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What was real? Have I tricked myself?


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I'm struggling a lot right now and I don't know what to do. I feel so stuck and unsure. I feel like all my feelings weren't real and were somehow made up. I hate the way I feel right now; maybe I just need to get used to it. But, I want to go back to the way things were. I keep looking up things online about the difference between OCD thoughts and actually enjoying them. I don't like thinking of them and I don't actively do it. Whenever I come across the hint of a sexual act I get the feelings of arousal it seems so intense to when I actually think about something that turns me on. I don't feel normal anymore, I feel like something has switched and I need to know what. I'm scared because I'm back at school so being around a lot of people is making me feel uncomfortable and just makes my brain go into full on questioning mode or maybe my OCD was a lie? I don't know, was all of this repression? Was it just an excuse? 

Edited by don't know
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You're right back to asking us for reassurance that your problem is OCD. Can you not see that this is not working? You've been asking the same sort of questions for months and months. You are repeatedly told it is OCD but you just come back with more of the same questions.

Enough!

This is getting you nowhere. You have OCD about OCD. You are getting intrusive thoughts that this is not OCD. You respond with compulsions, like ruminating and doing research. It ain't working!

Stop the research. Full on stop. Start treating this all as OCD. Period. It's the only way you're going to find mental peace.

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8 hours ago, don't know said:

I keep looking up things online about the difference between OCD thoughts and actually enjoying them.

As PB says, this is a checking compulsion, and its only going to make things worse.  Yes its hard to resist sometimes, you want to prove to yourself that the doubts aren't real, but unfortunately OCD doesn't work that way, you can check and check and check but you'll still feel doubt, its the nature of the disease.

 

8 hours ago, don't know said:

I don't like thinking of them and I don't actively do it. Whenever I come across the hint of a sexual act I get the feelings of arousal it seems so intense to when I actually think about something that turns me on.

This is more compulsion, trying to prove to yourself one way or the other.  Aside from the doubt you will feel because of OCD there are other problems with this approach.  Forcing yourself in to situations to test how you'd "feel" in a real situation doesn't really work because its not like a real situation, you aren't allowing yourself to genuinely react.  In addition people doing these checking compulsions discount the variety of other reasons they might feel/not feel something.  Stress for example can greatly affect our emotions, including arousal.  Consider for example how you would feel and act differently if your home had cameras installed and you were constantly being watched by friends/family/gov't etc.  Your reactions and emotions would change because of the difference in circumstances, just like your reaction changes when you are stressed/anxious and engaging in checking behavior.

Also, its completely normal in people even without OCD to notice and react more to something they are focused on.  Maybe you learn the meaning of a word you didn't know before that you think is really interesting, suddenly you notice people using that word more often.  Did you magically make people use that word a lot?  Or, did people always use it and you just never paid attention before because it wasn't particularly important to you.  There's even a name for this effect, its called the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon.  You notice/react to something more because you have recently focused on it.  For you thats potential sexual situations, your mind has become tuned in to that topic so you are noticing it more and interpreting your actions from that frame of mind.

 

8 hours ago, don't know said:

I don't feel normal anymore, I feel like something has switched and I need to know what. I'm scared because I'm back at school so being around a lot of people is making me feel uncomfortable and just makes my brain go into full on questioning mode or maybe my OCD was a lie? I don't know, was all of this repression? Was it just an excuse?

Its beyond frustrating to feel like you are feeling, and perfectly understandable that you are scared.  Basically everyone here understands what thats like because we've all gone through it at one point or another.  Unfortunately its par for the course when it comes to OCD, including doubting that your problem is even OCD!

There is an old saying, If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck. Your behavior and symptoms match up to OCD pretty much perfectly.  The simplest explanation is therefore, that you have OCD.   If you don't have OCD that means one of two things:

  1. You are intentionally mimicking the symptoms of OCD to a crazy accurate degree and intentionally masquerading on these forums as an OCD sufferer for some bizarre reason.  This would require active effort on your part to study OCD in depth.  
  2. You are unintentionally/accidentally mimicking the symptoms of OCD to a crazy accurate degree in order to, as you put it, delude yourself.  

If its scenario 1, well then nothing we tell you really matters, you know whats going on and can change your mind at any point to stop pretending.  I doubt thats the case of course, but technically its possible?
If its scenario 2, well the odds of that are incredibly slim.  If you didn't have OCD you would almost certainly not be behaving exactly like someone who has OCD.  If you are exhibiting all the symptoms of OCD and you aren't doing it on purpose, it basically is the same as having OCD.  So you might as well treat it anyway.

So there you go, either you are faking this whole problem on purpose (which again, I doubt is the case, I am pretty sure your suffering is unfortunately very real) OR you basically have OCD and the best path forward is assuming you do have OCD and treating this as OCD.

You don't have to be 100% convinced you have OCD to treat it.  Doing the steps to recover from OCD won't hurt you if you, in fact, don't have OCD.  The techniques you learn in CBT are still useful.  There's basically no reason NOT to assume you have OCD in your situation.  So why not take the chance that it is OCD and take some steps that will probably help you no matter what?  You don't want to keep feeling the way you do now, this is how you change that.  Its not a quick fix, but its a lasting and worthwhile one.  I hope you'll take that step.

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