intrusive s3xu4l thoughts when self pleasure

hi! does someone have any tips on how to manage that? i don’t want to avoid self pleasure or future s3x with a partner in fear I’ll get intrusive thoughts. Today I was like “smh I hope I don’t get any intrusive thoughts during this”, and then I got a very unwanted disturbing one about myself morphing into something else and ofc it kills the mood so I quickly replaced it for what actually turns me on, so I continued, and then again, another unwanted bad thought about someone (not vulgar) popped up, which ended up killing my mood altogether and I had to stop lol. At first I felt guilty for continuing after replacing the first bad thought for the one I actually wanted because my brain went like “why would you still want to continue after having that very bad thought for like a millisecond?” but I did so bc I remembered that the more power you give to these thoughts (avoiding something/letting it interfere with whatever you’re doing), the worse it is for you, so they should feel like a passing cloud. But then I got the second one and I was like yeah I can’t lol killed the mood again.

floatingalien

Date posted: 8h

Moving forward, the trick is to stop treating these thoughts like emergencies that need to be fixed or replaced. They are just random, meaningless background noise, like an annoying car alarm going off outside. Which I honestly wish I knew before. I’ve had a very similar situation and it caused me to always try to find a way to fix or change the thoughts I was having and I just ended up digging myself into a deeper hole. You don't have to wait for the car alarm to stop before you can enjoy yourself, you can just let it wail in the background while keeping your focus on your physical sensations. If a thought ruins the vibe and you have to stop, that's completely fine, just shrug it off as a frustrating brain quirk and move on with your day without analyzing it. You did absolutely nothing wrong, and continuing to pursue pleasure is a healthy, normal thing that your intrusive thoughts can't take away from you.

moccalate

Date posted: 8h

@Anonymous thank you so much for your reply! I didn’t want to climax bc I didn’t want to then feel guilty over continuing even after having VERY unwanted thoughts, like I don’t want my brain to be like “well you must’ve liked em for them not to bother you!” do you have any tips on that?

floatingalien

Date posted: 8h

@moccalate What your brain is doing right now is the ultimate OCD bluff by trying to tell you that if you climax, it means you secretly liked the bad thought. That is 100% false because a climax is just a mechanical bodily reaction to physical touch, not a moral stamp of approval on a random, garbage thought that flew through your mind minutes earlier. In fact, learning not to be bothered by the thoughts is the ultimate goal of recovery, as pushing through shows your brain that its scary background noise has zero power over your body. Next time your brain tries to guilt-trip you with that logic, don't argue with it, just shrug it off, accept that your mind threw a weird glitch at you, and continue focusing strictly on how good the physical sensations feel.🙂‍↕️

Hopefulfeeli...

Date posted: 8h

I totally get it. Its so frustrating

moccalate

Date posted: 8h

@Hopefulfeelings123 it happened to me today with thoughts I never ever get and it was so frustrating!

JS55555

Date posted: 5h

Honestly, I think the most important thing to remember is that the goal of OCD is to live your life in the way that you want to despite the disorder. So therefore, just completing the action that you set out to do with minimal/no purposeful thinking about the fact that you have the disorder in the moment is the win in the situation.

Be a part of the largest OCD Community

Share your thoughts so the Community can respond