How do I know if I didn’t actually like a thought? Because I feel like I actually genuinely liked it, like no question or anxiety or anything in the moment.
If you have intrusive thoughts, it’s common to desensitise to them a bit after a while, so that they don’t give you as much anxiety as they once did. The lack of anxiety doesn’t in itself mean you like the thoughts or that they were true all along.
Right and this I understand, but my problem was that I genuinely felt like I liked it. The thought was explicit and I hated that I liked it, but I did. Is this normal?
@Dreamer2343 Hi your situation sounds so much like mine my friends and family are telling me it’s the ocd that’s making you like and want these thoughts it’s not you ..: you didn’t have these thoughts before and I just cannot agree I think it’s genuinely me who does like and want the thoughts
@mentalpatient I think it’s key for us (and I do include myself in this because it’s something I really struggle to do) to really understand and accept that our brains are wired in an abnormal way, that we do have an illness, and that we therefore should see and treat ourselves like people who are unwell, not like the monsters we often wrongly believe we are or are becoming. We need to give ourselves this compassion because this is not our fault. What would you tell a friend who told you they are going through exactly what you are currently going through? Would you blame them? Would you question whether or not they really have OCD? My guess is: no you wouldn’t. You would empathise with them and try your best to help them get better.
@mentalpatient Try your best to take a step back from the debate raging inside your mind. You have OCD, and the solution to it is learning to watch these thoughts come and go inside your mind without attributing meaning to them. Every human being on earth gets weird intrusive thoughts all the time. They mostly shrug them off, and chances are you do that too sometimes. But OCD means we sometimes get scared and try to figure the thoughts out. But there’s nothing there to figure out.
@Pudu OCD I really really hope you’re right, but this is so painful right now. I was doing so well for so long and then I slipped back into this dark spot.
@Dreamer2343 I understand, and I have been there. It gets better if you can learn to ignore the thoughts. I found the best way is to physically keep moving on with your day. Don’t try to first completely dismiss the thoughts before continuing your daily activities. It will not work. Just interrupt a thought or question with something like “alrighty, then” and then start on whatever task you had planned to do next. The thought will linger there a little bit. Just focus on your task and it will fade and leave you be. Eventually the thoughts will mostly if not fully stop showing up.
You are questioning it right now.
I’m with you on this one! It’s literally turned me into a p in my mind
@mentalpatient I got to the exact same mental state years ago when struggling with POCD. The anxiety was eventually gone because these thoughts and questions used like 30% of my brain power every single waking hour for years. So I sort of got used to them after a while, as horrible as that sounds. I didn’t know I had OCD. I thought I had become a monster. But I wasn’t m, and I am not 🤷🏻♂️, I am just ill. And in my case, after a long, long while ruminating and compulsing about this, the thoughts eventually just went away. They just up and left, just as they had come. Poof! And never came back. Today I do not have POCD. These thoughts bullied me for years, became the dark center of my life, and then just disappeared one day. But OCD is still here with me. I deal with other creative and fun ways it can show up, but I have learned through this ordeal that the OCD thoughts really are irrelevant.
So, yesterday while I was laying in bed, I was relaxing when suddenly I had an intrusive thought about someone, but the thing is that it brought me a sense of enjoyment or calmness for a few seconds before it went away. Once it did, it was only until hours later when I realized what had happened and I began to freak out because I'm reading everywhere that when someone experiences this type of thing, the anxiety happens shortly after the enjoyment or "false" enjoyment. Can OCD do this?
I don’t know if my hormones are extra wild this month or what, but I have been having so many POCD thoughts lately. It feels like I enjoy them in the moment, and then a few seconds later, I get this tiny flicker of *wait I don’t think I actually want to enjoy that.* It’s scaring me a lot. I was watching adult videos for the first time in about a year, since I had been avoiding them because of my OCD. I know they are not good for anyone, but I felt like i could (ironically it felt like a tiny win that my OCD had calmed down enough). But while watching, I had like 3 separate POCD thoughts. And it felt like I liked them. Like genuinely *liked* them. I don’t know if maybe my body was mixing up physical pleasure and mental pleasure, and then my brain inserted those not okay thoughts into the situation, which got tangled up with the pleasure responses I felt mentally and physically. It is all really confusing. I just feel so scared. I know OCD thoughts are supposed to feel real, and that once you get desensitized to the anxiety, they lose their power. But this feels like I am *actually enjoying* the thoughts, and that makes me want to cry. I’m scared that I actually like these thoughts when I’m really aroused :( Please help.
I am 15 years old and my POCD feels like its not POCD, i feel like i like my intrusive thoughts, but i have more intrusive thoughts about having intrusive thoughts, and i feel like i cant enjoy the things i normally enjoy anymore, like calling with my girlfriend and joking with her because this is still in the back of my mind, its making me question morals and if i ever even viewed P as completely wrong and i hate this so much, i love my nieces and nephews and when they're over i know id never do anything with my intrusive thoughts but when they arent present i feel like i like my thoughts. Before this i was dealing with HOCD and ROCD and i wish i could go back to that
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