Extreme insomnia, health OCD, real events

I've had a problem with sex for years now. I've been addicted to pornography and masturbating and I'm very ashamed and guilty of it. Even still, I end up relapsing and thinking of sexual topics with and without intrusive thoughts. I just can't seem to help it and I don't know what to do.

I also have a very very bad time with sleep. It feels like a challenge every night. There's been nights where I've relapsed on porn and masturbation and couldn't sleep for a couple days. At the very worst, it was an escalation relapse and I'll feel extremely guilty and disgusted of myself.

A couple of months ago something similar happened when I was masturbating. I got bored of how I usually do it, I got carried away, and impulsively masturbated by rubbing against a filthy wall and to this day I regret it so much. It haunts me that my impulses took me to a place like that and I hate that it happened. I've never done something like that before but I've escalated in other ways with porn on several occasions. It didn't even feel like this is really me when having this addictive problem at times.


There's even times where I know relapsing will make things way worse than they already are and I'll still get temptations to do so anyway. I hate this so much.

This awful, impulsive act has lead me to be so fearful of my health. Scared of what will happen in the future every single day. When it happened, I ended up feeling a lot worse than I am now and I saw some very unsettling symptoms that thankfully went away. Still though, I'm worried that I contracted some kind of STI or disease by what I've done and I can't shake the feeling that my intrusive thoughts may be right and that I'll die from an illness unexpectedly.

I went to get this checked out more then once and I was told that it wasn't a UTI somehow, so I must be fine. I just don't know. I want to stop worrying about this and somehow be kind to myself and not let my addiction get to me. But I just can't help but feel so disgusted by the things I've watched, the things I've escalated to, and the thoughts I have about all of this. I hate that with all this regret, I still get urges and I'm still bothers by thoughts telling me to do it all over again.

I'm getting so many intrusive thoughts about my health the second any physical sensation crosses my mind. I get intrusive thoughts about my reproductive health, my respiratory health, my mind, and it never seems to end.

I just wish I could go back and prevent the day I was ever exposed to porn. I wish I could just somehow stop it but I can't. This might bothers me forever. I don't know.

guiltshameregret wrote:A couple of months ago something similar happened when I was masturbating. I got bored of how I usually do it, I got carried away, and impulsively masturbated by rubbing against a filthy wall and to this day I regret it so much. It haunts me that my impulses took me to a place like that and I hate that it happened. I've never done something like that before but I've escalated in other ways with porn on several occasions. It didn't even feel like this is really me when having this addictive problem at times.

Not at all trying to diminish the problem you're having with porn, but for real, you're being harsh on yourself. I can't even remember all the ways I've masturbated, seriously some of this is just being a dude. I'm pretty sure I've stuck Little Snaga in all sorts of places and up against all sorts of things and in plenty of places I shouldn't have played with myself in. And not just as a teen but well up into adulthood until you just get so old it's like 'this is too much like work'. Really, I get the porn addiction and not to say it's nothing, because it certainly is something, but some of this is just being a guy. Because if you have a penis, you're going to see how many ways you can mess with it, it's just part of having a Y chromosome. I have no facts to back that up with, but I dare someone to honestly prove me wrong. I have a penis, I'm going to see how many ways I can have fun with it. You feel as if you're alone in this, but you are so not alone, trust me. I think the porn and isolating ourselves from interactions with other people exacerbate things like your wall episode, but seriously, you're too hard on yourself.

I understand that OCD makes everything seem as if it were insurmountable, but some of this stuff it's really not worth the self-torture you're inflicting on yourself. We'll focus so hard on self-horror and regret that we make no traction at all. After a point, it becomes very unhelpful to us to get this extreme with how we feel about ourselves.

Maybe you're right. Maybe OCD is just making this much harder than it actually is. This has happened before but not to the extent of this. It's hard to hold boundaries on what I want out of this sometimes but I do know that porn is only going to make my mental health worse.

I think this gave me some sort of infection that I need to check out. I just wish I could stop being hard on myself for it over and over again.

I don't know if I'll keep this thinking for long term but I think the reason why I did this and I'm coming to terms with it now is that I wanted something different. I wanted to try a different way of going about this and that's what I chose. It wasn't a really good move and I regret it but that's what I chose in the moment. I've read in many other replies people have posted elsewhere about this topic and it makes me feel less alone at least. Just hope I can get it checked and treated