Is seeing a "peeing" guy a trauma?

[Guest OCDhavenobrain]

6 minutes ago, PolarBear said:

What affair? To what are you referring to?

I was standing in a line in a bigger shop. Waiting to pay. 

ANd this guy comes from behind and stay there, this seems to be normal. However i found him to be passive-aggressive, I never looked back at him, first time I saw him was when he was going to the left line. SO i stood there and waited. After some time did he go to the newsstand, this seems to be the perfect coverup. This might sound paranoid but well. There is also this notion that you are not aware of everything, which obviously is true, but your mind is processing more things than the things you are focused on, So maybe my mind picked up on something and that is why i deemed him as passive-aggressive

ALSO a woman on my right was like looking at me, like in sympathy which I got annoyed at the moment because I was stressed. And then she stopped to look. 

I had cycled much that day and I think that I was pretty sweaty, I was. The hair shaft which was most sticky was above my right ear, and it had that glossy texture which I have had before when my earplugs have got stuck in my hair. 

But who knows? I was also comming across videos yesterday of persons who goes around and abuse people, so it obviously got me triggered. Now in this case it have to been in some kind of a container. 

SO ALL THIS is pretty sick and I am sorry that it is perverted but yea.. My mind are telling me things.

Edited August 14, 2018 by OCDhavenobrain

[PolarBear]

I think you worry about minor things.

[Guest OCDhavenobrain]

Another thing I have been thinking about is that I saw white marks on the back of my new chinos yesterday. So I thought that something was put on my saddle because it goes there. I bought them 2 weeks ago and they have lost A LOT of colour so could be that, but it was really strong white lines. I brushed on them and they didn't vanish, cleaned them and now they are gone. 

It feels kinda good when another thoughts pops in because it gives relief from the current one but I find that they change. 

Thanks for the replies, i relally appreciate it!

[Guest OCDhavenobrain]

I have been really busy this week (last week actually). So I haven't allowed the thought to go on in my head. But now do I have freetime again, and I was looking inside my helmet and there Is a white spot in the back of the helmet. 
The helmet is really old so it could be sweat or anything, but yea a white spot. I mean my hair wasn't white, it had that waxy texture. 

So I have saved some hair and I have the white spot so I guess i can get a ultimate answer to this question. BUT the video in the store is not there for ever. My head it telling me that the responsibile thing would be to go to the police. 

I mean wow, it's just that there are actually people who go around and do those things, creates trauma. But this was in my hair so it is even a bigger trauma. And the guy looked kinda strange, was also looking at movies yesterday with psychopaths and narcissists so that didn't make it better. I guess he had to be bisexual atleast to do this kind of thing, but I have read that psychopaths more often are bisexual. 

 

Short version: I have been busy, but this thought disturbs me and I feel kinda traumatized, and I wonder what I should do. And now do I have time to ruminate about this sick sick thing.... YIKES!!

Edited August 20, 2018 by OCDhavenobrain

[Headwreck]

1 hour ago, OCDhavenobrain said:

I have been really busy this week (last week actually). So I haven't allowed the thought to go on in my head. But now do I have freetime again, and I was looking inside my helmet and there Is a white spot in the back of the helmet. 
The helmet is really old so it could be sweat or anything, but yea a white spot. I mean my hair wasn't white, it had that waxy texture. 

So I have saved some hair and I have the white spot so I guess i can get a ultimate answer to this question. BUT the video in the store is not there for ever. My head it telling me that the responsibile thing would be to go to the police. 

I mean wow, it's just that there are actually people who go around and do those things, creates trauma. But this was in my hair so it is even a bigger trauma. And the guy looked kinda strange, was also looking at movies yesterday with psychopaths and narcissists so that didn't make it better. I guess he had to be bisexual atleast to do this kind of thing, but I have read that psychopaths more often are bisexual. 

 

Short version: I have been busy, but this thought disturbs me and I feel kinda traumatized, and I wonder what I should do. And now do I have time to ruminate about this sick sick thing.... YIKES!!

Hey, was thinking that we hadn't seen you here for a while, was hoping maybe because things were getting better! You know what's going on here, don't fall for it.

[Guest OCDhavenobrain]

1 hour ago, Headwreck said:

Hey, was thinking that we hadn't seen you here for a while, was hoping maybe because things were getting better! You know what's going on here, don't fall for it.

I was. Last week did i work on a paper. Pretty much all the week every day. 

I am feeling pretty empty today. So this is a normal feeling. Many people feel lost afyer they habe finished something. Like "now what". 

But now I have all this time you know...

[Guest OCDhavenobrain]

Today I saw a older woman who layed in a guys arms, he had been hit by in the head, it showed pretty clear. So there was like 20 people around her and my mobilephone doesn't work, my microphone doesn't work. And I am no doctor so I just went by. It was 2minutes from the hospital.

Read the news it says that they first thought she was hit by a car,  but then did they write it off as an accident. 

 

Btw, I was doing a lot of caffeine last week, I am tapering off, I can feel it for sure. Tired and not as elevated. I will do my best to keep up with last weeks mode, where i don't involve too much.

Edited August 20, 2018 by OCDhavenobrain

[Guest OCDhavenobrain]

Today i choose to ride close to the sea, there is a nude bathing place there. It is like a hill above the sea, however, there was this old guy who had a hard time walking, he was using a wand. I went past him and then i looked back. 400 meters and he stood still, either he was peeing or something else. He looked in my direction. He stopped and walked away again. 

I couldn't see anything in that distance, but I mean it is all about intention with those kind of crimes. 
So I make up a scheme about the requirements. 

 

I guess you would advice me to stop thinking about it. All my obsessions are about traumas now and contamination where the contamination is bodyfluids. 

[PolarBear]

Yes, I will advise you to let it go. There is no point in pursuing it further. Even if he was taking a pee, so what? It's no big deal. Anyone else would laugh or shake their head and move on. Your mind is making a big deal out of things like this and it is wrong.

[Guest OCDhavenobrain]

5 minutes ago, PolarBear said:

Yes, I will advise you to let it go. There is no point in pursuing it further. Even if he was taking a pee, so what? It's no big deal. Anyone else would laugh or shake their head and move on. Your mind is making a big deal out of things like this and it is wrong.

I am pretty sure he was peeing. It is the other options I am afraid of. Also he was not moving first when i was going past him, and I didn't watch him. So i am like thinking what if he was nude then too? 

It was 400 meters at least it was impossible to see, and I regret that I looked back. 

 

Edited August 21, 2018 by OCDhavenobrain

[Guest OCDhavenobrain]

I mean I am not sure. And it could be a crime. Where do one draw the line?

[PolarBear]

Are you the pee police? 

Yes, you're not sure. You have no clue what he was doing, if anything. And even if he was, so what? A crime? Really? 

[Guest OCDhavenobrain]

5 minutes ago, PolarBear said:

Are you the pee police? 

Yes, you're not sure. You have no clue what he was doing, if anything. And even if he was, so what? A crime? Really? 

Well I guess he would went there because it was a nudebath, maybe he thought that it would make something to happen. However it was 400 meters apart and he couldn't have seen me after i went past, I stopped afterwards. I looked back and there he was standing looking in my direction. Now it would be exposing I guess and that is a crime. And then I am the victim. But you are telling me that I need to drop it. 

Ok I have to drop it. The thing is that even if I solve individual thoughts do I always have the worst one left. It is just that sexual assault and trauma are such scary stuff. 

[PolarBear]

Your opinions are misguided. An old man standing on a road 500 metres away is NOT sexual assault or a trauma, even if he was peeing. You have this twisted belief that seeing or experiencing certain things can be damaging when they're not. Your mind is lying to you.

[Guest OCDhavenobrain]

3 minutes ago, PolarBear said:

Your opinions are misguided. An old man standing on a road 500 metres away is NOT sexual assault or a trauma, even if he was peeing. You have this twisted belief that seeing or experiencing certain things can be damaging when they're not. Your mind is lying to you.

I was worrying that he did something more than peeing, it was just above a nudebath and I guess that is the perfect place for people who like to expose themselves. 

[PolarBear]

You are imagining this, thinking what the worst case scenario could be. All you know is some older gentleman was stsnding at the side of the road a long way from you. That's it. You're making far more out of this than needs to be. Let it go. Get on with your day.

[Guest OCDhavenobrain]

56 minutes ago, PolarBear said:

You are imagining this, thinking what the worst case scenario could be. All you know is some older gentleman was stsnding at the side of the road a long way from you. That's it. You're making far more out of this than needs to be. Let it go. Get on with your day.

I guess I have to listen to you here. It was just that I was looking back there he stood watching in my direction. I just saw that he stood in the grass and something was going on down there. So when I see this am I very confused. One side of me wants to figure it out, another side wants to make the trauma as small as possible. 

 He had big problems with his walking. He walked really slow. It was like 150 meters from a parking lot, seems strange to me that he is riding if you have such big problems walking. I don't rememer at what point I thought about going back but I did, pretty sure it was after 10 sec. And I took a photo, I mean you can see a human but not good enough to identify.

 

You call him gentleman, I see what you are doing. I kinda see everybody as a a threat. I am really not sure about this one, but I will just let it be then. 

 

Also I am not sure if there is a toilet at the parking if there is that is very worrying. So if I go back to the place and find a toilet... 

Edited August 21, 2018 by OCDhavenobrain

[PolarBear]

Don't go back. Leave it alone.

[snowbear]

22 hours ago, OCDhavenobrain said:

Now it would be exposing I guess and that is a crime. And then I am the victim. But you are telling me that I need to drop it. 

Seeing someone expose themselves to you/seeing them pee is NOT 'trauma'. It's an unpleasant experience, at worst, and a minor one at that.

How you think about any experience, what you tell yourself when you think about it, determines if it is 'damaging' or not. Right now the only person doing you any damage is yourself, OCDhavenobrain. 

By seeing yourself as a victim and looking on this minor event as potentially 'traumatising' you're feeding yourself language that will increase your anxiety and reduce your ability to process it and let it go.

Your OCD has latched onto this because it violated your sense of moral righteousness, not because you have been violated. They are very different things. If you have a strong sense of moral duty then you're going to be outraged by a million and one minor things as you go through life. The sooner you learn to recognise it's your morality that's been offended and not 'you' the happier your life will be. 

                                                                                                              *******************************

Snowbear steps up onto her soap box...

Real trauma is VERY different from this all-too-prevalent modern concept we see in the news, on social media - and increasingly here on our forums. 'Something slightly unpleasant happened to me so I must have suffered a trauma.'   Worse still, 'I'm feeling bad about it so that means I must have PTSD.'    Really?   Unpleasant things are a part of normal life. They happen to everybody in their hundreds. The older you get the more of it you'll have seen. It's normal. You think about it for a bit, feel unsettled for a bit, then you let it go and move on.

Time after time I read posts where people describe minor, unimportant incidents as 'trauma'. I can't help concluding these people must have lived extraordinarily protected, easy lives to have such limited awareness of the kind of hardships that truly traumatise someone. As for PTSD, that is a diagnostic set of symptoms which most people don't suffer after trauma (even the major kind of 'real' trauma.) In fact it's surprisingly rare in relation to the amount of trauma out there. 

Right, I'll get back down off my soap box. Apologies OCDhavenobrain for offloading on your thread - my need to speak out on the topic has been building up for a while.  

                                                                                                               *******************************

I'm not belittling your experience OCDhavenobrain. I'm trying to help you get it in perspective so you can let it go. For that you need to change your thinking;

-change the language you use when you talk to yourself about your experiences

- learn to separate your sense of morality from your sense of self

- and gain some perspective in when it's the right thing to let your moral indignities go and when it's essential to act on them. 

 

If that's a struggle for you then see a therapist and get some one-on-one guidance on changing your thinking. 

[Guest OCDhavenobrain]

I read your reply Snowbear and my plan was to come back here with an answer to your question. 
But today did I get a new thought, totally new. 

 

When I was 11 did we have a teacher (woman) after physical education who followed us into the changingroom and she even drought me on the back with my towel. That is what I think I remember, who knows if she even used it on my legs and then what if it touched something more. 

But I do believe that the thing with the back is enought to classify as sexual abuse?

[PolarBear]

Only in your mind.

[snowbear]

On 26/08/2018 at 20:18, OCDhavenobrain said:

When I was 11 did we have a teacher (woman) after physical education who followed us into the changingroom and she even drought me on the back with my towel. That is what I think I remember, who knows if she even used it on my legs and then what if it touched something more. 

But I do believe that the thing with the back is enought to classify as sexual abuse?

No, it doesn't. As before, you've completely lost perspective on what abuse and trauma mean. 

Although I know you don't mean to be, your application of these emotive words to minor incidents is insulting to those who have suffered real childhood abuse and actual traumatic events. 

It seems to me that you're looking for trauma, trying to find something in your life that's bad enough to explain the degree of anxiety you feel. But you don't need to. People can feel extreme distress without having experienced any kind of trauma, even without having anything bad happen to them. You don't have to justify how you feel by finding an adverse event you can state as the cause.

People who've experienced a life with no adversity, no abuse, no trauma, no real worries or even serious cause for stress - they can still feel distressed. There may not be a reason for distress in the events of their life, but at the root of how they feel there will always be a distressing thought. 

It's not the event in itself that can damage someone, but how the person interprets the event- how they think about it, how they frame it in their thoughts. That's why 2 people can suffer the same event and one may be traumatised while the other is able to cope. Because, in their own minds, they've given different meaning to the event. 

I don't doubt for a moment that you are very distressed by your obsessive thoughts and I'm not suggesting your thoughts are any less distressing to you than other people's thoughts are to them.

But what I'm trying to help you to see is the language we use when thinking about our feelings impacts on how we feel. (How you frame it in your mind, how you interpret what you're feeling.) Therefore it's important to use suitable language, not to over-dramatise or get things out of perspective. Because all that does is make you feel worse, setting up a vicious circle:

feel bad >>> think of yourself as traumatised' >>> feel bad in response to the idea you've been traumatised >>> feel even worse >>> keep looking for a reason you feel so bad >>> convince yourself there must have been some traumatic event in your life to explain it >>> can't find any significant events so class minor things as 'trauma' >>> loss of perspective >>> feel traumatised >>> feel worse because you 'know' you've been traumatised etc.

It's the same cycle as people with 'false memory' where they feel traumatised and imagine ('remember' )an event that could have occurred (but didn't) as a way to account for their (very real) distress. 

My advice is to stop looking for physical events in your life to explain how you feel. Accept you feel distressed simply because of distressing thoughts you've had. Thoughts such as 'Have I been abused? Am I traumatised' etc. are triggers for distress in themselves.

Whether triggered by an event or by a thought, you deal with any unpleasant feelings that arise in the same way - using standard CBT. 

 

 

[Guest OCDhavenobrain]

On 27/08/2018 at 23:24, snowbear said:

ify how you feel by finding an adverse event you can state as the cause.

People who've experienced a life with no adversity, no abuse, no trauma, no real worries or even serious cause for stress - they can still feel distressed. There may not be a reason for distress in the events of their life, but at the root of how they feel there will always be a distressing thought. 

It's not the event in itself that can damage someone

I am sorry but the last two days have I been worrying about the time in the cue in the store. And now did I see some creeps on the internet who goes around and do those sick things on purpose. 

I am in therapy now and I have also been doing very good lately, my question really is if you guys think I should approach this with the thinking that I have been abused and accept it. Polarbear's thinking would be nice to hear. I haven't really done that kind of thinking when it comes to my "traumas". Therapy haven't come to exposure yet, I am doing exposure with smaller things on my own. My fear is that this will spiral out of control like it always do

 

Thanks and hope you all are doing reasonable good. 

 

I DO KNOW that this comes across as offensive to people who have been in trauma, and it is not like I am proud of it but it the stuff my mind uses against me. Something else which I have been using to justify it is what newspapers and people often say about traumas, you often hear people say that "X life is over because of y and z", I don't agree with the thinking that someone's life is over because an incident but it actually started out that way. But yes I do realize that it comes across as offensive. I am aware and I am not proud of it..

Edited September 23, 2018 by OCDhavenobrain

[PolarBear]

You are looking for trauma where none exists. Your mind is telling you that certain things will damage you but they are all lies. 

[Guest OCDhavenobrain]

Yes I am analyzing the event. I really hope it was the wax from my earbuds. I have got panicattacks this week at nights but it is really strange because I am not actually thinking just symptoms and I am overall doing very good. 

I am most afraid of it growing, it seems to me that this is some new fetisch which some people find amusing..  Sick stuff and I could go on a craze and watch them all just to analyze and worst of all see if I am in one of them. I hope you are not to frightened but I find it pretty sickening. 

A little curious if maybe I should tell myself that something have happened, I have to do that at some point, up to now have I only been doing really good when it comes to avoiding the thoughts. But this is maybe not the right time to throw in that kind of exposure.