POCD?: Is this just intrusive thoughts or was I about to do it

[GoofyGoblin]

I’m 19. Basically, me and this one person were sexting and sending each other nudes. And so we were gonna face cam together today but they weren’t up for it which was fine by me. But before that I thought of where should I well “wank my jank” in. There was a carpenter upstairs in our in my parents room which is next to my room. So then I thought of me doing it in the bathroom downstairs. And then I was just thinking about it, like being in there and doing it.” I think that was me genuinely thinking about it and planning on doing it. But then I snapped out of it and got reminded of what happened in the zoo. People keep saying “oh it’s just intrusive thoughts””you didn’t act on it so it’s fine”. I don’t fucking know at this point. I’ve written this about a thousand times and each thing is different from the last.But I think I may know what happened. Like I said this was around the time I was very compulsive and acting on my urges. Some impulses I had were patting my sisters head, holding my dog in front of my crotch, standing close behind my sister because I got the urge to “move your crotch closer and stand behind her”, hug your brother, tap your sisters knee, hug your dog and put your crotch closer to her but don’t press your crotch on her, “while your dog is on the toilet move forward to move your crotch closer to his face”.

Before I would act on these impulses I would think “would this count as sexual assault?”. With some of them I would think “NOOO STOP” and tried to resist the urge to. Now cut back to the zoo. Like I said I was at the zoo and we were looking at pandas and my sister was standing in front of me. She had a small backpack on her. And so when I looked I thought and got the urge to “press my dick on her back pack”. Like I said before this is vent I was acting on my urges and then seeing if whether or not if I should act on them if they counted as sexual assault. Back to the zoo, when I got that thought I didn’t rebel or anything. I think it was a genuine thought, cuz afterwards I thought “would it count as sexual assault”. I was thinking if I should do it if it counted as sexual assault. But then later (this is the part I don’t remember as much) I thought about it and looked at my sisters backpack. I stood there I guess visualizing it and just thinking about doing it. Kinda like how I was genuinely thinking about “wanking my jank” in the bathroom downstairs. Then when my mom called my sister i snapped out of it and I freaked out. I was worrying if I “I was thinking about doing it”. Then it developed to a worry of “was I planning on doing it?”. And then finally I came to the conclusion “I was almost about to do it wasn’t I?”.

I felt like such shit cuz I was worrying if I would ever sexually assault her, or was attracted to her. But now I think I was about to do it. I mean it make sense that this would be a genuine thought. Why else would I worry about it so much. I would’ve known if it was an intrusive thought or not. It wasn’t just a small intrusive thought passing by or just a thought there that you tried to ignore but you still thought about. No. I am fucking disgusting and I don’t know what to do at this point. What the fuck am I gonna tell my mom “Hey ma! I’m afraid I was thinking about or was about to sexually assault my sister!”. I hate to say it but I think that’s the truth. If that was such a minor of a intrusive thought I would’ve known. It’s not it’s not. I’ve tried to ask people and all they say is how repulsed they were in the moment and how it “goes against their values”. Well that wasn’t the case. Cuz I thought about it and I wasn’t disgusted at the moment and I fucking thought about it.

[Baker202]

hi there! I also struggle with POCD. I can tell you one of the things that really gets my anxiety going is when I start comparing my reactions to something with another person’s reactions. For example, watching a documentary about child abuse might make me a little bit uncomfortable but my mom will act completely disgusted. I would then get intrusive thoughts that something must be wrong with me if I’m not having that strong of a reaction, part of me must like it. I’ve spent a lot of time talking about this in therapy recently. And have come to the conclusion that we all just have different thresholds for things. I am able to put a wall up to protect myself from feeling so effected by something like hearing about child abuse and that can actually be a strength. Bottom line, the biggest thing I’ve learned in my OCD journey is that thoughts are just thoughts. We don’t have to assign them meaning. We can have any thought in the world and that doesn’t mean you want to do that thing or you like it. The whole point of OCD is that you have that thought and you’re scared of it, or you spend time doubting if it’s true about you or not (sounds like what you’re doing now). The other thing I’d like to mention is that one type of compulsion is testing. This is where you get an intrusive thought and because we want certainty about it so badly, we actually might engage in a behavior close to that thought so that we can check our own reaction, “did I get aroused?” And try to prove our intrusive thought wrong. Of course, while this might explain behavior we also want to make sure our compulsions aren’t hurting others so this is definitely something that is helpful to talk to a therapist about. I do want to acknowledge directly that from what you’ve described, it doesn’t sound like you’re hurting anyone, you’re just really scared about that being a possibility. Maybe you could ask your mom for help finding a therapist, you don’t always have to tell her the specifics of why you want one right away.

[GoofyGoblin in reply to Baker202]

Im just really scared. Im worried I was about to do it. I wanna die cuz of that

[Baker202 in reply to GoofyGoblin]

OCD can be so scary and it tries to make you believe horrible things about yourself. But it is temporary and you can get through it! You absolutely deserve to be here and to live. Often times OCD goes after what you value most and it can try to take away some of your natural strengths. For example, if your worst fear is hurting your sister, that tells me that being a good, caring, big brother is so important to you—and that is an amazing trait. But getting in therapy, particularly CBT, is so important. And if you feel like you can’t keep yourself safe please tell someone who can support you or call 988.

[GoofyGoblin in reply to Baker202]

Btw are you sure you read the whole thing? It’s just I’ve been worrying about this for months. Idk if you went through a similar experience