POCD Flareup - Need some urgent guidance

[wanderer02]

Hey Friends,

My POCD (children related) has flared up again and I can't get my head around it and could use some direction. I'd be very thankful to hear your take on this

In the last 6 months or so I had a big battle with POCD again after it subsided for many years. It was always in the background but wasn't really bothering me all too much. After the last 6 months I was able to get over most part of it by getting to terms with the fact that these are only thoughts. Largely I was over it and things felt relatively calm for a few good months.

3 Days ago I was watching TV and they had a special about how sexual harassment in sports clubs and schools is a problem and there was a woman speaking about her past and that when she was 13 her swimming coach embraced her in the water and was pushing her under water (probably part of an exercise of some sort) Apparently the coach has not really touched her in an "inappropriate" way or anything but in her perception it felt like a sexual advancement of some sort and he kept on doing it until she quit and did not go there anymore because it made her feel violated in a sexual way...

This triggered my POCD again in a way that makes me think that I might have touched a child in an inappropriately way while my POCD was at its worst. I am thinking about a recent encounter where I "bumped" a kid on the shoulder in a joking way. I was not thinking anything bad while my POCD was largely in the background at the time but now that I was triggered by the TV show I am worried that the child might have been traumatized in a similar way as the girl on the TV show. I didn't event touch the child it was more like a playful bump with my shoulder while there were many people around and I know that there was nothing indecent about what I did but somehow the TV Show triggered my POCD thinking again and somehow I feel evil/guilty and I am searching for memories that might put me in that category as the coach. I just need someone to reassure me and talk some sense into me.... How is it that something so small can trigger these bad feelings again when there is really nothing wrong with what I did? Is it that the TV Show made me realize that even "harmless" things can have this effect on kids and I might have done something in that way (without even noticing) in the past and the guilt is eating me up because of it? Somehow the OCD is making me feel like i am a horrible person and that I must confess to the parents of the child that I did something wrong and that I will end up in prison because of it.. it always ends with me losing everything I have and my life coming to an end so the thoughts keep spinning in my head...

Please help me get some perspective on what is going on. That would be so greatly appreciated!

Thanks for the help!

[KK77]

To me, this borders on "thought crimes". You caused no harm, intentionally or unintentionally, and what you were thinking at the time is irrelevant. Everyone is free to think what they want in their heads, and as long as they don't act out fantasises, that's all it is.

However, you have OCD, which is unfortunately recurrent, and can be triggered by the most "trivial" incidents. So you must deal with intrusive thoughts, not the object or theme of your thoughts.

What makes P-OCD so powerful is that child sexual abuse is such a taboo and heinous crime due to its victims being young and helpless. There is fear involved and your OCD thrives on fear. A paedophile is not afraid of their thoughts while a person with an anxiety-based disorder like OCD is. Likewise, a psychopath acts out their crime and kills people. An OCD sufferer may get intrusive thoughts of killing their parents. There is fear involved because they would never want to harm their loved ones. And never will.

We cannot eliminate all possible triggers in life; therefore, we have to tackle the root cause which is anxiety-based OCD. Fear is a very powerful and destructive emotion.

[MyNameIsTerry]

From what you have written here all you are guilty of is a fist bump on a child's shoulder. Little different to a high five, a handshake, etc. But your anxious mind might be turning it into a "what if" I meant to do it inappropriately? But what if you didn't? What if it was just a friendly bump on the arm?

How did the kid react? Did you hit him so hard it hurt and he showed pain/fear? Of course not. And something of a sexual nature would likely cause a change in the child's behaviour.

You can see what this is, it's a trigger situation. It is trying to bring the POCD back to the forefront and enact the same cycles to keep itself relevant. It will want you to complete compulsions to feed it and obsess to keep the cycle running over & over. So, look at the evidence for & against, reframe a conclusion and that's where you stop. Have strategies to eliminate compulsions, things which can give you a period of time where you don't complete them that substitute the behaviour it's expecting e.g. rather that seek reassurance you engage in some form of other activity whether that's a walk, talking to others but not allowing the conversation to stray into the compulsions, a hobby, exercise, etc.

Trigger>intrusive thought>mental compulsions (searching for evidence of your potential wrongdoing)>leading to need to confess or seek reassurance.

Look around you. How many people may have done the same? Has a teacher, coach or youth worker ever put their hand on a child's shoulder in a friendly way? Are they prohibited from doing so by law? Have there been people arrested and prosecuted for a fist shoulder bump? Are people watching such documentaries and panicking they have abused a child? So, what is different in your situation? Is it just that you have an existing anxiety disorder with this theme?

Substitute that programme for one about cancer. A cancer patient starts talking about their symptoms. Would that trigger someone with HA who has feared cancer? How would they react? Would it change the outcome how they reacted? If not, why?

Without seeing the programme it's hard to comment on the case you mention. However, it does seem more about perceptions of the person. A question might remain over whether the coach acted inappropriately in his role, and I don't just mean inappropriate sexual behaviour because there could be an element of bullying in here too, but it's also the case that someone may feel x person was inappropriate yet they weren't. It's a great shame it affected her in this way and perhaps if she had been able to raise it with her parents, or a teacher, it may have been cleared up or the coach told it was inappropriate because of the person's feelings about the subject and stopped in the future. The guy might have been mortified to hear how he had affected her or he might have been an unpleasant idiot who didn't care, we don't know hence we have to be careful in judging stories like this if they haven't been investigated on both sides.

I'm guessing you will have professional standards guidance about appropriate levels of relationships with children too if you are in a role working with them?

So, catch those "what ifs", the memory searching stuff for more Confirmation Bias and try to stop it sucking you back in. If you have a theme like this it can latch on to so many things people do everyday without a care whether it's seeing a child in the street, even an innocent conversation with a child or the things seen on TV that broadcasters are allowed to show all day long as they are not in any way sexual. But just because the subconscious tries to make a spurious connection doesn't mean it's true or real, that's where it's down to you to shrug it off and not react to it.

[wanderer02]

KK77 thanks for your post, it helped put it in perspective and that I actually did nothing wrong and that my OCD was just latching onto something that triggered my pocd. Its just so sad that it will probably will keep happening in the future until i learn to change the way i attach importance to these triggers. I will keep practicing. What is just frustrating is that this particular sub-set of OCD seems extremely hard to get rid of because of all the stigma an possible punishment attached to it.

[wanderer02]

From what you have written here all you are guilty of is a fist bump on a child's shoulder. Little different to a high five, a handshake, etc. But your anxious mind might be turning it into a "what if" I meant to do it inappropriately? But what if you didn't? What if it was just a friendly bump on the arm?

How did the kid react? Did you hit him so hard it hurt and he showed pain/fear? Of course not. And something of a sexual nature would likely cause a change in the child's behaviour.

You can see what this is, it's a trigger situation. It is trying to bring the POCD back to the forefront and enact the same cycles to keep itself relevant. It will want you to complete compulsions to feed it and obsess to keep the cycle running over & over. So, look at the evidence for & against, reframe a conclusion and that's where you stop. Have strategies to eliminate compulsions, things which can give you a period of time where you don't complete them that substitute the behaviour it's expecting e.g. rather that seek reassurance you engage in some form of other activity whether that's a walk, talking to others but not allowing the conversation to stray into the compulsions, a hobby, exercise, etc.

Trigger>intrusive thought>mental compulsions (searching for evidence of your potential wrongdoing)>leading to need to confess or seek reassurance.

Look around you. How many people may have done the same? Has a teacher, coach or youth worker ever put their hand on a child's shoulder in a friendly way? Are they prohibited from doing so by law? Have there been people arrested and prosecuted for a fist shoulder bump? Are people watching such documentaries and panicking they have abused a child? So, what is different in your situation? Is it just that you have an existing anxiety disorder with this theme?

Substitute that programme for one about cancer. A cancer patient starts talking about their symptoms. Would that trigger someone with HA who has feared cancer? How would they react? Would it change the outcome how they reacted? If not, why?

Without seeing the programme it's hard to comment on the case you mention. However, it does seem more about perceptions of the person. A question might remain over whether the coach acted inappropriately in his role, and I don't just mean inappropriate sexual behaviour because there could be an element of bullying in here too, but it's also the case that someone may feel x person was inappropriate yet they weren't. It's a great shame it affected her in this way and perhaps if she had been able to raise it with her parents, or a teacher, it may have been cleared up or the coach told it was inappropriate because of the person's feelings about the subject and stopped in the future. The guy might have been mortified to hear how he had affected her or he might have been an unpleasant idiot who didn't care, we don't know hence we have to be careful in judging stories like this if they haven't been investigated on both sides.

I'm guessing you will have professional standards guidance about appropriate levels of relationships with children too if you are in a role working with them?

So, catch those "what ifs", the memory searching stuff for more Confirmation Bias and try to stop it sucking you back in. If you have a theme like this it can latch on to so many things people do everyday without a care whether it's seeing a child in the street, even an innocent conversation with a child or the things seen on TV that broadcasters are allowed to show all day long as they are not in any way sexual. But just because the subconscious tries to make a spurious connection doesn't mean it's true or real, that's where it's down to you to shrug it off and not react to it.

again, i can't thank you enough for going into such detail and taking apart my false logic. This goes a long way to helping me drop an obsession and in this case it helped me get over this particular "loop" of thoughts. I was always under the impression that I should not even try to reframe the trought by logically arguing with it but rather i should label it as an ocd thought and move on.. this does not work since the feeling keeps lingering until i actually decide to deal with it in the best way i can but that often causes me to spin the thought more and more which in return causes more distress to the point where i am completely exhausted and usually another obsession around the same core concept results.

This has happened again and now i am obsessing about the checking I've done when the obsession was at its peak many months ago. In other words I hit another brick wall and I'm dizzy from just thinking about how i would have to come up with the energy to defuse another one of these very difficult thoughts.
I wrote you a PM on the problem I am having at the moment. I think if I get your perspective on this i will be able to defuse the loop that keeps this particular obsession alive and hopefully stay clear of POCD for many years (as i already managed to do in the past).

Thanks again!

[wanderer02]

I am just having a bad meltdown because of the checking I've done in the past looking at child modeling images and that I did something i can't reverse which is making the notion of confessing my "crime" very real. It's causing me to panic and I don't know where to go with myself. I keep looping in the fact that I've done more than just obsess which looking up images and that I can't reverse what I have done.. Can anyone offer some advice on dealing with such dead end situations? It makes me feel like my POCD made me do something that is beyond the scope of "just ocd" :(

[Carys]

Hiyer Wanderer,

I did reply to your PM a while back, last week was it? I'm not sure if it got to you as (very out of character for you) you made no reply.

[wanderer02]

Hey, I'm sorry I've been a mess lately. I replied to it today. I meant no disrespect.

[Carys]

Hey, I'm sorry I've been a mess lately. I replied to it today. I meant no disrespect.

Oh gosh no, I know you would never be like that and ignore replies, thats why I was concerned you hadn't got it or not seen it. Its ok, no offence taken, sorry if it sounded like I was annoyed.

[MyNameIsTerry]

again, i can't thank you enough for going into such detail and taking apart my false logic. This goes a long way to helping me drop an obsession and in this case it helped me get over this particular "loop" of thoughts. I was always under the impression that I should not even try to reframe the trought by logically arguing with it but rather i should label it as an ocd thought and move on.. this does not work since the feeling keeps lingering until i actually decide to deal with it in the best way i can but that often causes me to spin the thought more and more which in return causes more distress to the point where i am completely exhausted and usually another obsession around the same core concept results.

This has happened again and now i am obsessing about the checking I've done when the obsession was at its peak many months ago. In other words I hit another brick wall and I'm dizzy from just thinking about how i would have to come up with the energy to defuse another one of these very difficult thoughts.
I wrote you a PM on the problem I am having at the moment. I think if I get your perspective on this i will be able to defuse the loop that keeps this particular obsession alive and hopefully stay clear of POCD for many years (as i already managed to do in the past).

Thanks again!

Both ways are equally capable of success. In truth I think we need to learn a bit of both.

We can challenge our thoughts without it being fighting against them. Fighting is a negative because it will be attached to negative thinking and feelings that tell the subconscious it needs to protect us still e.g. trying to push thoughts away because they feel uncomfortable, shouting back at the thoughts that you hate them, feeling despair or low, just wishing it would all end, etc. Challenging is about doing this logically, in a structured manner. Make statement>rate how I feel about it>example evidence for fear>examine counter-evidence>reframe new conclusion>rate how I feel about it. You also don't populate evidence with "I hate this", "make it stop" type stuff. You learn to avoid negative language such as "should" rather than "could", the former placing a must on yourself, which adds pressure, whereas the latter allows for a voluntary decision.

None of that is adding to an obsession unless you enter into it incorrectly (negative language, incorrect population of evidence, incorrect reframing, etc) or do it obsessively. CBT works this way. It's stopping you reacting negatively and therefore adding to the panic cycle. The response is more positive/neutral which the area of the brain that receives the response in the fear cycle doesn't use hence can't reinforce through it.

The other way of labelling a thought as just a thought is more the way the acceptance route goes. This works equally well and achieves a positive/neutral response in the same way. You are stopping the cycle, giving it a "meh". The subconscious learns the thought isn't important.

Both methods work to starve the response and mothball negative core beliefs around your fear. And both will take time because the process was built to protect us therefore it's quick to build a fear and less so to unpick it since the scary bear was always meant to remain the scary bear.

It can be about what works for you. Some find one method more helpful than another. I'm more for combination but I have found Mindfulness excellent at teaching you how to sit with thoughts without reacting to them as it walks you through a process as opposed to simply telling you to say xyz or not respond and for me this was made it less "mysterious" in nature.

Obviously discuss this with your therapist so they can adjust, if needed. They will hopefully spot you are finding one method easier to work with than another and happily exploit that and besides the CBT approach has always been where they tend to start anyway.