Story Pretty Sure I have OCD.

[UnnervedCompany]

Disclaimer this is going to have lots of sensitive writing regarding Sexual Assault. If that triggers you I recommend you not to read it.


My sibling has diagnosed OCD. He suffered a lot due to it and attempted CTB because of it. He is still not fully cured of it but he told me he gotten better. I randomly one day had an intrusive thought regarding raping a random female women I saw in a laundry room. At first I thought that was weird but the intrusive thought would not go away at all. The intrusive thought made even less sense because I am gay and I know I am, I never had a single attraction to a female in my life. The intrusive thought spiraled to absolute chaos going from just I could rape that woman to my whole life is a lie, my whole orientation is a lie, I cannot be near any of my friends (cause they are all female). I slept after a while of panic that but the intrusive thoughts would not budge at all. It went from I could rape that one woman to I am going to rape every female in the world. I feel uncomfortable all the time I downloaded Grindr and tried to hookup with random men (I met too many creeps in that app so I deleted it before I did anything) to try to prove myself the OCD is wrong. I called my brother and explained to him my entire situation and he agreed to me that everything I am going through is pretty much what he went through or is going through. He explained to me the day he tried to CTB was because he had an intrusive thought regarding hurting one of our family members. Ever sense that one thought came into my life my whole existence has been hell. I have started SH because doing that is better than actually fighting my random thoughts. OCD also seems uncurable fully from what I research and I am terrified. Do I have to CTB now? I do not want to suffer so much. I am falling behind heavily in my work and everything. Every day I am spending hours on hours fighting thoughts, SH, researching my thoughts are wrong. I am not diagnosed with OCD I have not met a professional yet.

If anyone who is struggling with OCD can you tell me if you have similar issues or do I have something else.

 

[StrawberryRed]

I'm not diagnosed with OCD but I've been worrying about having it too. I have been dealing with similar symptoms though mine come in waves of intensity. The last time I had a really bad episode was over the summer. I was at a museum and saw a child and thought she had a cute hairstyle. This spiralled into a 2 week long fixation that I must be a pedophile. I had breakdown over this, it was literally all I thought about. I wanted to be pediatrician and this episode made me change that dream. I was extremely suicidal, if it continued even a week longer I'm sure I would've killed myself. Any means possible, I was that desperate for the thoughts to end. For months afterward I couldn't even be I the same room as child, my brain would tell me I deserved death. Honestly if its not OCD I dont know what else it could possibly be. You do not have to kys becaus you have OCD, it is a manageable condition. People I know personally have gotten better with medication. I can understand how painful it is, if I had full intensity 24/7 I would want to die too. But its definitely not even close to the only option. I hope u can find a better answer that this, and that u find help. There is definitely more out there than you think.

 

[KlMeNw]

What you guys ate experiencing is not the traditional OCD most people are familiar with. It is a form called Pure O-OCD. The O in OCD stands for obsessive, so you obsesse purely on intrusive thoughts. Whereas you lack the C or compulsive part of OCD, which is the part that makes you flip light switches on and off 20 times before a relative dies, or something like that.

 

[UnnervedCompany]

What you guys ate experiencing is not the traditional OCD most people are familiar with. It is a form called Pure O-OCD. The O in OCD stands for obsessive, so you obsesse purely on intrusive thoughts. Whereas you lack the C or compulsive part of OCD, which is the part that makes you flip light switches on and off 20 times before a relative dies, or something like that.

I do have compulsions but they aren't like flipping switches or washing my hands a lot. My compulsions are specific to me and they are listening to one of two songs on repeat over and over, watching a Chrissie Hodges video and taking to ChatGPT always in that order. They are weird compulsions but I cannot function without doing these things when I get an intrusive thought. You might not think they are compulsions but to me they feel like they are. If don't do these things every single time I get an intrusive thought I believe the worst thing that can happen will happen and I don't even know why.

 

[SteamaHorns]

I've suffered from this kind of OCD since childhood. The kinds of thoughts and behavior that you've mentioned seem familiar to the things I would do a lot before, though as the one above me has stated, I'm not totally sure if you're actually repeating a specific ritual to relieve those thoughts, because you probably haven't stated every detail for various reasons. It's possible that you going on Grindr and/or utilizing self-harm could have something to do with a ritual you were using, but that's something only you could actually know at the moment. With these things said, please try not to self-diagnose too seriously.

I can only really offer a few advices. One is to understand where the thought came from, and why. Once you understand those things about the kind of obsessive thoughts that you're experiencing, then it becomes easier to convince yourself that the "OCD is wrong," through a list of logical reasons explaining why you've fooled yourself into "believing your OCD." It's possible that the thoughts themselves are misrepresenting the feeling, sensation, or whatever that triggered them in the first place, and I personally have found it easy to figure out the reasonings of them, once I decided to think about why I was suffering from certain OCD thoughts that I've suffered from. Though, this would only work if your thoughts are actually wrong. This leads to the second method that's worked somewhat for me; simply accepting that it's a part of you. What's helped me is realizing that even if I really do have certain kinds of desires that it doesn't mean that I have to act on them. Why? Because I, like everyone else, am a collection of various different desires, each of varying intensities. Even if some portion of you, whether large or small, desired a specific thing, it doesn't necessarily mean that you overall, considering all of your desires, would actually want to live in the reality of which it would bring. The thoughts may always linger and bother, but it's possible to become jaded and used to them.

Another thing that I'd like to mention is that after I decided to accept that I had certain kinds of thoughts, like the ones you've had, and really might have those kinds of desires; I was able to more clearly think about them, which is what really allowed me to convince myself that I didn't actually have those desires. I was so caught up in my fear of the possibility of my OCD thoughts being true that I could never truly know because there would always be the idea in the back of my mind knowing telling me that I was simply lying to myself for another day. But when you accept that the OCD thoughts may be true, then you'll really be able to determine if it's true or not, and if they are; then understand that there's a reason why you haven't acted upon them.

With all of that said, you'll still have these kinds of thoughts bothering you, probably everyday. You'll still have to fall back to whatever ritual you've come up with to relieve and help convince yourself that the thoughts aren't true but I've personally found that these methods to be more helpful than any other. Although they never truly get rid of the thoughts, they help make the rituals go by faster, and if you're really doing well, then you'll end up finding yourself being able to skip one or even a couple steps in the ritual that you'd seemingly always have to go through without failing. I can't guarantee that these methods will help you, but can say that they have for me, to a degree. I'm sorry if it doesn't, or if it worsens your experience with whatever you're dealing with, but I wish the best for you.

Oh yeah, and therapy helped me a lot for some of my thoughts, so there's that.

 

[bananaolympus]

I attempted suicide by jumping mainly because i had severe ocd pure ocd like many have said it was more of mental rituals rather than physical the interesting thing is that i don't know if it was the trauma or hard drugs cocktails they put me in the icu, reduced my ocd by 90-95% i no longer have rituals my ocd used to take several hours of my time daily now like 1-2 minutes basically cured

 

[UnnervedCompany]

Another thing that I'd like to mention is that after I decided to accept that I had certain kinds of thoughts, like the ones you've had, and really might have those kinds of desires; I was able to more clearly think about them, which is what really allowed me to convince myself that I didn't actually have those desires.

That is the major advice professionals give regarding OCD but I absolutely refuse these thoughts. I don't want to accept the fact that I probably want to rape my friends. It seems like such asinine advice.

Also I understand self diagnoses are cringe and but it feels like every article and video is telling me I do have OCD. I spend hours every single day reading every article I can find and watching so many videos regarding OCD. Idk if that counts as rituals or compulsions or they are just me being terrified I am actually a monster. If I don't have OCD I am so scared that these intrusive thoughts are real and I actually want to hurt people and my identity is a lie.

 

[lavenderlilylies]

The compulsions and thoughts you describe look very much like OCD to me. If you can get any kind of help, please do it as soon as possible. Yeah OCD isn't curable but it becomes much worse the longer it's untreated. Since your sibling is diagnosed there's a greater likelihood you have it too since it can be genetic. I'd say if you're not planning to ctb soon anyway, it's not worth it losing your quality of life to such an ugly disorder.

I don't have OCD but i get intrusive thoughts periodically, I'm so repulsed by mine that i can't talk about them even anonymously. The fact that you're horrified of these thoughts is proof enough that they aren't your own. They're your worst fears, something you would never do, that's why they have such a negative impact on you.