Am i the first person who acted on my intrusive thoughts?

Well, I have had pleasurable groinal sensations by the oddest of things that I can only assume are because of spiking anxiety. I used to work with a machine that could mess you up pretty bad if you had your hand in the wrong place at the wrong time, and sometimes you had to have your hand there unless you wanted a disaster to happen, and I found out quite by accident that the moment I knew I must pull my hand back, I'd get a tingly feeling between my legs that wasn't unpleasant. Of course, I was intrigued and tested that, finding out I could consistently feel that sensation at will, by putting myself in that momentarily tense (and hand-threatening) situation. Not that I did it for the feels, far from it, but after years of moderating this forum & seeing people alternately question and assert that anxiety spikes can cause groinal sensations, well I was in fact rather gratified to experience it for myself, verify that it was real, and be able to reproduce the effect on demand, proving it wasn't coincidence or a one-off thing. As well as conclusively proving that it can be an anxiety that has absolutely nothing to do with sex. The thought of a broken or maimed hand is 100% not on my sex gratification radar, yet I got groinal sensations from an intense, compressed moment of time in which something bad could happen to me. Which had in fact previously had happened and I don't know how I didn't break my hand. After that, I began to notice the groinal sensation.

So yes, anxiety can cause pleasurable sensations in the nether regions and have zero connection to sexual desires. Been there done it and found I could call up that sensation every single time I placed myself in that anxious situation. I don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised if it has something to do with fight-or-flight instinct.

For me, a lot of the time OCD style intrusive thoughts are best gotten rid of by learning to not let them scare or worry you. I have harm OCD and I eventually learned to disregard my intrusive harm thoughts. That greatly decreased the frequency and intensity of my fears of harming others. When an intrusive harm thought pops into my head, I know I have to ignore it and take the attitude that I don't care about the thought. I call it deferring anxiety. I'll worry about the bad thing after I have done the bad thing, and not before.

I know it's harder when sexual sensations or sexual desires are involved. Sexually-intertwined OCD style fears are some of the hardest to rid oneself of, but OCD is OCD and what works in one OCD theme should work in others. Well a good example would be POCD. I've never allowed myself to worry that I will molest a child, even though I know my OCD would jump on that like a starving wolf if I gave it half a chance to do so. I very carefully keep myself from beginning to ruminate on such things and I make myself not worry about it, or overthink every time I affectionately touch a child- because by the time you let OCD get through with you, everything would be a 'bad touch'. Well, they're not, I'm not a pedo, and so I refuse by choice to entertain the notion that I'm a pervert.

Such things take practice and are very hard to get started, but once you keep at it, eventually you realise that what you obsess and worry over doesn't have the same hold on you as it did before. From my point of view, a person has to out-stubborn their OCD.

At this risk of temporary confusion, I've merged these two topics, since they're pretty much both focused on the same thing I think- forum rules prefer not having multiple threads concerning the same topic running concurrently.

I think it'll straighten itself out as the combined thread continues on and it's much better to not be trying to keep up with two concurrently running but related conversations, I don't think there's enough differentiation between them to justify a separate topic.

Now then-

lesshopesishopeless wrote:nd yes, I suffer from incest ocd.

I assumed as much, from the 'other' thread I had just responded to.

I think if you were truly incestuous, you wouldn't be having this anxiety. I mean, you might have general anxiety because you didn't want to have incestuous thoughts, but that's not the same thing. I'm Bisexual. I've had OCD style overthinking and ruminating and hand-wringing over my sexuality because I don't want to be Bi, but I am Bi, and it's never been something over which I am even capable of feeling existential dread. Quite the opposite, while I hate my sexuality, at the same time I would be horrified at the idea of being forcibly made Straight.

If you were just questioning, you wouldn't post in OCD. That we're here, speaks more of this is a thing that appears to grip you in an unreasonable fear. When it wouldn't really be the end of the world if you had an incestuous desire. We all have all sorts of unrealised desires that we know are best never acted out. And I've already spoken of cultivating an 'I don't care' attitude when it comes to the fear of being or wanting or doing something that you think or know is wrong. This only has power over you as long as you let it strike fear into your heart. On the one hand, I dislike when people say you have to embrace the feared thing. I'm not going to embrace my intrusive harm thoughts! But I do have to learn to not care about them and have a 'so what?' attitude when it comes to the idea that I'd ever act on them. I'll worry about acting on intrusive thoughts, when I've acted on them. Until then, thoughts are only thoughts.