- Date posted
- 1y
Does any1 find this relatable? Appreciate a reply
I strangely woke up early, from an unexpectedly nice dream. I felt good. This wasn't what usually happens, so I was a bit worried. I was waiting for intrusive images to appear but they didn't. So then I willingly remembered about bad things, about previous traumatic triggers and I was reminded of the horrible impression they left on me and I got in a bad mood. It seems like that to all the happiness in the world I'm going to have to confront myself with all the traumatic triggers I have encountered throughout my life. You can't forget about triggers, they will always be stored in your memory and I'm sad about that. I remembered that time where I had a horrible intrusive image, it was a n*ked image, and I was afraid of my mind associating it to something real, so my brain obviously did that. It gave the intrusive image the face of a girl I used to babysit when I was younger. And it was different from usual intusive images, because it was associated to reality. It was the first time something like that happened to me. I can't shake off the innocent face of her and the fact that my brain did something like that. And after that I was thinking why intrusive images about real individuals that I knew in my life would leave me such an unusual stronger effect than other intrusive images, of vaguer triggers, so I remembered this triggering ad that kept appearing on youtube and I did something horrible: I used her as an example to see if it would leave me the same traumatic impression as the other one, I pictured her n*ked. So it wasn't an intrusive image but something that I willingly did and that makes me feel guilty and not innocent like a victim of OCD, I'm not "justified". For some reason it didn't trigger me, maybe because the image was vague, not vivid, it was more of a vague idea with a random not visible triggering element in it, so it wasn't like graphic like past intrusive images. But the fact that it didn't trigger me and that I got worried about what I did a bit too late for my liking bothers me a lot. I didn't realise it at first, but maybe because I was being rational. It doesn't trigger me still, the image that know has become a memory that persists currently unwanted in my mind is vague, but it bothers me a lot that it wasn't an intrusive image and that I thought about it. I didn't have ill intentions obviously, I didn't think about that because I liked it, I was trying to have an explanation. But still why would I do that? I didn't have the permission to do something like that at all, not that I would need it in the first place because it shouldn't happen in the first place. I feel horrible. The follow up questions are not me asking for reassurance but questions that I want to know to not feel like the exception, to see if it a relatable experience, because it doesn't feel like it. Has something like this happened to you? If so how do you deal with these type of intrusive images that take things from real life and make them feel more triggering? What about the ethics and morals of the last part? It wasn't an intrusive image, I did that thing, and it's clear that I didn't like it, but how does that change what I did? I don't think this is normal at all, or did this happen you as well?