what can I do with my life??

[char123]

Hi,

I'm in need of advice and I want to know if anyone was worrying over this when they were younger. So for some reason my anxiety/ possibly OCD has been focused around attraction- firstly worrying that I am gay, attracted to my brother, to my friends and now if I am attracted to toddlers. Since we just have had holidays, my mind was obsessing more than usual over these fears and they've died down abit as we're back in school and my mind is busy. I'm pretty sure and really hope that I'm not attracted to my brother, friends and to toddlers but I feel as though it's a possibility and it makes me feel sick and makes me cry sometimes. Like I can never be certain if I am and I can't do anything about it. Anyway this post wasn't supposed to be on these worries,it was meant to be about what I want I can do with my life...

When I was younger, I did used to want to be a primary school teacher but with the pocd-like thoughts I'm afraid that I'd never be able to let the thoughts go because the trigger would be there every day. Also, I was wondering if I did have OCD, would it limit where I could work? Like do they let people with Ocd be teachers for example. At the moment I don't really know what i want to do and I can never think of what I want to do that I could be good at. I'm a 16 year old girl and my college are pressuring me about careers and stuff but I really don't know. I was thinking about having a gap year to get work experience but I'm afraid the spare time will result in me obsessing over my fears like in the holidays. Arghh it's so stressful. I'd love to hear some advice or similar experiences& I'd appreciate any reply

Thanks for reading!!

[unfitwellhappy]

You can do absolutely anything you want with your life..

I have had pretty crippling anxiety for well over a decade now and have always tried to never let it interfere with life (I know this is easier said than done - it takes practice but eventually you figure it out)..

You're only 16 - you have a long long time ahead of you... I didn't decide what I wanted to do until I was about 28 - i'm fairly successful in my field of work but I still go through periods of self doubt... I think this is a normal reaction though..

Relax ;-)

[uru]

Mynameisterry will give you some good advice.

[MyNameIsTerry]

Char123,

I think you are right about the gap year. If you do that, it would perhaps be best to commit to something to cover that time e.g. travelling, work experience, charity work, etc because just taking time and having too much on your hands will likely just result in what you say.

Having these thoughts about your future is exactly how many young people are. On TV they portray things like they all know what they want to be. I'm 40 now and I didn't know and barely anyone in my year really knew beyond going to college, uni, etc. You can get advice on this and what they will probably do is talk to you about what you believe your strengths are, what you enjoy, what you feel is fulfilling, etc. These can help you come up with a range of careers, industries, etc that may be appropriate. If they interest you, you keep looking from there. When I was your age a careers advisor would come in and just talk about types of jobs and ask if they interested you. This has changed from what I understand now, the job market has greatly changed, and advice to jobseekers is so much different to back in my day. Now it's about looking more at yourself than asking you to select a job. It's the same in career development, HR circles, and was when I was in management.

In terms of your worries about OCD and teaching, OCD is not a criminal offence. The medical profession, and the law, understand OCD and they know that there is a big difference between someone with OCD and a violent offender, a big difference between a paedophile and someone with POCD. There are teachers on this forum for a start. I've spoken to a female teacher on here with POCD.

The more I see your posts, the more I see someone with a lot of Pure O going on. Your OCD seems to jump from theme to theme but there is a strong sexual undercurrent that binds them together. I saw people giving you good advice about how sexuality at your age is confusing and how thoughts about siblings do occur during sexual development, I had them when I was younger than you. If you read what the NSPCC say about this, they explain child development in stages and how things like this are common to them. The same with homosexuality. Many young people have thoughts and question themselves but for the majority, these things sort themselves out because it's just part of growing up .

However, I have always seen OCD in your threads. You know it's there and that's good because many don't understand it so you are clearly researching it to know this and I would encourage that as you need to be able to determine what is normal development and what is something you need some support with. This recent move into POCD only cements this for me.

Sexual themes in OCD can be very debilitating, especially something as emotive as POCD. I think you should be having this conversation with your GP, you are old enough to visit them on your own. I think some guided self help, some therapy, etc would really help you and perhaps it will help you with the rest?

---------- Post added at 08:48 ---------- Previous post was at 08:48 ----------


Mynameisterry will give you some good advice.

No pressure :ohmy: (thanks for the confidence in me though :D)

[uru]

You seem to know about OCD.

[char123]

Thanks for replying!

It makes me feel so much better to know that I'm not alone in having no idea of what to do when I'm older, it seems like all my friends have a plan already. I think I'll have to go to the careers counsellor in my college and try to get some ideas but to know that you guys didn't know puts my mind at ease. I agree with you and I really don't want to let the anxiety interfere with my career at all.

Thanks Terry for replying as well, so I know now that OCD doesn't affect the jobs you can have but is it compulsory to let them know about any mental illness , anxiety as well? My POCD thoughts have calmed down a bit now but the thoughts and uncertain feelings about 'fancying' my family members seems to always be in the back of my mind. I guess my HOCD thoughts stopped when I accepted the thoughts and reassured myself that even if I was gay, it is not morally wrong so i think my 'incest' fears haven't gone because I feel weird not questioning it because it is morally wrong- I'm not sure if that made sense- do you know any techniques of stopping the thoughts that I am 'attracted to my brother' etc? When I feel really down , I feel like I need to go to the doctors to get help but going to the gp alone scares me as he is quite new to me, practically a stranger. Also, how do you even bring it up, I haven't told anyone about my weird obsession thoughts except from when I was younger and I was worried that I was gay. I remember telling my mum and she reassured me that it wouldn't matter but I noticed it made her laugh and made me feel stupid. I could not imagine talking to any of my family about fearing that I am attracted to my brother because i know they wouldn't be able to look at me the same and make them feel uncomfortable.

I remember talking to my anxiety counsellor who I went to for 6 weeks and telling her about the possible HOCD thoughts but she brushed it off as me thinking this because i read the symptoms on the internet. This causes me to doubt myself and causes anxiety as well because I don't know if I have pure o so maybe I don't have an 'excuse' for these thoughts and I'm just a weird , morally wrong person. I doubt myself because I have/had health anxiety and so I found Pure O the internet, read the symptoms and started obsessing over it. Although I do know that I had HOCD thoughts before I googled the symptoms. So this confuses me and scares me a bit, is it weird that I sort of want it to be pure o so that I have a reason/ answer to why I'm having these thoughts?

Sorry this turned out to be quite long but I don't really have anyone to talk to about it, Thanks for replying again :)

[MyNameIsTerry]

Hi char123,

Sorry for the late reply, I missed the thread and have just spotted it.

If you have a diagnosed condition, your employer may ask you about any health conditions when you apply for jobs. They will do this in a procedural way so I would say confront that situation when it comes. For instance, in roles I have worked in (office based, management, BA, projects, etc) they would provide an occupational health form that I would fill in and send back to them to be assessed since the interviewers can then refer to them as Subject Matter Experts (SME) although they are always limited in mental health from my experience (one day certificates for the nurses at my last company). The form would ask for certain conditions specifically e.g. any heart conditions, and then it would ask for anything else to be mentioned. So, this is where you would mention it but all they need to know is the name of the condition, not any themes. So, if you had OCD, that's all you would put. If you had GAD, that's all you would put. If they have a section that asks how your condition may affect your work then this is where you need to be careful. If your anxiety is not going to affect your work, telling them all the ins & outs of it's impact on your home life is of no benefit to them anyway. If they ask for a summary, keep it brief. I think I would be wary about some of the Pure O themes as these people won't be mental health professionals so if you can avoid saying specific things, it might be best. It depends what they need to know.

With a job working with children, this may be more relevant but lets remember it's OCD, which is medically accepted to not mean a risk to children in hit's POCD form. The other stuff about being gay or incest is going to be irrelevant. Incest is only illegal when committed, we are free to have whatever thoughts we want. So, it would be irrelevant in the sense of safeguarding. Being gay is irrelevant as they can't even discriminate based on sexual preference, so again they don't care about that. If the POCD needs declaring, I'm not sure when it comes to teaching so getting some advice would be best there. There are some teachers on here so they might know but if not somewhere like ACAS should or perhaps the bodies that teachers join?

So, back to the OCD side.

That therapist is a bit of a numpty in my opinion. I can understand someone having physical symptoms and Googling a disease to make it "fit". I can understand someone Googling other mental symptoms and coming up with an organic mental illness to make it "fit". Both of these can be seen on this forum loads of times. However, I can't say I've ever heard of someone Googling their anxiety symptoms and saying "yes, I have anxiety" when they already have it. That's the challenge for HA people, accepting it's anxiety and they will do at some point (hopefully) but they won't Google their symptoms and decide they have another form of anxiety and worry about that normally. You do get some people who look up certain elements and worry they may also have OCD but once explained that goes away. I think in your case you have multiple themes of OCD and it is affecting your life. The latter is where normal obsessive-compulsive behaviour seen in many people without an anxiety disorder would become a diagnosis.

I know what you mean, you can challenge & accept HOCD on the basis of being gay or bi as being fine. Many can't so you should be proud of yourself for that, I've seen plenty of people on here tearing at themselves over that issue and not wanting to be gay/lesbian. It can even happen the other way to, fearing being straight! The impact is the same, but then why wouldn't it be? But beating that one how you have shows you can do it and beat your OCD so remember that.

So, when it comes to challenging the incestuous thoughts you need a different strategy. This is where the usual strategy of learning to accept thoughts as just thoughts, and that their content is not respective of your beliefs. The fact they upset you is proof alone that they are the opposite of your deep beliefs, your schemas you learnt growing up, because your subconscious is firing them out to your conscious mind saying 'I cant find that this thought is acceptable so what do I do?' and then your reaction is fuelling it by giving it meaning based on the strength of the negative reaction. Learning not to react, which is very hard at first, helps greatly here because your subconscious will stop bothering your conscious mind if it learns you don't respond in the way it needs - it needs a negative reaction. If you starve it with positive/neutral reactions, it will learn over time that the thoughts are not needed because it will only be ignored...which it doesn't want.

A CBT strategy is to use something like a Thought Record. There are loads online if you Google them. I use the ones on the psychologytools website. With these you work through the thought in a structured manner, provide evidence for the thought being true and then challenge it with counter evidence and come up with a closing thought. These can help. It can help alone to get the thoughts of your head because on paper you have more chance of stopping them just going back to the starting point all over again. This is what I found anyway, that somehow it was easier when I could see it for real on paper and it being out of my head and I accepted the closure more easily. You can then reuse these sheets when you need them.

I wouldn't worry about your mums reaction. It can be a difficult issue for a parent, a child's sexuality whether it's gay/lesbian/bi (or other things like gender) and even talking about sex at all can be difficult for an parent as you never grow in the eyes of some so they find adjusting hard. Your mum may have reacted because she felt embarrassed about her own embarrassment of talking about that with you or she may have thought it to be "just one of those phases" that some children go through. But like she said, it didn't matter to her.

Fire away with things, that's what this place is for, us all learning off each other. The guys on the OCD board would know exactly what you mean, many of been through it.