Real event ocd

[helloocd]

Hello, first, english is not my first language, so I hope I'll be somewhat understandable.

I'm somewhat depressed right now and I think that I have nothing to lose to write this post... It's really hard to me because one of my obsession involve contaminating thing with my tought, so, writing this message will contaminate this forum and my email adress, but I'm really desesperate so, it's somehow a motivation...

 

I had a very mild case of OCD since I'm 7 or 8 years old, but it suddenly became really severe 3 years ago, to the point where I could not make meal by myself, I became barely able to walk, reading, writing, washing myself, every single thing that I did triggered obsession and I had to do compulsion to find a few second of relieve. Even when I was just lying down (honestly it was the only thing I was able to do..) I was consumed by mental compulsion in response to my obsession. My mother quickly found a therapist who did his Ph. D about OCD, so he was somewhat knowlageable about it... we worked wit CBT and despite taking a long time before I saw result, after 2 years of hard work I recovered a lot autonomy. I became able to walk, read, write, brushing my teeth without making my gum bleed, making my own meal, etc.. So, I could say that my OCD went from very severe to moderate.. most of my physical and mental compulsion are gone.. the only type of compulsion that stayed is avoidance. Despite seeing my therapist regularly I have not been able to make progress on this, we worked on the cognitive side a lot but it is just too hard. I stopped to see him because after several months I saw no more result..

This is where I'll talk about the root of my obsession. It's gonna be hard but I have to do it. I'm 26 now and OCD took me everything, I had to drop out university because of it, and I became completely socially isolated. My obsession is about a thing that I did when I was 16-17 years old.. I'll go straight to the point: I accidently came across a video that involved a women having sex with a dog... It made me excited and I masturbated while watching this. In the months that followed I remember that I did it a second time, intentionnally this time... I watched the video a third time during this period, but the third time I did not masturbate, I judged that it was maybe not a good idea, so I stopped....

The next 5 years nothing happened.. I questionned myself a bit about this event and what it meant about my sexuality but thats all. I was not torturing myself about it and my life continued just like nothing happened. In my head I was just a young heterosexual men who got excited by a weird thing when I was younger. I had a little relapse when I was 22, I remembered being excited by that when I was younger so I found a video of this kind, but it did not make me really excited so I did not masturbate this time and I closed the video after a few second... the months that followed this event my ocd became out of control, but I don't think that it was that event that triggered my ocd... a few month before my ocd became severe, I developped an auto-immune disease, so I'm pretty sure is somewhat related given the fact that people with ocd have some part of the brain that are inflamed.. anyway...

I worked on the cognitive side of it, trying to have a more realistic view on those events, to see them as the insignifiant event that they are... I know that we come from a culture with a long history of religious repression who made sexuality a really taboo subject. They made us believe that sex was only for conception and anything that came out of those very restrictive norm was unacceptable. I know that sexuality is more complicated than that. I remember a study done at my university that explored what people sexually fantasized about. I remember that a lot of them fantasized regularly about coerce other people to have sex with them.. that's illegal but they still fantasize regularly about this. I also remember a 10-15% of people fantasized about peeing on someone... and the study only talked about the thing that people regularly fantasized about. If there was a study that talked about things that people thought only once or twice in the past while masturbating, I'm pretty sure that a lot of weird things would show up... 

Despite those facts, I feel soiled, disgusting, deviant (despite the fact that I don't objectively meet the psyciatric criteria to say that I have a sexual deviance..)... and I know that a feeling is not a proof, but it's hard.

The way that my ocd act is by contaminating the things that have been in relation with what I did in the past. So, there is a huge area of my town that feel contaminated because I lived in this area when I did what I did in the past. The object that I owned during this period, the neighbour that I had, the school I went, some subject I was interested in, some word that my ocd find a way to relate to, the internet browser I used in the past... and the list is long...

I know what I have to do, but it's hard, partly because I'm at a point where my ocd do not torture me every second of my life. When my ocd started, it was so insane that I only wanted to die, so I had nothing to lose by taking the risk to stop compulsion... but now, ocd do not torture me every second of my life, it make my life unpleasant, unsatisfying, I'm a bit depressed, but it's not pure hell... so, it's hard to motivate myself to fight my last obsessions, the risk I take by not avoiding do not seem as much worth it if I compare to when my ocd started. But I know that if I do nothing I'll just stay there not moving with my life and not living the dream that I have and I'll probably just finish my life completely depressed and maybe killing myself. When I think about the past 3 years that my ocd took me, I feel really bad.. I don't want to finish my twentys by not achieving the project that I wanted to...

So, I post this to face an obsession, but also to find some motivation to face my last obsessions... and if some people have more realistic view to share to me about what I did in he past, you're more than welcome.

Thank you.

Edited December 27, 2018 by helloocd

[Guest OCDhavenobrain]

Welcome to the forum and I want to congratulate you for the gains you have mad. You are not alone and you are certainly not the only one who have had OCD taking away things from you. But once again, you have made progress and that is great, don't beat yourself down because of the years with OCD. 

Do not get lazy because of the fact that this one doesn't feel as bad. I promise you and you probably know it yourself that if you let the OCD be there unchallenged will it just grow on you and you could end up in the same place again. There is nothing unrealistic in challenging this last obsession. 

That would be my advices to you. 1. Don't look back 2. Treat the obsession like it deserves to be treated - with no mercy

Edited December 27, 2018 by OCDhavenobrain

[helloocd]

Thank you

 

I think that my OCD is using the fact that I only had 1 answer as a proof that I'm a deviant.. if people would not think that I'm a deviant pervert then they would have replied to me..  I'm not sure what to think about it..

Edited January 6, 2019 by helloocd

[Saffie]

Can't respond properly because I'm going through a really rough time but just wanted to say you aren't alone. No reassurance, it won't help. But try and accept this for the unimportant thing it was x

[dksea]

16 hours ago, helloocd said:

I think that my OCD is using the fact that I only had 1 answer as a proof that I'm a deviant.. if people would not think that I'm a deviant pervert then they would have replied to me..  I'm not sure what to think about it..

Very good insight on what the OCD is pushing you to believe.  You are falling in to a trap that a lot (probably all) OCD sufferers fall in to, setting up a false dichotomy, i.e. defining the situation as having two and only two possibilities when thats not reality.  In your case you've got:
A. If enough people reply, i'm not a deviant
OR
B. If enough people don't reply, I'm a deviant

The reality is there is no connection between the number of people who reply and whether or not you are a deviant.  First, there are ample reasons why people might not reply that have nothing to do with you, such as being busy and not checking the forums, not clicking on your particular post, not feeling confident in replying, not being sure what they have to add, trying to decide how to reply in the most constructive way, etc.  Second, even if people do reply there is no connection to the reality of whether or not you are a deviant.  

You're falling in to another trap that not just OCD sufferers but many people fall in to, judging yourself and your behavior based mostly/solely on what you can observe of other peoples public behavior.  You fear you are a deviant because you engaged in a behavior which you think others wouldn't.  Maybe they wouldn't, maybe they would, its going to be extremely difficult to find out (if its even possible).  The reality is, people don't often publicly discuss their sexual behaviors in general, and even those that do mostly do so within contexts that are deemed by society to be "normal".  Yet you even point out that what society can consider to be "normal" can be quite twisted based on ideology.  I imagine many of our ancestors/predecessors from more puritanical societies would be shocked and scandalized by behavior that today even the more prudish wouldn't consider particularly scandalous, such as a woman showing her bare ankle in public (yes that was once scandalous!).

OCD drives us to seek a feeling of absolute certainty, a goal which is basically impossible.  In your case it sounds like you are seeking certainty around the idea that you aren't a sexual deviant.  On the surface that sounds like a reasonable goal, a non-OCD person could also want to feel like they are not a sexual deviant.  The difference is the level of proof required to convince the non-OCD person and the OCD person.  The non-OCD person doesn't need absolute proof.  They don't need to know, under all possible realities, am I sure I'm not a deviant.  They would be ok with feeling sure ENOUGH.  The OCD person however can feel sure, but because of OCD not 100% sure.  Well the thing is you can never be 100% sure about anything.  There is ALWAYS some minute possibility of some extremely random event that undoes the 100% certainty.  Am I 100% certain i'm sitting here typing this answer on a computer?  Seems pretty certain, I can look at the computer, I can see what i'm doing, but there's the possibility its all some sophisticated illusion right?  A hallucination?  A vivid dream?  A computer simulation?  Who knows!  Even if the odds are vanishingly small, they still exist! And OCD latches on to that, and makes us doubt.  "But what if..."

The thing is you can't change the past, what happened, happened.  Its understandable to feel regret or discomfort about things we did in the past, but it would be a shame to allow that to continue to define the rest of your life.  It sounds like you have made significant progress over the past few years, and thats great.  Its also totally understandable to feel like 'i've worked so hard, and things are much better, do I really need to keep going, isn't this ok enough?"  For some people it might be, it might be enough that they never confront all their past anxieties and obsessions.  If you are happy with your life and feel like it can be fulfilling and worthwhile then maybe you wouldn't need to deal with that one last fear.  Maybe a person has anxiety about heights for example.  While they will never climb a mountain, that doesn't mean they can't be happy with their life.  Lots and lots of people never climb mountains.  Or maybe they fear rejection so they decide not to try writing a novel.  Well lots and lots of people don't write novels, so maybe thats not a big deal.  On the other hand some people really want to climb that mountain or write that novel, so they decide to face down their fears and find it worth the battle.  Each persons life is different, what drives and motivates one person might be completely boring and uninteresting for another.  I have friends who LOVE attending live concerts of their favorite bands, its a very rewarding experience for them.  I, on the other hand, have no interest in that type of experience.  While I enjoy music, the idea of being crammed in to a crowded venue with lots of people screaming and music playing way too loud does not sound at all enjoyable to me. I'd much rather listen to my favorite music at home on a nice speaker or pair of headphones.  The important question when deciding whether or not to challenge something or change something is whether or not it seems worth it to you.  

Now in your case it sounds like the anxiety you still need to confront IS holding you back from the life you want to live.  Its good to recognize that and consider ways to handle it.  Maybe the best course for you forward is to take on that anxiety and work to overcome it so you can move forward with your goals.  If its necessary to do that then it will be worth the time and effort to try to overcome it.  But also keep in mind that fighting OCD is a marathon, not a sprint.  It might take time to get past this next hurdle and its important you respect that time required to change.  On that note I wanted to address one things you said:

On 27/12/2018 at 10:32, helloocd said:

I don't want to finish my twentys by not achieving the project that I wanted to...

Its good to have goals and to work to achieve them, but be careful about setting arbitrary deadlines like this.  Not getting to a point by a specific age doesn't mean you can't be happy, that you can't achieve your goals, etc.  You didn't ASK to get OCD for example, and that has severely impacted your life, so of course its going to alter any plans you had before, and thats ok.  Life changes and its important to adapt.  We have no way of guaranteeing 100% that things will go the way we plan, sometimes we just have to do the best we can with the situation we are given.  And who knows, maybe you won't reach the goal you previously aspired to by your deadline, but that doers't mean you can't still achieve it.  And its entirely possible that unexpected events and opportunities will happen too, maybe you'll find yourself in a situation where you'll end up doing something you hadn't imagined.  This spring will be my 20th anniversary of graduating from high school (12th year in America).  That summer I turned 19 and started University in America.  I now live and work in a foreign country (Japan), something I didn't at all plan on doing at the time, and at one point, because of my OCD would have seemed like an impossibility.  Yet here I am, having experienced and done things I didn't even really know about back then.  Yes there are things I wish had gone different, I have regrets and frustrations about the things OCD stole from me, but I  can't change the past so I try to focus on appreciating what I have now and making the most of opportunities moving forward.  

I hope going forward you will be able to continue to improve from your OCD.  I hope you will be able to achieve some of the goals you set, but be open to new opportunities too.  And be kind to yourself, give yourself the time you need to heal and move forward, and work on accepting that you can't change that OCD has affected your life, but you can change your life path going forward. Do your best, thats all any of us can ever do!