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the NOCD Community

Does anyone feel angry during your obsessive spiral?

There’s feeling of pain deep within my being physically weighing on my chest like a beating drum and my back aches and I feel out of breathe and I just want it to stop and this coat of anxiety to be lifted. How do I release this tension centered in my body? It’s been days on end and sleepless nights and I need a way out.

So I had severe SOOCD, and used to experience sexual abuse in my ex relationship. I would avoid sex because I was afraid I wouldn’t get aroused and if I didn’t, or wasn’t “wet” enough my ex bf would call say I’m not attracted to him and yell and scream at me. I was in this relationship from 16-19. I had no understanding of healthy intimacy. It was so bad I avoided doing anything to myself even, made me so afraid. When I started dating my current bf he was super helpful, patient and understanding. I would freak out if I wasn’t aroused quickly and would cry and worry it was because I wasn’t into him. 6 months into our relationship I applied this logic to him also. If he wouldn’t finish quickly it meant he wasn’t into me, or that he didn’t like me. I’m not insecure, I am quite secure in my relationship. But I heavily connected not finishing or being aroused enough to = not into me or I’m not into them. I still can’t get this out of my head, I avoid sex, fear it, and worry the entire time. Here’s the problem. Now my bf worries about the same. He said my constant checking and worrying makes him feel like he’s not normal and soemthing is wrong with him. He avoids sex, we are both afraid of it, and it’s led to a sexless relationship. I feel horrific for how Ive impacted him. I tell him it’s because of the abuse (very abusive) relationship and my ocd (he also has ocd). Do you guys think this is fixable? How can we work around this? Do you guys think once we remove the anxiety of sex, we will gain desire again? We are both attracted to eachother but man, I can’t help but feel horrible and that now our relationship is doomed. How can we work together to fix this?

Hello friends, I don’t know how to ensure I don’t do compulsions or do anything that would be bad for my healing journey. Can someone read and help? So, every month my period has been late, and every month my OCD fills my head with the same fear “what if you cheated on your partner and don’t remember. He won’t believe you. Because who would? And you’ll lose him forever” that’s the most prominent thought. Along with “what if your partner had his way with you while you slept” or even worse.. what if someone else did. I’m now technically a day late from when I got my period the last month. I have had a longer cycle then this before. June of 2025. Yes I track that extensively. Here is my dilemma. My mind tells me I should “take a pregnancy test” to put my mind at ease. I have done that before. Knowing I’m a virgin, celibate etc. and yet I still watched that test with immense fear. And when it came back negative (Because yeah of course it did). I started searching it’s effectiveness (expiry dates, if I did it correct.) I know it’s a trap but my god I would love the relief of not being a monster. My mind convinces me every month that I have betrayed my partner. He keeps trying to cheer me up. The doctors say it could be PCOS. As it runs in my family. I have most symptoms. So my partner just thinks it’s that like everyone else. But the doctor didn’t even pregnancy test me. So how can they know for sure. And if it did come back positive. How?! You know. I heard sometimes fake positive tests mean cancer too. So that also scares me. Anyway I have been being distant from my partner. My brain has convinced me I have betrayed him and he is being so sweet to me. And I can’t get the what if’s to go away. And I feel so guilty and stressed which isn’t making my period come any quicker being stressed. I don’t know what to do. Or how to cope. What to do or not to do. I want to make sure I don’t participate in a compulsion. I also want peace. Help.

One of the things that OCD makes difficult for me is buying things, particularly expensive things or things I'll have to use a lot, like sneakers. I have bad knees but like to run, so I want to buy sneakers that will be comfortable. I found myself going to 3 different store over the course of 2 days, trying on bunches of pairs, testing them out for a couple hours, and still feeling overwhelmed when deciding. I did purchase a pair but still unsure how I feel about them and debating returning them and going to another store to get another opinion/other options. It's exhausting and I just want to accept the shoes I bought. I don't want it to be a whole task. I am going to work on practicing NERs, just having a hard time with it right now. Just curious if anyone can relate so I feel less alone in this and if anyone has suggestions of what works for them? Thanks ❤️

TW: mention of my internal thoughts related to racism I am constantly stressed (no matter where I go, or who I'm talking to) about systemic oppression and problems in the world (namely racism, poverty, sexism, transphobia, climate change & environmental degredation) and how I can contribute to fix it. Its like a mental bug in my mind that won't stop saying "this is a problem you should be aware of and doing something about RIGHT NOW or else something terrible is going to happen and it will be all your fault." I dont like socializing very much anymore because this is always running through my mind, so when I engage in any sort of conflict or confrontation or anything outside of me doing something to help someone, I feel overwhelmed and sometimes break down emotionally. I feel like I can't do normal or fun things without getting distracted by and focusing on intrusive thoughts. This has been a significant problem since I was a teenager. It started with being worried about recycling properly or driving my car too much, or leaving the lights on. Now its gotten to "if i look at this Black person awkwardly, are they going to think I'm racist?" and then latching onto that thought and doing mental compulsions to figure out how I can avoid being racist. I am in fact White, if that was not obvious already lol. I feel like helping and engaging is more of a compulsion than something I actually love doing or want to do, instead it feels like something I HAVE to do. Im burned out constantly because in most of my relationships, Im just trying to figure out ways I can make peoples' libes better, I'm not actually being present or enjoying my time with them/engaging fully with an activity. I dont want to live in a state of constant burn out and obsessive thoughts. I want to tolerate being uncomfortable and allowing shit that's out of my control to just be, but there's lots of intrusive thoughts running through my mind telling me "you have to do something about this or else someone, somewhere will be harmed by you"

Need some advice perhaps?? So this is random but I want to be married someday and I don’t go on dates a lot and I pray about it all the time. And I don’t know when random people are interested in me I either shut them all off or like I’m like they could be a future husband or something yk I feel like I’m impulsive and we aren’t suppose to chase after someone else but how do I know If I don’t try they aren’t gonna magically appear. But then I’ll give them a chance sometimes or just cut them off out of nowhere and we like nah they aren’t it I already know or maybe they are a distraction or maybe I’m ignoring the signs of someone who it could be. It’s just a lot does anyone else feel like this? Cuz I don’t wanna make the wrong choice or be distracted but want to experience potentially finding someone and getting myself out there cuz I’m more reserved.

TW: Checking I have a huge problem with checking. When I’m triggered by something, I tend to always grab my phone and start researching and spiraling for hours on end about that one thing. Usually it will feed into other things I worry about, and the cycle repeats. For example, I’m awake now because I’ve been up for the last 3 hours being paranoid about a Quora and Reddit post I made a while ago asking for advice. Constantly fearing that people sharing them are making fun of me, worrying about the comments and dislikes. I also tend to get in my head about rude comments. I made a lot of spelling mistakes in my Quora post, and people were coming at me kind of rude because of it, and it has me feeling extremely self-conscious, worrying that other people will find out it’s me and make fun of me. Anyone have any advice on how to stop checking so much and to learn to sit with uncertainty?

Hi all! I am very new here. I was diagnosed with ocd a year ago, but was never able to get treatment and recently stumbled onto this app. I am not sure what category to put this in because I feel very confused right now. I have so many thoughts my brain feels a bit blank. But essentially, I am on a vacation with two of my closest friends, and one of their parents. There are have several things throughout the trip that have been heightening my anxiety. Right now I feel obsessed with thoughts around how the people around me feel about me, and about whether or not I am 'performing' well if that makes sense. It's an excruciating cycle because I know the worse I feel, the worse I am to be around, and then that exacerbates my anxiety. But I can't get rid of these thoughts about my behaviour, how I feel I've been unhelpful throughout the trip and about my friends and their family hating me now, or thinking worse of me now. I feel really upset with myself too because this trip, while being really fun, has also made me feel like a lot of the mental health progress I have made has been undone, and I've fallen back into behaviour I've worked really hard on improving. This is all to say, does anyone have any advice on how to regulate these kinds of emotions and deal with the bombardment of thoughts? Of course I want to be reflecting on myself and my behaviour so I can be a good friend and responsible, but I also recognise that this bombardment of thoughts is not helpful, and that a lot of these are intrusive thoughts. My sense of reality feels a little distorted and I feel slow and am finding it difficult to remember things. I am not able to calm down and I feel really disconnected from myself and what I think would be helpful for myself. Any time I do successfully calm down, I immediately have thoughts of 'well what if it doesnt matter and the damage is already permanently done' which just ends up eventually restarting the cycle. Thanks for any advice!!

Has anyone with history of TOCD found it possible to avoid being trans to align with the intrusive thoughts? I’m convinced that my TOCD is actually just a suppression of being trans because I’m scared of it, even though I am trying to remember that just because I’ve always been afraid of being trans and what it would do to my life, it doesn’t mean I actually am trans. I feel dysphoria and can’t stop imagining myself as a man, and my brain then tells me that I like these thoughts. I think I am suffering from depersonalization because I have been completely disconnected from my body for years as a result of trying to cope with this. I even developed an eating disorder as a way of trying to regain control of my life. I always identified as a cis straight woman and had no awareness of misalignment or disappointment in my womanhood when I was younger, I often times just felt like I wasn’t enough (pretty enough, nice enough, accepted enough, successful enough, etc.). However, early awareness of finding women conventionally attractive and fear of being a lesbian has intensified into years of TOCD. I’m in a spiral where I can’t stop ruminating and have spent so much time overanalyzing my whole life that identity feels gray and confusing now, and I’m uncomfortable by the idea of being friends or in a relationship with anyone. I want to be able to see myself as a wife and mom, to reconnect with my identity as a daughter and sister, but these thoughts have taken it all away from me. Like no matter what I think I want, I’ll never be able to happily be in a cis straight relationship because I’ve always been trans underneath it all. I’m hoping I can survive this because I don’t want that to be my life just because I couldn’t overcome these thoughts. I don’t know that I can continue on when it feels like I want something (to be a man) that I’ve always wanted to not want. Thank you.

Please help. I've always had this fear of "what if I'm trans?" and fear now feels like reality. It feels like I've been suppressing a hidden truth for so many years and that the inevitable truth of me being trans is now coming out. I am completely dissociated and feel like my body is trying to make me feel dysphoric in my current body and forcing constant fixation on images of myself as a man and makes me think I like them. It feels like this has never been about fear and has always been about suppression, and now I don't even recognize myself when I look in the mirror. I've completely numbed out any emotion and am so hyperaware of what people think of me and of "being figured out" that this it is unbearable. I feel no joy or connection to anything anymore, and the idea of connecting with anyone on a friendship or relationship level scares me because it feels like it is going to confirm that I am not a woman. I want to be a woman and have struggled with body dysmorphia and feeling like I need to constantly be working on my body to be satisfied, but I don't think at my core I want to be a man. I feel relieved at the idea of accepting it and realizing there is a cause to the years of intrusive thoughts and disconnection from myself and others, but the feelings of dysphoria in my female body/euphoria at the thought of being a man makes me feel like this is inescapable and I am just in denial. I think learning about the fact that gender dysphoria is the determining factor of what makes someone trans versus what is OCD is why I feel dysphoric now, but I am so in distress that I don't even know who I am or ever was anymore. I've always felt inadequate and had imposter syndrome, like I've never been able to acknowledge the good person that I am or how I've been successful. I've long been insecure of my appearance and had tendencies to compare myself to others and check to see if I was enough. I have a major fear of being inauthentic, and being trans would take away everything I value in life -- aka my authenticity and my relationships with my family. I feel like these thoughts first came up in childhood when I felt like liking certain things or not being hyperfeminine meant I wasn't feminine enough, and not so much core misalignment or wanting to be a man, but that's what it feels like now. I don't want to be trans or have my life change, but this threat feels so real and so persistent that I can't keep denying it. It's gotten to the point where when I see an attractive man, it makes me think I'm gay, even though I am biologically a woman. I've had other themes that are easier to shake off, but the identity one and feeling like I don't have a sense of belonging is the one that I can't separate from. I don't want to become a man and so badly want to feel connected to my feminine body and identity as a woman, but the lack of connection I feel to it seems like proof of incongruence. My brain has convinced me that I want to be a man and that that is the only way I'll feel aligned or connected to myself, and if I try to reassure myself that I am a woman and just need to reconnect with that part of myself, I'll be miserable and suffering from intrusive thoughts forever.

Early today I went to the mall far away from my place, I crossed multiple streets aswell despite all the anxiety & the intrusive thoughts. I tried on clothes and I still haven't showered despite feeling itchy all over and it late now. I haven't been able to relax, and Im very tense due to feeling like I might get sick because I put on the clothes at the store. I did find & buy a cardigan that I actually needed, so I have that and I'm happy I pushed myself. I have been looking for a cardigan for months but never found one I liked until now. I usually just avoid going and avoid trying things. This day has been very very hard, but also good because I've tried to go against it and got things I needed out of it. I got myself churro icecream as a reward for later. Now I'm very tired, but I've covered my mirrors so I won't get stuck and pick my skin when I finally take my shower. Being tired usually ends with picking skin when getting ready for bed & getting more harm thoughts when I finally go to bed, making it hard to sleep. But! can't wait to show off my cute cozy cardigan! And here I am wondering if I should even post this because I'm getting thoughts that it might upset someone or something or if I'll get misunderstood somehow. I will do my best not to delete this.

i’m a senior in high school, about to graduate, and i’m totally dreading going to college. art is my passion, and i have the opportunity to go to school for art, but the idea of taking classes with people and being the new kid makes me want to crawl out my skin. i have struggled since 8th grade making friends because i feel like people don’t get my personality, and i have been bullied because i don’t fit in with the stereotypes of my school community. i believe that the bullying has been the main cause of my ocd, and that it gets worse when i know i have to meet people. anyone else deal with this?

hey everyone, I hope you’re doing ok. I feel like I need support today. I just finished a small cry after being overwhelmed with thoughts. today hasn’t been the best, honestly. I showed up to work in the morning, later than usual since I wasn’t scheduled, and felt fine. but yk how most of my shift involves me being alone? yeah, well, I spent most of my time listening to youtube videos that had my interest. anyway, while I had these videos in the background, I kept having thoughts about there being a god or not. the most known one is God from the Bible. buckle up, cos this is gonna be a vent post. I have been identifying myself as agnostic for a while now & currently, at this time, I don’t feel as confident. I have recently been looking up questions in relation to christianity & have been overwhelmed with the answers. I just don’t know what to believe. I don’t know if a god exists, different gods, or not. maybe a goddess. I don’t know. and it’s been fucking frustrating. I want to believe that there’s more after death, and that we ascend to a better realm. because there’s no way that this goes away afterwards. sometimes I think, will it be lights out after death? or will there be more things like described in the Bible? or something else that no one has thought of? or perhaps maybe one religion that people barely knew about was right? what even is the truth? and a big thing about OCD is that the best way to beat it is to accept uncertainty. but how can I accept that when it comes to this? what if I go on my entire life believing something else instead of, let’s say, Christianity? and then after death, it turns out to be true? would God send me to suffer because I didn’t know for sure? would a god like that be loving, as many claim? how would I be at fault if it people have the ability to twist words and take advantage of people? I’d be out of luck if I hadn’t followed a religion or at least believed and it turned out to be true but do we really have freedom and is this god all loving if we decide to not believe and he sends us to suffer???? how would we have known while we lived if what we were told were lies or not???? I don’t think it’s fair that I suffer in the end because I wasn’t sure of what was true or not. and I don’t want to suffer. all I care about in the end is to be sure I can see my family again. I’m crying again as I type this. if I had a way to know that I will see them again & my past, present, and future pets & friends after death, I wouldn’t be scared. I would take my time to live my life to the fullest & be happy as I can be. but I don’t know. we can’t know. at least, not in the current lifetime. will we ever find out what happens after death? will we be able to somehow resurrect the dead and ask them questions? some might get angry for reviving them & ask to be left alone & let them die again lol. I’m at a loss. I find it so fucking unfair that this theme is now coming to me. give me a fucking break. I just started healing and changing my ways this year. and this change happened before my ex coworker passed away. I’m bringing him up because his passing made me see life a different way. now I’m appreciating life more. but I was already heading towards healing. at the beginning, I wasn’t talking to “God” or “the universe.”I was focusing on myself and talking to myself. I received advice from people around the internet, specifically YouTube creators. I had support from my dad & continue to do so. my kitties have helped me as well. And I’ve done a good job today by not looking up questions that pop up in my mind relating to this theme/other topics regarding monotheism. I think I’d like to believe that there is a purpose & that after dealing with life’s bs in this lifetime, we will move onto a better world. I hope that is the case. but right now, this theme is messing with me. there are so many questions and I don’t know who to believe. I just want peace, contentment, happiness, gratitude, and good times. I am just overwhelmed. like if God turned out to be real, would he hate me for not being sure that he existed???? would he hate me for being bisexual???? he’s supposed to be loving, right? so he would understand what I’m going through. sometimes I wish he was real so I can know there’s someone to witness my true intentions and know that I’m a good person. sometimes I don’t because of things I’ve heard about him. I don’t fucking know. I was sorta raised to believe and sometime around, idk, middle school or high school, I dipped out. I remember praying at my church camp with the counselor to take my fear of balloons away. guess what? it’s still there. I remember praying for my mom to find a good husband because even though we fought often during my teen years, I still wanted her to not be alone. even when that night at the park she found my little gay drawing and said that it didn’t make God happy. even after what she has said to me, I still prayed she would find love instead of me. guess what? she’s still trying to find that man after several men later. the current one is someone I don’t like, because he thinks being gay is a sin. I’ve been closeted this entire time because I honestly don’t know what she’ll think. my dad knows. he believes in God. and guess what? he still loves me. he still supports me. and not a lot of people who have parents that believe in God get that, sadly. I don’t want to be harsh on my mom, because I know she’s trying. I can tell she wants to repair our relationship, based on the texts I’ve been receiving from her recently. and you know what? somehow, deep in my heart, I want to have a good relationship with her. there are things I don’t agree with & will hopefully have her come around after a talk. I don’t know. and I wouldn’t say there’s nothing after death, because how would anyone know??? I don’t understand atheists either. so then how do you live your life??? is it full of void??? do you realize that nothing matters???? does it make someone want to do whatever tf they want???? do you live more depressed that way??? I don’t know. I just wish it wasn’t this hard. all I want is to love and be loved. I’m tired of the hatred in this world. that being from religious people, atheists, or whatever. doesn’t matter. I just dislike the negativity plaguing the world right now. why do innocent people have to die? why? how come they get to die and we keep on living? what makes us so worthy? I don’t get it. when I think about not following religion, I feel better because I feel like I’m not chained to rules that I don’t even know are true or not. but then I am left wondering what it all means and if we get to keep existing afterwards. not existing sounds scary. I somehow feel a bit at ease knowing that even if it were true, there wouldn’t be any suffering. bothers wouldn’t be anything and there wouldn’t be consciousness to have anxiety or anything. when I don’t dream, I am just resting. I have experienced this plenty of times. there is nothing but pitch black. and there is no happiness, there is no sadness. no joy, no pain. just nothing. and I’m not conscious. feels like peace. and yet, when I wake up, I feel reality kick in. the cortisol levels hit in the morning & either people get memories from the day before or some others get intrusive thoughts. but what was there before waking up was nothing. so, that’s what I hope it would be, if nothing else happens after death. but then I want to see my family, friends, and pets again. you see where I’m going with this??? it feels like a cycle. I don’t know what to do. I kind of want to believe in God and that I won’t be judged for who I am, but there are so many questions. sometimes, I feel like I have angels guarding me for the way my ass didn’t pay much attention on the road before. how I’m still here is a miracle. and then I don’t want to believe because of all the scary shit I hear. and how people do horrible things and justify it with using whatever fucking book they read. I feel like by reading the Bible or whatever else will feel like signing up for the military. and I’ve been warned NOT to advise loved ones or myself to go by those who served. and the recent thing I did by speaking with “Jesus” somehow left me feeling like he was listening. I don’t fucking know anymore. I feel connected to mother nature and religious people don’t acknowledge mother nature bc it’s God or whatever else they believe in. and oh my GOOOOOOOSSSSSHHH this has infiltrated how I should go about with dating. idk, but I heard dating is hard as it is making friends rn. well, as an agnostic, I don’t know what to fucking do!!!! can I date a religious person if I’m, I don’t know, questioning?! can I date an atheist?!?! or should I go with a deist?!?! TOO MANY QUESTIONS!!!! I don’t fucking knowwwww!!!!! hahahaha!!! I don’t know!!!! how wonderful it is to have this theme!!!!! wow!!!! anyway, I’m just gonna continue on with my day & do something productive. I think this was today’s problem. I’m clocking out. I will deal with tomorrow’s problem tomorrow. this was long. whoops! I appreciate if anyone read this so far. I wanted to let this baby out. remember to breathe. be kind to yourself. you can do this! hugs 🫂

Tw!vent sa Ive spent the past two years!! convinced i committed CoCSA. I’ve done everything I’ve talked to 2 professionals who both told me it wasn’t cocsa. I’ve talked to the person who told me it was fine and he wasn’t hurt and yet I keep obsessing that either committed abuse or I had problemic behavior based off a few words in a follow up email (boundary crossing and inappropriate) even through the email also said I wasn’t bad person, it wasn’t abuse and I may overreacting. I genuinely can’t stop checking and I don’t know what to do. I’m have an appointment with a therapist in april but idk if I can wait that long. I’ve been sitting here crying for over 3 hours and now I’m not going to get my math homework Done and it needed to be done like yesterday. I just feel so hopeless.

Does anyone else ruminate on every single conversation and thing they've had/done throughout the day? I always focus on how my voice may have sounded or how I looked and always assume the worse it sucks. My awkward/clumsy nature does nottt help I hate this. And right now I'm in class, my head and shoulders keep doing the weird tic jerks and I keep looking back to see if anyone's looking at my screen which instead I just look crazy but oh well.

So I attempted therapy with a counsellor and opened up about some of my C-PTSD as a compulsion (confessing) when I brought up my OCD thoughts and how they were driving me insane since they were based on a real time period. The problem is, she not only misunderstood my compulsion as a confession and made me feel horrible about myself and the event reminding me I need to be careful not to repeat it. But like...I already think about it ALL the time and feel horrible about it. It is genuinely debilitating. She didn't even try and clarify it, called me a victim in one scenario and put a bunch of labels on me without confirming what she understood from what I had told her. She seemed visibly shaken. Then she tried to end the session ASAP and told me that we had a lot of work to do and to practice sitting with my feelings. I understand that C-PTSD is a complex topic but I genuinely don't think that reaction was helpful at all. My previous therapist who was trauma informed didn't react like this. It just made me spiral really bad into OCD and I have been stuck for days fighting for my life. I of course immediately stopped sessions with her and am currently going back to my old therapist. The reason why I write all of this is because I want to contextualise my previous bad experience with someone who wasn't trauma informed. My current therapist is, however she doesn't deal with OCD so her help is greatly limited for me. I have been looking for someone who might have both but I can't really seem to see that. It seems to be mostly psycho-therapists. The thing is I have had a few bad experiences with them and I really don't trust them now after this. What could I do? Should I go for a combined approach of both without getting into too much detail for the IFS or ERP? I am really lost and scared rn.

Everyone told me to turn to religion. But here’s my problem, now that I’ve accidentally read the bible like a book, and associated with numerology I feel I have a deeper meaning than most because I think everyone else read it wrong and now my delusion is I’m an OCD angel who can save everyone but no one wants free good help. They’re all relying on medication they may not need or getting the right one because I know it’s happening to me so everyone must be silenced by the big metaphamical industry is the fucking devil and bullied addicts but I understand why people would turn to drugs and can stop. Literally everything can be solved with love I learned the freaking equation and all you need is true love but no one’s ever seen it or appreciated like life and love should be but me, and truly wanted it back to the point they would do anything to have it back. I want it from everyone. No one’s ever leaving me again. I won’t let them not even my least favorite, because I can still understand their pain.

I never realized how bad my ROCD was until I started NOCD. For as long as I can remember I’ve been obsessed with how I’m perceived and what people think of me. I ruminate on any mistakes I’ve made and I assume the worst from everyone else. I compare myself to other people in every way imaginable and I envy people who have a sense of self, even if they’re vastly different from me, because I don’t think I’ve ever had a sense of self. I think my whole life I’ve lived for other people’s approval. I feel really crazy and weird for thinking this, I feel like if people truly knew just how much stock I put into their opinions of me they’d be weirded out. I wish I could let go of the need to be liked so badly. I don’t like myself and it makes managing this difficult

I have an obsession over thinking my partner looks ugly bc it scares me so much. And I just thought of the fact that I think my partner is ugly when his hair is a certain way. I’m so guilty idk what to do or how to handle this Obviously I’m currently spiraling over this topic which is why all these thoughts are coming up I assume. Is my ROCD making things relevant that I wouldn’t otherwise pay any attention to or feel guilty about at all? Insight would be appreciated. I’m at a loss. Do I just sit with the feeling of guilt and fear? The sad part is I have other topics that make me feel so scared too Is this all some odd protection mechanism going on in my brain? Maybe I should thank my brain and move on.