This has started in my teen years and as an adult that's engaged to someone I'm going to spend the rest of my life with, it's only gotten worse and worse. It is ruining my sexual and intimate life.
Every time I have sex or intimate with my partner, I picture my step father. I am repusled at times and at times I don't feel anything and I just give in to these images and thoughts. This is seriously ducking up my life. This is worse than all of the other themes I've experienced because it's been silently going on in the background since my teen years. I am at a breaking point and need guidance.
Sometimes I just give in to these thoughts and my mind tells me that I really do enjoy them and am attracted to my step feather. WHAT THE ****. This is the toughest theme I've ever been going through and need to stop with it before it destroys everything.
I am uncomfortable around my step father. I am irritable and mean and it shows. I don't like hugging him or touching him or being near him. I feel like I'm damaged and I'll never be fixed with these thoughts. And since it's been going on forever, I feel like it's never going away. I am at a breaking point and feel like crying. My libido is low, and I feel awkward being intimate with my partner. I need some support from people who have experienced sexual thoughts toward family members. I need to stop this once and for all!
I constantly check how I feel about my partner during sex, or kissing him and if I feel normal towards my step father again. And everytime it's the same thing, I'm so done with this shit!
This is ****ing weird and disgusting. I don't even want to share this with my partner and had trouble sharing this here.
I'm literally on my knees pleading of someone can tell me this is just my OCD and if you can offer some guidance into a thought process that will discontinue this once and for all.
MyNameIsTerry
08-06-16, 15:00
I'm logging off for a while now, Girl18, so I shall post when I'm back on later with more detail about the thought process but didn't want you to feel alone as the OCD board can be a bit quiet. I didn't want you worrying that meant your theme is bad because it's not, and you're not the first to even say this exact person either - step dad. I've seen it before on here alone.
It is OCD. It's intrusive thoughts, the Pure O side of OCD. These can be pretty disturbing and they aim to challenge your strong beliefs to create an intense fear response to reinforce themselves.
You haven't demonstrated giving into them from what you have said. I believe you are misinterpreting that part but I'm going to have to explain various things about response to help explain this and it's going to mean a big post. So, I'll do it later but in the meantime I would say it will help you to read the online articles on Steve Seay's website. He is a licenced psychologist in the US who treats OCD and his articles are detailed.
Please don't worry about discussing this here. I've had thoughts like this and I can remember having them as a teenager too, although I didn't know what they were back then. All people have intrusive thoughts as studies have proven, they just don't release it because their fear hasn't been ramped up like when suffering with anxiety disorders.
Terry, I really appreciate you taking the time to help me and everyone out here. This is something that I've never spoken about and its' been silently going on. I'm getting married next year and need these uncomfortable thoughts to go away about my father. Thank you for taking the time to help me.
MyNameIsTerry
09-06-16, 08:01
The thing about "giving in" is that we worry we will act on these thoughts, actually do what is in them. But how have you done this? You haven't. All you have done is stop fighting them and then a thought has entered your mind that because you didn't fight, you must want them. That's another trick of intrusive thoughts. They don't just pop in and then do nothing, associations get made and conscious reasoning/analysis is negative-based (Cognitive Distortions) and you scare yourself more by talking yourself into it further.
It's not like an OCD cycle with an urge or compulsion to say, touch an object 10 times. With that you are being driven by the anxiety to touch it on the basis that it will stop the anxiety. With Pure O, the urges/thoughts tend to trigger compulsions that are usually "covert" e.g. mental checking. That isn't giving into the thoughts but it is giving into the cycle. BUT that does not mean giving into the thoughts in that you want to have sex with your stepdad at all, it only means you complete a compulsion aimed at reducing the anxiety e.g. checking "do I want to have sex with him?", "why?", "have I ever found him attractive?", "when I hugged him X years ago, did I feel anything inappropriate?", etc. It's all mental checking, fight or flight looking for possible risks so it can come up with a plan to protect you from them. How it protects you tends to be detrimental e.g. you may fear being in a room alone with him or hugging him (as you mentioned earlier) and whilst this seems to help, it's avoidance. This avoidance causes you more problems in the long run because now your subconscious can take not of your conscious minds action to say "avoid this person, they are a risk" and the subconscious adds to the fear by reinforcing such associations between the risk object and your fear.
That's a classic OCD compulsion, you will have probably seen how some of us with harm-based intrusive thoughts start to hide the knives outside the house or someone with POCD won't touch their child anymore. That ONLY builds further fear as we are sending signals back to say it is a fear to remember.
So, a big part of breaking this cycle is to cut down & eventually eliminate compulsions like this. These are negative behaviours and the area of the brain looking for feedback only sees negative, especially emotions the stronger the better.
What we need to do is starve it off this feedback. The subconscious will keep firing off the thoughts but the more it gets nothing back, the more it works out that conscious mind doesn't care so they must be nothing. This will change the subconscious routines and dismantle the associations that have been formed. The latter may be done by using older healthy associations or make links since neurons are connected by synapses (think of the old telephone exchanges with an operator pulling out one plug to put into another hole to connect the call).
In CBT we learn to react with positive or neutral responses to this. This starves the feedback process and the lack of a compulsion stops the cycle in it's tracks so it can't reinforce itself (or tick the box at the end of the process). The same with things like acceptance or Mindfulness, we learn to react neutrally ("whatever", "who cares", "you're just a thought, nothing more") or with positives (laughter is one example). In CBT though we use techniques like Thought Records where you work with evidence for & against in order to reframe it, come up with a new conclusion. It can also help to get it out of your head, I sometimes found it would just go back to the start again when done in my head but on paper it felt more like closure was possible. Paper is perhaps the best way to start since doing it in your head requires more control to move on from it.
Remember that all an intrusive thought means is that the subconscious has checked it against your deeper beliefs and can't find it to be appropriate or something that kicks off another process (remember also that this is a vast area in the subconscious, incoming stimulus can be something that triggers something automatically, but not with intrusive thoughts in the context of acting on them but in non reaction to them as the subconscious learns what to do with them as you recover...which is really just like what we always did before we had anxiety since all people have them) and if it can't find a match, it needs the executive brain (conscious mind) to make a decision. Just think of it as subconscious brain saying "ok, I've done all the checks but can't find what to do so here is all the "data" conscious mind, please tell me what to do". When you react with fear responses it thinks "ok, great, now I know this is to be feared as conscious mind says so". If you don't react you diffuse the situation and subconscious mind thinks "oh, it wasn't important, I won't bother again". Obviously, it takes time to change thoughts so that is a simplified example.
We also need to remember that as we develop we start building very strong beliefs that help us view our world. These are known as Schemas. These are very deep and related to our identity. Think of right & wrong. These are what the subconscious is going to check against, as well as such as memory & core beliefs and other things, so because you know that sleeping with your stepdad is wrong, it will find that belief and this is why the thought gets sent to conscious mind to make that decision about what to do, is this a fear to remember, etc.
So, can you see how despite these thoughts you will always have those very strong morals in place not allowing the thought to be accepted? You can choose to accept a thought but that doesn't change that schema, schemas are very strong & very deep within in. Accepting thoughts like these is just a strategy to starve the feedback mechanism, it's not you agreeing that you want to turn into what you fear.
This leads us onto some of the weird stuff we may experience that doesn't seem like it fits what we have read is OCD. For instance, you think you will always react with fear but you won't and there can be reasons for this. Here are some examples:
- you are suffering low mood, so your fears are naturally dulled.
What happens then? The OCD sufferer misinterprets this as not being scared by the thought therefore they must agree that the thoughts are correct. This is incorrect, we can't always react with such fear. Think of if you are so tired you are struggling to get anything done, even get out of bed.
- you become habituated to your thoughts.
This is often termed "backdoor spike". It literally means you just react with a "meh". You know the thought is rubbish, you have learnt not to care. But what can also happen then is that the sufferer doesn't understand this and starts to worry they are becoming used to the thoughts which indicates they are changing into what they fear. This is incorrect and logically if you think about it, how could anyone recover without not allowing intrusive thoughts to scare them when we now know from studies that you can't stop having intrusive thoughts?
So, if backdoor spike didn't exist, we couldn't even recover once we had suffered intrusive thoughts.
- positive reaction.
When I started getting beyond mine I had some strange intuitive urges with them. For instance, I had an image of harming a guy I was walking past at a bus stop and within a second something inside me made me amused and I wanted to laugh. Then another thought came to me that I wasn't scared anymore and that I knew I was getting better. It was an intuitive reaction, it wasn't subconscious but I went with it and didn't question it further.
Some people can have this and again, like with the backdoor spike, worry it means changing into the monster they fear. It doesn't, I'm past my intrusive thoughts, I've beaten them twice now.
Be aware of your need to say "what does this mean about me". That's a checking compulsion. It leads into catastrophizing and making a whole load of Cognitive Distortions come into play on top of this as your reasoning turns to analysing in a negative way. Doing it the CBT way, with a Thought Record is a different story as you are turning that around.
Something else to remember, and why acceptance is an excellent tool with intrusive thoughts, is that you can't stop all intrusive thoughts. It's an unrealistic target which results in more anxiety as our therapists tell us we have to be reasonable in how we approach planning.
All human beings can have these thoughts but as you recover they will reduce in intensity & frequency. So, the goal is not to get rid of them, it's to not be bothered by then. Wouldn't it be great if they just flash through your mind a couple of seconds and your response is not to be bothered by them? That is achievable, it's how mine are now.
We mustn't push them away either. Remember, before when I explained a simple internal dialogue from the subconscious mind to the conscious mind? Well, what do you think the subconscious sees when it observes conscious mind saying "ahhhh, get this horrible thing away from me!!!". It's a negative response. Now it also sees conscious mind saying to itself "I'm not going to think about this, this is horrible and I'm pushing you away!!!". When it sees this, subconscious mind thinks "great, I did something that sparked up conscious mind so much so that must be something conscious mind really wants". It's sad but true isn't it? The more we try not to think about a polar bear, the more we think about a polar bear. We are putting too much energy into the process and creating more work so it's a bigger deal to subconscious mind who is watching & waiting for a response. Studies have shown it is detrimental to push these thoughts away because they are just part of being a human being as our mind works this way.
Something I always say with this feedback loop is to remember that subconscious mind doesn't need to think in terms or right & wrong as those deeper beliefs are there to steer that so all he (or she :biggrin:) is thinking is that due to a strong negative reaction he or she must have done something "valid". Notice the use of the term "valid" and not "correct"? It sees that the process is valid hence should be triggered again in the future.
Starving this takes time. This is because this whole process is built on the fight or flight which is a survival process. Survival processes are meant to be very strong & quick to learn in order to keep us safe. So, it's quicker to build these fears than it is to eliminate them...don't we all know that lesson well?!!!
Remember that I said you have those deeper morals in place to prevent any action or willingness to act on these thoughts? Now think about why these thoughts scare you so much. It's because these beliefs are strong in you. Logically, if you had an intrusive thought to something that meant nothing and didn't cause any fear, it wouldn't be an intrusive thought at all. So, the fact you are responding with revulsion only proves that deeper moral beliefs are telling you that it is wrong. Those are very hard to change, realistically that's not going to happen on your own and we know people with intrusive thoughts don't act on them as per the medical professionals.
Don't confuse the lack of fear response in what I've just said with the points I made above about when we don't always react the way we expect ourselves too.
Something some of us have been discussing on here, OCDers with GAD in particular, is that our overall anxiety levels contribute to the frequency & intensity of our intrusive thoughts (and obsessive-compulsive cycles & traits too). So, you can help yourself by working on bringing these levels down. This can mean relaxation work, meditation, exercise, anything that helps you reduce your anxiety as simple as it may be. Over time these levels reduce and the thoughts are easier to handle.
Be ware of your mental compulsions. Write them down and come up with a way to eliminate them. It doesn't have to be a complete stop. I couldn't do that with mine, I went with steady reduction and with some I did something else were I took control of the compulsion to continue it out of choice, a positive thing which meant my mind set was saying "I am choosing this, not being driven to it by my anxiety". This latter one was just something I hit on, it may not be for everyone and you do have to be careful not to attach negatives to it like then worrying you are turning into X because you chose it. I only did this with physical touching compulsions. In some ways it's a bit like how we use a Thought Record to steer it round.
MyNameIsTerry
10-06-16, 06:20
I knew I would forget something, I always do!
Add another to the above:
- Laughing, amusement responses.
People tend to interpret this as them changing into the monster they fear. But it's not the case at all. Like I said with mine, I started to experience this when I was recovering from them.
It can also appear as "liking" them, like you are saying internally "go on, do it" at the same time. I had these with my harm-based thoughts about my parents.
Something I've observed in several other OCD sufferers on here since I joined (those I have spoken too with Pure O) is that they have started off with fear reactions from the thoughts, then moved to apathy and then onto a sense of "liking" them.
In each of those 3 differing responses they turned in on themselves by asking what it meant, does it mean they want to do X or Y to happen, etc. That's just the natural anxiety response to analyse, you will have seen it plenty I would imagine. People assume that the response must stay the same, but this is false and how could you unpick your cycles without changing them? And changing the response is integral to breaking these cycles anyway.
People often turn towards checking compulsions. For instance, someone with POCD mat start to look at children in real life in an attempt to re-trigger their intrusive thought to check they still react with fear. Aside from this being a reinforcing action anyway, they are building on top of it by adding in new compulsions to strengthen it all. They then don't always get the expected fear response (as I mentioned above) and start to worry they are changing because they can't even intentionally replicate it.
Hi Terry. Thank you for taking the time to write out such lengthy responses. A lot of the points you brought up are very helpful in understanding OCD and anxiety. I used to do mindfulness and it seemed to help in a different situation. I stopped and I wish I hadn't. I need to start up again.
Although whenever these thoughts come up about my step-dad, I do get anxious and uncomfortable and I 'check'. Sometimes when I'm intimate I just force myself to think them like, "Go ahead think about them" and it further disgusts me. It's so bizarre... the mind is so powerful and weird. I'm still working on the thoughts about my step-dad. Like I said I need some serious mindfulness.
On another note, I have a question for you. It seems like ever since I've developed these thoughts, as a teen, I can't explain it but it's like they've always been there and I've struggled. When they don't come up, I'm fine but I just KNOW they are there in the background and for example they come up whenever I'm hugging my step-dad. Is it possible to have this for years without properly dealing with it?
I'm also dealing with ROCD and intimacy issues with my partner. And I feel like I've developed the same exact issue with my partner. I avoid intimacy now because I feel repulsed/numb when being intimate. Most of it stems from the OCD thought that I don't find him attractive, and I find his flaws, and that somehow my OCD makes me think that he just wants to be intimate all the time and that's it. It's not true. He's a wonderful caring guy. I constantly 'check' to see if I feel the same way about him and I don't get the answer I want, I panic and get very emotional. It's as if I feel nothing for him and it worries me to no end because I KNOW I love him and before all this nonsense I was happy.
I'm going to save this thread and look back to help me out. Hopefully you can answer my question about the OCD/anxiety being with you for years.
Oh my God, I relate so much.
I'm glad I'm not the only one. Hopefully, you're doing better. I've started meditating and I love the way it makes me feel so I will continue with it. x
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