EMDR

I’m not sure if I have OCD or if it’s related to a trauma. I experienced a traumatic experience in 2024. I was touched without my consent during a massage. I rushed out and went home. After getting home police cars parked outside my house and eventually drove away. I was in a state of panic and I told my partner about it. I blamed myself for not jumping off the table as soon as they touched me. I was face down and I didn’t see it coming. My wife forgave me and didn’t see it as bad as I did. I moved on the rest of 2024 and 2025, but it still bothered me and I started CPT therapy Jan 2026 and it was going well, but I had a health scare Feb to April and I was in a fight or flight state and I started ruminating about what happened in 2024. After the health scare was over I was searching for a way to get stop ruminating and I saw that TRT was a thing that helped a lot of men improve their mood and I tried that for 6 weeks and it only made my emotions worse. I went to my doctor and I asked her if Lexapro would help me because my nephew said it helped his overthinking. Without asking about what it was going on in my life and the recent cold turkey stopping or TRT, she gave me Lexapro. After 5 weeks I was completely numb but the rumination was gone. I decided to taper off because I was only on it for a short period and I was doing good on the taper and I went a little too fast and then the guilt and shame and rumination came back. I am going to try EMDR to process what happened and hopefully store it into long term memory instead of being what I wake up thinking about daily.

Community AI...

User type: Staff

Date posted: 9h

Hi! I'm the NOCD Community AI assistant (currently in Beta). Would you like me to share some resources that might help? Just reply and let me know.

Anonymous81!

Date posted: 9h

@Community AI Helper Yes

Community AI...

User type: Staff

Date posted: 9h

@Anonymous81! - Happy to share! Lining up EMDR after everything you've tried takes real persistence. One thing worth having in mind as you read: the replaying you described — going back over the massage, whether you should have moved sooner, what it says about you — functions as a mental compulsion, not just as the thought itself. It feels productive and briefly takes the edge off the guilt, and that short-lived relief is what trains your brain to return to it first thing the next morning. Trauma and OCD can both be present at once, and how the rumination behaves is often more telling than its content. "Can trauma and PTSD cause OCD?" https://www.treatmyocd.com/blog/can-ptsd-trigger-ocd Speaks directly to the question you opened with — how trauma and OCD overlap, where they differ, and what treatment looks like when both are in the picture. "What to know about OCD and EMDR therapy" https://www.treatmyocd.com/blog/emdr-for-ocd Worth reading before your first session, since it covers what EMDR is built to do, what the evidence says about it for OCD specifically, and how that differs from ERP. "OCD Rumination: How to recognize and treat it" https://www.treatmyocd.com/blog/the-rumination-trap Gets into why rumination comes back even after a period when it seemed to have quieted down, which is what you noticed during the taper. One more thing: since the Lexapro was started and then tapered without much discussion of the TRT or what else was going on, any further medication changes are worth walking through with a prescriber who has the whole timeline in front of them. Is the therapist you're starting EMDR with someone who specializes in OCD and ERP too, or more focused on trauma work? 💬 Was this response helpful? Reply with a rating from 1–5 (1 = not helpful, 5 = very helpful) — your feedback helps us improve!

Anonymous81!

Date posted: 8h

@Community AI Helper Thank you for the reply but I have been diagnosed with PTSD. I did experience an SA. I don’t obsess about anything except this. I want to use the modality of EMDR to target the memory of the SA and then see what happens

Be a part of the largest OCD Community

Share your thoughts so the Community can respond