Living with OCD

Having obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) can feel isolating. It might seem like you’re the only one going through what you’re going through. Social

When Howie Mandel revealed he has OCD, he thought it was the end of the world.  It happened many years ago in a New York radio studio. The

As someone who grew up with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), I often reflect back on what my childhood was like and all of the ways in which OCD

Have you ever been with a group of people and heard someone exclaim, “I’m so OCD about that”? Or heard people sharing their organizational preferences

Accurate representations of your experience can be life-changing. That’s especially true for those experiences that are commonly misunderstood or

OCD can make you feel like something terrible is always around the corner. So, that frustration you feel? Perfectly normal.

Have you ever wondered if your child’s behaviors were typical fears and stresses for their age? Or noticed that they seemed more anxious than other

This is a guest post by Jackie Shapin, a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist who specializes in anxiety, OCD, and eating disorders. There is a

It can be stressful to watch your partner suffer from a mental health condition, especially when that condition is as frequently misunderstood as

We're incredibly proud of the therapists in the NOCD network. While all of them are trained in delivering evidence-based treatment for

I could not get everything clean enough. Someone else in my home may have touched this or that and then that. It was an endless and exhausting process that lasted years. The amount of stress that I felt cannot even be put into words. I was full of shame at my core. I had no one I could tell about this. I knew how strange it all was, I knew logically that it didn’t make sense and yet I FELT so deeply that if I could just get it clean enough that it would all go away. My life wasn’t my own.

I felt like I was a puppet and something else was controlling my mind. My entire life people had taught me to “trust your gut”, this played into my obsessions. I started engaging in magical thinking. I believed that certain thoughts, actions, and words could somehow manipulate the physical world.

It's important to remember that OCD is not curable but it is very much treatable. That is what I mean when I say that you can live in recovery. You can live a life that you love and cherish. For me, recognizing that this is a lifelong struggle is important. This helps me to remember that my brain works a little differently, and that's okay.

There came this moment of clarity for me. I had enough. My thoughts are not reality. Would I choose to pay more attention to the turmoil in my mind or my life that was happening right in front of me? I felt this defiance and resilience rise up within me because I was sick of living this way.

My experience with OCD has rooted me in hope, for I have learned that my struggles need not be opaque walls or echo chambers of pain. OCD does not have the final word in my story.

Growing up I never heard about OCD other than when people made comments about “being so OCD”. Looking back I truly wish I would have known about it and I could have started therapy sooner. People around me just chalked up my behaviors to my personality. I think that happens a lot, even in today’s society. People tend to think of OCD in a certain way not realizing there are so many forms .

I was constantly embarking on quests for certainty.I have had various themes or subtypes over the years but I didn’t present in the stereotypical way that the media portrays OCD. The content of my thoughts was so terrifying to me that I couldn’t bring myself to tell anyone.

It was at this crucial turning point in my life that NOCD therapy helped me the most. One of my fears had become a real life event.  It happened, my marriage fell apart. It was then that it all clicked. I realized that recovery from OCD was never supposed to stop our “what ifs” from happening, it was supposed to help us cope if they did happen. I knew that I could tolerate these feelings of discomfort and anxiety, I knew I

I’d spent a lot of my childhood frozen as my mind raced and I cried so often as I tried to understand what was wrong with me. I didn’t know how to explain it to anyone...

OCD has latched onto many themes throughout my journey. I had health themes where I was scared that I would contract aids or that I had it already. I had contamination fears where I was scared of germs and being unclean.