- Date posted
- 16h
This has been a struggle for years
This may be a long one so please bear with me. 18+ I’ve never been officially diagnosed with OCD or any other subtypes, I can only assume based on symptoms and compulsions that I have. And literal years of research, I’ve brought some of these things up to my parents but they say it’s just anxiety. I have been diagnosed with anxiety/ and ADHD - I am aware both disorders are known to cause intrusive thoughts, as far as I’m aware tho not to the extent that I’ve been experiencing them. Just to give some background I’ve had intrusive thoughts for as long as I can remember, when I was is 6th grade (about 12 years old) I started having sexual intrusive thoughts about my mother. They would cause severe distress and anxiety and at the time I had absolutely no idea what it meant all I knew is it made me scared and uncomfortable. I avoided any contact with my mother because of if, thankfully it eventually went away. However when I was 13 I started having intrusive thoughts about children, these thoughts are so much worse and brought a lot more anxiety, stress, and discomfort. I am now 18 and still struggle with this - some compulsions I’ll have (which are rather strange and don’t make sense) is when I was at work, holding an giant bucket of lemonade and in my head a voice said I need to grab the door I just walked out of before it closes or I’ll become a pedo, so it then feels like I HAVE to grab the door. Most of the time I can’t even wear the color blue or pink socks on my left foot because my brain will tell me that makes me a pedo somehow And earlier today I was scrolling on social media, saw a video of a group of ppl sitting at a lunch table at school, first person I see seems to be a male. My mind immediately says “oh he’s cute” or like “he’s attractive” then immediately after I was like he looks really young though… I could already feel the anxiety start to build up so I scrolled away quickly, but I couldn’t shake this feeling like I needed to know what age group he was in order to reassure myself. When I check the comments I find he’s in a middle school - immediately sending me into panic, stress, and discomfort, I’ve been trying to tell myself this could probably be false attraction, but I don’t know. I guess I just need advice from someone who’s been diagnosed with OCD This is truly exhausting and I want the thoughts to stop