i have gotten a little better with my fear of touching/bumping into people, mainly due to exposure of going places where it just happens and no one cares. i’m not all the way better though and today walking my dog, waiting for him to finish his bathroom stuff i may have felt something on my bottom and now i’m worried my bottom touched someone, is this a form of sensory motor?
Good to hear that you've improved from this. I'm currently going through this fear unfortunately because my mind is convincing me that I committed a sexual crimes due to my elbow making contact with a woman's behind. I'm not too sure what sensory motor is though.
@BigGip09 i actually misspelled it and it’s sensorimotor, but it’s essentially when you become hyper aware of body functions. i’m think it may have made me feel something that didn’t actually happen but idk it felt so strong at the time but it may have been a false memory
@BigGip09 also i’m sorry to hear your that dealing with this. i seriously doubt you’ve committed sexual crimes though. my elbow has probably touched the behind of a young hostess at a restaurant by accident so your not alone
@mitz I can relate to sensorimotor feelings. I was once very aware of my breathing. Still kinda am since I have intrusive thoughts about times where I've woke up gasping for air due to anxiety. I'm sorry you go through with that.
@mitz What's killing me so much about this is that I didn't apologize or tuck in my elbow but I made every effort to tuck my elbow afterwards. I just remembered feeling so much guilt and worry after it happened. The thought of wanting to do that just drives me insane and makes me worry so much. I don't think I'd be this worried if I meant it and didn't care.
@BigGip09 exactly. i didn’t think to apologize in my situation either and it’s made me worried at times but in the situation i knew what it was (just a thing that happened) and treated it as such
@mitz Well I'm glad you aren't ruminating about something like that. I just can't seem to stop doing it. I even remember the day after it happened to see if I could've tucked my arm at all to prevent it but it felt weird. My mind is telling me so many things about it and it just won't accept the fact that it could be an accident. There's just so many scenarios in my head about this. I know I have to accept uncertainty but this just disgusts me regardless
@BigGip09 well i still ruminate about things like that sometimes. it definitely sucks, but if you’re not you should look for ways to counter that, maybe write scripts on it or something
@mitz Only kind of ERP I'm getting is thoughts about jail, prison or any punishment I think I deserve. I've had this fear for years and it's been based on different types of fears. Has your OCD tried to tell you that you meant to do that to that person?
@BigGip09 yes definitely
@mitz I'm sorry about that. I know you haven't been through something like that on purpose and you wouldn't want to go through with that. I wish I could have myself believe the same thing but all I can do is just not ruminate about it.
@BigGip09 exactly. we can’t know what our intentions were only what they are now
@mitz Is this all part of the ERP I'm supposed to be following or can that be applied to general stuff too?
@BigGip09 i mean mainly erp but i guess either one works
@mitz Yeah. Things have gotten better in the meantime at least. I hope you can say the same
I absolutely have this too!! It’s super tough
For the past couple of months, I’ve had a really big fear of like my hand basically going down there or objects going down there and like being contaminated. This basically leads me to be scared of being on my own and doing things without people near (because if I do everything in front of someone they would tell me if I did something), also tucking my shirt. This started last October too and I remember crying for like hours everyday. Now I’m better but I do compulsions like tucking my shirt in a specific way so I know my hand couldn’t reach there. I’m scared to even get ready for the day, brush my teeth, etc with my shirt untucked because I’m scared those objects will be contaminated or I’ll do something to contaminate them. I’ve been trying to stop this compulsion of tucking my shirt in for a while but I’m not really going anywhere.
Started therapy recently and I feel like I’ve gone from being triggered every few days to every few hours. It’s like, I can’t even get out of bed for an hour before something new happens. I’m a stay at home dad with a 2 year old. This morning, I hesitated checking his diaper by patting him, just because any sort of touching in his diaper area makes me anxious or causes intrusive thoughts. But, I did it anyway, only for my brain to then go, “His diaper is always wet in the morning, why did you need to check?” I have this huge fear of accidentally doing something inappropriate or harmful, so any kind of touching, that isn’t completely necessary, feels harmful. At this point I’m just trying to survive between therapy sessions, but the risk of sitting with uncertainty with this theme, feels so strong and I feel so irresponsible by not trying to “figure it out”.
I don't know how to describe it, but when i walk down the street it's like I'm always very aware of whether people are looking at me or something, and i can feel some concern if some older men slightly look at me, if they are stalkers or they are watching me because of my butt, or other parts, and i tend to squeeze it or hide it, i get uncomfortable and want to leave quickly. This also makes me question whether i actually experienced something that i'm not remembering or that i have blocked, because i think my reactions and my fears are somewhat more strong and weird. It's weird, i used to objectify myself to get attention and that's where most of the bad actions i did come from, but now it's like i feel hypervigilant, besides being afraid of being terrible myself, i also worry about other people being like that. It's also like i want to have nothing sexual, to have an operation to remove my parts or something like that
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