Family members and pocd

I’m writing this to see if anyone else has a similar experience, I feel so sick and want my life back… I don’t know what to do half the time when I start panicking. I didn’t have many intrusive thoughts until a year ago after a family member made me feel very uncomfortable, now I over think everything around family members male or female (mostly male like him) and have intrusive thoughts thinking “I might develop a crush on them” or “I might give them the wrong idea”. Then I started feeling scared around children encase I made anyone feel uncomfortable like how that family member made me. I’m passionate about childcare and children’s safety so it scares me even more. I like childish things, I think as a trauma coping mechanism, and again my ocd tells me it’s because I’m a dodgy person. Or if I kiss my cat too much then I stop myself and think am I a dodgy person? Or do people think I’m being inappropriate which obviously is not my intention. All this over thinking makes me worry all the time if I am a dangerous person (or if people think I am) or if other people are dangerous. Does anyone have any advice? Just to know that I’m not alone would help…

Antique

Date posted: 3y

I have pocd too, and I ended up developing incest-obsessions. I bounced between almost all of my close family members, convinced that I was attracted to them. I've also had an experience when a family member has made me feel uncomfortable, and my pocd managed to link it back to me instead of him. You said you are passionate about childcare and children's safety, which makes a lot of sense! Intrusive thoughts are generally ego-dystonic, which means they go against your morals and beliefs. My advise would be to talk to a trusted adult about your experiences, in hopes that in the future you'll be able to have professional therapy which'll give you the most chance of recovering quicker. If you can't do that, buy this book called, "overcoming unwanted intrusive thoughts," it helped me a lot in introducing me to the way intrusive thoughts work, and the independent ERP I could do to work through when intrusive thoughts happen, and doing my own exposures. For now, the general advise that I got from the book when an intrusive thought happens is to: 1) recognise the thought; 2) remind yourself that they are just thoughts; 3)accept and allow your intrusive thoughts in your mind, don't attempt to push them away 4)feel the heightened anxiety you get from the intrusive thought, without doing a compulsive behaviours, like reassurance, ruminating whether or not you're a "dodgy" person, avoiding family members and children etc. (This is the response prevention section of ERP.) 5) let time pass, eventually your anxiety will decrease naturally. You have a nervous system called the sympathetic nervous system, it works to calm your body down after a spike in anxiety. "Let time pass" means to continue with the activity you were doing before the intrusive thought, even the same activity that triggered your ocd if you want to. If you were to, that would be considered an exposure, but you don't have do that right now. :) 6) Proceed, which is basically the same as let time pass, but it means to continue on with your entire day, and not let the intrusive thought control how you spend your time. For me, that was too many steps, I usually just do 1) 3) 4) 5). I think that 3) and 4) are the most important. :) I hope this helped! And I wish you luck.

PanickedLemo...

Date posted: 3y

Wow Thankyou so much for this reply, this makes me feel much better yes I went through the same thing going through stages of each family member being scared and throwing up because of it all, ocd is such a horrific disorder… I think I’ve read that book! If it’s the one I think it is then I remember it being very very helpful, I do see a counseller but they don’t specialise in OCD or know a huge amount about it, they’re more PTSD and anxiety based, but I can’t afford anything more, I wish there was more help available 😥 Thankyou again for the reply, I’m wishing you the best of luck with everything

dee012

Date posted: 25w

anyone else?

maybe a therapist can respond or anyone who relates and experiences this also?? im trying to make sense . ever since ocd started, specifically harm ocd and pocd, sexual themes ocd in general, my brain makes everything sexual or gross. or just makes inappropriate connections with quite literally anything. or any person I see I wonder if they are a p, or if they are “like me”, because im fully convinced at times that im some weird or bad person, and then when i see actual criminals etc i cant help but compare myself to them it’s so weird?????? or sometimes I feel like i cant judge a p because im no different than them?? idk its so weird. rn writing this ik im not a p like what im just struggling with really bad ocd and trauma I hope :( It’s just my brain distorts everything and then it makes me feel worse, like “ur an actual p or pervert because see??? ur brain is sexualizing everything?” hopefully this makes sense

Anonymous

Date posted: 20w

POCD and changing baby diaper - please help

Hi NOCD community, I was hoping to get some advice from fellow sufferers. In December we welcomed the first baby into the family, my beautiful niece. Since then, my POCD has been awful, which I know is probably very normal. Last week, in the middle of a very high stress day in my family, I was changing my niece and as usually happens, I got intrusive thoughts about awful things people do to babies when changing them. The thoughts were so harrowing to have as I was also changing her at the exact same time, and I felt my hands just quickly want to finish patting her dry before putting her nappy on, and for some reason, my heart dropped with that hand movement, because I was afraid that I had acted out the awful thoughts in my head, in a moment of mania because my morals, values and heart do not align with abuse of any kind, especially to children. My niece is my everything, and I know I would never want harm to come to her in any way, shape or form. I love her endlessly. I am having therapy, but have only had a couple of sessions. But, I cannot shake the 'what if'. I am tortured over trying to remember what it was I did that made my heart drop, but I can't, and its getting fuzzier and fuzzier the more I try to remember. Could anyone offer any advice on this please? Thank you.

hopefulxmess

Date posted: 19w

Pls has anyone been through this?

Let me start by prefacing that I developed ocd as postpartum ocd after having my first child. I had harm and pocd. I had it on and off for years and then it just eventually went away completely for many years until recently after a stressful life event. Now that it’s back it again targets my children but now my grandchildren also. It’s been horrible and makes me pull away from them. Last night my 6 year old granddaughter threw up in the car when my daughter was about to take her home so my daughter brought her back in the house and asked me to clean her up while she cleaned her car. I had some anxiety about it because of my ocd but I couldn’t say no to helping so I opened the bathroom door and my granddaughter was standing in her underwear waiting for me to clean and dress her. Everything was fine and normal but then for some reason, I have no idea why, I looked down at her chest area. I immediately got so upset and didn’t know why I looked there and now my ocd is saying it’s because i’m a monster. I tried to tell myself it’s just normal human behavior when someone is standing there naked that you look where you shouldn’t simply because it’s just there in front of you but I feel horrible. I don’t feel any inappropriate way about her or any child but my ocd is saying it was inappropriate. Has anyone else been through this?

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Family members and pocd

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