Lynz

I agree. There's some really attractive bald men out there - Mark Strong and Stanley Tucci are two that come to mind. What is attractive is the confidence definitely. Also reddit is a toxic cesspool and really should be avoided as it's not representative of real life at all like most social media.

ERP is great but ideally you would need to also do some cognitive work on challenging your faulty core beliefs which drive the obsessions. I've noticed it doesn't seem to be a thing in the US as therapists will only do ERP but in the UK they tend to follow a rounded approach which includes cognitive work and ERP.

You're right, GBG. I think the whole swipe left/right app dating culture has led to people being commodified and categorised like products, and the apps are responsible as all they care about is making money. It's the same with the rise of these red pill manosphere podcasts where men will rank women as being 'high value', 'low quality' etc and all this nonsense about 'body counts' which dehumanises intimate relationships with other human beings. The whole thing frankly disgusts me. I'm not sure however whether the OP actually subscribes to these beliefs or whether he is just adopting them as a way for him to try and describe how he is feeling. It is common in OCD to be very reductionist and to me a lot of his comments tap into the basic black and white thinking and confirmation biases that are characteristic of OCD. For example he is only noticing so called 'above average' women dating 'above average' men but to me this is like the yellow car thing, where if you focus on seeing yellow cars for example then you will suddenly see them everywhere and wonder where all of these yellow cars are coming from, but you're ignoring all of the other car colours if that makes sense. This then feeds into your confirmation biases that yellow cars are everywhere when in fact they're probably a lot rarer than other car colours.

You don't need to be asking @snowbear that. We are all telling you in here that your confirmation biases about what types of people date other types of people are incorrect based on our own experiences, yet you are still refusing to accept this and are asking users personal questions to try and determine if you are still right in your assumptions. What are you currently doing to help your OCD? You said you have a therapist but have they given you any techniques you can use to work on this theme?

This is not true at all. Without meaning to sound bigheaded I am what you would consider "above average" and I don't go for guys like that at all. It's also a bit insulting to insinuate that only attractive women go for men like those guys. You can't generalise at all as everyone is different.

Yeah your therapist is right. Contrary to what many red pill dudebros say a lot of women don't care about looks, or if they do then they don't like what is considered to be "conventionally attractive". For example I don't like muscly men but prefer slim guys. I also prefer shorter men to taller men. Gym bros really put me off, but give me a man who is artistic, intellectual, creative, likes to read, and has confidence and can make me laugh... wow! My husband is only 5ft 8 and about 145 pounds and he ticks all of those boxes for me. I am a lucky woman indeed. Above all remember that women are human beings first and foremost.

A domestic bonfire is not comparable to emissions from factories etc which would be hundreds of times more polluting, and they rightly have controls placed on them. The fact that you are equating the two suggests to me that your thinking is highly skewed by OCD contamination worries.

We have a neighbour that loves burning stuff all the time. I think he's actually lost it because one time when he had a bonfire going he tried to burn a TV, but when it so obviously didn't burn with the rest of the bonfire he just quietly got rid of it. He's not elderly either I would say he's around 50, works in quite a high end job and has a wife and teenage kids. Unfortunately I have really bad asthma and the smell of burning smoke can set it off. What I found helps for me is putting some vicks vapour rub under my nose which stops the smell of smoke from getting into my nose. I have to keep reapplying it but it helps a lot so far. We've tried going through the council against the neighbour too but sadly they've been useless and despite numerous complaints made directly to him by other neighbours he still carries on. However the argument about toxic chemicals being burnt is just OCD nonsense. If the smell of smoke doesn't bother you like it does me then I would try your best to distract yourself while the neighbour is burning stuff using some of the suggestions in this thread.

You were wildly inappropriate to constantly make sexual comments to her during your hike. Women get harassed like this often by men throughout our whole lives and it can be quite scary. She must have been scared too as she was lost and also stuck with you who spent the whole time being sexually inappropriate with her to the point where she felt unsafe. However because you have autism it is likely that you didn't realise that you were being inappropriate and didn't realise that you'd upset her. I would get in touch with her to apologise for your behaviour and mention how your autism makes it difficult for you to understand social rules and boundaries sometimes, but that you are learning how to manage this and you realise that you've messed up. I would also promise her (and mean it) that what you did won't happen again. She might not want to continue to be friends with you or have any contact with you to be honest if you've freaked her out that much, so do be prepared for that.

Honestly I think this sort of thing (keeping secrets in the family) is never a good idea. My husband was in a similar situation to your daughter when he was growing up, i.e. his parents were separated but not really, and they pretended like everything was normal but it was obvious that it wasn't but my husband didn't feel like he could talk about it, and all it did was mess him up mentally when he was an adult. When it all finally came out in the open he felt like he had been lied to by his parents for years and couldn't understand why they didn't just have an open conversation with him along the lines of "your mother and I are separating but we are still going to live together in the same house as we want to both be present for you while you are growing up". His relationship with his parents is still strained now and he is 37 years old. I mean it's your life but I don't think this problem of yours is an OCD one but mainly a problem that is a consequence of your own actions. If you want to try and have a secret life then of course you are going to run into some mental gymnastics of trying to keep everything separate and compartmentalised.

Thanks @Stephen19791 same to you. Have you ever had any CBT for health anxiety? I've found it to be very beneficial for me when I had it in the past.

Aww I'm sorry to hear that. I've found that health anxiety worries really can be all consuming and feel like they're taking over your life. You can get help from it though. I've recently had to go back on the waiting list to get help for my own health anxiety as I'm struggling a bit myself at the moment. My own problem though is I have other serious chronic health issues and I spend a lot of time worrying if any new symptoms are my own health problems getting worse or if they're just nothing to worry about and will pass. I've found a lot of health anxiety treatment focuses on trying to get you to stop worrying about having things wrong with you when you in fact healthy, but I actually have real health issues that I spend a lot of time worrying about, as well as worrying about developing other problems.

I have OCD and health anxiety too. Tbh the past few years for me I haven't been bothered that much by OCD but I have been bothered by health anxiety. For me I had to go back and have another round of CBT which was more focused on health anxiety rather than OCD. I found this to be more helpful than just trying to apply the principles I learnt in CBT for my OCD. Health anxiety and OCD are very similar but sometimes a slightly different approach is needed for health anxiety.

This is exactly what I wanted to say but it wasn't as well put as this so I didn't post anything in the end. Basically it is absolutely OCD thinking. People get told that they have increased risks of things all the time but those without OCD would not react to this news in the way that you have @Robin43 - by catastrophizing and deciding that your life is in fact over. For example a friend of mine had quite a serious blood clot in her head a few years ago, luckily it was caught and treated in time but she has been told that she is now at an increased risk of having another one at any time, and the next one might even be fatal due to the location in the head where it could be. If she applied OCD thinking to her situation then she would decide that there was no point in carrying on living anymore as she could basically die at any moment, so she may as well just spend what limited time she has left on the couch doing nothing because what was the point? Does she do this though? Absolutely not. She just carries on with her life as best as she can and does her best to minimise her risk of getting another clot such as losing weight, improving her diet, not drinking/smoking, doing exercise, and going for regular check-ups.

I don't intend to come across like I'm biting your head off or anything like that. Tone is often quite difficult to portray online. I'm just saying that for the moment I will have to tap out to protect my own mental health and that I wish you all the best, truly.

I'm going to be frank here I don't know how to help you anymore @Robin43. I've not come across many forum users on here who so severely lack insight into their OCD that they just refuse to listen to advice repeatedly over and over again. I know you don't mean it but it is also a little bit demoralising to spend ages typing up a reply only for it to be completely ignored and for you to be told "nope you're wrong" over and over again. I don't have the mental space at the moment to get into back and forth arguments with other users' OCD right now so I will defer to users such as @snowbear from now on, who from the last post seems to be getting through to you a little bit. I wish you all the best.

Ok, but this happens to a lot of people who engage in contact sports and things like that. I've had a few concussions from when I used to do jiu-jitsu but I couldn't care less about getting dementia when I'm older. A very small fraction of people who have had concussions go on to develop dementia or have any significant issues. And concussions do "shake the brain like jelly", as that is basically what a concussion is. Why does what the neurologist say mean that you are now in a state of "non-existence", when right now you are fine and there isn't anything wrong with you? If you had actually been given a dementia diagnosis or had any signs of cognitive decline then I could understand why that may lead you to feeling despair but you haven't. All you have been told is what you already knew - that you had significant head impacts when younger and have had some concussions. You knew all of this beforehand because that is what you have stated in this thread before you saw the neurologist. All of this has proven to me that we were correct in saying that this is primarily an OCD problem. The neurologist has not told you anything that you didn't already know, and in fact going to see them has made your OCD/anxiety significantly worse like we said it would do.

In some areas waiting lists are not as long as they were and have come down. It would be worth self-referring to your local IAPT and seeing what the waiting lists are like or they may be able to offer you alternative treatment to one-on-one therapy that isn't as long a wait, for example self-help resources along with weekly telephone contact with a therapist. Alternatively you could get yourself onto a waiting list and perhaps try self-help resources in the meantime. Silvercloud for example is very good and you can access this through your GP or local IAPT organisation. Or work through one of the many decent OCD self-help books such as 'Break Free From OCD'.

This is textbook OCD. Your theme is incredibly common amongst OCD sufferers. Many other forum users have posted similar worries to yours on here over the years. Have you ever had any treatment for your OCD?

I agree with this. Having said that though unfortunately when someone doesn't want to get help then there isn't much you can do besides marching them to the GP, sitting in the appointment with them and forcing them to tell the GP what the issue is. Even then she could still refuse to have further treatment or any tests/investigations done. Perhaps your mum doesn't want to have any further investigations and treatment for those issues and just wants to enjoy what time she has left free from doctors and hospitals as much as possible? That can be difficult for loved ones to accept but sadly sometimes we have to accept that they have a right to seek treatment or not depending on what they want to do, not what we want them to do, no matter how frustrating it can be for us. As difficult as it is I would concentrate all of your efforts on getting your degree work done. I would also speak to your therapist about your concerns about your mum and perhaps they can teach you some techniques on how to cope with what you're going through, and how to accept that your mum has the right to treat this issue as she sees fit, whether we agree with it or not. Wishing you all the best xx

Your GP is an idiot. I would try and see a different GP in the practice, or if that isn't possible then make a complaint to the practice manager.

The Law of Attraction is nonsense I'm afraid. Just a marketing gimmick for people to sell books. You're buying into it because it falls under the realm of "magical thinking" obsessions that people with OCD can have, just like with your worries that what you think can affect the world around you. What steps (if any) have you taken to address your OCD so far?

It absolutely can and does get better. As you can probably see from my posting history I was at my absolute lowest between around 2015 - 2017 with occasional brief relapses since then. However since I sought help and have been applying the principles I've learnt in therapy consistently I'm now OCD-free. I'm not completely cured by any means as I do also have a bit of generalised anxiety and I do have health anxiety too but I'm working on this using similar principles to how I tackled my OCD and I'm recovering well and getting a lot better all the time. Best of luck for your recovery journey. You've got this

Island

None of us can say for certain whether you have OCD or not but from what you've said in the latter half of your post it certainly sounds like it could be OCD. I've just quoted this bit though as I want to point out that those traits on their own would not mean you have OCD. If you felt compelled to tidy up, arrange things etc to the point where if you didn't then you would have significant anxiety then that may have been OCD. Just liking order and symmetry on its own without having any intrusive thoughts or anxiety about it is not enough to diagnose you with OCD. Liking order and symmetry can be a feature of many other things such as a quirky personality trait or even autism. It is the intrusive thoughts and subsequent anxiety that comes with them that classified it as OCD, basically how it can cause dysfunction. Have you ever sought a diagnosis for OCD? Getting help and support these days is nowhere near as scary and daunting as it used to be, and problems like OCD are so common now that GPs won't even bat an eyelid when you go in to discuss it with them. Most people who have OCD greatly benefit from CBT with ERP and/or medication.