank You NOCD

I had just wrapped up the completion of my Ph.D. in history, a subject that I loved. I crammed what should have been 7 years of work into 4. It was a time of high stress in my life. I wasn’t eating or sleeping well. I started to have dark thoughts. I thought about hurting myself and others. I knew I didn’t actually “want” to do these things and yet I was tormented by the thoughts. 

By Dr. Benjamin Hruska

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10 min read
From the Darkness to the Light

I call what I experience,  the darkness, like a superhero who has a dark reflection of himself that everyone is ashamed of. It’s something that manifests into shame. It is everything you don’t want. It is something that compels you that you want to expel.

By BAZ

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6 min read
OCD tried to outwit me

A friend of mine mentioned Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). I didn’t know what OCD was. When I was feeling at rock bottom, I decided to research it online. I typed in the words OCD and Christianity.  For the first time in my life, I felt like something clicked. This felt just like what I experienced. I felt heard and seen at last. I knew I had OCD.

By Mary Hinchliffe

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10 min read
The long road toward recovery

I still retained a stereotypical mindset of what OCD looked like and it couldn’t have been farther from what I struggled with. OCD was about being clean and about contamination, symmetry, and order, things that had never brought much distress to me. At least that is what I thought. I had a very narrow view of what OCD actually was. 

By David Guo

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7 min read
OCD is just hearsay

I realized I had been consumed with perfectionism my entire life. I had always had tendencies toward obsessive thinking but I never thought that it caused me to suffer. If anything, I thought it may have been helpful. 

By Mark Goldstein

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10 min read
Trusting Even When I Am Afraid

I was spending an excess of time on homework, striving to be the best, to be “perfect”. I made excuses to work on math and to go ahead in the textbook. The idea of a black-and-white world drew me in. Math felt straightforward. It was comfortable to have a correct answer because there was no guesswork involved. It was straightforward and I felt at ease. Other subjects did not afford me this comfort. There

By Summer Contreras

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6 min read
The Day the Switch Flipped

I had always had what I will call low-grade anxiety. I was a bit of an overthinker. I had a lot of superstition beliefs. I struggled with what I now know to be “magical thinking” OCD themes. However it was never something that negatively impacted my life, it was just something I incorporated into my life. Little did I know that OCD was there, lurking in the shadows.

By Brady

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10 min read
Cheering for Myself

The stigma surrounding mental health is still an issue that needs to be addressed. I struggled in silence for so long before sharing my story. I was not the typical “face” of someone who had a mental illness. Over time and through my experience I have learned that there is no typical “face” of mental illness. It is me, it is you, it is your neighbor, your brother, your friend, your pastor, your teacher…it can happen to anyone. Mental illness doesn’t discriminate.

By Allyson McAndrews Washo, M.Ed.

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5 min read
Out of the Darkness

OCD is a jerk of a disorder that goes after the things you value most: family, work, kids, safety, and responsibility. That is my list, but the list is different for everyone. I have learned that it attacks the things you value and hold dear to your heart.

By Danica

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8 min read
I Hate OCD

In spite of all the progress I have made throughout treatment, I still love to hate ERP. I still see ERP as scary. Even after all of these years, I do not like it. I look at it as if the rewards are worth it. I refuse to let any mental illness stop me from my future. I hope to continue to be an advocate and a voice in my community and field for anyone who experiences any form of mental health issues. The more I speak up and raise awareness, my hope is that more people will feel safe getting the help they need.

By Audrey

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