- Date posted
- 3y
- Date posted
- 3y
this theme is scary and hard. my best advice is to take some deep breaths. what’s helped me is to picture it as a tv in the background while you’re sitting in a bar (acknowledging it’s there, but not having to give it all your attention). you’re definitely not alone, and if you can put it on the back burner just for a little bit, even for 10 mins you can slowly focus your mind to the present moment. it’ll be there when you’re ready to deal with it, but you don’t have to engage. of course it’s easier said than done, but it’s a start. i’m not a therapist, but that visualization has kind of helped me.
- Date posted
- 3y
I feel this way about harm ocd sometimes and it’s important to remember that adrenaline from fear can sometimes feel good. Like watching a scary movie right? It’s called misattribution of arousal. It doesn’t mean you actually like it, it’s just a psychological phenomenon. Try just accepting the thoughts I know it sounds crazy at first because it might feel like that means you like them but it doesn’t you’re just acknowledging them and then going about your day.
- Date posted
- 3y
i relate to you! one day i just kind of had the thought, “what if you’re struggling in your relationship because you’re actually into children or something?” it was like a switch went off in my brain. i had no thoughts even remotely like that before, then suddenly my days were consumed with that thought. images, memories, things i considered “proof” from my childhood. i started looking at children differently, being overly cautious of them, feeling uncomfortable with them. i was convinced i lost my mind (because it truly felt that way!) you definitely aren’t alone! millions of people struggle with these thoughts & compulsions. i still have all these thoughts, but i try to treat them as any other thought. they aren’t good or bad really, they are just something the brain has put together. background noise really.
- Date posted
- 3y
I'm extremely scared
Related posts
- Date posted
- 23w
I’ve been feeling the urge to avoid intimacy or purposefully engage (for reassurance that I won’t give into a compulsion) because of intrusive thoughts and fear that I’ll “check/test” my reactions. My OCD is making me so scared that I’ll purposefully think of a child and try to see if I like it. It’s so complicated but I guess I’m mentally checking if I would mentally check during intimacy. I’ve even envisioned myself checking and it’s making me so nauseous. I know it’s a compulsion like any other but the sound of “touching yourself to the thought of a child” sounds atrocious and vile. I’m terrified I’ll automatically start checking next time I am being intimate. I truly feel so worried. If anyone has gone through something similar, I’d appreciate hearing your experience. Or if anyone has any advice?
- Harm OCD
- POCD
- Students with OCD
- Mid-life adults with OCD
- Older adults with OCD
- Young adults with OCD
- Real Events OCD
- "Pure" OCD
- Date posted
- 22w
Trying not to seek reassurance, but rather connect the dots on my OCD and possible reasons as to why I am the way I am. I have severe OCD (or at least I hope I do) mainly surrounding POCD. I've had symptoms of OCD the majority of my life but this theme has come up more recently. When I was a kid, and i'm talking 6-7, I was first exposed to some really gross adult content online. It was introduced to me by a friend of mine around the same age of me. I saw some really disgusting things that a 6-7 year old should definitely not see. This was not a one time occurrence, as I had been exposed to taboo topics online years to come after that, such as the same friend introducing me to Omegle... And i'm sure you can imagine how that went, theres a lot of genuinely disgusting human beings on there. Coming back to the reason for making this post; is it possible to early exposure to this content could be one of the reasons I struggle with POCD? It genuinely scares me to death because you hear that real p*dos dealt with simular situations when they were kids, so thats kind of making me feel that this could be more than OCD, and I could be a genuinely bad person. My POCD feels so real, that at times i'm fully convinced its not OCD. Sometimes I can't even distinguish the feelings of attraction between a younger person and an older person, except for the feeling of anxiety and fear. Its really hard to explain without going into detail, but it just feels so real. Some feedback on this would be great, thank you all.
- Young adults with OCD
- Students with OCD
- False Memory OCD
- Mid-life adults with OCD
- "Pure" OCD
- POCD
- LGBTQ+ with OCD
- Date posted
- 22w
Sometimes I think " do I like kids?" "Would i get aroused if I saw content with kids?""What if I'm a pedo and cant accept it?" "What if I'm ok with these thoughts?" "What if I'm not distressed enough " "What if I enjoy these thoughts?" , i avoid kids as much as i can, i cant look at them bc I'm scared I'm gonna have some groin like response. I keep testing if I'd get turned on or if I'd have some groinal response to sexual scenarios with kids. Sometimes I think that if I took my life this would be over and i wouldn't have to think about this and i wish i doubted something else instead of things like this. I had similar situations just with different topics such as if i loved or found sexually appealing a guy while in a relationship and i kept asking myself those questions for months and i avoided going to school for weeks and when I went I'd cry and have anxiety attacks. I had it with past actions i obessed over and felt the need to exploit every detail and be honest because otherwise i was being a fraud. I had it for sexual things that happened when i was a child. Im not diagnosed with ocd but should i tell this to my local counselor? Can someone help? Give me advice or tell me anything?
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