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OCD and the search for innocence


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Over the years I have noticed my OCD focuses on invasiveness/contamination issues and the need for total security. I can remember distinct childhood experiences where I felt invaded by other children or contaminated by their crayons getting mixed with mine. Now, as a man in my early fifties and a parent I struggle to constantly find 'safe zones' and moments of indubitable safety. I am still active but there is an immense tension between staying linked to the world and wanting to retreat from it or vaporise into nothingness. I'm sure many of you have to use immense amounts of will power to keep going which is profoundly exhausting. Each morning I awake with the awareness that the day will bring an ocean of triggers and can feel my brain continuously searching them out. I wonder of this desire for Innocence/the safety of a secure childhood/protection from the coldness of the world is a common factor for OCD sufferers and links with the absence of that in childhood. My own mother suffered from depression so their was nowhere 'warm' to go.

Sorry for length of post-it's my first time on this sight!

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Guest Sisyphus

Over the years I have noticed my OCD focuses on invasiveness/contamination issues and the need for total security. I can remember distinct childhood experiences where I felt invaded by other children or contaminated by their crayons getting mixed with mine. Now, as a man in my early fifties and a parent I struggle to constantly find 'safe zones' and moments of indubitable safety. I am still active but there is an immense tension between staying linked to the world and wanting to retreat from it or vaporise into nothingness. I'm sure many of you have to use immense amounts of will power to keep going which is profoundly exhausting. Each morning I awake with the awareness that the day will bring an ocean of triggers and can feel my brain continuously searching them out. I wonder of this desire for Innocence/the safety of a secure childhood/protection from the coldness of the world is a common factor for OCD sufferers and links with the absence of that in childhood. My own mother suffered from depression so their was nowhere 'warm' to go.

Sorry for length of post-it's my first time on this sight!

Hi S,

Welcome to this forum.

I like your descriptions of what it's like having OCD.

It's an interesting question. I suppose I yearn for my childhood quite a bit as it was the lat time I remember being happy, I mean consistently happy, not odd moments of relative happiness. Happy, carefree and in the flow like never since. Plus you're relatively free compared to in adulthood. And unbrainwashed, untarnished by self-consciousness, taboos, political correctness etc etc etc. But maybe non-OCD sufferers yearn for their childhood for the same reasons?

Your post isn't too long if that's what you meant. There's some right woppers on here.

All the best,

David.

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Thank you David-OCD can make you very unhappy, that's for sure! With me it is the search for an impossible to find security-I suppose, if you haven't internalised that then you are left facing the world in a very raw unprotected state. It is good that you have happy childhood memories-perhaps you can draw on this as a source of strength when dealing with OCD issues. In my case I think I was unhappy as a child so i can't do that. One has to be terribly brave in the face of life's onslaught! I often think that love and selflessness is the only thing that helps overcome this in a world of suffering.

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Guest Sisyphus

Thank you David-OCD can make you very unhappy, that's for sure! With me it is the search for an impossible to find security-I suppose, if you haven't internalised that then you are left facing the world in a very raw unprotected state. It is good that you have happy childhood memories-perhaps you can draw on this as a source of strength when dealing with OCD issues. In my case I think I was unhappy as a child so i can't do that. One has to be terribly brave in the face of life's onslaught! I often think that love and selflessness is the only thing that helps overcome this in a world of suffering.

Ah OK perhaps I misunderstood that.

When you say a search for impossible security, that does kind of ring a bell for me. There has been this constant theme for me of trying to make sure I'm ready to face the world, take on all comers kind of thing, feeling like I was able to defen myself if needs be. So I don't kno if you mean in that sense. There was a time before I knew I had OCD when I would sort of psyche myself up any time I went out for those reasons. Very hard work, but if I did'nt do it I felt vulnerbale, perhaps that raw unprotected state you mentioned. I think I eventually had to go out so many times without it because I was late and stuff that I concluded the psyching up made no difference and just made me exhausted instead, so it dropped away eventually. That's not to say I don't still feel vulnerable in some situations and seek reassurance.

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I was just wondering whether (in the case of contamination and excessive sense of personal responsibility issues) there is a search for 100% security which, as adults, we can't find. In childhood that feeling is possible for at least short periods and if you get enough of it maybe your brain stores it and it forms a 'background' structure which buoys you up as you face the variety of knocks and blows that life inevitably deals out. So I wonder whether, in the case of OCD sufferers (perhaps not all) there is this missing component.

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Guest Sisyphus

I was just wondering whether (in the case of contamination and excessive sense of personal responsibility issues) there is a search for 100% security which, as adults, we can't find. In childhood that feeling is possible for at least short periods and if you get enough of it maybe your brain stores it and it forms a 'background' structure which buoys you up as you face the variety of knocks and blows that life inevitably deals out. So I wonder whether, in the case of OCD sufferers (perhaps not all) there is this missing component.

You might be onto something there. I definitely know this feeling of wanting to be sure 100% of security though, in any situation really. Of course it is illusion but I try to establish that that is the case regardless anyway.

Perhaps there is something missing in OCD sufferers. Along with the apparent partial inability to to register a feeling of certainty about some things.

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