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14 minutes ago, Dave321 said:

Can your gut feeling be wrong?

Of course it can. People’s “gut feelings” are wrong all the time. If they weren’t people would always follow them and never make a mistake. 

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3 hours ago, Dave321 said:

Can your gut feeling be wrong? Right now its telling me I am gay and all this 'ocd' is me whinging about it and eventually I will come to accept it.

'But it feels so real' is an OCD sufferer's mantra. As is the eternal rhetorical dialogue asking whether something is OCD. 

Throw in the same continued posting on an OCD forum for good measure. 

 

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But its not thoughts so much as all the physical evidence being thrown at me by my own body.  For instance you will think I am crazy but I think I have discovered that gay men have different physical features t straight men such as no adams apple, higher pitch voice  gay finger ratio, wider hips etc..  I have all these things because I believe I was exposed to more oestrogen in the uterus.

The other physical evidence are the constant recurrent groinal responses/arousal.  They are happening more and more and becoming much more easily triggered.   My hope is that my fear response is becoming sharper and causing it but I am seriously doubting this.  I sat beside a guy today who obviously had not showered that morning and reeked of sweat and when I got that smell I got a groinal response or sensations of arousal in my groin.  I wonder is it pheromones?  This disturbed me but sat with the anxiety and eventually subsisded.   It was still disturbing me but my anxiety went down after 40 mins.  Then I was watching the football tonight and they were showing a clip of players celebrating and one took his top off and got a groinal.  Then I was at the gym last night and just looked at a man and I felt all sorts of bodily sensations such as weird feelings in my torso, groinals and intensity that I find uncomfortable that makes me want to look away. 

One side of my head hopes this is all ocd tricks but the other voice tells me this is attraction and what straight men feel for girls or what gay men feel for other men. 

The groinals linger on too.  I still type this with a groinal sensation that was triggered 20 mins ago.  Even topless men cartoon figures can trigger one.  I am not checking.  I am going about my business and confronted with these challenges througout the normal course of the day and the groinals happen before I even realise whats happened.

On top of that stuff that used to arouse me isn't anymore.  I got sent a dirty video on whatsapp by a friend and I should have found it arousing but it didn't.  I know in my teens and 20's I would have found it highly arousing.

Either I am completely nuts or this is all real signs of being gay and I am just too closed minded to accept it.  I am quite conservatve in some ways.  I have never taken drugs or tried them, nor want to.  Same with kissing men.  Maybe that is the whole issue? Me being closed minded and conservative??

I support gay marriage and equal rights for what its worth but for some reason I am terrified of being gay myself.

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We have talked about this until we are blue in the face. We've done so off an on for at least six years.

You won't listen to us but you come here every couple of months looking for reassurance. 

How many more years are you going to keep this sad charade going? 

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6 hours ago, Dave321 said:

Either I am completely nuts or this is all real signs of being gay and I am just too closed minded to accept it. 

Or there is another option, you have OCD.  Declaring that there are only two options and there actually BEING only two options is different.  

I could go through and debunk every one of the "proof" claims you made, but frankly I'm tired of doing that.  Iv'e done it before.  Others have done it before.  And it won't matter because you refuse to do what is necessary to change the situation.  If you want this to stop you eventually have to make a choice and LISTEN to us, otherwise there is no point in responding to you anymore, we might as well be talking to a brick wall for all the difference it will make.  You have my sympathy, you really do. None of us ask for OCD, we don't deserve OCD.  But recovery requires taking some measure of personal responsibility and making decisions and you are not doing that.  Thats on you.    When you are ready to listen, I mean really listen, not keep repeating the same garbage at us over and over, then great, we'll help. 

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hi guys,

Been struggling with anxiety since the coronavirus thing and my groinal responses are as bad as ever.  Everytime I log onto facebook I see adverts for topless men advertising some fitness product and feel something down there. Its really stressful.

And I am terrified I will get and give coronavirus to my elderly mother.  Its horrible.  I was in very busy supermarket today.  I didn't want to be there but she needed groceries.

Handwashing was never a thing for me but I washing my hands very throughly anytime I touch something I think might be contaminated and this is nearly everything that someone else has touched.  My hands are getting sore and dry.

 

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12 hours ago, Dave321 said:

Been struggling with anxiety since the coronavirus thing and my groinal responses are as bad as ever.

Its a stressful situation, unprecedented in recent time, so its not surprising you will have some additional stress right now.  Unfortunately stress can exacerbate OCD anxiety in general so its not surprising (though obviously frustrating) to see your other areas of OCD causing you issues as well.

The best thing you can do is continue to try and resist compulsions and engage in correct behaviors based on CBT.  Its also important to practice self care during extra stressful times however, so it can be a good idea to scale back especially stressful or demanding tasks otherwise if possible.  For example you might scale back the degree of ERP you are doing, or non-OCD related projects you take on.  You might give yourself a little more relaxation time compared to productive time. etc.
 

12 hours ago, Dave321 said:

Handwashing was never a thing for me but I washing my hands very throughly anytime I touch something I think might be contaminated and this is nearly everything that someone else has touched.  My hands are getting sore and dry.

Handwashing IS important, but overdoing it will cause more problems than it solves.  Its important to set reasonable goals.  For example you could use a timer to ensure you wash enough, but not too much.  You can set rules on when you will and won't wash your hands, and base those rules on reasonable advice form medical experts. 
Its also ok to consider that behaviors that would otherwise be potentially OCD driven might not be now.  For example, its reasonable under current circumstances to limit social interaction.  But its also important to realize that social interaction isn't inherently bad.  in your case going to the store was necessary, so you should try not worry.  While its important to be cautious at this time, that doesn't mean going to the store is a huge risk either.  Remember, NOTHING in life is 100% safe, doubt and uncertainty are part of life.

Its great that you care about your mother, but overworrying won't actually help.  Focus on taking reasonable actions, and do your best to understand and decide what's reasonable when you aren't in the grips of an OCD moment, i.e. before you feel the need to wash or before you HAVE to go to the store.

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Unfortunately even in the face of the end of the world I am worrying and experience groinal responses.   I remember being at 2 funeral int he last 10 years of both my grandparents and all I was thinking and worrying about during it was 'am I gay?'   Now I am very worried of coronavirus and am terrified for my mum but thats all I think about all day.  Groinal responses and coronavirus.  This proves that no matter how many more vitally important problems there are int he world and stuff I should be worried about (an am) that thins thing still won't leave me alone.  EVERY SINGLE TIME I see an ad on facebook for fitness things with men I get arousal like sensations in my groin automatically in milliseconds.  I was watching tv and even got one looking at Gary Neville. :(

Why cant this thing leave me alone and stop torturing me?  Its the end of the world and I still worry about it.  :(

 

 

 

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Do you really think gay men get aroused EVERY time they see a fitness ad, and in milliseconds,? Do you really think that happens? Do you think every heterosexual male gets aroused in milliseconds EVERY time they see a beautiful woman?

Think about it! Do you really think the entire male population is guided solely by our penises? Think!

And don't come back with any **** about the gay finger ratio or anything else. Answer this question.

Because its one of your key arguments that you must be gay  that you very often get these sensations. Well if that makes you gay, then every gay man must also get the sensations every time.

Let's focus on this one thing. Don't go off on a tangent. Answer this question.

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I don;'t know.   Maybe some people have very sensitive bodies?  I have no frame of reference.  I can't ask other men  about it.  I know you are going to say no they dont.  I am not talking about full erections but the sensation that is the start of the arousal process.  I never get erections.

All I know was I have always been very aware of my body sensations and I used to worry a lot in my teens about what this sensation was and if I had some disease.  I have always been hyper aware.

Anyway back to my youth if I as much as thought about sex I would feel a sensation in my groin. That was before hocd. 

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6 hours ago, Dave321 said:

I am not talking about full erections but the sensation that is the start of the arousal process.

Ok, here is where we have a cognitive distortion at play that we can address.
Sensations in the groin CAN be the start of the arousal process, but that doesn't mean they ARE the start of the arousal process.
Just like a headache CAN be the sign of a brain tumor, but that doesn't mean every person who has a headache has a brain tumor.
You have gotten to the point where you treat sensation as proof of arousal.  It's not.  It simply isn't.  Thats a fact.

 

6 hours ago, Dave321 said:

All I know was I have always been very aware of my body sensations and I used to worry a lot in my teens about what this sensation was and if I had some disease.  I have always been hyper aware.

And I'm willing to bet that all those sensations didn't end up being the feared diseases you thought you had.  Because there is seldom if ever a 1:1 correlation when it comes to sensations.  If I tell you i'm crying it might mean I am sad. It might mean I am happy. It might mean i got something in my eye.  Being hungry, being sick, being nervous, being in love, all of these can cause you to have the same/similar sensations in your stomach.  Muscle twitches can be a sign of stress, a pinched nerve, over exertion, side effect of some medication, a random event, or a number of neurological conditions.  

Further, hypersensitivity and hyper awareness distort our perception of the frequency and severity of sensations. They often cause us to experience the sensation more often, notice it happening more often, and thus judging it to be stronger than "normal".  Constantly thinking about your itchy skin vs ignoring your itchy skin results in different outcomes.  The former makes you more likely to feel bothered by the itch and prolong it from bothering you, the later makes you more likely to feel normal again and be less bothered.  Human perception is relative, not absolute.  We are not robots.  The very act of observation can and often does influence the phenomenon which we are observing.

As long as you continue to focus on the sensations and react when you have them, the longer they are going to keep bothering you.
If you set your goal as "I never want to have this sensation again" you will almost certainly fail.  Our brains don't function that way.  The very act of trying to deny/prevent the sensation is likely to CAUSE you to feel the sensation.  Frustratingly paradoxical, but it is what it is.

If you set your goal as "i'd like to get to the point where I don't care if I have these sensations" you can succeed.  That is how to overcome OCD.  Not to never have a sensation or experience a trigger again, but to not care, or care very little if you do.

When I first developed OCD it was centered around being sick, particularly sick to my stomache and wanting to avoid that feeling at all costs.  One way this manifested was avoiding any reference to that kind of sickness.  The words vomit, throw up, puke, etc. were triggers for me.  They would cause anxiety when I saw or heard them. Don't even get me started on seeing depictions or allusions to those events on tv etc.  It was not a fun time for me.  It took work and help but I got to the point (and its where I am now) that these things either don't bother me at all (such as typing them above) or only make me slightly uncomfortable, such as depictions in media, which I'm guessing is fairly normal.  Or at least its close enough to normal to not interfere with my life.

In his original behavioral experiments Pavlov trained dogs to associate a bell with a steak, and thus elicit certain responses.  But there is nothing inherently connected between hearing a bell and thinking of a steak, it was a learned connection.  It was created in the minds of the dogs through repeated learning.  Similarly OCD and your response to it have forged a connection between certain physical sensations and certain stimuli.  You see a type of picture, you have the sensation.  But a learned behavior can be unlearned.  You can break a bad habit, though it may be hard.  If you want to break the bad habit you have gotten in of having these sensations in reaction to certain stimuli you need to start doing the right steps and not the wrong ones.  It might cause you to feel anxiety at first, but that doesn't mean its wrong.  A smoker feels anxiety when they stop smoking, not because they are inherently a smoker, but because they are challenging a long held behavior (and the addictive properties of cigarettes don't help).

So you can follow the steps that have been proven to work for OCD recovery and change your situation, slowly overtime, but still change it.  OR you can continue down the path you are on, which has lead you to more suffering and has been shown by generations of OCD sufferers before you to not work.  Its ultimately up to you.

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Well I am very worried I have created the connection between seeing men and groinal responses.  They 100% feel like arousal sensations though.  I am worried I have grooved the synapses in my brain to trigger one any time I see a man topless for example and then causes me anxiety.   I don't know how to stop being anxious when it happens.  It just freaks me out.  My sexual interest in women has fallen off the map.  I no longer find arousing stuff I used to.  Its very scary.  I am changing into something I dont want to be.

When I was 9 yrs old I developed hyper awareness of my breathing and went for checkups in the childrens hospital as I thought I had something wrong that I felt like I was gasping for air.  It was just a habit I was told and it disappeared.  I also used to get 'chest pains' age 8 when running and thought it was signs of a heart attack.  My teen years were filled with worry about this pain or that sensation or that lump I found in my nipple etc...

 

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5 hours ago, Dave321 said:

Well I am very worried I have created the connection between seeing men and groinal responses.  They 100% feel like arousal sensations though.  I am worried I have grooved the synapses in my brain to trigger one any time I see a man topless for example and then causes me anxiety.   I don't know how to stop being anxious when it happens.  It just freaks me out.  My sexual interest in women has fallen off the map.  I no longer find arousing stuff I used to.  Its very scary.  I am changing into something I dont want to be.

I understand it’s scary, I understand you don’t like it, I understand you want to stop feeling anxiety. You are not alone in this, it’s what all OCD sufferers experience. 

You can change things, but not without doing the work and part of doing the work is going to involve feeling the anxiety and learning to not respond to it. There is no solution that involves suddenly making the anxiety disappear. Therapy and possibly medication can help make it easier but the simple truth is it takes time and effort. Because of OCD you have ended up in an unpleasant place with these unwanted connections in your mind. But they are not set in stone, they can be changed. 

So if you want to get better you need to start applying CBT. Ideally with the help of a therapist, but it can be done without too. You have to make the decision to follow that path, you have to be willing to do the work.  It won’t be fun, but it will help.

 

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  • 4 weeks later...

Sorry but the groinal responses are bothering me all the time.  Imagine EVERY SINGLE TIME you see a topless male on the internet you get a sensation in your groin. I know people say not to let it bother you, acknowledge it and move on but I am not sure I ever will not be bothered by it.  They are getting worse.  They only used to occure maybe once a week or maybe two a number of years back.  Now they are happening every single time I see a topless man.   I am being bombarded with adverts for indoor workout equipment on facebook featuring topless men and its making me feel anxious. 

I really feel hoping its ocd is clutching at straws at this stage.   At least a few years back I would find naughty pics of women arousing still and this was reassuring.  Now I cant get aroused by any women or porn.  What's going on?  I am not on it much. Hardly ever but I checked recently because my sex drive (for women) is rock bottom. 

I dont know how to respond to this.  I just want someone to take away this pain I guess,  Can your sexual orientation change? It feels like the arousal I had for women has vanished slowly over time.  And men never aroused me before (I never tried to get aroused though tbh) but seeing topless man never made me feel like I wanted to have sex with them or anything. 

This is just a rant. Over and out.

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  • snowbear changed the title to OCD or shame
6 hours ago, Dave321 said:

Sorry but the groinal responses are bothering me all the time.  Imagine EVERY SINGLE TIME you see a topless male on the internet you get a sensation in your groin. I know people say not to let it bother you, acknowledge it and move on but I am not sure I ever will not be bothered by it.

I understand that this bothers you, all of us who suffer from OCD are bothered by our intrusive thoughts, thats why its a disorder.  Trust me, I understand that this is painful and hard and unpleasant.  The advice we offer you isn't always easy to follow, recovery from OCD is a struggle, and no one expects you to be "ok" with all of this, at least not right away.

But what you are describing is not remotely close to normal attraction.  Neither straight people or gay people have reactions EVERY TIME they see someone of the sex they are attracted to.  What you are describing IS however an expected and "normal" reaction in someone suffering from OCD.  Your mind has become habituated to reacting this way because that is what you teach it by responding to the intrusive thoughts each time.  Yes OCD makes it more likely you will do that, without OCD you almost certainly wouldn't be in this unfortunate situation.  But you DO have control over changing this situation. You can, with patience and time, unlearn this bad habit you have taught yourself.  Whether you do that or not is up to you though.  If you want things to change YOU have to make the right choices to change them, and that includes changing how you respond when these things happen.

I wish there was some easy answer we could offer, I really do, not just for you but for all of our sakes.  But unfortunately thats not an option right now, we can only offer you the option that has been demonstrated to work, the hard and slow option of CBT.  You could also talk with your doctor/therapist about medication, that might help too, but at some point if you want to beat this you will have to do the hard work.  Thats just the reality of the world we live in.

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Thanks DKSEA.   IJust to be clear I get a sensation in my groin in my perineum like I can feel an artery  vasodilating and I feel a sexual tingle.  My penis doesn't change shape or annything or get an erection.  Its just that internal sensation.   And then its not there when I see women.  I feel dead inside now looking at women. 

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On 14/04/2020 at 19:36, Dave321 said:

IJust to be clear I get a sensation in my groin in my perineum like I can feel an artery  vasodilating and I feel a sexual tingle.  My penis doesn't change shape or annything or get an erection.  Its just that internal sensation.

Like many OCD sufferers you feel a need to explain the details, as if you are holding something back or if people know more they will change their mind about the situation.  And like those OCD sufferers you are wrong :) 
You don't have to explain it more or better, etc.  Its still OCD.  The steps to get past this remain the same.  If you can obtain professional support/help such as a psychiatrist and/or therapist I highly recommend it.  Otherwise there are many good self guided therapy books.  The process is often slow and requires dedication and patience, but its not complicated.  The sooner you work at breaking the cycle you are in, the sooner you can begin your recovery.  You FEEL like the details are important.  They really aren't.  You FEEL that the anxiety is important and you must address these thoughts.  You really don't have to.  It takes a conscious effort to change the way you've been responding to this, to unlearn the bad habits, but its doable and worthwhile.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Hi guys, Hope you are all well.   My anxiety is as bad as ever.  When not worried about being gay I feel fine.  But anytime something triggers it during the day it makes me anxious and depressed and then eventually I feel fine after a while only to be triggered again and so on...

The problem I face is I genuinely do not know if my problem is a genuine sexual orientation acceptance issue or HOCD.

I was called gay age 12-13.   My teenage years were very innocent.  I didnt mix with girls or guys and generally just fantasises about girls and thoughts of women happily until I had my forst kiss age 19 and unforunately got a horrific dose of glandular fever out of it and was in a bad way for 2-3 months.

During the illness I noticed my erections were now soft when I masturbated and they never returned to the way they were pre glandular fever.  Thats 19 yrs ago now.  I saw doctors and urologists and even had surgery and nothign improved.  I have had hormone tests you name it.  Doctors had varying opinions what was wrong.  2 said it was physical and 1 said it was psychological.

During this extrememly confusing time as to was my erection issue psychological or physical I suddenly thought ''am I gay?'' and was this the reason I coudnt get properly hard.   So age 25 I tested masturating to thoughts of men and thought I didnt get properly hard I got a reaction and freaked out.  That was 2007.  Here I am now with the same issue.

I think my situation is especially confusing because I grew up easily able to get hard thinking of women.  Now I cant get hard thinking of men or women.  I feel dead sexually, Well sort of....

Here's where it gets ultra confusing for me.   I feel dead inside until I suddenly get surprised and see a topless man say flicking through the tv channels.  I then suddenly get this intense groinal response with apprehension feeling like I am getting aroused.  Nothing happens down below.  I stay completely flaccid but for a short period of time it feels like I am super turned on but its terrifying at the same time if that makes sense.  Sometimes it feels like I am sitting on a grape sensation between my legs and near my butt.  .   When this scary experience happens I conclude ''thats it I must be gay'' and then go ''I am going to accept this once and for all and just embrace it'' and go to masturbate about the thoughts that gave me the groinal response but when I do and I try to relax and let it happen I dont get particularly aroused and  definitely wouldnt be hard enough for sex with men.  I then conclude I didnt try hard enough and then maybe look up naked pictures of men or gay sex and masturbate to that to accept who I am and see if I get back my good old erections of my youth but again nothing really happens ad even stroking myself to gay porn I dont find it particularly arousing and takes effort to finish.  I then conclude that maybe I am not gay and masturbate about women but again its not that arousing and the circle continues.

 

The other night I just saw a little bit of Love Island and I saw that they tested women and mens heart rate when looking at other contestants.  Then the thought occurred to me to check with a heart rate app to check my own heart rate to women v men.  When I looked up men I first got 68bpm -70bpm.   When I looked up women I returned to my resting heart rate of about 56bpm.  I then concluded my heart rate increases because I am attracted to men and not women.  Is this physiological proof?

I noticed the worse the groinal the higher my heart rate is.   Now I am having thoughts that the only way to know is to be with a man and my heart rate would sky rocket and pump blood into my penis and then I would get hard like my teenage years.

Or should I be able to get properly hard to images and thoughts of men if I was really gay??

 

I think not having a proper sexual response has really messed my head up for the last 20 years.

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Dave, it’s evident to me that the penile problems are a physical condition resulting from your glandular fever illness.

Your worry about the physical problem turned into OCD when you attributed the flaccidity to intensity of attraction to people (intrusive thought, normal and acceptable), and then started to test and check (the compulsions which have kept your worry alive over 20 years). The more anxious you have become, the more odd sensations that crop up, like the groinals. You need to look at these groinals as intrusive sensations and stop the testing and analysis (both are compulsions) that come afterwards. Even if the groinal is upsetting, or pleasurable, or both, you need to just let it be there and pass you by. Your reaction to the groinals so far has ensured that they keep on intrusively coming.

Edited by Orwell1984
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Thanks Orwell.  I had erectile dysfunction even masturbating from 2001-2007 before I started questioning.  I started questioning my sexuality because I had just seen a doc in April 2007 who said there was no physical problem and thats when I started thinking if its not physical then it muse be some mental thing and then the gay reason came to me and thats when this all started.   I still have the erection problems even masturbating to men to see.   The groinals range from mild to severe in intensity that its so so so so so difficult not to react to or try to explore it.

Do you think the increased heart rate means I am attracted to men?

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