This is embarrassing but can I get some help?

I’ve always been someone who likes to daydream or fantasize about scenes from books, like a passionate kiss or something similar. Sometimes, I act it out by kissing my hand, or occasionally, I might kiss my partner. However, lately my POCD has been acting up, and now I’m worried about imagining something inappropriate. For example, I might kiss my hand and then have the thought, What if I imagine this kiss being with a child or a family member? I’m not sure if I feel tempted to do this out of curiosity, or if I’m trying to prove to myself that it’s just my hand and nothing more, but it’s scaring me. When I kiss my boyfriend, it feels easier to acknowledge that it’s just him, and there’s no issue. But with my hand, I’m scared that I might be tempted to check or do something wrong, even though I know deep down it’s just my hand. Same thing for m*sturbating. I feel embarrassed for being scared of my hand, but the anxiety feels real, and I’m afraid of checking by kissing it or self intimacy because I worry that would be wrong. I’m feeling really confused and don’t know how to handle it. I won’t see my therapist for another week, and this is starting to bother me more than I’d like to admit. If anyone has advice or guidance, I’d really appreciate it. Thank you.

TexasOCD41

User type: OCD Conqueror

Date posted: 27w

Hello, First let me start by saying I'm sorry you're experiencing this but i believe you can run this off pretty easily. So, lets just break it down into small parts. You like to daydream ( usually the sign of an intelligent person so bravo) and you imagine kissing that cute person in your books with your hand or your bf... annndd somewhere in there your POCD ( that pesky condition you KNOW you have, and you KNOW lies to you) made you ask one question that made your heart race " what if---" "what if this were a kid? or a family member? would i like it?" and your OCD makes you sink your teeth into it because " what normal person would think like that? ( uhh.. everyone actually) to which you would argue " no way, if everyone thinks like this, why doesn't it bother everyone else?" and THAT is where the glitch in the system lies. other people have weird thoughts too. " would i be attracted to a minor? a family member ( i did have a crush on a cousin for YEARS but that's beside the point lol)" but the difference is THEY don't have a mental illness ( that's not a bad word its just fact) that causes them to over-analyze random meaningless thoughts. THEY don't have ODC that sends false alarms when there is no fire. THEY would go " huh, weird thought" WE go" WOAH... why would i think that? does that mean I'm a pedo? or incestual?" SO ill give you my hard-earned OCD advice... DONT AVOID kissing your hand ( that's a compulsion, and the more compulsions you do, the stronger it actually makes your OCD) keep kissing you hand, imaging whoever you want, and when your pesky little OCD bug says " what if you liked it if it were a kid" you say back " maybe i would, but this is my hand, cross that bridge IF i get to it" ( this is not actually admitting you WOULD like that situation, it is simply the behavioral modification of NOT giving into your desire to protect yourself with compulsions" Dont feel embarrassed, iv seen SOOOO MANY different ways POCD sneaks into peoples lives, i think it might be one of the most troubeling forms of OCD. i had it for a spell. i couldn't get this mental image out of my head of my violating the child of one of our friends, even when i was making love with my husband, it was AWFUL, but once i made the difficult decision to stop treating it like it was a threat or that it meant anything, and started treating it like a glitch in my thinking that wasn't important, it slowly went away. keep kissing you hand and just brush off the thoughts with " meh, maybe so, not really important tho" i often find inserting humor helps me to remember OCD is silly. like " well, it would have to be a 6'3 brown hair blue eyed millionaire child if that's the case haha" or for family i might say " hey, i could probably get away with a 3rd cousin right? " lol you make fun of the situation and it communicates to your brain its a false alarm and you don't actually need to pay attention to it.

Em2003

Date posted: 27w

@TexasOCD41 Thank you so much for taking the time to write all this out. It does help a lot, but one question, me imagining my hand being a kid and kissing it to prove to myself it’s just my hand, wouldn’t that be a compulsion? I don’t want to stop kissing my hand as you said not to, but I’m scared I’ll purposely imagine a child and kiss my hand. Does that make sense? It’s become really distressing because I find myself wanting to kiss my hand more often now almost see *if* I will imagine a kid. It’s a bit hard to explain so I’m sorry.

TexasOCD41

User type: OCD Conqueror

Date posted: 27w

@Em2003 - yes lol that is what could be called a covert compulsion ( a sneaky one). compulsions are behaviors we carry out to get relief or to get assurance, that can come in the form of testing ourselves. people with relationship OCD do this by looking at pictures of their partner to "test" to see if they are still attracted to them, or they look at pictures of other people to "test" if they think other people are attractive. testing can be applied to any sub-type. What you are experiencing is called " ego-dystonic" thinking, which means your "thoughts" don't line up with your base morals and beliefs. I understand it sounds horrible to suggest to just let it happen, even if you do accidentally imagine your kissing a kid, because at the end of the day, it still doesn't mean anything. I could kiss my hand right now and imagine its a kid... anyone can, its just a thought, thoughts are not threats and feelings are not facts. the fact that you are SCARED of this situation is the proof in the pudding its ego-dystonic, you literally DONT want to imagine a kid, so even if you did by accident ( or on purpose) it still doesn't mean anything about you. the best thing you can do is try to continue your behaviour and routine as usual and if a kid pops into your head? oh well, just a weird thought, means nothing, brush it off, replace it with who you would rather kiss instead. but stop testing, the more you test, the stronger you will actually make the obsessions.

Em2003

Date posted: 26w

@TexasOCD41 Thank you for replying again. I think I am scared of testing. It’s getting worse replacing my hand with images of genitals or anything POCD and whatever the hell else my brain can terrorize me with. Thank you for the advice and information. I sincerely appreciate it.

🧡🍁🎃

Date posted: 22w

Question of curiosity

TMI!! Hey everyone, I was coming on here to ask if anyone has experienced this before! Im in an amazing relationship with my boyfriend so in this post I wanted to ask this question because this is how it felt to me! I remembered earlier today I was watching this movie, etc. and there was this spicy scene in it (iykyk) and it got me feeling some sort of way. This has happened before especially if I’ve played a game or watched a show with some content like this. I felt really in the mood and started to imagine my boyfriend and I doing those things together and I sort of decided to (yanno, the m word) hopefully everyone understands because I just don’t like saying the word😭, but I found that every time I do that, that’s when my ocd is at its worst/peak. Every time my mind has tried to convince me I’ve cheated, when I self pleasure. I get in the mood if I think of my boyfriend and I doing those things I see in movies, shows etc, and that’s when I’ll do it, But literally I realized after I’ve done that at times my ocd is at its worst because my mind will attack me constantly asking “Is this cheating? Does this make me a horrible girlfriend?” If I self pleasure, I also want to add that I mentioned it to my boyfriend at one time and he told me it wasn’t at all and that everything is okay, but constantly I feel guilty for it and extremely horrible. Just wanted to see if anyone else has experienced this?

Anonymousssssss

Date posted: 18w

Can somebody plz fking help me

Ive dealt with pocd for a very long time now and it gets more real as time goes on. I was watching a movie and I’ve read the books so I knew there was a kiss scene coming up.The actors and their characters are children but I was basically looking forward to the scene. Then as they were kissing, it looked kind of weird and mechanical because again the actor was technically still a child. And I let myself indulge and enjoy it, of how someone young was doing something sexual and adult like. Idk I feel like a fuckikg creep but I don’t WANT this. There was nothing intrusive about this, it’s just something creepy that I’ve done. I keep ruminating about it but still. I don’t identify myself by this mistake but it still sucks. My mind then went to children that I know, one girl and one boy, and them separately doing sexual things for the first time and navigating that and it feels like I like it but I don’t. It’s not as real as the movie scene because the fact I enjoyed the scene WAS real but it’s still stressing me out.

Anonymous

Date posted: 18w

POCD and changing baby diaper - please help

Hi NOCD community, I was hoping to get some advice from fellow sufferers. In December we welcomed the first baby into the family, my beautiful niece. Since then, my POCD has been awful, which I know is probably very normal. Last week, in the middle of a very high stress day in my family, I was changing my niece and as usually happens, I got intrusive thoughts about awful things people do to babies when changing them. The thoughts were so harrowing to have as I was also changing her at the exact same time, and I felt my hands just quickly want to finish patting her dry before putting her nappy on, and for some reason, my heart dropped with that hand movement, because I was afraid that I had acted out the awful thoughts in my head, in a moment of mania because my morals, values and heart do not align with abuse of any kind, especially to children. My niece is my everything, and I know I would never want harm to come to her in any way, shape or form. I love her endlessly. I am having therapy, but have only had a couple of sessions. But, I cannot shake the 'what if'. I am tortured over trying to remember what it was I did that made my heart drop, but I can't, and its getting fuzzier and fuzzier the more I try to remember. Could anyone offer any advice on this please? Thank you.

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This is embarrassing but can I get some help?

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