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For anyone dealing with “groinal responses.”


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Recently I’ve come really far in my recovery. I’ve been at a good place with my OCD for two years now but I was still struggling on and off from groinal responses.

For anyone who does not know, groinal responses is a term coined for when a person with sexual obsessions “feels” a sensation in their groin and their OCD labels it as attraction and this causes an endless, learned cycle of trigger=response=intrusive thoughts fearing attraction to trigger.

The only way to “beat” groinal responses I discovered was to divorce the meaning from the sensation. When you label the feeling as meaning attraction or arousal, that’s when you commit yourself to the endless obsessions and compulsions that come with the trigger.

The goal shouldn’t be to stop the responses, but instead to stop associating the physical sensation with some label/meaning. 

So in my experience, if I see something sexual that I don’t like and then I have this physical sensation, instead of mentally categorizing it as, “ Oh god, I’m aroused,” I instead counter it with, “ Here’s that random physical sensation that my OCD created/labeled.”

The goal should be to basically not care that you’re having the sensation and to stop labeling it as arousal/attraction. If you divorce the meaning your OCD gives to the response and learn to accept it as a random trained response from your body (similar to Pavlov’s bell experiement with his dogs) then you’ll eventually live more comfortably. 

Thanks for reading.

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Wow so good to hear that ur doing well! I had groinal responses too, it’s one thing to label it as OCD but you can also say to yourself “so what, I’m aroused?” Learning that arousal means absolutely nothing about you is in my opinion a better way to get comfortable with it, even though it’s very uncomfortable at first to tell yourself this! Glad things are working for you though!x

Edited by Wonderer
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1 minute ago, Wonderer said:

can also say to yourself “so what, I’m aroused?”

......and on another note, what do we term as sexual arousal?  In "normal" speak sexual arousal is generally held as a pleasurable, enjoyable state.......with OCD it's anything but, it is simply a physical sensation in the nether regions which causes distress.  Enjoyment doesn't come into it, so label it for what it is.

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1 minute ago, Caramoole said:

......and on another note, what do we term as sexual arousal?  In "normal" speak sexual arousal is generally held as a pleasurable, enjoyable state.......with OCD it's anything but, it is simply a physical sensation in the nether regions which causes distress.  Enjoyment doesn't come into it, so label it for what it is.

Yeah, like I know that a groinal response isn’t an actual sexual response, but when we’re in the thick of it and fear that it is in fact arousal, then we have to learn to not care about it, sometimes though people do get aroused at things that OCD then latches onto creating a whole issue out of it when in actual fact people can get aroused by literally anything, so it’s good to understand that and not allow such feelings to freak us out and learn that arousal doesn’t equal actions or even desires all the time! X

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7 minutes ago, Caramoole said:

Sorry Wonderer, I wasn't querying your words of wisdom, just adding another point to consider :)

Oh I know I just wanted to clarify a little as when I read mine again and then your comment I thought, actually I better explain more in case I freaked anyone out who read my point! Just making myself a little clearer on where I was coming from! Thanks xx

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