/feels/ - Advice & Venting

definitely can relate to all that you listed, i also have OCD and it's so intricately woven in my life it's just a fact i can never get rid of.
it's the first mental health issue i started struggling with and i absolutely hate it

Get on meds. Wish i had sooner

>>99311
Haven't heard of any meds for controlling OCD specifically. I'm already on meds for other mental health issues, so the idea of piling on more pills sounds mega shit /: I also would not touch SSRI's with a 10 foot pole.

My OCD ruins my life every day, and nobody can understand why when I complain about these problems to them.

>worrying about sitting on a toilet seat and water splashing on my ass and dying from a serious infection because of it
>worrying after seeing dog shit on the road and if I want to eat it
>worrying if I want to eat my own shit when I look at it
>worrying if I am into farts when someone farts around me and I try to close my nose hoping I don't inhale it
>worrying if I am into farts because I fart a lot
>worrying if I have throat cancer because I get sick quite often
>worrying if I have autoimmune diseases
>worrying if I inherited AIDS accidentally
>worrying if I accidentally had mixed my blood with someone who has AIDS after taking injections from a nurse at a hospital
>worrying if I'm not heterosexual
>worrying if I were trans
>worrying if I had cancer, all kinds every kind
>worrying if I accidentally killed someone and I don't remember
>worrying if I was molested as a child and I don't remember
>worrying if I was raped by this old bald uncle of mine when I was a child [he's dead now]
>worrying if my dad was gay
>worrying if my dad likes seeing my naked body
>worrying if my dad was into trannies [yeah I know]
>worrying if I was a nudist
>worrying if I was into anal [yuck]
>worrying if I was into scat [gross]
>worrying if I was into armpits [eww]
>worrying if I was into eating ass [disgusting]
>worrying if I were a pervert who can't think about anything else except sex
>worrying if I lost my libido forever
>worrying if I like choking stray cats
>worrying if I want to have sex with stray cats
>worrying if I want to lick some stray dog buttholes
>worrying if I were a pedo
>worrying if I were a threat and a danger to kids around me
>worrying if I had brain tumor
>worrying if the kids near me crapped their pants and are walking around with it
>worrying if the girls near me are wearing diapers and shitting their pants happily
>worrying if the moid before me is an ex-convict
>worrying if I'd get mugged when I go out
>worrying if the first thing I want to do when I get up is masturbate
>worrying if I have sleep apnea
>worrying if I have insomnia
>worrying if the roof will fall on me while I am asleep
>worrying if I'll die of a heart attack
>worrying if I'll get kicked out of the house by my mom
>worrying if my partner would leave me and I'll die
>worrying if I like eating human body parts
>worrying if I want to stab myself with sharp objects around me
>worrying if I want to jump out of the window or off of rooftops
>worrying if I want to press this bright red fire extinguisher button and run away
>worrying if I want to jump in front of a train
>worrying if I want to bang myself till I bleed to death
>worrying if I want to get hit by a car
>worrying about failing exams when I was in school/college
>worrying about getting kicked out of the college for doing something wrong that I'm not aware of
>worrying about sleeping with the teachers
>worrying about getting raped by teachers when alone with them in their room
>worrying about raping those teachers when alone with them in their room
>worrying about people suddenly starting to have public sex in front of me
>worrying about people suddenly removing their pants starting to shit in front of me
>worrying about me suddenly removing their pants and starting to lick their assholes [yes]
>worrying about getting pregnant because I sat in a public toilet and sperm could've traveled from it inside me
>worrying about getting pregnant and birthing a baby out of my asshole instead of a vagina

I still got a lot of my obsessions I could write about, like the times when I were religious and God would judge me for every single thing like killing an ant, but I'll stop here because it's getting bigger. I hate it.

>>99300
I struggled with OCD most of my life, I unfortunately have a sexual form of OCD and have a lot of unwanted obsessions about disgusting sexual acts. Made me crazy for a while and I would force myself to throw to prove I was disgusted at my thoughts and stuff.

Did alot of exposure therapy with someone who specifically worked with people with OCD. It helped so much and I'm at a point where I can easily ignore the thoughts. I sadly see myself do some rituals and obsessive stuff here and there, but it's nowhere near as bad and I know how to manage it now.

>>107394
Nona, can you give me [>>107366] any advise for my sexual obsessions?
Maybe how I could do ERP on myself for this.

I struggle a lot to deal with my groinal, and I experience a lot of intrusive thoughts that I've developed masturbation as a compulsion to make it stop because that seems to be the only thing to create some significant change down there. I'd still continue to check for groinal if I experienced something new but it won't be as anxious as it was before I masturbated.

I'd see something attractive [a half-naked moid for example or sometimes a tomboy, or a girl in bikini] on a magazine on a newspaper, and I'd find myself checking out to see if I get wet when I look at them by touching my crotch [which in turn triggers something in there, I know. I'm stupid]. I know I'm not attracted to them because I can feel that it's different from sexual arousal and I'm not a lesbian but I still check if I am. Then I'd be getting that image as an intrusive thought, and then I'd start to think about similar images that I masturbated to in the past to see if I am aroused to it, and in case of an image of a girl, I'd start to think about situations where I watched lesbian porn [made for male gaze so obviously I am going to be aroused by it] or felt attracted to other girls. Tomboys trigger me the most.
I usually find myself obsessing about this for the whole day if I kept myself from masturbating so I don't know, I think these would come on a 6 or 7 in SUDS scale.
This also happens when I go out and see kids, dogs and cats [they're usually found playing half-naked or completely naked where I live] but I don't masturbate to that thought because it's truly disgusting, so I just masturbate to something safe like vanilla porn to assure myself that I am not a pedo and that I'm not into animals to take care of my anxiety.
Look at how lucid I write about myself, but when overwhelmed with anxiety, I can't really think any of this and the reptilian brain takes over that keeps telling me that that I am a lesbian.

I only recently started to read about ERP and I plan to read a workbook about it but idk if they have anything for something as idiosyncratic as my experience. I tried to find something on youtube but I only got the "education" part of sexual obsessions, but not much on what to do. I wish I knew how to write hierarchies and the things I could do to free myself from this.
I live in a shithole where mental health doesn't exist so all I got for myself is self-help. I can't live like this just avoiding people and going out.
I'd be really grateful if anyone helped me.

>>107401
Thank you very much, nona.

>I know people who go through this can also feel like they're bad people
Yes, and it gets compounded when you are religious and you go to hell for thinking these things, and how people in the past burnt you in a stake for being a witch.

It's so weird, you know. I used to think of myself as some sexual monster that only thinks of herself and would use anything to gratify, including animals but ever since I realized that it's OCD it did feel cathartic, but it never really stopped. I try to think "thoughts are just thoughts" but OCD would go "look at your groin it's getting wet I can feel a slight movement in there this means that it's not OCD but it's what you really want"!
It's so hard. I wish I could play with cats but I have to always deal with knowing that something in me thinks "you want to kiss his balls!". Some kids want to play with me but I have to push them away because it makes me very uncomfortable. I know it's OCD, but I feel very ashamed to even write all these replies in this thread because I know at least a few will judge me for being a compulsive masturbator and having these disgusting thoughts and idk I may even get banned for talking about the p thing.

I really wish I knew how to stop because it's ruining my life and I want to put my mental energy into things that actually matter, lol.

>>107403
>It's the type of thing where you should just be like " oh well I guess I have this now" but if you actively ruminate on it constantly then it can make you feel worse.
Yes, I understand that this accepting uncertainty is the only thing I can do but this doesn't seem to work when I'm extremely anxious. I simply can't think properly. I can do this for something simple like reading a book and worrying that I missed an important detail in the previous paragraph, and say to myself that it doesn't matter but I can't do this for something that shakes the core of my identity like being a lesbian for some reason.
I feel that doing exposure therapy [on myself] can help me reach this state where I am comfortable to accept that I may be a lesbian when looking at tomboys but right now I get extremely anxious and uncomfortable, but I don't know how to.

> Also basically everyone masturbates so don't feel bad about it
Yes but… I do it to check if I'm X and I'm not Y. Everyone else do it because it's normal, and it's a healthy biological urge. I don't know how to explain and I don't want to be graphic about this but I'm not even into it. I don't do it because I want to. I sometimes even develop red rashes because of how often I sometimes do. It's a way to make intrusive thoughts that make my groin move because of blood flow own there to shut up.

>hobbies
Um I like to write stories about vampires living in modern societies. It helps but I don't want to be in distraction mode all the time!

Thanks again. I haven't talked to anyone about this in a long while, and talking about this helps but I'm now worried that I'm just seeking reassurance from you which is supposed to be a bad thing when it comes to OCD and it eventually becomes a compulsion in itself. Apparently, I have to deal with the possibility that I am a sexual predator and not ask people to tell me that I am not one. This is just torture, lol.

>>107398
You can do ERP on yourself, as long as you have coping strategies to help manage the anxiety that comes with the exposure. The thing you mainly have to do is sit with the anxiety and force yourself not to do the ritual associated with the obsession for a certain amount of time. As time goes on, you just add more time to it. So the first day may be 10 seconds and the week after you may go a whole minute or two.

Something I did in therapy was make a list of what were my biggest obsessions, 1 being the easiest thing I could handle thinking and 10 being the worst that I really tried to avoid. Then my therapist had me do exercises like script-writing about me performing the acts, but I wasn't allowed to engage in any rituals. We basically followed the list up from 1 to 10 of the things that triggered me. He also had me do exercises like sit in a room/interact with the trigger, but not allow myself to do the rituals. I'm not going to lie to you, it was kind of torture and it took ALOT of time, but I can actually sit in a room with a kid now and not start crying from how disgusting I am. We also did some other exercises like learning to treat the thoughts as "clouds" or whatever and let them pass. We also did alternative behaviors to help manage my anxiety towards not being able to do my rituals. It was silly sounding at the time, but I really can go a day without having obsessive thoughts now. They still pop up, but I've learned to separate from them. If that makes sense.

>>107407
Can you give me an example of your exposure exercise for sexual obsessions?

I'm trying to think of something that I could do and find information for it online but I'm struggling to.
Say that my obsession is worrying that I'm into dogs. I go out, I see a dog, and my thoughts go "look at that dog's balls". My compulsion is to avoid looking at the dog, but I can't so I end up looking at it. Then I force myself to stop looking at the dog, but the image is burned in my head now. It keeps flashing. Then I start to check my body, like my mouth or nipples and groin and see if anything moves. I'd consider this like maybe 3 or 4 out of 10.
I try to find information on what to do, and I'm supposed to just stare straight at the dog and look at his balls and uh… admire it till I get bored. Okay… but I also worry if I feel any arousal. There's a lot of compulsions going on just for one obsession. What do I do? I guess a therapist's help would really make a lot of difference here.

>I can actually sit in a room with a kid now and not start crying from how disgusting I am.
>They still pop up, but I've learned to separate from them. If that makes sense.
Yes, it does. Especially mindfulness. I can only imagine how much hell you must've been through just to be where you are right now, nona. That's very good.

>>107405
>Well do you think you are lesbian?
No, of course not. If I were a lesbian, my OCD would actually be "what if I was straight and I don't like women?". When I'm calm and I'm not seeing anything triggering, I know what I am. I think it's normal for teens to experiment with their sexuality so it's fine but it never stopped for me. It's annoying actually.
Apt lyrics, triggering song.

I'll give a proper reply later!

>>107408
So one we did was script-writing. It would be about me committing the act and the consequences of it. Another one was writing the thoughts out as a sentence and reading them to myself out loud. While doing those things, I was instructed to not engage in checking or praying or whatever my compulsion was associated with the thought. Another exercise was sitting in the room with a kid and allowing the thoughts and trying not to do any compulsions. If I did a compulsion, I would end the exposure and go do something to calm down then come back and try again. I kept doing it and found that I could do it for more and more time.

>Then I'd be getting that image as an intrusive thought, and then I'd start to think about similar images that I masturbated to in the past to see if I am aroused to it, and in case of an image of a girl, I'd start to think about situations where I watched lesbian porn [made for male gaze so obviously I am going to be aroused by it]
Is it related?

>>107435
This is OP speaking.

Ironically, most of my therapists were extremely dismissive about my OCD and tried to reason with it and show me that my obsessions were unlikely (which, as you know if you have OCD, does not work)
I found that I am my own best ERP therapist. I find that the idle mind is certainly the devil’s playground and that my OCD worsens during periods of social isolation. Even if I do not feel lonely, my brain feels the effects of social isolation, and I need friends to hang out with or else I will lose my shit.

However, I have realized that I cannot be overly reliant on others for the rest of my life and that I will inevitably go through periods of isolation. When that is not an option, when I legitimately do not have anyone to hang out with, I try to imagine what I’d do if my worst intrusive thoughts came true. It can turn into a quite funny story. I discovered this through helping out my friends who also have the “Final Destination Brain”, as I’d like to call it. For example, I imagined what I’d do if I was sick with a certain horrible illness that I believed that I had and would persist my entire life and/or be terminal, and I said that I’d tell the doctor to order me every hard drug in the world that I’d never tried while I watch my favorite movies. If I went to jail for life, I said that I’d find the toughest, buffest prison wife possible.

I still haven’t found some of these solutions for some of my more serious OCD’s, such as me becoming disfigured, crippled, paralyzed, or dying in a freak accident, but I am working on it.

>>107437
What do you mean?
Yes, that's one of my obsessions, Sexual OCD and fear of not knowing if I'm straight. I was just trying to say that lesbian porn made for moid audience is not a good tool to check if I'm not straight.

>>107435
Okay, I guess it's mostly scripts and relaxation. Thanks!

>>107464
>It can turn into a quite funny story.
That sounds like a good idea.

>>107405
>those intrusive thoughts it manifests itself to become bigger you know?
Yes, I know what you mean. It's called the white bear problem.
>Doing it multiple times a day is not good for you and can hurt you lol.
Yes, it used to be quite bad, back when I didn't know it was OCD. I've been trying to distract and self-soothe but it's hard to relax when I'm having a bad day.
>You're not actually aroused if you just think you might be because being aroused would be a bit more intense and not just a little tingle or whatever you think you might have whenever you feel like this.
You're right, nona. There's obvious differences with being aroused and being anxious, but then, reptilian brain. I hate it.
> don't think you're a sexual predator since you seem so worried about the idea of you harming others which is something actual predators don't care about.
Yes, that's right! I don't like having any of these thoughts.
>I love talking to and giving positive words to any of the nonas here who are going through problems :)
CC's guardian angel :P

Yeah. I will say that Prozac helps me, personally. I've been on it for… a year and a half? And my neurotic behaviors have decreased noticeably.
I had a lot of obsessive thoughts/behaviors (I still do, but they are far less pronounced and waste less of my time)
>obsessive counting and checking related to calories and weight and appearance
>washing and rewashing hair
>cleaning - I'm learning to get over stepping on crumbs on the linoleum tile. I still fight the urge to pull out the broom every time I enter the kitchen but I don't automatically start cleaning and create a bigger issue for myself like wasting time or exerting too much energy on repetitious behavior
>fear-based thoughts - is my friend dead? is my mom dad? is my dad dead? is my brother dead? Am I worrying about this because I'm having a premonition about their deaths? I would ruminate for hours.
>unwanted flashes of things I have seen on the internet popping into my head at the worst times
>constant checking of messages - e-mails, texts, IMs, DMs, etc
>exercising - it had to be so many minutes, for so long, I had to break a sweat, it had to be uninterrupted (I couldn't stop and chat with people, stop in the store until it was complete)

In short, a lot of rigid rules that would make me anxious whether I followed them or not. Had a brief mental breakdown and told my psychiatrist, and now a year and a half later, I'm far better off.

I can't daydream anymore, though. I miss being able to dissociate, even if it was clearly maladaptive.

>>107468
OP here again
Nona, how long have you been on Prozac?
I am so glad that it is helping you, but I have heard of it decreasing in efficacy once the “honeymoon phase” (approx. 1yr) fades away.

Does it affect your sex drive, if you don’t mind me asking? You don’t have to answer if that question makes you uncomfortable

I’ve been considering bringing Gabapentin up to my psych doc due to my severe social anxiety and OCD as I not only have a am currently on Wellbutrin for anxiety, depression, and ADHD (works wonders for being more “present” in public settings as it gives you a fairly substantial confidence boost and helps quite a bit with anhedonia but doesn’t do jack shit for anything else and gives you extremely odd side effects especially during the adjustment period), but I also do not wish to keep relying on alcohol and/or other drugs to cure my sociali anxiety. However, I am toooo embarassed of my intrusive thoughts to bring them up to my psych doc and I am afraid that she will say that I am being silly or overdramatic. As a child, a licensed child psychologist did not believe that my issues of my mom dying in a car accident were actually a debilitating condition for me. I’m not sure if she is too OCD-informed, because other docs have been incredibly dismissive of my OCD-related issues in the aforementioned manner in the past. I am also terrified of her believing that I am a drug seeker as I initially came to her office looking for ADHD medicine and I have admitted to using and abusing drugs in the past to my psych. She has not said this yet, however, I feel that bringing up any anxiolytics may raise red flags for her.

Probably rambling at this point, but I definitely need some answers, because I cannot live in fear throughout my entire life. All I am going to ask is this:

So, Nona, do the adverse effects outweigh the benefits or do you find yourself with little to no side effects? Also, how did you initially bring up and address OCD with your psych doc? Is he or she an OCD specialist or a regular psychiatrist?

>>107464
>If I went to jail for life
I just read about fear of going to prison, nona. I'm pasting some exposures below.

>Ask you to write a script about going to jail/prison
>Ask you to watch a video portraying people’s lives in prison
>Ask you to watch interviews or read articles about someone going to jail because of a hit and run accident or child molestation (or whatever potential crime you may be worried about)
>Ask you to write a script about what you did wrong that will land you in prison

>dying in a freak accident
Some exposures for this.
>Therapy begins with exposures that trigger lower levels of anxiety, such as reading statistics of auto accidents and the resulting injuries and deaths. A next step might be watching videos of car accidents with or without injuries resulting. After that, exposures could involve riding in a car with another driver and then, eventually, driving by oneself. Ideally a person would begin with short drives in low-traffic places and would work up to longer drives and driving in congested areas.
Thank god I don't know how to drive.

I wish I could find something for fear of being a [literal] shit-eater.

>>107464
Sadly, there are a lot of therapists who suck and try to use CBT exercises (like challenging the thought or having "evidence" against the thought blah blah blah), but my therapist didn't play into the thoughts. He didn't reassure or validate me nor did he challenge me, he just had me do exercises that exposed me to the thought and instructed me to not engage with compulsions for as long as I could.

Exercises that could help with the other stuff you're talking about might be like reading articles about people that had those life events or writing a script as if that happened to you, or watching a movie that those events happen in then not engaging in your compulsions.

I wish you the best! It is very tough and OCD does feel like hell to go through.

I have been trying out exposures on my own by writing scripts and browsing /d/ and scrolling through um… images that has shit and gas in it for the past days.

I attempted to push and try to convince myself that I do like this shit stuff which only makes me laugh and think about how ridiculous it all is. Looks like I have to truly believe in what I expose and think about for it to work, but I can't. This is too funny and stupid. I felt quite stupid. I couldn't sit with the exposure though I just immediately realized how stupid everything is and closed it. I also can't believe that people are actually into disgusting stuff like soiled diapers and all that.
I tried to read about this, and apparently it's called "flooding" and it's not effective.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flooding_(psychology)
>Flooding is a psychotherapeutic method for overcoming phobias. In order to demonstrate the irrationality of the fear, a psychologist would put a person in a situation where they would face their phobia. Under controlled conditions and using psychologically-proven relaxation techniques, the subject attempts to replace their fear with relaxation. The experience can often be traumatic for a person, but may be necessary if the phobia is causing them significant life disturbances. The advantage to flooding is that it is quick and usually effective. There is, however, a possibility that a fear may spontaneously recur.

I did notice my OCD trying to tell me that I need to keep checking and if one image didn't work, I gotta move to the next image to confirm it, and if that didn't, then the next one. I also kept going back once I stopped experimenting just so I can confirm once more and "put an end". I also noticed that I also wanted to confirm that my "arousal" works only for vanilla stuff. These are actually compulsions, or specifically checking and pure obsession, and its a trap.

>I'm a lesbian
>check out lesbian porn
>it doesn't work
>okay so this means you are straight?
>you should confirm if you are straight
>check out straight porn
>but what if you are BISEXUAL!?
I'm going to try telling myself "maybe I am into shit, maybe I am not", or "maybe I am straight, maybe I am bisexual, maybe I am gay", instead of choosing one, then making the OCD convince me that it's actually the other, and then checking it to confirm. according to a video I watched. I always lose to OCD which will try to convince me that I am wrong if I choose only one. I have to be everything and nothing at the same time.

I just learnt that a lot of basic therapy strategies like helping the patient understand that "thoughts are just thoughts" and to help them understand that the scenarios that they fear have extremely low chances of happening won't work if they have OCD because they'd still go "… but what if?". I need these things because I have BPD as well and I think aggressive and hypersexual thoughts all the time, but OCD will surely sabotage it. These thoughts CAN happen even if it's improbable.

Trying to convince someone pizza is bad because of saturated fats won't really stop them from liking pizza. In the same way, trying to convince someone that the thing they fear won't happen is wrong because these fears do and can happen. It is possible to contract AIDS by accident and it is possible that you accidentally ran over someone and forgot to notice it. CBT fails if it's logical. It has to be repurposed and do something else.

Just spent so long repeatedly opening and closing my bathroom door that one neighbor yelled at me to shut up and another knocked on my front door to ask if I was alright.
It makes people think I'm a fucking lunatic when I do that sort of thing so I have to tamp down on it in public and feel uncomfortable the whole time I'm outside I can only interact with each object once, usually not enough.
Fuck's sake, wish I could phase through walls…

this is really stupid kind of coping mechanism but basically among other things i am constantly worried that i smell horrible and especially my vagina smells to bad that everyone around me can smell it, like if i enter a building the entire space smells like my pussy. i always think that people are commenting on the smell, like they use code language to talk with each other about my horrible smell so i wouldn't realize they are talking to me, for example today i heard someone say sarcastically something about a "lovely spring weather" and i was sure that was a code for my pussy smelling bad but in situation like this i just think "well that's some quality schizo posting!" to myself and i'll realize how ridiculous i am being and can relax and laugh at myself

I've accepted that perhaps the intrusive thoughts really were right after all… and that being the case, as long as I'm too afraid to rope, there's no cure for me except refusing to act on it.