- Date posted
- 34w ago
Trauma’s relation to subtype
Ive been told that I have POCD bc I was molested as a kid. By two practitioners (therapists who treat ocd/trauma). Im not sure I buy this. What do you think?
Ive been told that I have POCD bc I was molested as a kid. By two practitioners (therapists who treat ocd/trauma). Im not sure I buy this. What do you think?
OCD is caused my genetics, medical, or trauma, so no, it is not weird. I was molested as a child and my first pure O theme was POCD which was very hard to get over because of my abuse (but I did get over it).
@Nica Caused by*
So when the body experiences trauma, it changes the brain and body, especially the parts of the brain that evaluate threats that can help regulate our nervous system. The part where OCD occurs in the brain tends to overlap with the areas that are impacted by trauma as well. So for example a non OCD person would scan the environment and their brain would play out all the possible scenarios, sometimes things that are way out there, but the filter that says “hey, that’s less likely to occur” will filter out those scenarios, meaning they get way less intrusive thoughts. They still happen, but not as often. Now a person with trauma has lived an abnormal living experience, where the brain didn’t anticipate the threat (especially in instances that involve s.a.), so now the brain doesn’t know what thoughts to flag as abnormal vs normal. It will scan the environment for threats, and in the scenario where you are most likely to be the main threat, the brain is still going to play that scenario out, just in case, and it may not flag the thought as unlikely or irrelevant. Because the brain has been wired to protect at all costs, it will even try to protect itself from itself. That’s why people with harm and POCD themes tend to only have these fears towards people that they feel are weaker than them. And then with the general ptsd around what happened, it’s like experiencing a flashback but in thought form that you know isn’t real and would never happen, but the brain needs you to feel it’s real so you take the threat seriously, because in the past it wasn’t able to protect itself, and needs to feel like it can now.
Trying not to seek reassurance, but rather connect the dots on my OCD and possible reasons as to why I am the way I am. I have severe OCD (or at least I hope I do) mainly surrounding POCD. I've had symptoms of OCD the majority of my life but this theme has come up more recently. When I was a kid, and i'm talking 6-7, I was first exposed to some really gross adult content online. It was introduced to me by a friend of mine around the same age of me. I saw some really disgusting things that a 6-7 year old should definitely not see. This was not a one time occurrence, as I had been exposed to taboo topics online years to come after that, such as the same friend introducing me to Omegle... And i'm sure you can imagine how that went, theres a lot of genuinely disgusting human beings on there. Coming back to the reason for making this post; is it possible to early exposure to this content could be one of the reasons I struggle with POCD? It genuinely scares me to death because you hear that real p*dos dealt with simular situations when they were kids, so thats kind of making me feel that this could be more than OCD, and I could be a genuinely bad person. My POCD feels so real, that at times i'm fully convinced its not OCD. Sometimes I can't even distinguish the feelings of attraction between a younger person and an older person, except for the feeling of anxiety and fear. Its really hard to explain without going into detail, but it just feels so real. Some feedback on this would be great, thank you all.
Does anyone else struggle with this? It's been the main thing powering my POCD, and it's only been getting worse. Especially when I see posts online of people sharing their personal stories relating to CSA, specifically grooming. It's so triggering now, but before this theme developed, the most I'd feel while reading posts like that would be disgust targeted towards people who did those things. Now, my first thought is, "What if I do something like that one day? What if I've done it before and I don't remember or didn't know I was doing it?" I have many, many different intrusive thoughts or worries related to this theme, but it all circles back to this specific fear that I'll become like the people who hurt and took advantage of me. Does anyone have advice for this? I'm not sure if I've asked a similar question in the past or not, but is this something I need to deal with separately before beginning ERP for OCD? I'm just curious and also lost on where to begin with all of this. I'm just glad I'm able to begin working through all of these issues now, rather than later in life when I'd probably have a lot more responsibilities. Anyways, any feedback is appreciated! 🤍
Being exposed to taboo p*rn as young as first grade ruined my life and now ocd is making me pay for it. I have so much guilt for being a child/teen and looking at taboo stuff, and it was all fictional or anime or whatever but it was still so so gross. and I didn't realize It because I had been used to it at so young 🫠 I think what haunts me most is when I was a kid/young teen (like 12-14ish) and didn't have access to p*rn I'd imagine stuff similar to what I'd seen in the art. I can't even believe I'd imagine scenarios involving kid characters or whatever because it had been so normalized to me and I assumed it was normal since it was fiction. I'm 23 now so it's been a decade since I've done anything like that and I've never had the urge to since but still. I've NEVER been attracted to kids or had any urges or anything ever, even when I was addicted. The thought makes me want to vomit, I'd rather die than associate anything sexual with kids/minors and I think people who groom or assault kids are vile. But I still feel like the fact that I imagined stuff similar to the things I read sometimes when I was young is proof I'm a p*do. I don't think people would believe me if I said I'm not. I just feel like I don't deserve to live or that if I do, I'm living a lie. I know 'I was a kid too' but even when I was 13/14 I read/imagined stuff with characters younger than me because I thought it was normal. I'm so disgusted. I've had this theme for so long I'm starting to wonder if ocd is right. I feel too ashamed to tell my therapist.
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