discuccsant

No, you stop focusing on how good it feels. That's the core issue. You are obsessed about this. And you have to quit this behavior cold turkey. If you want to have sex, you have it. It has nothing to do with how good your orgasms will feel or not. No. That's the core issue. Nobody does that. You either want sex, because of sex, or you don't. And this has absolutely zero connection to the question if the orgasm will feel good or not. You never ever ask you that question again, because you obsessed about it. If you happen to beat OCD, then trust me, this question will never pop out by itself. Only because you are obsessed about it, you want to think about it.

If you don't want to have sex, because of whatever reason, except this OCD induced anxiety you want to beat, then of course you're not obligated to continue! Only if the anxiety that comes from your OCD makes you feel not wanting it, then I would try to ignore it and rather continue with it, as stopping it would be an avoidance compulsion.

Tricky question. If I don't want to have sex, I simply stop it - no matter the circumstances. But in this case, I think this is some kind of compulsion: Avoidance, e.g. you want to avoid being confronted with "anxious orgasms". Are you in therapy? Because I don't want to give you bad advice, and this is a very unusual case I've dealt with so far. I mean, who advises anyone to continue with having sex, even though they actually don't want it, because of how bad it feels for them? In normal circumstances, of course not. But you've OCD and you actually want to have good and nice sexual experiences again, I believe. Otherwise, you wouldn't be here and asking for help: And that's why I would advise you to ignore the thoughts and the anxiety and simply continue with having sex. 1) You ignore all thoughts related to your anxiety regarding orgasms 2) You stop evaluating how good or bad a certain orgasm was or, in the very moment it happens, is 3) You focus on the moment of intimacy itself and try to back up from this orgasm-fixated perception of it That's what I would do, if I were you. No compulsions, no questions, but simply having sex.

Yeah. Exactly. You stop trying to force something. You just have it and that's all. I think you are somehow hyperfocused/hyperaware on/of how good your orgasms will feel? Hyperawareness is a classical OCD symptom. It's maybe one of the main drivers of how intrusive thoughts are created. Take me: I never said to myself, "oh yeah, this will make my orgasm perfect!" - I don't care. All I care is how hot this and how sensual that touch is. Or how good this and that body part looks on my wife. Or just how much I want my wife from a sexual point of view. I've never ever focused on how "good" my orgasm feel - I didn't even consider there to be some kind of different orgasm levels of goodness You simply stop focusing super hard on your orgasm. That's the key here. And to be honest: I think most people want to last sex as long as possible and actually want to drag it. They don't want to achieve a perfect orgasm. They would rather not have it and want to last the sex forever, haha. Orgasm is just the cherry on the cake. The actual "nice" part is the very intimate moments you share with someone else. That's how most people I think see it. And you have to go back to this. Stop focusing on orgasms that hard. They are nice, yeah, but that's it.

And don't forget: the first time you stop any compulsions, it will feel extremely hard to live with the anxiety. Just as you described. But that's what you gotta do.

No, you shouldn't forbid yourself to have orgasms. And because of that, you shouldn't avoid it, out of your anxiety. And when you have an orgasm, you also shouldn't evaluate how it felt or something like that. You don't give it any further attention. You need to ignore the anxiety, no matter how it feels, and continue with your sexual life as usual, even if it feels "weird" because for whatever reason. If you stop giving it any further attention, then I'm 100% sure your orgasms will feel "normal" again. Depending on if you are in a relationship this can also actually harm it, as a healthy sexual life is crucial for a healthy relationship and by testing your anxiety levels or trying to evaluate how good or bad your orgasm was, you will continue the OCD cycle of hell and make your sexual things just worse. In fact, any compulsion will only fuel your anxiety and therefore make things just worse. Stop them immediately. You really gotta live with the anxiety and all the "What If's…" in your head, and simply move on like usual with your sexual and daily life - try to ignore all the thoughts in the aftermath of your orgasms and continue with whatever you planned to do and don't waste time on doing compulsions. It will get better and normal

I think this just shows, that you can have OCD about everything. The solution to your problem is, to not give it a single thought and just have orgasms as usual There is no need for an answer. You don't need to avoid anything. Stop any compulsions to forget about it: - Stop to ruminate over it - Stop testing it - Stop asking for reassurance on here - Stop giving it any deeper meaning or value And there you go: That's how you beat it.

Given your case, as I've read your posts, it seems to be your main issue: Your fear of being the same as your father and by that, trying to remember things from your past to prove you aren't. But because of how false memories develop, you obviously "remember" stuff, which then makes you feel like as if you're like someone, you never want to be: Your father. It's 100% clear that this is OCD. You are anything but a monster. You're an individual who suffers from OCD. There is nothing else to it. I'm really sorry for what you're going through. OCD is tough, especially in cases like these, but in the end OCD is OCD. There is nothing else to it. It doesn't matter the context or anything else. And you need to understand this to make progress. You wasted so much lifetime on this. And you want to end this hell. And the good news: you can end it by not giving into these compulsions, by trying to figure out what exactly happened here and then. By not giving these intrusive thoughts in form of vivid memories any significance. You would 100% know! Remember this! There is no way you wouldn't be sure about that. It's just OCD lying to you and creating doubts. You can move on from this.

Then you would know it. You would 100% know it. There is no way you couldn't remember something like this 100% clearly. You need to understand that.

Want my non OCD view on that? Who cares? You were a child yourself. And listen: All these "sudden memories" are, like always, OCD ****. There are no "sudden memories" or something like that - we know what we did. All these "but it feels so real" and all these "vivid memories" or whatever are just things you made up in your mind. I had these memories poppin' out in my mind as well. You know how? I ruminated about my childhood, then imagined stuff, said to myself: Nah, something like that never happened. Just to remember this made up scenario some time later, to suddenly have the feeling, as if I'm familiar with this scenario - of course I am, I imagined it to prove, that I did nothing like that at all. BUT: OCD makes you think, because you have this feeling of familiarity, that this was indeed a past childhood experience. And the more you try to remember, the more it feels real. There is a very easy way to determine whether it's a made-up memory: You would know with 100% certainty if something like that happened. You just know. There are no maybes or whatsoever. There is just knowing. And you don't know As all people with OCD: They don't know exactly. Let it go.

Did you forget about the posts before, when I explained how it is irrelevant how many of these incidents happened? Again: If some guy kills one virtual character in a video game, it doesn't make him a murderer → If he kills 1000 of them, it still doesn't make him a murderer. It's irrelevant. Non-Issues stay non-issues, no matter the number of occurrences. There is no sudden number barrier, after which non-issues become issues - that's not how life works and that's a very absurd conclusion. You really need to put the advice we've given you, Cora. + Come on, you can do it!

Cora, me, and everybody else here REALLY don't care about the details - they are irrelevant. I was reading the first sentence of your details, but immediately stopped it. We are NOT going to give you any kind of reassurance. It's nonsense. It doesn't change anything. No matter how much you ruminated about this incident, no matter what conclusions you've drawn out of it and no matter you believe how it connects to your past: Nobody cares, because nobody would even draw these kinds of conclusions out of minor events. It's completely ridiculous and absurd! But it reminds me of myself. I once had an intrusive thought while I did something and where it felt like, as if I've acted on some kind of urge. It felt, completely, real. Oh no, I acted on an intrusive feeling/urge! HELP! And I couldn't let this go! But since so much time went by, and I applied the advice given to me, to basically stop ruminating over it, this incident somehow became completely irrelevant to me and I could clearly see for what it was: An irrelevant, meaningless event, nobody would even care about, except for me - and I don't care about it either today. You have to start believing us and not your own head and emotions, Cora. If you start applying the advice, you'll get better. You'll feel good with yourself again, and you'll find yourself a month after getting over OCD to a point, where you see things for what they were: Thrown away years of your life over nothing, while you could have been happy and satisfied with yourself the whole time, if you would just change the way of how you react to these thoughts. But you really gotta try it. Stop asking for reassurance on here!

That's the only thing I needed to see, that I can conclude, that you are not a homosexual. Pretty easy. It's actually that easy to conclude that by yourself as well, but you struggle with this, as it's for every sexual orientation themed OCD people suffer from. I think you try to seek for reassurance by giving us those real life examples, though, and I think you need to stop that, as this is a compulsion, who in the end will create another fear and anxiety related to this - you really need to stop, before OCD magnifies all these irrelevant "What If's..." into something much bigger. You can choose to end this cycle, and you know how to end it. Apply the advice.

I think OCD is a general condition and not bound to one single theme, but that's how it is, at least for me. But I think all obsessions stem from one single core value we have: Mine seems to come from the struggle to be perfect and to be someone, who never does some kind of mistake in his life and who is also seen as a good and valuable person by society. Whether it is about work, cleanliness, relationships or love - I obsess about everything related to that inner struggle to be perfect. But that's faulty thinking, as mostly the stuff I've obsessed about were not really a big thing - they were just so in my head. I think the smallest form of obsession that stems from that for me at least, is for example the obsession, that I could have a bad smell for others, which is the reason why I can't leave the house, before I've taken a shower. I don't want people to associate any negative to me. So yeah. I agree with your statement.

Cora, why don't you try to simply believe us, when we tell you over and over again, that you make a big deal out of nonsense each time? I mean, if you wouldn't do that, you could move on. You could live, as if nothing happened, because NOTHING HAPPENED. Wouldn't this be awesome? To feel no guilt, shame or depression anymore? To not feel like a monster? You are 100% normal, but you try to attach meanings to all of these insignificant events, so that the OCD lies make you think, that you are in fact anything but normal. That's a lie! Don't believe it! YOU ARE NORMAL! You are similar to some guy, who once killed someone in a video game and now thinks he is (or potentially could be) a murderer because of that, as this has to mean, that he likes to kill others - even if it isn't even REMOTELY comparable to actual murder. That's totally stupid, isn't it? But that's what you're doing, basically! That's what we LITERALLY MEAN when we say, that you don't have to feel guilty or shame associated to these "events". Stop it! There is no need to feel even remotely bad about them! We don't care if you are going to experience one, ten or a thousand more of these non-issues for the rest of your life, because non-issues stay non-issues. I mean, if I would kill, 10000 of virtual characters in video games, it still doesn't say anything bad about me! Maybe for some overly crazy moralists. But who cares about them? These incidents are not even WORTH thinking about them for a single second, and they don't change anything about you. So stop giving meaning to those non-relevant incidents. Nobody does that. And before all of this crazy stuff in your head with OCD started, you didn't do so as well. What's so hard for you to believe us here? You are free to let go the hell in your head. You are allowed to, because you are 100% innocent. But to do that, you just need to take the leap of faith, apply all the advice we give you over and over again and start to believe the truth and not all the lies in your head spread by OCD. Look! The exit door is literally in front of you. Just stop all these compulsions, already, and then you can easily go through and live the happy life you deserve.

I think "accepting" here means to not interact with them at all. Not giving them any meaning. Not trying to analyze them. Simply letting them pass in your head and move on with whatever you just did. Example: Accepting: "I just had the urge to jump in front of this train." → "It's irrelevant, though, and I continue with my life." Not accepting: "I just had the urge to jump in front of this train." → "Oh my god, why would I feel like that? Am I losing control and will at some point really jump? I need to avoid trains!" In the first thought process, you are "accepting" the thought by simply acknowledging its presence and further do so, by not attaching any meaning to it and by moving on, because in the end it was just a meaningless thought. That's how normal people would react to such a thought. That's where we want to go back from our OCD. In the second thought process though, you don't want to accept the thought, because you attach some kind of meaning to that and from that draw compulsions you think have to do, e.g. by avoiding trains in the future, which then only further feeds your anxiety related to these kinds of intrusive thoughts. That's basically how OCD works. That's where we want to move away from. I do think some people with OCD think that "accepting" the thoughts also means, that they actually AGREE with the thought. This is a complete misconception, though, and this is not what by "accepting thoughts" is meant. I think it's basically the very same as not accepting it, as you would just further fuel your OCD, if you would try to AGREE with the thought, feeling or urge. Why? Well, who would like to agree it as part of themselves to want to kill themselves by jumping in front of trains? And it's a very absurd conclusion out of a random thought. Nobody does that. This wouldn't be normal. It might help in some form of therapy like ERP, by reducing the anxiety related to it (like to make clear how absurd the very fear is), but that's it. Nobody goes out of ERP and is like, "Well, I think I might jump in front of a train! AWESOME ! Thanks, ERP therapy! You're the best! Now I actually want to jump and not fear it anymore! I suddenly love trains!". Nah, quite sure this is NOT meant by "accepting" thoughts. Nope. Accepting means to know the thoughts are there, acknowledging their presence, but then to ignore these thoughts, by not attaching any meaning to them. That's it. I hope you get my point.

Caramoole is as always right, Cora. I would wish you would take our advice and apply them for future events, but somehow you continue to post about your intrusive thoughts and as conclusion how horrible you are - you aren't. I'm REALLY missing the part, where you give yourself the benefit of having OCD and where you tell us, that even though you experienced such and such, that you don't try to attach any meaning to them and instead move on. Try to apply the advice: Stop making catastrophizing conclusions regarding you as a person, because of meaningless incidents. This really needs to change.

Yes, that's why you have OCD. Because the thoughts feel real. Otherwise, you wouldn't have OCD. Welcome to the OCD club - now try to exit as fast as possible, by simply ignoring it.

If I learned one thing in life, then it is that you only know much you loved something, once it is gone forever. Don't worry, you do love your family and ignore the intrusive thoughts.

Whatever your issue was, I think you need to understand that science, society and law make a clear distinction between actions from childhood and between actions from adulthood. That's for a reason: Our brain is simply not fully developed yet at early ages. So whatever the issue itself was, it's not that important as you think, simply because you were a child or teenager. Of course, there are exception to that like murder, but 99.99% of all people, who have OCD related to real events from the past, are concerned about nonsense or non issues, nobody would give second thought about. I've seen too many of these, real event themed OCD stuff, to make this conclusion. And for a fact: Everybody has some haunting, cringy and weird memories from their childhood. But, as always, the difference between their and our thinking comes from OCD: OCD makes you catastrophize stuff. Contrary, "normal people" aren't catastrophizing these past events and attach any meaning to them. They see them for what they are: Not relevant anymore and important, because they were young. They are able to contextualize and rationalize. You're not, because you have OCD, and therefore you simply catastrophize your cringy memories AND try to attach a meaning to it. What do I mean by meaning? Well, the very following: "If I did X in my childhood, does that mean I'm actually a Y?" "Why would I have done such a thing like X in my teenage days, if it weren't for the fact, that I'm in fact a Y" "I can't change that I have done X as a child, so I must accept, that I'm Y for the rest of my life" "That I have done X in school, must mean, that I'm a Y, because only Y do that" "Because I saw X back then, it must mean, that I'm a closeted Y who just happened to deny it all until this very point of my life" I think there are a lot more question you may ask yourself, over and over again. It's not really relevant though what these questions are. But that's the very issue: You always try to make a conclusion Y out of the random real event X from your childhood past. And to draw the connection between all OCD themes: You give something a meaning, when there is no meaning. But here is the deal: You don't have to, because nobody does that. If I were you, I would simply start taking the leap of faith in believing all the people, you told about this event, that it's not a big deal and THEN ALSO to STOP attaching any meaning to your haunting memory, by not making very far-reaching conclusions out of this regarding your personality, morality and character. Let it go.

I think the problem with guilt and shame we people with OCD experience, is mostly because we tend to catastrophize those kinds of incidents. And that's also what you're doing. By catastrophizing, I mean that you attach the worst possible meanings and interpretations to each one of your incident. You view those incidents very differently, then other people would do. You make a very big deal out of them. Despite that, you seem to have some kind of reality distortion, thinking you're always doing something bad, even though you are actually doing nothing at all. I think that always happens, because you are having some kind of intrusive thought, while you are doing something. And then you think you do stuff out of a bad intention or something like that. You should keep telling yourself, that it's just all OCD and that you're attaching a very strong and powerful meaning to actual meaningless incidents' nobody would care about. We as outsiders tend to struggle to understand the shame and guilt associated with your incidents, because we view these incidents very differently. We see them as meaningless and not important. You don't. Because of that, we're also saying to you, that you don't need to feel any shame or guilt at all related to your incidents. It's not because we are lying to you, want to make you feel better, or because we are not understanding fully what exactly happened. We do understand that, and yet we just don't see it the way you see it. Take a leap of faith here. I think you need to accept, that your mind is simply catastrophizing innocent stuff, and therefore you feel guilty about them, but that you actually shouldn't feel anything about them at all, but simply move on with life.

There are a thousand of parents who experience proximity with their children in their daily life, AND who happen to have OCD similar to yours → You can imagine how horrible it has to be for them, right? Other than you, they really have to touch them AND they DO experience weird and random thoughts and feelings during moments of proximity. There are literally a thousand of stories on the Internet about that, there are even several Facebook groups for moms for example. What advice would you give to them? Let's go one step further: There are also people who in a moment wanted to kill their opponents in an online video game, because they got very aggressive over loosing. They literally wanted to murder someone out of anger, and they think would maybe have done so, if the opponent from this online game would have been in front of them. That's way over wanting some colleague to touch you, isn't it? So again: What advice would give to people like that? NJ, there are much "worse" OCD themes people suffer from. And I think you could easily give them advice about what to do about, don't you? That's because you wouldn't give this kind of intrusive harm thoughts any kind of importance. They wouldn't bother you, because your OCD isn't attached to these themes. Realize that. It's all OCD and apply the very same advice to yourself, you would give to those people.

I think you still fail to understand how OCD really works. Everything you described here. Every single moment. Everything is still just an intrusive thought. Yes, your movements - at least how you see it - as well. This isn't anything new, Ma. Really, I've heard stories like that hundreds of times and experienced themselves. There are literally tons of people, who had these situations. You're nothing special. A lot of moms with PPD do know these moments! It does feel real, it does feel as if one has slightly altered their movement, but just as Caramoole said: It's so irrelevant and in reality so tiny or not even existing, but just in our minds, that no one would even notice a damn thing even if 1000000 spectators would spectate you in these very moments. Because it's just dramatized by your OCD. It's completely irrelevant, non-existent. Likewise, it's not even worth to be called "a tiny movement". It's no movement at all. It's just imagined gibberish, exaggerated by the OCD goggles you wear. I'm 100% sure this is for every single one on this forum. You just exaggerate something to its extreme. And why? Because you have OCD. And why do you feel so guilty? Because your OCD is so damn convincing that you did something horrible. It's convincing for everybody. That's why people wash their hands, till their hands are bleeding. That's why people fear their parents or children might die, if they don't tap three times against their door, whenever they come home. Do you think it's out of fun? What do you think? Do you really think there is a difference between them and you, in terms of "that it feels real"? Of course, it feels real! It feels, as if the danger is there! It's there in our minds! Ask every single sufferer of OCD how they feel about their thoughts, like whether they believe them or not and whether it feels real or not. Ask them. Just go to a random person with OCD and ask them and tell us what he told you. You're not convinced that it's just OCD? Welcome to OCD! If we were so easy to convince that we just suffer from OCD, we would be able to dismiss everything as OCD easily and nobody would have to deal with this awkward mental illness anymore. Guess what? It's not easy, and it feels like the absolute truth for the sufferer. It feels rational and feels emotional wise like a real threat or burden. That's OCD. That's simply the very damn definition of how OCD for every single sufferer feels. The only difference is your very obsession in comparison to others, but the overall truth is all the same for every single obsession: They are all nonsensical ********. Why you don't simply accept that you've got OCD and that you do suffer from intrusive thoughts in specific situations? And why don't you simply use this to tackle the compulsions you keep carry to act on? No, instead, you make the same mistake. Over and over. Each situation feels worse. Each of the situations makes you suffer more. That's all and only because of the compulsions you keep carrying out. Stop it already.

Ma, again: The content of the intrusive thought doesn't matter, and that's why you don't need to reason with it. You just need to know, that every single human being has intrusive thoughts. Not only that, but you acknowledge, that you just happened to obsess about your them, because you tried to attach a meaning to it, by constantly ruminating over the contents of your thoughts. And because you know that, you let it go and try to stop being differently than others in terms of attaching meaning to it and that you stop doing compulsions in the future. What your thoughts mean? You don't need an answer for this. It doesn't matter. Really. Intrusive thoughts are normal and nobody tries to argue with them, except of people with OCD. Nobody searches for an answer, except people with OCD. Look. I'll try it again: If there is a meaning at all in this, then it's not regarding the content of your thoughts, but regarding the obsession you developed out of it. Intrusive thoughts like that are normal → This is essential for you to understand. I can't repeat it enough. Get it in your mind. You are anything but special regarding your thoughts. Your extreme fear is the only special thing about you. Your self-damaging obsession in combination with your self-damaging compulsions. The only thing I can say for sure, is that you don't want to do anything inappropriate to your son, because of how much scared you are of doing so hypothetically speaking. So my conclusion is the exact opposite of what your OCD wants you to convince off. That's the only problem with you. And you need to accept, that your perception of things got distorted by your obsession with time. Again: The only thing I see in all of this, is that you're extremely scared of doing something bad to your son. See the difference of perception between you and me? I made a completely different conclusion than of what your OCD wants to tell you all the time. What you tell us. You know why this is the case? Because you are in a constant state of anxiety, and we all know that anxiety is poison for our emotional and mental state. You're not your true self anymore. You're an OCD version of your old self. And you enable OCD to poison you more and more, by actively doing compulsions and engaging with it and, by that, strengthening the obsession and in the long term and therefore experience even more intrusive thoughts. So you obviously need to break the OCD cycle, by not engaging in any compulsion doing behavior at all. From now on all you need to do, is letting it the compulsions go and stop reasoning with any kind of intrusive thoughts at all. Don't reason! Don't feel bad! Don't try to find escapes from the situation, nor try to understand what they could mean! Just go on. And when I say any kind of intrusive thoughts, then I mean so: It feels real? Intrusive thought check. Keep Ignoring. It feels different this time? Intrusive thought check. Keep ignoring it. It doesn't matter how different, how abnormal or how wrong they seem to you: you ignore them. They have no meaning. Literally ZERO meaning. No matter how scared you're, how bad you feel or how strong the guilt feels: Just acknowledge that you had an intrusive thought and that there isn't anything more about it. Just see that your view got distorted by OCD and that your perception got extremely manipulated by OCD. And then you're good to go to say at some point: Nice try OCD, but game over. And you know what? Prepare for even worse, intrusive thoughts during this time, but just do as Caramoole told you: It's normal. Even if you get over OCD completely, throughout your life, you'll experience intrusive thoughts about all kind of topics, to be very precise. Randomly. You just need to learn how to deal with them. You need to learn how people without OCD deal with them. In fact, you're already experiencing weird thoughts, but you just don't obsess over them. That's what you want to achieve with this obsession as well. Again: Don't worry. It will get much easier to cope with them, and it won't bother you once you come back to your senses. But you'll experience intrusive thoughts throughout your life. It's normal. Don't worry, seriously. You're not special, no matter what you tell yourself: You're absolutely normal like everybody else. Look. You can blame anybody of us, if you might fear, that you did something wrong, because we encouraged you to ignore them and to not do any compulsions, i.e. avoiding your son, not touching his nappy area, even though you need to, bathing him, cuddling with your son or kissing him. Just do it, like anybody else would do. If "it goes wrong, because it feels wrong" - and OCD will convince you easily of that - I'll take easily the blame. Completely. All my fault. I encouraged you, and you just tried to get better by listening to me. It's all my fault. I'm not enough to blame? Make the whole forum, your therapist and every self-lecturing book responsible for everything, if you feel like, as if you have done something wrong. In the end, we encouraged you, right? But trust me: I gladly take the "blame" of helping you to get over this and be a happy mom again. And everybody else does as well I have to be honest, though: OCD will battle you very hard during this time. In fact, avoiding compulsions and just do what you wanted to do, despite the intrusive thoughts, is something very hard to do. It feels wrong continuing what you tried to do, even though it feels weird and bad, because of the intrusive thoughts, feelings and sensations. Everybody who came over OCD had to go over this step. We all know how unbearable, hard it can get. But that's how it goes. If it wouldn't feel wrong, we would be able to dismiss it. But you want to go back to "normal state". You want to be like other mothers, don't you? They don't have a problem with touching their babies, right? You do. And that's because of your reaction, the intrusive thoughts. But these mothers, I'm 100% sure, experience them as well. They just don't care. And you need to do the same: You don't care. It felt wrong? Who cares. My mind tells me to stop? Shut up, OCD. Do the opposite and cuddle your son even more. IT'S HARD. I KNOW. Everybody knows! Everyone reading your posts know how hard it is for you to deal with all of this. It's extremely hard. It's painful, and it makes you self-doubt to the extreme. But you need to stay strong, and you need to always remember, that this is all just OCD, no matter what OCD wants to tell you: Intrusive thoughts are nothing else but intrusive thoughts. Period. It's tough, but you'll slowly but surely get better at it. I wish you the very best.

Hey Ma, I think you might have a misconception of why OCD is so hard to cope with at all: Look, OCD feels real for everybody. The topic/fear we obsess about feels real for every single one of us. And it convinces us that our fear is real. And that's what all of us mean when we say, that we do suffer from OCD. The obsession OCD lets us focus on also comes with us overexaggerating and overdramatizing intrusive thoughts. We are in a constant state of anxiety, as if danger is around us, while in fact, this is just a misconception of our perceived reality stemming from our OCD. We aren't thinking logical anymore. OCD literally took over and gave us a very wrong perception of reality. A very emotional-based and illogical perception. This is how it's for everyone who suffers from OCD. It really doesn't matter what the obsession is about. Let it be obsessions concerning health, harm, sexuality, cleaning, racism or potatoes. If it wouldn't feel real for any of us, we wouldn't be here, as we wouldn't have problems to easily dismiss them. This is obviously not the case. For neither of us. That's why suffer from OCD. I also think that there are different levels of intrusive thoughts we have to deal with from time to time. Sometimes, we are able to ruminate over them for a short time and then move on. Sometimes, though, we get overly fixated on them for a very long time. Different intrusive thoughts can hit us differently. So sometimes they are easier to cope with, sometimes they are extremely hard to cope with. Sometimes it even seems like, as if we do in fact enjoy intrusive thoughts for a second. And in other times, we feel, as if we must ruminate over them, to make sure, that nothing bad happens if we don't do so. And sometimes it can even feel like, as if we have acted on them or liked them - like in your case. It doesn't really matter, though, as in their very core, they all happen to feel real for the sufferer. The keyword here to remember is the word "feel". Now you have to know that just because something "feels real", it doesn't mean, that it's in reality actually real. You need to understand that. OCD is in it's very core a feeling problem. And we need to change here: As long as we associate feelings to intrusive thoughts, we can't get rid of them. Attaching meanings, feelings or fears to intrusive thoughts is the single reason, why we do obsess about them. And as long as happen to do compulsion to reduce our anxiety, we sadly give them automatically meaning. And everybody here, who has to deal with OCD, happens to attach meanings or feelings to different intrusive thoughts, even though, it's more or less given, that they already had the exact same intrusive thoughts as you had. And yes, I'm 100% sure you had their intrusive thoughts as well already. Just a random single thought, we can't even remember anymore. Why is it so different for everyone? Well, we sufferers happen to obsess about individual topics in a very individual way. I think the more you fear something, the more likely you will obsess about it. While one obsess about being dirty and stinky, others obsess about being morally bad people. It doesn't matter. The obsession can even be about potatoes, it's still the very same in its very core: Fear. Laughable for everyone else, yet a very serious concern for the person who obsess about them. And because we happen to think differently about intrusive thoughts, this is the exact reason why everyone around here is saying to you: Nah, you just have OCD. Chill out. Move on. Stop the compulsions and give yourself a break. Because we don't have your anxiety about this. We don't obsess about it, yet everyone here had the same exact intrusive thoughts as you at some point. But we don't obsess about them. You do. So try to analyze your OCD. You need to see this. Remember the potato guy? You're like the potato fearing guy. Seriously. Pretend you are the potato guy: Don't you think that it would be wise to listen to people, who don't obsess about potatoes, e.g. believing them, following their instruction and handle their compulsions? Or do you disagree with that and would encourage yourself, to ruminate about potatoes or avoid them even more? Fairly easy to answer, right? Now guess what: The answer to that is the same answer to your problem. Take me now. I don't obsess about your topic. So personally for me, reading about your situation, I immediately thought: You rubbed your feet and happen to have an intrusive thought while you did it in this very moment. Move on. That's it. There is nothing more to evaluate or think about. I don't even care about your groinal response or whether you enjoyed it for like a second. Still just an intrusive thought - please, always remember, that intrusive thoughts feel real and that's why they hit us so badly. You really need to understand this. Really. Don't make the mistake to believe, that intrusive thoughts shouldn't feel as real as that. Always think about the potato guy. Now you have two choices: 1) You choose to stop doing any compulsions and follow the advice, you would give the potato man for yourself. Living your life and try to forget about it. Knowingly, that it will get better over time. 2) You decide to continue to do compulsions, attach meaning to your intrusive thoughts, and happen to suffer even more. Knowingly, that this will make things even worse from time to time - just think about yourself.