Anxiety/arousal/masturbation/orgasm

hyphybum2014 wrote:Final question: I lost my ability to tell who is a minor and who is an adult. .

You're not alone in this. Sometimes I'll meet someone and they will have a son or daughter and I'll think they are 19 or something, but they turn out to be 14. Huh?

You're OCD has nothing to do with that. HOWEVER, your fear and pain (anxiety) about it, has everything to do with OCD.

Good news on the porn thing. Don't get down on yourself if you find it difficult to do. But do you best.

So that has nothing to do with being a pedophile? It's just that it has been happening a lot to me, especially when I was checking for reassurance. Everyone looks so damn old and I can't tell who is a minor and who's an adult. It feels like I lost my attraction to adults my age which is very strange because I used to like people older than me. But this is my crux right now. I can't shake it. I think my brain is tricking me. For instance, I have to check peoples ages and measure the level of attractiveness. When I find out they are minors, it scares the $#%^ out of me because they don't look like they are. I never find any relief. I want this gone so bad. I never had to do this. I was happy. Its horrible.

hyphybum2014 wrote:So that has nothing to do with being a pedophile? It's just that it has been happening a lot to me, especially when I was checking for reassurance. Everyone looks so damn old and I can't tell who is a minor and who's an adult. It feels like I lost my attraction to adults my age which is very strange because I used to like people older than me. But this is my crux right now. I can't shake it. I think my brain is tricking me. For instance, I have to check peoples ages and measure the level of attractiveness. When I find out they are minors, it scares the $#%^ out of me because they don't look like they are. I never find any relief. I want this gone so bad. I never had to do this. I was happy. Its horrible.

bolded = VERY typical of OCD.

STOP CHECKING! Almost all people with this kind of OCD check. And it makes things much worse.

Losing attraction could be anything. Anxiety affects our body. Changes in sexual feelings, desires, bodily responses, etc are common. But most of the time they are misinterpreted as being a signal something is wrong.

Try not to make things worse ofr yourself as you wait to get support. Don't check.

good luck,

Otter.

These last few days have been challenging. Trying to lower anxiety, but I still worry that any attractive person I see is a minor or younger than me. I worry that it means I'm a pedophile. I have to know how old they are. They all have one thing in common. I see adult complexions. I don't know why I do this, but now I realize that its ocd. This is just so horrible. Its like I lost all my confidence. Never hit such a low in my life. I managed to apply for a job in a bank. I survived my final year of college with severe anxiety and depression. I passed. Does that mean I'm strong?

Having to do anything in the real world with added weight of mental illness is hard for most people who don't suffer, to understand.

Yeah, good job on the college front - not easy with depression and severe anxiety - some can't manage it at all.

Let that be an indication of what you can achieve. But I'm sorry about the recent problems. Work it through, find a way to not get involved in a destructive loop (thoughts). Try not to check.

Otter.

Some days are better than others. So far, I am making every effort to stay away from anything that may cause me anxiety. Its hard, but I'm trying. Also, making a huge effort in staying away from porn. My goal is to completely eliminate my computer use. I will try to spend as much time outside as possible and relax. OCD has completely taken over my life and its time to do something about it.

I don't need porn, psychforums fills that role for me.

I have just had a MAJOR 0CD relapse myself actually. But anyway in relation to your thread, let me paraphrase how I felt a few years ago when my 0CD took on the "P" variant:

I went through a very existential crisis when my P0CD started that caused me to really consider what I found attractive. Like what if a 12 year old looks like a 22 year old? Or vice versa? What am I actually attracted to? Could I be aroused by somebody who is 12 for instance? What if a woman was 22 but her face looked 12? Would that make me a paedophile?

What if a 16 year old looked like a 12 year old? When those girls walked pasted was I turned on? If most of them were teenagers that would be okay, but what if a couple of them were 11 or 12!? Then what? Which ones would have been the cause of me getting turned on? What if I was lying to myself about what really happened?

Etc, etc, ad infinitum. All of these paranoid scenarios running through my head over and over and over. The anxiety levels were off the scale, back then I didn't even know it was 0CD, I felt like I could finally understand why people considered suicide an option when your own head can create such an utter hell for you.

Really what you need to do first of all is stop panicking, then you need to gradually reduce your levels of "giving a ###$" Resist the compulsions; easier said than done I know, I often find that a compulsion will burn itself out after 3 or 4 days, but resisting it in the first place is definitely the better thing to do.

And distance yourself from the intrusive thoughts, when I thought pops up throw an "that's 0CD" sticker on it (or some other catchphrase of your choice) and move on. That will distance yourself from the thoughts and reduce the anxiety and guilt you feel from having them. The last few months before my latest incident I was feeling so much better about everything and my intrusive thoughts had really taken a back seat.

Like Otter said, don't try to think of it in terms of something being reversed or cured, just focus on living your life and don't dwell on things that have happened, instead, next time you feel a classic "0CD scenario" is going to crop up, practice "nipping it in the bud" until most of the time you will be able to squash it before it becomes a full blown "incident" (like I have just had, even as an experienced veteran of fighting 0CD).

Hope that helps and be sure to do your own research such as Googling "0CD coping strategies" or other such things.

Thank you for your post ParanoidMan. You really hit the nail in the head when you described your crisis and thought patterns about attraction and the constant questioning. That's exactly what I am going through. That's exactly how my thought patterns started. That's what I constantly worry about. It has caused me a lot of pain and I lost my job because of this ###$ situation. I'll try to explain my thought pattern: Any time I come across a teen, something attracts me to the teen. I feel anxiety and ask how old are they? What attracted me to this person? Why is this happening to me? Then I start questioning whether I am attracted to them. What attracted me to this teen? Am I attracted? Is this attraction? Does this mean I'm a pedophile? After that, I feel anxious still and then I try to forget about it. I feel sick at this point. Its so hard living with this $#%^. It happens a lot. I try hard to try to understand why this happens to me. This never used to happen. It feels like I lost my attraction to adults?

I will do what you say and start looking for ocd coping strategies. I will do my best to relax and stop giving a $#%^.

You'll likely find that this is one "incident" you'll get over it and then you'll have another incident and the previous incident will feel very benign. OCD seems all about the current moment, when I have an incident it feels like it is the worst thing in the world at the time, nothing that has come previously seems to match it for intensity and misery.

Not trying to scare you, just telling you my experience. That really sucks that you lost your job. I have only ever been able to find part time work so I don't know how I would cope working full time with 0CD, it would feel like hell sometimes. Also that reminds me of another thing, 0CD can make you feel hella' lonely sometimes. You just can't explain that $#%^ to anyone, I know the feeling.