- Date posted
- 2y
POCD and intimacy, is this even OCD ?
Hi guys ! I am a new member of the community and this is my first post. I'm sorry for its length, I'll try to sum up as clearly as possible (english is not my first language). So, I think I have OCD for nearly 10 years now. I realised what it was maybe 1 year ago and I started therapy just after that. (My therapist is not ERP trained but we're currently looking for one). It all started pretty abruptly when I was around 13/14 years old. I was having pretty bad intrusive thoughts, almost 24/7, very dark and violent. A majority of them were about sexuality and it turned quickly into obsessions, especially POCD. I was telling all the thoughts I was having to my mother and it was, for both of us, a rough period. It has stuck with me since then, with ups and downs. Since I realised what it was, and started therapy, my POCD fell deeply asleep. Other obsessions started to rise when I met my boyfriend (ROCD, obsession about STI/STD, ...). It is my first loving and serious relationship and I met him while I was starting therapy so I thought that it was maybe normal for my OCD to be on fire since it's a lot of changes at once. It has been a rough year because even if my POCD was almost nonexistent, my OCD spread to other themes and symptoms were pretty intense. But several weeks ago, my POCD woke up again. I always had groinal responses linked to that and it made me very very anxious and depressed. It had a great impact on my sex life because I was experiencing intrusive thoughts during intimacy with partners and on my own. They were always happening because I was anxious to have intrusive thoughts beforehand, or because I suddenly felt anxious, in the middle of a moment, and was scared about having intrusive thoughts. I was feeling such shame and guilt, because these intrusive thoughts were sometimes followed by orgasms. For some periods of time, I stopped having some alone time and any sexual activities because of that. Before I knew about OCD, I felt like a monster and I was experiencing so much distress. What calmed me down was thinking that maybe, during all these years, I got my brain used to feel arousal when thinking about children and that it was just a body reflex and nothing more. When I heard about groinal response, it was such a relief, because I could read about people that were experiencing the same thing and that it was directly linked to anxiety. Before knowing about OCD, I was living through cycles. I could sometimes go through a whole year without falling down into the spiral, without obsessing over the thought that I was a monster, without having almost any intrusive thoughts. And then just like that, in the blink of an eye, it would fall on me again without any warning. It would then have me stuck in my head for months. It was an endless cycle, and I knew, everytime when I was getting back onto my feet, that it was just a matter of time before falling again. When my POCD fell asleep again (when I started therapy), the groinal responses faded and my sex life wasn't impacted anymore. It was great. I was breathing again because I wasn't feeling like such a horrible person. Yes my OCD was latching onto other themes but they were not making me feel like I was a monster. But several weeks ago, I realised that, during a moment with my boyfriend, I thought about children but it didn't feel like intrusive thoughts. It felt like some wandering random thoughts and it was not even sexual. It was some images of children in a classroom, or in school, images of a random family... The fact that it didn't happen the way it always did made me anxious. Because it didn't feel like OCD, but just my thoughts wandering around. And after that, it happened again several times in a row. I tried to not think too much of it but I failed. Was it OCD ? Why did my thoughts wander in these places ? And why did it happen several times ? Now I am afraid that I don't even have OCD and that they were here for a reason. I'm exhausted. Has this already happened to anyone ? These kinds of thoughts ? And is it really "normal" to experience orgasm after having intrusive thoughts ? I feel like I just convinced myself that I have OCD because it would mean that I am not a fucked up person... I don't have a lot of physical compulsions, and I am starting to doubt my mental ones, are they really compulsions ? Also, one of the reasons I doubt my OCD is because I don't feel like my thoughts are irrational. For example my obsession about STD/STI started because I got diagnosed with HPV, my ROCD started after my boyfriend and I had a deep unsettling conversation and he proposed to me. I know OCD is irrational and I don't feel irrational. When I went to my therapist for the first time, I told her that I was thinking about OCD and after a while she told me that she was thinking about it too, but I am afraid that I led her to this path. I know she is a professional and she has a (short) training for OCD. But I'm afraid that I biased her thinking. Thank you if you read through it all, I hope my english is not too bad and if you're struggling, I am with you <3.