Atlantis

Yeh I'd say so, perhaps at the moment it might be wise to steer clear of this forum because you're not taking any advice on board and you're clearly using the forum as an outlet for your confessions which is quite simply, a compulsion. Of course confessing to us is better than confessing to your wife, but nonetheless, you're still pouring fuel on the fire by posting the same stuff. I know because I have been there, in fact I came online here today because I wanted to share an ERP experience / confess to something that happened during my therapy today but have since decided not to engage, and live with the uncertainty that I might be a bad person.. although the insatiable urge is to confess to someone special, I am putting her welfare needs first by not opening up and allowing the OCD to cast any doubt about me or uncomfortable feelings in her already fragile mind.

How do you look on yourself? Do you feel that it's more that you need to punish yourself by telling her? Rather than setting her free of the devious, potential cheat / horrible husband you really are in the eyes of your OCD?

Thanks Roy and GBG, the kid was sick so didn't happen today.. maybe tomorrow. Or next week.

Thanks both, but they want me to not distract myself by saying such mantras.. my OCD involves movement and strong urges so it's not just thoughts I feel I am dealing with, so for example when I'm holding the baby's bum I am going to have very tense arms and hands and that's where I'll get sudden jerky movements along with the usual "I am doing this to abuse..." etc...

OK so tomorrow my battle against POCD will go up a notch. So far it's been getting on buses full of school kids and my therapist is always there making me walk up and down the bus even when it's rammed.. hell.. not done that for YEARS as I've not been able to. But tomorrow, I'm going to hold the infant child of one of his colleagues.. I feel like throwing up as I'm writing this. He said the exposure it to let the thoughts come, i.e "I want to cause harm, I want to cause sexual assault" etc and allow any movements that usually accompany the strong urges in these moments of absolute terror.. BUT, instead of immediately trying to calm myself down by engaging in compulsions, I am to stop in the guilt and fear zone. Then, after the exercise I am to record what I believe I did i.e. some kind of crime, and then listen to it over and over again until the fear dies down... seriously cannot see this happening fast, but apparantly it will.. then once it does, I am to repeat this exercise again and again until it no longer provokes fear. The point of this is to reflect on the situation again when there's no fear raging in the background so that I will see this condition for what it is, a lying irrational, posessive bully that's taken 37 years of my life, ruined jobs, relationships and friendships, along with ambition and opportunity. so watch this space. Has anyone ever done ERP like this? If so how did it make you feel and was it successful?

It's not about delaying but at least you're not engaging. Stick with it. This is what OCD hates, the lack of attention. It is tough but this is the right thing to do for the sake of your health and marriage.

Look man you've got ROCD, the only way through this is living with the uncertainty that you may have had bad intentions, because whether it was 7 minutes or 7 months or 7 years ago you will never EVER be sure that this was your true intention! I'm doing ERP at the moment and no amount of compulsions will bring peace because when you think you've solved one riddle of OCD another one will pop up in its place. You know how this works, you have been told this countless times but yet you still allow yourself to fold and get swamped. I know I sound harsh but I've been where you are with every girlfriend I've ever had, believing I wanted there sisters, best friends, more than them and as a result getting intrusive thoughts about infidelity and then trying to work it out a long time later and because I didn't get certainty I would have the feeling " oh well just confess because it's easier to get reassurance than it is to work out what really happened" therefore a double edged sword. Maybe look at it like this - if you truly love your wife then use that as a weapon against the OCD and live with the uncertainty whilst at the same time paying these issues no mind so much that you'd be finally able to convince yourself more that this really is OCD. So you had the thoughts of temptation, so what, you didn't do anything ?? Or you can carry on engaging this BS and ruin your relationship, because that's how it's going every time you engage in compulsions - granted it's not your fault because you're ill, but if I can live with uncertainty with POCD i.e. did I do something that time on a bus in 2009 then I'm pretty sure you can. Save your marriage. Fight.

I used to obsess over my mums high heels when I was very young... does that mean anything? If I allow my OCD to dictate on it and ruminate enough by 9 pm tonight I will probably be posting up similar to yourself.

What if you do what to be a trans? So what? At the moment your OCD has picked up something from when you were 3 and turned it into an obsession - personally when I was 3 I used to eat mud, maybe I thought it was chocolate mousse - who knows? But I'm damned if I can remember exactly what I thought that day when I chowed down on it's eartly goodness. Pretty sure you can't rememebr exactly what you thought and why but the bottom line is, YOU WERE 3! Most of your post is self assurance that you're a normal hetrosexual woman with no signs of being remotely interested in becoming a man, you're engaging in 'what ifs' - you will only get through this by not seeking certainty so get used to living with the uncertainty that a part of you might want to be a man, at the moment because you're ruminating and obsessing, you will feel 90% certain that those thoughts are true, but if you stop the compulsions i.e. mental checking, that will go down to a 0.1 % chance and I'm sure you can live with that because nothing in life is certain. (except death and taxes)

Hi, I wrote a topic similar to this a few months ago. In a nutshell, I developed a crush on my neighbor / friend after we started hanging out a bit more. At the time I was grieving the loss of my Nan so my OCD was going crazy sending me into a deep depression, so as well as a crush, I became emotionally attached to this girl. Both the crush and the emotional attachment were and still are enhanced by OCD but at the time I began having the same worries as you, "Am I stalking, am I a creep?" etc. Whilst behaviours were a little bit obsessive, they were also quite normal crush behaviours like hanging out in places where I knew she'd be just so I could run into her and talk to her, but I started worrying too much over it and it went out of control. I began worrying if she didn't smile at me, or didn't say "hello" in a friendly tone, I became obsessed with trying not to annoy her and ended up doing it because I was always checking with her if she was ok with me - all reassurance seeking of course. Don't forget that OCD is at play here because you're over analysing and checking for signs that you've annoyed him or what he might think about you.. I know it's hell, but it's OCD manifesting causing you to ruminate and seek reassurance on a forum so there's your evidence right there. The best advice I can give is just ride the wave of this crush and do not under any circumstances analyse your feelings or behaviours because that's what I did and it caused me to inadvertedly spook this girl out by carrying out compulsions by asking her.

Thanks x

Thanks for the reply - not reassurance although I'd be lying if I said I didn't need it. I'm just hoping someone else with the same or similar experience in their past had conquered this OCD theme via ERP shared their experience, not to get reassurance that I'm not a monster, but to reassure that this can be beaten.

OK, has my post offended or upset people? The thing is, whilst I'm not sharing in order to gain reassurance because that will go against the therapy, I notice that hardly any of my topics get any responses and a lot of them tend to get ignored. thanks.

How did you get better?

OK so something happened with me the other night whilst I was having sex with a casual partner. For years I have had a problem with violent sexual thoughts during intimacy, like I am committing a terrible crime. They get worse when either I form an emotional attachment to someone else, or simply being in love with a girlfriend. The thoughts centre around non-consensual sex i.e. anal, so for example if we are having normal sex I will fear that I will penetrate her the other way whilst the OCD thought process is screaming "rape". So sex became a fear, because it would always be ruined by thoughts happening during actions pelvic thrusting). Classic example of this was the other night, I was so scared of having sex with this partner, because the fear of penetrating the "other way" was rampant, made worse by the fact that I have had now for many months, a strong emotional attachment to someone whom I adore, because as usual the OCD gets us thinking the most abohrent thoughts. Mine was / is that I fear the thoughts will tell me I want to rape someone in the anus whilst thinking of the girl whom I am emotionally attached to, thus bringing shame and overwhelming guilt. So, the other night as I was first moving to penetrate I had the first person, real-time thought "I am doing this to rape her anally and think of this other girl" I let the movement carry on thinking I wanted it, I did not stop thrusting despite the rising feeling of dread and fear, but nothing happened because it went in normally - but seconds later, I lost my libido and mojo and it all went completely off the boil. I just felt overwhelming guilt and disgust that I acted on the thought / tried to go through with it. I am currently in ERP, so instead of going over the usual compulsions by telling myself it's OCD, thought / action fusion, and reassuring myself if I did enter her the wrong way I would be in a state of shock and there'd obviously be no enjoyment or arousal in order to diffuse the situation, under orders of the clinic, I have to stay thinking that I did something wrong, that I am a sick depraved individual and I have to keep these thoughts going until my reaction to them is no longer distress.. eventually I will have to rest on the laurels of uncertainty, because I cannot go back in time to get 100 percent certainty, and even if I could, in that moment of panic when anxiety kicks off irrational thought processes at 70 percent, I would still never get certainty of my true intentions. By far the most hardest thing I have ever endured.