- 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.
Has anyone had this fear that they were abused in childhood and just don’t remember? And that’s why you have harm related thoughts? Like, I kept thinking if my mom abused me in childhood even though I had not ever thought or felt that way before, it came up a few months ago when my therapist was talking about complex PTSD which then freaked me out thinking something super horrific happened in my childhood and I just don’t remember it. My mom and I are super close, always have been. My mom was protective of me, but never in an abusive sense. She would just worry whenever I went out with friends and such, and wanted me to text her every now and again to let me know what was going on. Even in adulthood she sometimes wants to check in on me if I go out somewhere (even though we live together) and she even tells me to not worry about it and she knows it’s just her anxiety that gets the best of her, thinking something bad happened or what not. Anyway, I kept thinking about this and I thought is this abusive behavior? My mom wanting to check in on me? And I think of course not, it shows she cares and loves me. It’s not like she’s a hounding my phone every second or what not, just a text or a call to see what’s up. But my mind takes it further and thinks this is controlling behavior or something. So it goes back to the was I abused in childhood and I just have repressed memories, and that’s why I get harm thoughts towards my mom. I’m always thinking there is a deeper meaning. I never even thought that before in my life, about the abuse part, but it has become stuck in my mind and I’m scared it will ruin my relationship with my mom.
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! 🤍
Share your thoughts so the Community can respond