POCD Help

[jlmdfem]

Hi

My POCD has taken on a new form of what I hope is still the OCD and not me becoming a monster. I was getting intimate with my boyfriend the other day and had an image of my friends child pop into my head, just her face not anything else and was just for a second as i was like what the hell why has that happened at a time like this?! Now whenever we start getting intimate, i guess because I really don't want to think about her and I'm so aware of it happening again, her face appears in my head for a split second and i hate myself for it! How can this keep happening?! I don't find her attractive, it doesn't turn me on if anything it makes me want to stop. It's making me not want to be intimate anymore because I'm scared about what it means. Please can someone tell me if this still OCD or I'm just a disgusting being  I never want to hurt her or any child but the fact that her face keeps popping into my head at intimate moments is really scaring me. I feel really guilty and ashamed now whenever I see my friend as well, it's making me want to just sit and cry whenever i see her. I don't want to be this person!! What should I do to stop this? Just accept it like any other OCD and not over analyse? Or is it not OCD at all and I'm just disgusting?

[ivybasil]

2 hours ago, jlmdfem said:

Just accept it like any other OCD and not over analyse? 

Yes. Exactly this. The OCD might have changed slightly in what it focuses on, but it's still OCD and that's how you need to respond to this situation too.  

Thoughts don't have to mean anything; you don't need to listen to what your OCD tells you it means. 

Also I want to offer a question I'm often asked in my own therapy.  If your friend or partner said exactly what you have, and were as upset by this unwanted thought that they have no control over, what would you say? Would you consider them a monster? Imagine someone else posted this exact thread, asking if they were a monster for having a thought they couldn't control? How would you respond? It's sometimes easier to accept that it's just an OCD thought when it's not our own thought, if you see what I mean? 

 Consider yourself with the same kindness and understanding you would a friend, and treat this as any other OCD thought, just like you said. 

 

 

Edited November 26, 2019 by ivybasil
edited for clarity!

[Closed for repairs]

It's the don't think of the thing trick.

If I say it's a really bad sign if you think of raccoons when you see chocolate, so try really hard not to think of raccoons, particularly when you see chocolate, you really don't want to associate raccoons and chocolate. And you give it OCD levels of attention then guess what your going to think of every time you eat chocolate.

 

[paradoxer]

The thoughts aren't the problem (they never are). It's your reaction to them that is. And try not to 'name' your OCD. It only attributes 'importance' to the 'theme'. 

[jlmdfem]

On 26/11/2019 at 10:41, ivybasil said:

Yes. Exactly this. The OCD might have changed slightly in what it focuses on, but it's still OCD and that's how you need to respond to this situation too.  

Thoughts don't have to mean anything; you don't need to listen to what your OCD tells you it means. 

Also I want to offer a question I'm often asked in my own therapy.  If your friend or partner said exactly what you have, and were as upset by this unwanted thought that they have no control over, what would you say? Would you consider them a monster? Imagine someone else posted this exact thread, asking if they were a monster for having a thought they couldn't control? How would you respond? It's sometimes easier to accept that it's just an OCD thought when it's not our own thought, if you see what I mean? 

 Consider yourself with the same kindness and understanding you would a friend, and treat this as any other OCD thought, just like you said. 

 

 

Thank you so much for your reply! I was feeling so low. But you're right, I will treat it as my OCD. 

[ivybasil]

45 minutes ago, jlmdfem said:

Thank you so much for your reply! I was feeling so low. But you're right, I will treat it as my OCD. 

Anytime; hope you're feeling a little better today? 

[Handy]

How do you define POCD jlmd?

[jlmdfem]

On 28/11/2019 at 08:37, ivybasil said:

Anytime; hope you're feeling a little better today? 

I do feel a little better but it comes in waves. I just feel like I have to confess all the time about my thoughts. I've started a new job and i'm working with people who have children themselves and the thoughts keep creeping in whenever they talk about their kids and i feel awful. I'm trying not to engage with them though and just letting them pass through. I am trying to concentrate on the fact that I would never act on them and never want to, it's all just fear. It's just the guilt makes me feel so low and feel like I'm a fraud because of the things i think or if i've ever looked at a child in a certain way. So feeling a little low this morning  

On 29/11/2019 at 01:20, Handy said:

How do you define POCD jlmd?

Having the obsessive thoughts that I could be a paedophile?  

[ivybasil]

1 hour ago, jlmdfem said:

I do feel a little better but it comes in waves. I just feel like I have to confess all the time about my thoughts. I've started a new job and i'm working with people who have children themselves and the thoughts keep creeping in whenever they talk about their kids and i feel awful. I'm trying not to engage with them though and just letting them pass through. I am trying to concentrate on the fact that I would never act on them and never want to, it's all just fear. It's just the guilt makes me feel so low and feel like I'm a fraud because of the things i think or if i've ever looked at a child in a certain way. So feeling a little low this morning  

Congratulations on the new job!  I'm sorry these thoughts are making it difficult for you - OCD is the worst kind of bully and it can feel very distracting! You're doing the right thing in trying not to engage with them and let them pass. You're right, I think, in that OCD plays on fear. 

You had an intrusive thought that disgusted you and scared you. But we can't control intrusive thoughts - they're automatic and just happen. They just happen and don't have to mean anything. What if you had an automatic thought this morning like "imagine I ate ice cream for breakfast today, instead of cornflakes." This is an automatic thought. You didn't ask to have that thought.

Maybe you heard an advert on the TV for ice cream and your brain adds "what if we broke the rules today and eat it for breakfast." Maybe the thought came out of nowhere as they often do. If you're anything like me, you might find the thought amusing and entertain the possibility for a minute. It's just a thought, it doesn't mean anything and it doesn't mean you have to act on it. 

The difference between the ice-cream-for-breakfast scenario and the situations you're describing is fear. The thoughts you're having don't mean anything more, the difference is that you react to them because it's something that upsets you and goes against your values. 

OCD just likes us to think all our thoughts mean something.  We don't have to listen.  Easier said than done, though, I know! 

Stay strong, keep challenging the thoughts. Good luck at the new job! It sounds like you're doing all the right things. 

 

Edited December 4, 2019 by ivybasil

[dksea]

21 hours ago, jlmdfem said:

Having the obsessive thoughts that I could be a paedophile?  

I think the point Handy is indirectly trying to address here is that there really is no such thing as POCD, just OCD.
It may not seem important to you to care about the difference right now, after all, you are struggling with intrusive thoughts related to being a pedophile, that is your fear so its most important to you.  However, in the long run its better for your recovery to understand why labeling things in subgroups (POCD, HOCD, ROCD, etc) isn't the best idea.  Sub-labeling OCD is problematic in two ways:

1. It makes it seem like the specific content of the fear is important
2. It makes a person more likely to tie recovery to just that one specific area of worry

Regarding the first point, its important to understand that what you are worried about isn't really the problem.  Yes, for you right now topic A (in your case pedophilia) is the most scary, but that could change over time to topic B.  Remember, non-OCD sufferers experience these same types of intrusive thoughts, they just don't treat them as important.  Recovery involves learning to treat the worry as unimportant, just a garbage thought without any meaning.  If you focus too much on the specific worry, then its harder to treat it as unimportant.

Regarding the second point, hopefully you'll progress in your recovery and soon these thoughts will bother you less.  The risk of sticking too strongly to labels like POCD, is that you'll associate recovery with just that intrusive thought and if another intrusive thought comes along you won't feel as prepared to handle it.  In reality, true recovery comes when you can handle pretty much any thought without falling in to OCD's trap.  Thats the overall goal, not just with this intrusive thought but ANY intrusive thought.

[dksea]

On 26/11/2019 at 16:51, jlmdfem said:

Please can someone tell me if this still OCD or I'm just a disgusting being

A good rule of thumb to apply is this:

If you think it MIGHT be OCD, it PROBABLY is.  So in these situations where you feel doubt, assume its OCD.  You don't have to be 100% sure either, thats what OCD wants, but reality doesn't work that way.  No one is ever 100% sure of anything.  They can't be.  It would violate the very basic laws of the universe.  When in doubt, its OCD.  Rules to live by.

[dksea]

21 hours ago, jlmdfem said:

I've started a new job and i'm working with people who have children themselves and the thoughts keep creeping in whenever they talk about their kids and i feel awful. I'm trying not to engage with them though and just letting them pass through. I am trying to concentrate on the fact that I would never act on them and never want to, it's all just fear. It's just the guilt makes me feel so low and feel like I'm a fraud because of the things i think or if i've ever looked at a child in a certain way. So feeling a little low this morning

One more post for now.
We like to think that our minds are 100% in our control.  That our thoughts == ourselves.  But thats not reality.  The reality is our brains generate waaaaaaaaay more thoughts than our conscious mind (the self part of us) could even begin to handle, let alone be responsible for.  The vast majority of how our brain works is automatic, and its a good thing too!  Can you imagine trying to manually process every image, every sound, every feeling that we experience?  Imagine being in a room and hearing EVERY conversation going on and having to manually try and pull it apart and pay attention to it.  In reality your brain automatically focuses for you, you pay more attention to the people you are immediately talking to than a conversation you are not involved in, even though your ear is still hearing everything going on around you.  Its why if someone calls out your name you will notice it, but if they call out another name you won't.  Part of your brain is filtering the input for you.

So you've got ALL that information coming in to your brain ALL the time, sights, sounds, smells, etc.  And, as you have no doubt experienced, each of those inputs can cause you to remember different things, or think about different things, often automatically!  A smell of a certain flower might remind you of a time, place or person where you smelled that same flower before.  Maybe you see a shirt that is just the same as your friend often wears so you think of that person.  All of this input happening all the time and your brain is constantly making connections and trying to decide what is and isn't important.  Now, you've probably seen a movie, and maybe in that movie someone drove a car off the road and hit someone.  Its just a movie, no one actually died, but your brain remembers that image, that idea.  Maybe while you are driving down the street you notice some people on the side of the road.  From the back of your mind that scene from the movie pops up, just for a second.  Not because you actually desire to harm anyone, just that the two situations have similarities and the human brain is ALWAYS looking for patterns to try and make sense of the world.  Now to most people this isn't a big deal, they might not even realize they had the memory, it passes by so quickly.  But for an unlucky few who happen to have OCD, and whose brains just happen to be in the wrong state, that thought gets stuck.  Its no different than the thought a non-sufferer had, there is no deeper meaning.  The only difference is for the OCD sufferer the thought sticks around, and so, of course, they think its more important.  After all, if it wasn't important they wouldn't be thinking about it right?  Thats how things work most of the time after all.  Maybe so, but the OCD sufferer isn't operating in "normal" mode, so its foolish to use "normal" mode rules to apply to non-normal situations.  But we are so used to doing just that!  Its hard NOT to handle things that way.

Overcoming OCD isn't really getting rid of unwanted thoughts, thats an impossible goal, these thoughts happen, they are part of life.  Overcoming OCD is about training our somewhat malfunctioning brain to better handle things when an unwanted thought happens.  Its retraining our brain that sometimes it has to deal with things a little differently than normal.  In an ideal world (and perhaps the future) we could just fix the part or parts of our brain that aren't handling these thoughts properly.  In the meantime we CAN adjust our brains to work around that malfunction.  Its kind of like how a person who has had a stroke can learn to talk again using a different part of their brain. Its not ideal, it would be great if they could just repair the original part, but until we figure that out, its great that we have alternatives.

Anyway, just something to keep in mind when these thoughts pop in to your head.  Its not your fault, its not a sign you are a monster, and you don't have to freak out over it, even though it often feels like you should.  Its a false alarm.  Just because the alarm is going off it doesn't mean your house is burning down.  Maybe you just overcooked some popcorn.  OCD is overcooked popcorn, not a burning house.  Remind yourself of that.  The anxiety is real, but the reason isn't.