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Not sure if i should pursue these thoughts


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Hi all.
Yesterday something happended that has caused me to have a new ocd like obsessive thought pattern.

We have 2 cats 1 male and one female.

I remembered yesterday that sometimes in the past i would rub the males cat his belly because he has a nice soft fur. But while doin so i knew that is genitalia were somewehere beneath, and i still chose for it to rub his 'whole' belly, so i guess that included is genitalia aswell. i remeber i was fully aware of that but i did not mind possible touching it while rubbing his belly.

I now dont clearly remember if there may have been more to just rubbing or maybe having sexual reasons for doing so.

I keep repeating those moments in my head, trying to reenact those situations and feel if i might get sexual aroused by it. 

So it all comes down to this. I will never know if i might have had slight sexual motives for doing it, so how do i accept that that might be true?


Also another thing happened yesterday (wich caused this whole obsessive thought cycle). i was sitting on the couch and the cat sat on my lap. i was watching in my phone and i scrolled trough instagram, i saw some good looking woman and i looked at some of those pictures, at some moment i could feel myself having a groinal response to those pictures like i was slightly getting a erection. but while this was happening the cat sat on my lap. and i know i was thinking 'should i remove the cat from my lap? this seems weird right ?' but i did not immediatly do so, i kept on looking at some pictures of woman that turned me on, and at some point when my groinal response became to obvious i did remove the cat because it just did not feel right.

What does it mean that i did not immediatly remove the cat from my lap? 

 

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It means nothing if you give it no meaning. Your mind is trying to connect two normal events. That's what OCD does. You can choose to believe it's true or that it's all hogwash.

In this context, looking for mesning is a compulsion.

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22 minutes ago, PolarBear said:

It means nothing if you give it no meaning. Your mind is trying to connect two normal events. That's what OCD does. You can choose to believe it's true or that it's all hogwash.

In this context, looking for mesning is a compulsion.

I get what you're saying but what if at the time some part in my mind also did it on purpose out of curiosity? 

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42 minutes ago, PolarBear said:

Again, you are trying to link two separate things. You're going to sit there and ruminate over this, trying to figure it out,  and for what?

Leave it alone. Let it go. It's just not worth it.

But I know for a fact that at the moment it happened I was aware of it and even felt it might be not appropriate. But I just kept rubbing his belly. And I even entertained it I guess. 

By saying to myself I should not connect these 2 things I feel like I'm denying the fact that somehow I had some curiosity as well? 

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Look, I've seen these types of things before. They never end well. You are on the precipice of falling into the OCD rabbit hole where rumination rules.

I'm telling you this is nothing to worry about, nothing to think about. More attention to this now will only lead to future grief.

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1 hour ago, PolarBear said:

Look, I've seen these types of things before. They never end well. You are on the precipice of falling into the OCD rabbit hole where rumination rules.

I'm telling you this is nothing to worry about, nothing to think about. More attention to this now will only lead to future grief.

So. No matter what the real truth is. It should be left alone and not given any attention? 

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Listen. You have OCD. You have an urge to discover the truth, to be sure, to be certain. 

OCD won't let you. It doesn't matter how much ruminating you do. You can think and think about this 12 hours a day and it won't change the fact that you will not find a definitive answer. OCD never works that way. 

I don't care about what you were doing. I don't care about you getting excited. I don't care about your cat. I do care about your mental health. For the sake of your mental health, wash your hands of this. Leave it alone. Refuse to get into the mind trap of rumination. 

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Just adding onto this as someone really struggling with rumination at the moment, what PolarBear is saying is correct. The more you seek an answer, the more questions will pop into your head. That's because your OCD will always throw in "what if?" or "yeah but!" or something similar. It never ends. The problem with rumination is that something niggling in your head, that need to engage in the questions and thoughts in your head. I know how difficult it is not to engage but it's the best way to stop, it's worked for me with my other theme's, I just need to repeat it on my current one, unfortunately, it takes persistence. 

 

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On 07/11/2020 at 18:25, PolarBear said:

Listen. You have OCD. You have an urge to discover the truth, to be sure, to be certain. 

OCD won't let you. It doesn't matter how much ruminating you do. You can think and think about this 12 hours a day and it won't change the fact that you will not find a definitive answer. OCD never works that way. 

I don't care about what you were doing. I don't care about you getting excited. I don't care about your cat. I do care about your mental health. For the sake of your mental health, wash your hands of this. Leave it alone. Refuse to get into the mind trap of rumination. 

 

On 07/11/2020 at 20:35, Symps07 said:

Just adding onto this as someone really struggling with rumination at the moment, what PolarBear is saying is correct. The more you seek an answer, the more questions will pop into your head. That's because your OCD will always throw in "what if?" or "yeah but!" or something similar. It never ends. The problem with rumination is that something niggling in your head, that need to engage in the questions and thoughts in your head. I know how difficult it is not to engage but it's the best way to stop, it's worked for me with my other theme's, I just need to repeat it on my current one, unfortunately, it takes persistence. 

 

In everything I do now I constantly get the thought; You have done something (multiple tims) with (partly) an inappropriate intention.

 

I really try to ignore this, but this is so difficult mainly because it is about something that "really" happened. Normally it is much easier for me to ignore OCD topics because they haven't really happened yet.

 

I constantly wonder about the things I've done in the past; am i allowed to still enjoy things? Can I still be part of this society? Do I deserve to still be happy?

 

On the other hand, I also know that if I hadn't had OCD I probably wouldn't have bothered about this at all. However, it seems like my OCD is acting as some sort of moral compass.

 

I don't know what to do in this situation. I am 100% sure that now and probably I have never felt anything sexual towards animals / cats. But it cannot be ruled out that at that moment I also stroked his stomach out of curiosity.

 

I felt my intention was 90/10     90 = for the warm soft coat & 10 = because I found it funny / curious that it also included his genitals?

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Hi Ironborn,

Ok, so trying not to think about it is actually making you think about it, right?

As PolarBear says, these thoughts only mean something because you have attached a meaning to them rather than ‘just letting them float in and out of your mind’. 
 

In my experience, we attach meaning to thoughts that seem important to us, and what ocd does then is try to tell us that what we think/ what the meaning is etc must be ‘wrong’ or make us bad people etc... and cause a great deal of distress and anxiety :(

So, what to do about it?

Well, trying not to think about something never works... and is in fact probably a compulsion & therefore something to try to resist doing. 
 

Have you heard of the pink elephant exercise? Try not to think of a pink elephant... no, really try very hard not to think of that pink elephant, are you thinking of a pink elephant? Basically, I bet that the more you try not to think of a pink elephant the more it pops up? Well, ocd is the same.

In the scenario you described in your post, can you identify what the obsession(s) is/are? And then what the associated compulsions are?

Remember an obsession is an intrusive, unwanted thought, image, feeling, doubt, urge etc that causes you anxiety or distress. 
 

Once you have identified obsessions and compulsions, we could create an ERP exercise to try, if you like?

catherine 

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