I feel like I am losing my mind

I recently found out that I have POCD. I have always been scared that I am attracted to children and have successfully blocked these thoughts out my entire life, occasionally having intrusive thoughts but verifying that I am not but constantly checking while around children. I believe that this stated when I was about 14, I started experiencing some groinal responses accompanied by distress in regard to sexual orientation and then once when I looked at a baby. My OCD of course tells me that this was not a groinal response but true arousal. In response I distanced myself from children, said I would never have children, and slowly just forgot that it occurred. Since then I have worked as a nurse with children and never experienced anything like that so I thought I must be safe. I recently had a miscarriage, and I was in the park and was looking at some children and started experiencing the groinal response. This was so startling and so distressing. I was so confused and my brain kept trying to figure out what was going on because I haven’t felt like that since I was 14. I didn’t want to google it because I thought I would be sent to prison. I was suicidal for a few days, didn’t know what to do, seeked reassurance for the first time in my husband and mum and then finally googled it and found out about POCD and the groinal response. This gave me reassurance and I was fine for a couple of days, but then thoughts about that experience when I was 14 and questions about true arousal vs groinal response stated to come out and freak me out. I live in a small down and am currently seeing a psychologist, hasn’t been for OCD but now I think I know where these thoughts are coming from. My appointment isn’t for another week and I don’t know what to do. I have been trying to use the uncertainty “maybe, maybe not” technique, but find myself constantly feeling anxious and seeking reassurance from the videos throughout the day that I am definitely doing the right things. I am unable to shut my thoughts up constantly saying maybe maybe not in my head and I don’t know what to do. I know I am experiencing some disassociation, I am unable to be present with my partner and I constantly feel like I’m spiralling. This is my second OCD spiral post the miscarriage, the first was of a different context. I just want to be present, in the moment, and accept the thoughts as they come but I am unsure how to do this. Any advice would be greatly appreciated, I am supposed to be going on holidays starting tomorrow and I don’t want to bring this with me.

Username: Emmnala Emmnala

Date posted: 1y ago

I’ve been here. I promise you that this is all just your OCD. You are NOT your thoughts. You will make it through this. Keep talking about it to people u feel comfortable with don’t let it eat you up inside. And remember that your own thoughts are not hurting anyone because they are not real and I’ve experienced those groinal responses as well. That was actually my first ocd episode. You are not alone. Keep doing therapy and keep doing coping skills and don’t let your mind scare you.

Username: CassieOCDCassieOCD

Date posted: 1y ago

Thank you so much for your reply, I really appreciate it. Yesterday I sat with the anxiety of not knowing and today I have felt better for it but I find that I am trying to provoke myself to have thoughts so I can feel anxious and get through them, I just want to be in the moment and focus on other things. Do you have any advice about being in the moment? I am finding myself obsessively thinking about responding to my thoughts to the point that I am responding to thoughts I am not even having.

Username: JordTheNordJordTheNord

Date posted: 1y ago

@CassieOCD Sorry to hear of your pain. Glad you had some relief throughout your life of your OCD episodes! Maybe it could have been brought back on by the miscarriage (trauma)? I know the question about being in the moment was for the other person but thought I could help. Focusing on the breath is a great way to simplify the moment. Slowing down your breathing will help the anxiety. Also, it seems you’re doing a great job of getting the right sort of tools and advice to combat the OCD. And you already acknowledge you are doing compulsions and reassurance seeking to make sure you’re doing it right which just acknowledging that is great too. If you are constantly trying to be in the moment you never will be because the compulsion has now shifted to “be in the moment or else”. Kind of always focusing on relaxing. “Relax more, that’s not enough, I need to do more to relax” kind of thing. Doesn’t help. It’s good to remind ourselves but when it starts repeating and causing us stress and now being in the moment or relaxing has become a chore we are right back where we started. A tip to help combat the compulsions is to spread them out slowly because progress is progress. Say you recheck to make sure you’re doing everything right 10 times a day. Lower it to 9 or whatever you like. Keeping reactions on compulsions definitely helps. It reinforces to the brain that we are ok and don’t need to do something to feel safe. Also, to help your anxiety you can always do something you enjoy, going for a walk, music, drawing, tv show, anything to help you shift thoughts during you sitting with your emotions/thoughts. Now the next thing I learned really helped me staying in the moment which kind of goes back to my first point…we are always in the moment. Now the phrase itself is almost like slang because even though we are always in the moment ppl refer to “your thinking of the past or future and not what is happening now”. However it helped me realize that the more I focused on being in the moment the more I felt out of it til I had the reset of in always in the moment. Having an OCD episode is being in the moment. Now in the moment we usually are referring to the quality. So we need to prioritize what we could be doing in said moment. Ex: lion coming at you and you’re thinking about whatever OCD thought you have instead of going to safety. Both are happening in the moment but one needs to be prioritized. So this comes to managing our thoughts and emotions which is what we are all trying to do (even non OCD peeps). When we know we are having an episode we need to breath and sit and as best as we can talk to ourselves in the episode. Do I really need to be thinking about this now? This is all hypothetical anyways. Maybe I should watch this movie I paid for first then I’ll go back to the thought if need be. Now this can still be uncomfortable but it helps with two exercises: dealing with uncertainty (finding an answer now) and not giving in to a compulsion and or spreading it out the time we act on it. We all love in the moment, it’s HOW we live in it that matters. That is what set me free to live in every moment and never worry about if I’m living in it because I already am whether it’s joyous or not. Hope this helps

Username: drak4drak4

Date posted: 1y ago

Good that you will start therapy. Meanwhile living life here and now is a great cure. I know your mind goes away to OCD always, but we have abbility to focus our attention to here and now. First it will be challenge, but after time you will get better. With experience you will know, that you can rule over your attention... i have ocd and also pocd...and my mind alwaya attended to it and runinated...but with practise I always refocused on here and now...feelings of anxiety stay with you when you refocus, but after time goea away... important is to know, that by analyzing ypu solve nothing, only make things worse...it ia a craving to compulsively analyze, but you must tell yourself it leads to nowhere and refocus to here and now, life your life and accept feelings of anxiety or shame...these feelings will pass on ita own after time...good luck

Username: Cavlaine

Date posted: 4y ago

I began struggling with pocd about 3 months ago. I’m the mom of two boys ages 3 and 7. Soon after that theme started for me, I discovered I was pregnant which was a surprise. At some point I latched on the the “what if I acted on my pocd fears and that is how this pregnancy came to be.” This led to me exerting all my energy to figure out if that was true, checking my memories ect. I began feeling like I had a “memory” even though that memory is very vague and details of it sometimes change when I try to recall it. Anyway, I’m struggling a great deal by now thinking I’ve acted on my pocd fears and now I’m carrying a child of incest. I get thoughts such as “what if I was half asleep?” Ect. And maybe that’s why I can’t remember it clearly. I’ve even gotten to the point of contemplating terminating this pregnancy because I just don’t know how to make it through with these thoughts. I feel like I will have the baby and something will be majorly wrong with it. Eventually tests will be run ect and all of my fears will turn out to be true. Then I will be separated from everyone and everything that I love and have to live out the rest of my life in a prison cell.

POCD

Username: bloominglotus

Date posted: 1y ago

Can anyone help?

I am not diagnosed with ocd. I began having distressing intrusive thoughts I think last December. It kept getting worse so I was looking for answers and ocd seemed similar to what I was experiencing. I don’t have any physical compulsions just mental ones where I can’t stop using affirmations like “I will never think/do ___” or “I have never thought ___”Then eventually I don’t even know how this happened but I discovered what pocd was, and I started thinking about what if I was a p in the past? I started having thoughts and images related to that and has been extremely distressing. I was afraid to go to sleep because I was afraid of having nightmares related to what I was worried about during the day. It got a little bit better when I realized I’m reacting the exact opposite to how someone who’s a p would. I am upset by these thoughts, I don’t want them, I have no desire to be anywhere near a child or hurt them in any way and I never have. I literally am avoiding looking at any child in public because I’m so scared. This is all in my head. But then recently I don’t know why it got bad again and I became convinced that I was one in the past. I used to play this game called moviestarplanet when I was a teenager and you could date other players on there and I started thinking what if I dated someone younger than me on there. Even though I know there is no possibility of that I can’t stop being convinced that it happened and that I’m in denial and don’t care. And my mind keeps coming up with new things trying to say that I did them and I know they are wildly untrue but I can’t stop worrying and I feel like I don’t want to live with this worry anymore that it could be true or become true. What do I do?

Username: CJW-182

Date posted: 40w ago

POCD

I’ve been struggling with POCD since I was 18 years old, I am now 22. It’s terrifying how quickly it switched from my ocd focusing on a fear of pregnancy, to magical thinking ocd, and then to POCD. I’ve been suffering with it so much so that I’ve convinced myself and have lost friends due to confession compulsions. I have major issues with ruminating, and it frequently goes hand in hand with my relationship OCD and my Suicidal thoughts OCD. (Worrying my partner will leave me because what if I am, and that I can’t take this anymore so I have to __) I often experience things like shame, guilt, grief, and intense emotional pain that manifests itself into nausea and heartburn and sometimes headaches. I’ve tried everything, so this app really is my last resort. I wish to find community here, to know that what I’m facing I’m not alone in my battles with. I know that I’m not, so why does my brain work so hard telling me I am? I love children, I always have. But I get so afraid of being near them. I want to get better. I want to be able to spend time with my family again.

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I feel like I am losing my mind

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