This morning I woke up feeling really weird and extremely tired. After getting ready, I saw something at school that triggered an unexpected mental image. The image became surprisingly vivid, almost like I was daydreaming rather than intentionally thinking about it. It had a strange “static” or charged feeling to it, and that immediately caught my attention. When I got to school, the image was still stuck in my head. I was able to have a normal/good time with my boyfriend, but I was extremely sleepy. I kept getting an urgent feeling that I needed to figure out why the image felt so vivid and why my mind was producing that kind of imagery.
Later, when I went back to class, I was so tired that I was struggling to stay awake. The thoughts came back, and I started daydreaming about my boyfriend. Then I noticed that the imagery had that same strange vivid/static quality and immediately wondered, “Why does it feel like that? Is it because I’m falling asleep?”
This is confusing because I naturally daydream a lot, especially when I’m tired, but my OCD makes me analyze the vividness and physical/emotional sensations afterward. I start wondering whether the fact that something felt so real or immersive means that I genuinely wanted the thought or that it says something about my attraction or desires.
I want to understand whether extreme sleepiness and the transition toward sleep can make mental imagery feel unusually vivid or immersive, and how that can interact with OCD checking. Instead of feeling like I’m simply thinking about something, it can feel almost like I’m inside the scenario or actually experiencing it. Along with the vivid imagery, I can sometimes notice physical sensations or an emotionally charged feeling in my body.
The problem is that once I notice the sensation, my OCD immediately wants me to figure out what it means. I start asking myself whether the fact that the image felt so real means I genuinely wanted it, whether the physical sensation means I was attracted to the person in the scenario, or whether my desires have changed. I may then intentionally replay the scenario, make the image more vivid, focus on the sensation, or switch between different scenarios to compare my reactions.The more I deliberately focus on it, the stronger and more immersive it can become. Then my brain treats the increased intensity as evidence: “See, you really felt that.” This makes the experience even more confusing because I can’t tell where the original thought ends and where the deliberate imagining, attention, and checking begin.Sometimes the sensation disappears when I stop paying attention to it, and then my OCD analyzes that too: “Why did it disappear?” or “Why was it so strong before?” I end up checking the feeling itself instead of simply letting the daydream happen naturally. This also gets mixed into my ROCD because I compare these vivid experiences with how I feel toward my boyfriend, Erick. If an imagined scenario feels intense but I feel emotionally flat or less “lovey-dovey” with him, my brain starts comparing the two and asking what that says about my attraction, desire, or relationship.What I’m trying to understand is the psychological mechanism behind this: why normal daydreaming can become so vivid and physically convincing when I repeatedly focus on it, and why my OCD then treats the vividness or physical sensation as proof of what I truly want. I don’t want reassurance or a definitive answer about my attraction. I want help understanding the checking/replay cycle and how to stop using these sensations and daydreams as tests.