Sometimes I feel like I have some kind of sexual disorder or something with the amount of sexually-intrusive/taboo thoughts that can pop up at anytime even though I have no plans or have ever had such desires to act out upon them

Right, it’s just like, and I feel gross saying this, but like, it can be about ANYONE, people you shouldn’t have thoughts about like that entering your mind. I just had one about someone in my family because I thought I checked them out and now I feel so gross for even having it cross my mind.

@Recoverer Yeah, totally! Today, my mother told me about this weirdo ass artsy movie or something they watched with dad, where some bestiality took place and it really yiked my yikes system lol. oh, i was hyperaware now!->groinal response?!oh no! anyway..... that’s fine. We have VERY good imaginations apparently! maybe write stories about it for exposure? that’s something i like to do, mix some humour into it and voile.

@ria_ Oh for sure, writing out “scripts” of my thoughts and saying them out loud, as well as verbal recitations have been apart of my overall ERP treatment. I have battled SOCD since last year and so I’ll probably just follow the same steps for my situation now as I did with the SOCD. Why I’m posting about this today though is because of WHO it’s about and WHAT it’s about and it’s like, “this thought made me feel gross” and also the fact that, “dang I thought I was doing well with my treatment, now something else popped up in my head that caused me anxiety” and it’s just frustrating how intrusive thoughts can be limitless and never-ending.

@Recoverer Good luck on your recovery! Something that really helped me with OCD was acknowledging the fact that the themes of our thoughts are just the superficial symptoms of some of our internal problems. I mostly deal with ROCD, intrusive thoughts of sexual natures. I can clearly see that I am simply not confident/trusting in myself and I must emphasize, practice my values more. Of course, it’s always a little distressing when something new shows up, but I slowly seemed to understand that it’s ALL the same. No matter who or what; it’s just the same thing, it wants the same thing, it feels the same. Intrusive thoughts love to test our creativity in many ways, whether we like it or not. How unfortunate, to not get intrusive thoughts when I need them for my stories...

@ria_ That’s what I realized over the last few months too, that even though we break OCD into subtypes, such as “SOCD, ROCD” etc, OCD is still OCD and it wreaks havoc in the same fashion. What sucks is, you’d think since you can learn coping mechanisms for it, that you can learn to fight ANY troubling thought that comes your way. But sometimes it’s hard to have the same confident response against every thought. And I’m sorry to hear that, my OCD stems from relationship OCD when I was young, so I definitely can relate to you on the lack of confidence/self-esteem issue 100%.