- Username
- DJTall
- Date posted
- 4y ago
Speaking as someone for whom sexual assault stories make both my OCD and PTSD worse, it's your job to remove yourself from whatever triggers you if that's your choice. Wishing that sexual assault victims would realise that talking about their experience triggers you, is kinda... Idk what word to use. But basically there has been enough pressure in the past not to speak about it, which was harmful. Being empowered to talk about it publicly is a big deal. It's helped me with my long-standing feelings that I never should've spoken about sexual abuse from an ex, and the invalidation and cruelty I got from certain people when I did. I recommend that if you find it too triggering, you unfollow.
Please never paint us as a small population Carl. That is labelling and damaging to people with my kind of OCD. That is the only thing I ask.
Mathematically, it just is a small part of the population. That doesn’t mean that the pain and struggle of people with OCD isn’t very real. I do advocacy precisely to reach those people and give support.
I'm not sure it's painting or labelling if it's accurate. It triggers my own OCD so we are in the same camp, but I see no offense in being clear that because sexual assault impacts so many more people, their speaking up is ultimately just a priority over us not being triggered. I genuinely don't understand why you think it's damaging or find it offensive to mention the fact that there aren't very many of us. I certainly don't feel labelled, painted or damaged by it.
@Scoggy Just because you do not does not mean that other people don't feel differently.
@DJTall I agree with you- others feel differently. So it's better to say that you find it labelling and damaging to yourself rather than to people in general.
@Scoggy I said what I said. I am sorry you feel that way but I am not going to worry about every little thing that I said. It is not good for me nor my OCD
It’s one of the tough things about these sorts of experiences. For some people sharing their story is how they process or cope with the experience, and for others hearing about those stories can be comforting (similar to how NOCD allows us to realize we aren’t alone in our struggles). Unfortunately, there are those like yourself who find such posts distressing. I think it’s sometimes best to close out or unfollow certain people or pages on social media, at least for a time, especially if it is particularly triggering. For example, I struggled with contamination OCD for several months after the initial outbreak of coronavirus. Seeing people share news stories about infection rates and morality was very distressing to me, but I know perhaps it’s how those others processed that information themselves. I had to delete certain apps and mute other pages until I could get my anxiety a little more under control
I will have to try harder but it is my right to share that it is triggering just as you have a right to share your story.
Yeah of course you have a right to share that it triggers you? I never said you don't? It's just the wishing people knew that it was triggering thing. Most people are fully aware that their stories are triggering to all sorts of people for all sorts of reason. You phrased it as if you feel victims are being insensitive to talk about their experiences.
I am just saying I wish people knew it was harmful for some people to hear about. I am not telling people to stop sharing their experiences. And I feel like that is absolutely fair. Have a good day
Oh dear. I never said it wasn't fair. I was just saying that people already know that it's triggering. Not harmful btw. Triggering. So they wouldn't act differently 'if they knew' :/
As a survivor of sexual abuse and someone with OCD, there’s so much shame and stigma around sexual assault that it’s far more important to share it than it is to not do so out of the concern that there’s some subset of the population that might take issue with it. At most 3% of the population has OCD, and an even smaller subset would be triggered by a story about sexual assault. Ultimately, too, the goal of the recovery is to be able to experience the unpleasant thoughts, feelings, sensations, urges, and emotions the thoughts give you and learning that you don’t have to organize your life around avoiding those experiences. The world is triggering, and we can’t alter that.
But thank you to everyone who has also shared their story/viewpoint with assault. This stuff is hard to talk about on both the OCD and survivor end so I hope that everyone in this thread and app can appreciate the courage and strength it takes to talk about it on both sides.
I just want to add that I have been sexually assaulted multiple times
I have to set my boundaries so I am done reading and replying but thanks for everyone who wanted to share, encourage and express their viewpoints.
Having POCD is the most damaging thing to ever happen to me. Like even if I get better or even if I get cured, the compulsions will always haunt me. I've always wanted to be a famous person. And my naive ass still has that dream, but if I get famous, I really wanna talk seriously and raise awareness about how extreme OCD can get. The problem is, how do you explain all this shit to people who don't have OCD and also convince them that youre not a genuine freak. How do you explain that "oh some people with POCD willingly think of sexual scenarios to check for arousal" or "Some people with POCD masturbate to their thoughts to see if they can achieve an orgasm and some of them do by pure stress response" and also how am I going to explain that I've seen rare cases of people with POCD who try to find CP in order to see if it arouses them? How am I going to explain this to people without them being like "so where is the fucking line drawn? Just because none of yall have ever hurt a child means that we should trust you?" It's bad enough as is that just because that one dude with OCD comitted a heinous crime and already people are pulling out the "its his mentol ewness that made him do that" shlock but also the fact that I've read that in extreme cases some folks with HOCD test themselves out with same-sex partners. Like to a normal person saying all this shit basically looks like I'm trying to paint a paraphilic disorder as an anxiety disorder problem, but at the same time it is what it fucking is and I still haven't seen anyone with POCD hurt any child. Just because there are some bizarre cases of desperate and extremely anxious possibly teenagers doing dumb shit doesn't mean that POCD isn't or has never been a treatable anxiety problem. I talked about this with a friend and she was like "why would you have to talk about any of that when you can just keep quiet?" Because it makes me feel like a creep in disguise. Yes, compulsions have made me do gross things but at the end of the day it was all self-harm basically. It never had anything to do with doing harm to anyone but myself. Yes people with OCD have the choice to resist compulsions, but if you don't even know whether or not you have OCD and you're not working with a professional, most likely scenario is you're gonna give into a lot of compulsions. People don't choose their compulsions as OCD is highly-individualized and different for everyone. And there's no such thing as a compulsion where you hurt a child to test yourself. That is absolute bullshit. I'm upset, because there was a study by this dickhead that was like "people with HOCD regularly or excessively look at gay porn. If CP was accessible, no doubt that people with POCD would be seeking it out too." ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NOT. Whoever wrote that can fucking choke. I'd rather die than see shit like that. FUCK OFF. These fucking mental health researchers are crazy sometimes like someone tried to test how high pedophiles and other paraphiliacs scored on the Y-BOCS test.....What the fuck was the reason for that? Can you do something more productive? I am upset with how horrible this disorder is and how much nobodys ever gonna get it. I want them to get it, because OCD is treatable and harmless, but people are too busy trying to milk their own perceived moral highground to try and take this seriously. It's bad enough that most of us can't be convinced that our OCD is actually real and is OCD and that we aren't being lied to by our therapists or whatever, but if the more severe cases of OCD get exposed to the general public we're gonna have them reinforcing that to us too. I feel completely hopeless and I honestly wish that the people who would raise their eyebrows at someone who has severe OCD, do something to make fictional CP illegal, instead of being willfully ignorant at already tormented people with a harmless mental disorder. Like I seriously can't even look at erotic fanart of a buff rugged adult fictional character without having the most disturbing shit pop up in the "recommended images" section AND THIS IS GOOGLE IMAGES like this isnt some nasty smut website I got on. If people really cared about the safety of children they would be doing everything BUT making people with POCD feel like menaces to society.
TW rant: suicidal OCD So this has been my major theme for the past year since my onset started. For clarification: I just have suicidal OCD, I’m not actually suicidal Incase there’s confusion about that. Anyways, I am so SICK of hearing about the topic of suicide which seems to be everywhere. You hear a story on the news that some celebrity did it, or other stories that people they knew did it or they themselves attempted it. You hear that people with mental illnesses or those who went through trauma or just being a middle aged white man have higher risks of suicide. On my explore page on Instagram, thanks to the OCD support pages I follow, I get suggested posts about other mental health related things and there’s usually posts about “signs of suicidal people” or whatnot. I’m soooo sick of it. Having suicidal OCD has been extremely hard and scary to have. It seems like anything is a trigger and the unwanted thoughts of it keep popping up (as OCD normally does). A lot of the time it’s aimed toward myself, but a big chunk of it is aimed toward my loved ones, like what if they decided to commit suicide? If I haven’t seen a family member in a little while (they’re chilling in their room or whatever) I get scared they might have killed themselves so I feel the compulsion to check on them, ask if they’re okay and happy etc. But it’s mostly at myself and I hate it so much. I think overall, whether this attack is aimed toward myself or others, it just absolutely terrifies me that anyone could just decided to do it and then just do it? It’s not like fearing a murderer coming to your house or an outside threat, but you’re the threat! And you can’t seem to protect your loved ones from it! I get these fears that I’ll become depressed (I’m not depressed) and eventually desire it or that I’ll spiral from fear and pain and eventually desire it, or that it’ll be like the movie Bird Box where the people in it (after seeing the monster) seemed to go on autopilot and killed themselves. I can’t even see words like “committed” or “attempted” without having my stomach jump. I struggle to get things out of my closet since having an open closet is even a trigger for fear. I just wish suicide never existed, I wish it wasn’t a thing, I wish I’d never think about it, I wish i could move on from this intense fear. (Disclaimer: I’m doing ERP for this and compared to before have been progress, but on my spike days it’s just so frustrating) Thanks for listening 😩
I hope I’m not offending anyone by saying this and if I am please let me know so I can apologize. I just want to know why everything is surrounded around gender identity now a days . I understand spreading awareness but it’s literally all I ever see now and it triggers me so damn bad . It’s almost like ocd knows I’m trying to get my mind off it . I feel like my view of my gender has changed for ever and I will never be the same …
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