*Real life example*OCD triggered by a newspaper article (TW)

I have just decided to write a piece of an example of P0CD in a real life situation, which I think will help people understand it better.

So there I was, in the morning, with my coffee and toast, reading the morning broadsheet rag, when I came across an article quite out of place amongst articles on Europe, economy news and war and other such benign (or not so much in the case of the last one) stories. Actually it was in a readers comment's section, which was why it seemed quite random.

It was an article about a theatre play (I think? The article isn't too clear) about some near future virtual reality sex simulator for paedophiles:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... victimless

Against my better judgement I read it and was doing okay until I got to the part where it said:

Suited up as avatars, adults role-play paedophilia with an 11-year-old girl – or rather the avatar of an 11-year-old girl – who encourages her “abusers” to finish her off with an axe after sex.

My reaction to reading that was to hurriedly flick the pages over to get as far away from the offending article as possible and then the physical reaction was to get a hot flush and sort of hyper awareness state of whether or not I was getting aroused which seems to involve mentally focusing on my groin area to pick up "signals" of getting an erection. Additionally, it was like I could feel the anxiety flushing through my body.

I wasn't aroused from reading that paragraph but the paranoia of being turned on by something so horrific is still there and every once in awhile reading something unexpected like that causes it. I really wasn't expecting graphic details in that sort of article, more philosophical ideas about the morality of such a technology. After the initial panic that lasted maybe 15 seconds, I finished reading the rest of the article to proof to myself that I wasn't turned on by it.

This is not the first time something like that has happened and won't be the last, but I want to post this here so that people see how annoying OCD can actually be, it is the idea of being aroused by something really, really bad and not being able to help it that seems to be my obsession.

Yet days when I am living a normal life, having day to day interactions with other people I feel like OCD doesn't even exist But OCD makes me more likely to shun interaction because I think "what if I was aroused during such and such an incident" (even though I knew I wasn't) and then "What if they knew I was aroused during such and such an incident".

To summarise, this has happened before, I have got over it and realised how crazy the concept of getting turned on by something like that is and it "proving" me to be a paedophile. The reason I have posted this particular incident is because it happened today and I wanted to give a good example whilst it was still fresh in my memory. Thanks for reading this crazy thread, feel free to give your own examples of similar paranoia

This is the rough part of OCD. Even when you are trying to avoid things that might trigger you (which in itself could become harmful, if taken to the extreme) you can't avoid things you don't know will trigger you.

This has happened to me countless times. I think I am going to lay of my examples, so as not to trigger anyone.

Fair enough, yeah. It annoys me that I have this weakness though. Imagine if I was out in public, my compulsion to do that stuff like quickly turning the pages over all of a sudden. What would people think. How can I overcome this sheer stupidity? They are just words on a page, nothing happened, nothing was real, yet I get a mini panic attack from it.

We are people who have to live normal lives, go to work, do chores around the house, how can we live in constant fear of what might trigger our OCD? And then the rumination afterwards, hours of feeling bad for something or rather, nothing. It is truly a crazy condition. And it is all in my/our heads.

I just wanted to give that example of my insanity when it was fresh in my head. I really do feel like someone who is suffering from insanity sometimes, yet other times I feel so normal. OCD seems to be so inconsistent in how it makes me feel, I just can't seem to get a stable baseline level of normality Perhaps I should make a separate thread for that.

What an absurd idea, the thing actually encourages you to kill & rape it? lol...