DRS1

For the sake of it. If someone else told you they had the exact same intrusions that you have with all the same worries and same compulsions, would that help you? Would you then know that it's OCD? Or would it not be good enough and there would still be that doubt at the back of your mind. Would that be "evidence" that it really may all be OCD?

Just because one medical professional didn't do something right, doesn't mean your GP won't or anyone else. Don't take 1 bad experience to mean that every other experience will be like that

How do you know this? If you haven't had this conversation, then how can you know this will be the case?

You can message the mod team, there's a link on your page (contact mod team)

I mean in that scenario, you can re-expose yourself and respond differently. Send the text in a way that makes you feel like it's not right and don't try to correct it

This cannot be stressed enough @Eric Dave

I'm sorry that you have that medical condition. It must be so frustrating. Rather than try to convince you anymore, I'll just leave my post I made here as a response:

Don't presume or in this case, catastrophise what a therapist may think if you disclosed this. Also, what part about you literally physically have no control over what you get aroused to and when is escaping you here? Anxiety is playing such a huge part in you not being aroused by the things you want to be and equally you are testing the ever loving nonsense out of yourself. If you truly want to get better, here's one for you. Go look at these topless photos of men or product images of male models displaying underwear. Or better yet, try to picture it in your head. In your case you will probably focus yourself into having an erection but you know what, how about you use that as part of the ERP. Let yourself feel all of the feelings of being aroused. Actively notice all the sensations and don't do the compulsions around it. Just experience the arousal. Cool, you got an erection when looking at these things. The part of your brain that decides whether or not it gets aroused truly does not care about your values and what you would want to happen. If it did, as males, we wouldn't have unwanted erections at times we would rather not have them, but we do. We all do, regardless of sexual orientation. It's a fact of life. Why can I and many other males who identify as heterosexual have erections around other people wanted or unwanted, see erotic content and have arousal from it, look at buying underwear etc. and not care? Because it's just a body response. It's not reflective of our sexual orientation. To be quite frank the jokes that it has a mind of its own generally aren't false. A lot of the time, you are a passenger to what your body decides to do with your sexual organs. Oh and for reference, I have intrusive thoughts that I'm going to get aroused around family members or in situations I don't want to and I feel its anxiety inducing. However, in all cases the best thing I can do in that scenario is to accept if it happens, it happens. There's ultimately nothing you can do to test it won't happen or to try and effectively employ mind control or hypnotise the sexual response system of your body. It does not care. It happens to people when they have the groin medically examined regardless of what sexual orientation or gender the medical professional may be. I'll ask you this, why am I different from you? Why ultimately are you somehow different to everyone else who identifies as a heterosexual person with OCD? @taurean, @snowbear, @Caramoole, @Ashley, @PolarBear, myself and so, so many more people have been trying to get through to you on this for a while now (for others listed a very long time). The reality is, either we are all absolute idiots and can't see this clearly isn't OCD or it's that obvious, it's frustrating to see you continue to suffer in the way you do despite this information. I get it's not easy. Right now I imagine you almost feel like your body/mind is effectively betraying you by the fact you aren't getting aroused to what you want to be and that's got to feel devastating. However, if you truly understand that there is no way for you to control all the things you are trying to control and try to accept that every time you experience arousal or not experience it, it may be completely unconnected with your values and your sexuality and that's okay. The only part that is making your life so miserable has literally nothing to do with your erections. It's how you perceive your arousal and the compulsions you are doing around it because as @taurean has correctly said, your core fear is of being homosexual. In fact, lets take it back a bit. Your core fear is being something that you don't feel is part of your identity as a person. Even if it's just one piece of advice, take at least one and try to take action based on that. You don't realise how strong you are with how long you've been dealing with this. I recently made a post on sexual themes in OCD that I might ask if I could move from the OCD-UK members chat to the main forum to share and I can reply with the link to that post on here at least for a bit of education on how sexuality, and sexual themes ultimately play out in OCD and the kinds of things we can do to get our lives back.

See, what you don't understand is this is how a lot of us have felt when dealing with OCD and events that have happened in our lives at some point. It can feel like a bit of a miserable existence but it gets better than that. If you don't like who you are, you can change that, change your values. There are people who are legitimately evil humans that exist on this planet yet you as a person with OCD seem to place yourself below even them? The more you dwell in this thought process, the worse you will feel. Choosing to feel like there is no way out isn't going to bring you any closer to getting better.

I've genuinely gotten use to ignoring all of the details once you start confessing Cora and maybe knowing that we don't want to hear your confession will make you more anxious but genuinely it's true. What will your confessing ever accomplish, especially if we are all wilfully choosing to ignore the confessions?

The theme like that comes up way more than you think it does. The problem is you can't expect anyone to have heard of every single intrusive thought or compulsion ever but you can and should expect them to know the mechanisms of OCD. In terms of that specific thing (I apologize for the labels/subtype naming here, it is just what they have called it, not what I would call it or say) has been visual torretic OCD. Jonathan Grayson has done a fair amount of research and has had quite a few patients with this specifically. I have the same thing, though I would more consider it just another tool in OCDs bandwagon instead of another type or sub type of OCD and I brought it up during therapy, so don't be scared about taking about it.

This is not medical advice or necessarily what is prescribed but I recently found out that the anti-epileptic I'm on (Lamotrigine) at least in studies seems to have somewhat of an affect but it depends on dosage. I had a discussion about it with my psychologist and GP not that long ago. I'm not on a big enough dose for it to be for treating mental health conditions but it's idea is to affect glutamate. It'll be interesting in future if that is a better way to look at treating OCD as at least from what I've seen, there seems to be a lot less side effects although there are long term consequences (weakening of bones making them easier to break). Like everything it's not going to be a conclusive, this works 100% for people, but they may be able to use it for some people. At least it's potentially another thing that psychiatrists/gp's can prescribe that may be better for certain people? I feel the need to state after that, the current treatment guidelines recommend CBT with ERP (for therapy) and SSRI's (for medication purposes).

I had my 2nd round of therapy not that long ago now. I had about 3 sessions over 7-8 weeks and were pretty much top up sessions. They will generally want to get you in sooner rather than later if they can do less sessions and get you on the right path again. What I was told was that if I needed more than a few sessions, that I would need to be put back on the full waiting list which could take a while (longer than it had been when I was on the list during the pandemic due to a reduction in available staff). I also felt bad about going back. That I shouldn't need to and that it could be taking up other people's opportunities who I deemed needed it more than me despite the fact I was really starting to go back on the top of a slippery slope. I guess the main things are: You deserve access to treatment in the same way anyone else does. It's also not up to you in terms of the waiting list and how they organise it so there's not really anything you can control/worry about there If you go back now before it gets worse, you can have fewer sessions and from the way they would look at it, not necessarily be coming back for longer numbers of sessions (which would add to their already long backlog) So yes, you would be offered treatment. If you are struggling/suffering don't just think that because you had therapy once, that was it, that was your one chance or that because you are better than you were before (I had this exact thought process by the way and I was wrong!) that you don't feel deserving of therapy. You do deserve the right ultimately to get better.

I've noticed in my relatively short time on the forum (compared to how long it has been going for) that sexual themes not only are frequently mentioned by sufferers looking for advice on here but even in my own experience. In fact, as far as I'm aware, sexual themes in OCD is substantially more prevalent than most people think (even those with OCD). As seems to be the case with any sexual topic outside of OCD, there is a taboo when it comes to sexual themes in OCD. The purpose of this post is in some ways to address things that people may not want to talk about because they feel shame or guilt unnecessarily all because of OCD. I'm only going to hit on a few core things here but if anyone else thinks of anything else then feel free to add to this thread. The idea is here is to try to create more ability on the forum for those with sexual themes that might be afraid of talking about it to be able to feel like they can and also make everyone who reads it aware of some of the thing. A Rundown Sexual bodily fluids and OCD Sexuality and OCD Groinal Response/Arousal Sexual Orientation/Gender Wet Dreams / Masturbation / Sexual Intimacy With Partners Sexual Bodily Fluids And OCD It should be of no surprise that OCD will target anything, and whilst blood might seem like a fairly common one that people may be able to understand, sexual bodily fluids like semen or lubrication seem too taboo to talk about. The reality is, they are normal things are bodies produce. We can't, nor should we try and prevent them from happening in any way. From my own experience and seeing others posts on the forum, here's what I've gathered are common: Obsessions Worries about semen/lubrication being on objects after being aroused/masturbating/wet dreams/sex Worries about touching someone (e.g. shaking their hands) after arousal/masturbation/wet dreams/sex Worries about potentially getting someone pregnant/being pregnant because of semen left in the bathroom or elsewhere where someone else may touch and then wipe themselves in their groin area Compulsions Compulsive handwashing/washing your body for longer than people without this obsession and OCD would in these scenarios Ruminating, mentally reviewing, physically checking that there is definitely no semen/lubrication in areas where other people can touch Compulsively cleaning down areas and objects where there may have been semen/lubrication Avoidance of any sexual activities that could result in expulsion of semen/lubrication (e.g. masturbation, sexual intimacy) Avoiding using your hands (or a hand) to touch things until you feel clean enough that there is definitely no semen/lubrication that could end up contaminating something else Some Ideas For ERP There is a line that needs to be drawn here. ERP in my opinion shouldn't be not washing your hands when you have semen on them or lubrication on them and then shaking someone else's hands or wiping your hands all over the bathroom or anything of the sort. However, there are things you can do to show OCD that these are just bodily fluids: After sexual activity/arousal/wet dreams washing your hands for 20 seconds and after you've washed them, use the hand/hands that feel contaminated to touch the door handle on the door instead of trying to use the other hands or trying to not open the door with your elbow etc. It's going to feel horrible and as if you may as well have had semen/lubrication on your hand still and that's great. Don't go back and wipe it down, just leave it and carry on with what else you wanted to do whilst trying to minimise the compulsions Cleaning up after yourself to a reasonable degree. It can be messy, there's bodily fluids involved but clean what you can see (not attempting to clean what you can't see). Once you've done this, go do something else, remove yourself from where you can possibly check for where there may be semen / lubrication. Allowing contact of semen/lubrication. If you throw up and you end up with sick on you, it's not nice but it's not exactly going to hurt you. Same with urine or faeces or blood (unless it's someone else's blood... there's some uncertainty for you). The same applies with Semen / Lubrication. Instead of panicking and rushing to cleanse it off you if you do end up with these bodily fluids on you, just let it be there for 60 seconds, a few minutes. Barring the obvious reason why this would be a bad thing which I don't feel the need to mention, it's not going to hurt you or cause anything to happen. Participate in intimacy with your partner or masturbation. Allow yourself to have wet dreams. Practicing acceptance of this can be helpful Sexuality and OCD Groinal Response/Arousal I largely covered this in a previous post I made but in essence, we don't actually control arousal... and actually we all subconsciously know this. Everyone can experience unwanted arousal at times we may find inappropriate or awkward or times when we don't necessarily mind but we didn't ask for or when we do want to be aroused. We do not try to control the unwanted arousal when it isn't something we feel effects us. We can try to but it doesn't seem to work. When your anxious and want to be aroused, you might not be aroused because of the anxiety. On the flip side you might end up being aroused when you don't want to be because of how anxious you are over something and how much concentration you put on trying to make it not happen. We know that the sexual response cycle doesn't operate based on what are values are and whether we do or don't want to be aroused. It's like a button gets pressed and off it goes to start the process, there is no thought as to what caused the button to be pressed, just that it was pressed. Obsessions This will come into many different kinds of sexual intrusive thoughts Compulsions Compulsively checking for arousal Ruminating over why arousal occurred Checking whether or not you enjoyed that arousal when it happened at the same time as having your intrusive thought/images Avoidance of people, pets, places over the possibility you may experience arousal/groinal response and with or without intrusive thoughts/images Exposure Ideas Keeping in mind these need to be done focusing on the response prevention part too: Remaining where you are and if you get aroused/have groinal responses just let them be, let them happen and do nothing about them. You only really need to do something when it's really noticeable. The interesting thing with this is that, this is what all people without OCD do. It's hard to fathom for those of us with OCD but everyone else experiences the same unwanted arousals at unwanted times but they continue doing what they are doing anyways, thus, we can do the exact same. Sexual Orientation/Gender and OCD Seems to be rather common on the forum. I've personally had OCD go round a lot of these. The key disclaimer here is that this doesn't necessarily mean you aren't going to be X sexual orientation or Y gender, just that this is what OCD is focusing on. It is also not a form of homophobia or transphobia and generally comes from being afraid of being something they aren't/didn't think they were: Obsessions What if I'm X gender or Y gender and I don't know What if I'm X sexual orientation or Y sexual orientation and I don't know This list could go on for a while Compulsions Ruminating/Mentally reviewing interactions with others, moments in your life that might possibly indicate that your obsessions are confirmed to be true Looking at people of the sexual orientation/gender you are having obsessions about to check you are or aren't attracted (Also this would apply to checking for arousal) Watching porn, masturbating or testing yourself in some way or another to prove that your fears are not true (Note, this one in particular will really accomplish absolutely nothing) Avoiding tv shows, films with people of the sexual orientation/gender you are having obsessions about Avoiding masturbation/sexual intimacy in case these pop up ERP Ideas Intentionally looking at people of the sexual orientation/gender and acknowledging how good they look Intentionally watching tv shows, films with people of the sexual orientation/gender you are having obsessions about and even those that specifically framed as having main characters with those sexual orientations/genders Wet Dreams/Masturbation/Sexual Intimacy These are all normal sexual human behaviours/acts for humans and they should be able to be appreciated without any guilt or shame no matter how much OCD makes you feel otherwise. Wet Dreams With wet dreams or sexual dreams they can come with some very nonsensical dream content (it's almost like they are no different in mechanism than intrusive thoughts!). Most people who experience them without OCD will find those dreams weird but acknowledge that it's just a dream and move on, however, in people with OCD this may not be possible, at least not initially. You may: Ruminate over the content and wonder why it happened and what that means about you Punish yourself with undeserving guilt and shame as if you had control over the dream content instead of recognising it as something truly out of your control There is a few ways you could approach exposures for these. You could not do the compulsions and move on but if that's becoming difficult you could if you remember the dream content, take it, exaggerate it into the worst thing of the entire wet dream and then do the response prevention to that. It's really important regardless that you don't beat yourself up for experiencing one. It's just like an intrusive thought. You didn't ask for it but it's happened so you need to accept that it's happened and be able to move on from that. Masturbation and Sexual Intimacy There is always going to potentially be all sorts of viewpoints on these topics in particular but in general from the NHS, masturbation and sexual intimacy are normal and healthy practice for humans. The main thing that I think can be a problem here is intrusive thoughts/images coming up during these activities. This may cause people to then: Avoid these activities altogether Stop these activities as soon as you get an intrusive thought/image Try to distract yourself with pornography to confirm that you didn't orgasm/ejaculate to intrusive thoughts/images Ruminate over whether you did orgasm/ejaculate to intrusive thoughts/images Something that I think is important is that masturbation and sexual intimacy are things that we may choose to do. We should remember that it's something we value doing. There should be no reason why having an intrusive thought should stop us doing what we value in general and it's no different here. Instead of stopping the activities, or avoiding them, intentionally participate it if you value it. Allow yourself to enjoy having these experiences even if some intrusion pops up. By not giving importance to these thoughts/images that pop up you are reinforcing to OCD that you will continue to enjoy the things you want to regardless of what your brain may throw at you. Even going as far as afterwards, telling yourself/acknowledging that you really enjoyed these activities just to rub it in to OCD. As I had mentioned in another post I made, throw it back in OCD's face. Hopefully this helps people feel less isolated if they are experiencing these things as well as helping others who are not aware of sexual themes and OCD and what it may be like for a person experiencing these things.

Would you like to know how often around others I get intrusive thoughts about saying something offensive to people? All the time. It's gotna different one for each kind of person but I still have to get on with my day. I've even let people know to that extent that OCD for me can be based on perfectionism and being afraid to say something offensive. None of it matters. I wish I could just tell you that you aren't a lost cause and that would be it, you'd snap out of it but that's unfortunately not how this works. Ultimately your problem is a problem at the stage of trying to get better where you clearly can acknowledge others OCD but when it comes to you, you just aren't prepared... Yet...to let yourself start taking that risk. This may be lost on you but to reiterate, your OCD is not special. Your intrusive thoughts aren't even special amongst the human population without OCD. It's easy to forget that when it feels as real as it does but to some extent, at some point you need to think, how much do you want to live without OCD paralyzing you? What do you want to do even next week, next month, next year? How badly do you want to do those things instead of doing all your compulsions? Get frustrated at OCD and the situation you find yourself in, get to that point where you've had enough and you are not prepared to tolerate it's nonsense anymore and want to do the things you want to do.

This really needs to be a question for your GP/Pharmacist. None of us on here are the right people to be giving you personal medication advice like this, your GP/Pharmacist will know best.

This was not the point I was trying to make when I explained empathy for autistic people Cora.

Oh I wasn't disagreeing with that at all, just explaining some things about autism and it's potential relationship with OCD.

I'm autistic and have OCD, it's more common than you think. I believe the probability of being autistic is higher if you also have OCD (and seemingly vice versa). This can also be the case for a whole host of other co-morbidities. The only thing I'd correct on is the empathy aspect. It's a bit of a misunderstanding. We may lack empathy but for a lot of us it can be hard to process emotions and show empathy in a way that aligns with the way that society and NT's expect us to. Other than that, everything there is absolutely spot on. There is a lot of overlap and the line can absolutely be thin between them.

As an autistic person, I don't react always int he way I'm expected to, that doesn't make me a bad person and I hope that doesn't somehow suddenly turn me into an autistic, epileptic psychopath with OCD! As I've mentioned before,.you really need to look at why you treat yourself with so little worth as if you are problematic in some form or other. I think a lot of the things you worry about, if you really look at it objectively are not rational things to try and control and trying to expect that you must react exactly in the way that you think is proper. What if the way that you want to react isn't actually the way you should react? What would you do in that scenario? Despite OCD playing it's wonderful (sarcasm) whack-a-mole game with me any time it finds that it can't win on themes It used to get me trapped in the cycle with, I'm a lot better than I was. I really feel for you. I think there is part of you that really does want to get better but I think there is a part that is ultimately not willing to accept that you have to live with the uncertainty of things. Maybe you did react wrong or maybe you are a bad person. Maybe you enjoyed the thought. One day you may laugh out loud hearing some bad news, or possibly (strong sarcasm here) turn into some sort of psychopathic characture of yourself. These are all things that can happen. Equally you can have all these intrusive thoughts, images and urges about them now I'm the present moment too. As was put to me during my 2nd run of therapy recently, bad things are going to happen throughout your life. It's how the world is but we can't predict nor control that from happening. What we can control is what we do ourselves and in our cases, do we choose to let OCD continue to bully and run over us or do we choose to take a risk, experience all these horrible thoughts, images and urges in our heads and yet do nothing with it. I've had some life events I'd rather not have had happen but they have. It is technically possible that I could die from a seizure. That's a genuine possibility. It's unlikely but possible. Should I try to worry about am I protecting myself right and am I taking the exact right precautions and to avoid everything that could cause it, contribute to the pain inflicted by it happening? What if I accept the fact that it could well happen and that until it does then I simply will continue living my life. I'm not willing to live in fear anymore. Also not to give reassurance but just think about it for a second, if you really had reacted wrong in a way that was unacceptable, someone would have brought it up to you by now no? Maybe you might say. "Well maybe they didn't see it happen or were so appalled that they didn't want to say anything". To that I'd say look at all the excuses it wants to throw at you. OCD can be a neverending bucket of "but what ifs". Please no one take this the wrong way. How about taking the confession compulsion you keep doing on here,.exaggerate it to the worst possible thing and read it all as if you really are all these things. Read it a few times. I bet you (with not 100% certainty of course ) that you will become extremely anxious and want to do compulsions. After that anxiety goes down, not only do you realize it's not as bad of a thing to have these thoughts and worries and not having to do anything about them but it shows you one extremely important thing too; you can cope with it even if the worst happens. Doesn't matter what it is if it happens, you will just need to cope with it happening. I know that sounds scary but it's worth trying. Realistically there is no point in us telling you you aren't a psychopath, or a pervert or any other thing you've called yourself because simply telling you these things clearly isn't enough to help. You also can't convince yourself as OCDs I'm your own head going off on one but if you can demonstrate to OCD that through ERP you can in fact and will choose to do deliberately stare it in the face and tell it where to go and that you will tolerate everything it throws at you, even if the worst actually happens, you have something that is actionable on. It's super important to be able to find that out for yourself. I wish for you that you and so many others could see it the way it actually is but I understand, I was once do caught off guard by OCD that I didn't know if it was true or not. You can get through this if you are unwilling to compromise with OCD.

When you post consistently for a period of time and willingly ignore all of the responses you get for trying to explain OCD and how you are struggling with it, then it's no wonder you feel that no one gets it. I'm not trying to be harsh, it's just the truth. There's nothing else I can say because I'm not sure you will even be open to listening and trying to take it on board. For someone so convinced they are gay, you sure are anxious and uncertain about it. How about this. Do you accept the fact you have OCD? What does your OCD consistent of in terms of intrusions and compulsions? Don't give us a detailed explanation, just give a 1 or 2 sentence summary.

I don't think this is even OCD related to be honest. I think is more a concern about AI and it's impact in general. It's not going anywhere and it's going to be utilised more and more in different industries. You can look at AI art. Is it exactly ethical that you can generate art for free instead of paying someone else who is an artist by profession to do it? What about AI generated music? In my opinion, ultimately AI is just going to be an assistant to what we want to do, effectively streamlining processes that may normally take us some time. Fully AI generated art will not match what a particular artist will do with it. A human is able to communicate artistically with other humans in a way that right now AI just doesn't understand how to do. It's great but we aren't even remotely close to it being at that point. You can worst case scenario it like a lot of people do but there's no use in doing so until we reach that stage. It's really no different to OCD in that regard. Maybe something bad may happen, but until it does, we can't try to control it or prevent it when we don't even know what that bad thing may be. I can't give you an answer to whether or not it is ethical for you or anyone else to utilise it in the way you do or any other use case of AI 1) because OCD will not accept such an answer and 2) each person has a right to and should decide for themselves on what their opinion is on it. There is lots of ethical issues in general such as the "Trolley Problem" and it's role in self-driving cars.

Hi and welcome to the forum. I think you may be best served searching for it on the forum. You are very likely to see many... many posts on this. One thing to say is that OCD isn't original. It's not just you. Your OCD is not special.

Do you remember everything from when you were 3 years old? I certainly don't and I'm only 24. I'm not sure what something more sinister would be here from what you are saying but you can't force the human brain to remember everything and like everything with OCD, you are looking for perfection/solutions/answers/certainty and yet you can't get those or provide them in a way that OCD would be ever accept. Here's something to consider though. Why would it be so bad if he didn't remember? Equally, what would happen if he remembered every minute detail from birth to when he's older. Would that fix the issue?

I'm sure OCD could be involved here but I think people without OCD in this situation would have the same worries. I'm not one for judging, but if you are truly separating from your wife, surely you can have that discussion about dating other people if you are only in a relationship via a marriage certificate at this point? I wonder if the core fear here is that your daughter will think you are cheating on her mum? Would you technically be cheating on her if she doesn't know that you would like for you (and I'm guessing her) to be able to date other people now until things are finalized? If she is doing further/higher education after finishing school when she is 18, do you think the divorce will somehow not have the same if not bigger impact then? OCD is having a field day with all the uncertainty with some huge consequences here! This seems like something that would probably be served talking to your wife about alone and if not I'd suggest seeing a therapist