My OCD Story

Hello, I was diagnosed with autism and ADHD at 25 years old. I attributed my overthinking to autism but I realised a few months ago that Pure O OCD is the most meaningful explanation for it. I am also an asexual, so I am, simply put, a shitshow of symptoms. I constantly review the past - particularly painful memories. I have a consistent fear of getting cancelled. When I was 18, some YouTubers I followed got accused of sexual misconduct and cancelled. I was obsessed and concerned for them. Others found my obsession strange. I did not like how their lives were ruined over accusation and no trial. (I was naive then to why public accusations are happening, as it is because the legal system often fails to address predatory men.) Even 6 years later, I googled one of them 240 times between January 2020 and April 2020. It was plain obsessive. When I burned bridges, I continued to search the people involved in my past dramas. Often multiple times in the same day with nothing new to see. They would likely be scared if they knew how obsessed I was with them. I have started doing ERP exercises. I wrote a script where I receive public false allegations and my life is ruined. It is forever googleable and I am a complete pariah. Completely unemployable, unliveable, even my family abandons me. I listen to it for 15 minutes on loop per day. What else would you recommend to tackle the ruminating? I wish I had this information at 18. I should have been solving these issues then and enjoying my life, not figuring it all out so much later in life.

I’ve always had OCD, and for most of my life it was little things that seemed manageable at the time or something that would phase out of my head within a couple days/weeks/months. But, the older I got the more severe it became, I’d find myself collapsing deeper and deeper within my own head trying to out think the thoughts that bothered me. About a year ago I had a thought that rattled me to my core. My brothers and I were watching a movie in our mother’s room when my youngest brother turned to me to say something. His close proximity to me triggered a fleeting sexually explicit image in my head and that thought caused me to spiral. Asking questions like, “are you attracted to your minor brother? Are you attracted to minors? Are you gay? Etc.” a couple days went by and my mental stability continued to crumble until I broke down to my mother, she was understanding and we found a a psychiatrist. I got on medication and for a while everything was slowly but surely trending in a positive direction. The thoughts would still pop into my head but they were becoming more manageable. As we all know OCD and mental illness comes in waves. Currently my OCD has been pretty severe. I feel those intrusive thoughts latching on in my head and it’s been very hard to kick them. It’s gotten to the point where I find myself being uncomfortable being in close proximity with my little brother because I feel as though I am capable of harming him in any way. And the more uncomfortable I become being around him the more I find myself lashing out in anger towards the people I care about the most. Those moments of anger cause me to spiral even farther as my head fills with ideas like “what if you are capable of hurting someone or even murdering them?” There’s times where these thoughts rattle me so much that I feel like it would be better to be in prison where I couldn’t harm someone or that even being dead would be a better solution than possibly running the risk of hurting someone in my life I care about. This is about the jist of it, a majority of the OCD I have is centered around the idea that I am capable of harming my little brother physically, mentally, sexually. It’s been exhausting and it feels like there is no end in sight.

I have no idea anymore. I guess this all started with me worrying about whether I was gay, then whether I was a P, then worried about being just attracted to teenagers. After that I started freaking out about not feeling “grown up” enough. Like “I’m an adult wtf is wrong with me for seeing someone who is probably younger and thinking they’re physically attractive. Then I started overthinking not finding older adults (like 30 or 40) very attractive. Like ofc I’m probably not gonna find them attractive, they’re not anywhere close my age. Maybe the desires are half real. Maybe as a 21 yr old young adult I do find older teenagers (16+) somewhat physically attractive. I still think it’d be weird to date one. Maybe that’s the normal reaction I’m supposed to have. If not, please let me know. I just don’t wanna do anything illegal one day and I’m super scared I will. I can’t tell if the fear is my just being afraid of the law though, in which case I might actually just be a bad person. I hate that my brain is just rationalizing thoughts now. I feel like I can’t do the ERP thing of “just accept that the thoughts are there but don’t engage.” Like what? How can I just think a thought that might be so integral to my identity and just ignore it? If it’s all true and I don’t like people my age anymore then I have to know and plan around that, that could change my entire life. I’m rambling, my b.