Where did your OCD come from?

So I have been trying to work out over the past 5 years where my OCD come from and have began to realise that ruminating on where it comes from is actually a compulsion in itself. I believe mine come from having a low self esteem and a lot of stress in my life at that time. I then attended talking therapy to try and understand my feelings and intrusive thoughts and all this did was fuel the OCD further because trying to assign meaning to the thoughts is actually the opposite of what we should do. Does anyone else feel like they know what triggered there OCD?

LillyX

Date posted: 13d

My therapist thinks mine stems from childhood abuse, which I suppose makes sense. Low self esteem makes sense , not being able to trust yourself etc! I understand therapy making it worse , it might do at the start but gets easier! What therapy do you do?

jheredia

Date posted: 13d

I had it since I was a kid. And when it was when I was younger it was all prayer and religion based I think because my mom would always tell me I would be punished if I didn’t listen. So I was always praying. And then the other big one was when we were in vacation and I woke up anxious and my cousin was next to me and I thought what if I didn’t listen something to her, of course I know I didn’t and I love her but it made me think maybe I did. And lastly after having my second daughter I was breast feeding her and I got a weird sensation and I felt like omg did I like that and now it’s been years and I wonder if I was a terrible person or if I liked it. And it’s constant intrusive thoughts of what if I’m attracted to kids or what if I would hurt a kid. And I know in my heart and head I would never but I constantly doubt myself.

sophea

Date posted: 13d

I talked about this with my NOCD therapist last session, actually. Like most mental illnesses, there is no specific known cause, but it's thought to be a combination of genetic and environmental factors. (https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/obsessive-compulsive-disorder/symptoms-causes/syc-20354432) The things you listed didn't cause your OCD; they exasperated an existing problem. Personally, I have obsessions related to basically every OCD theme under the sun, but the ones that really get to me (existential and perfectionism) trigger my childhood trauma from growing up autistic and undiagnosed.

Anonymous

Date posted: 13d

This is exactly what happened to me! I just posted about my struggle with talk therapy if you go take a look at the posts. Constantly wondering about events and if I suffered abuse or not? Did I? Was this (x) event traumatic and that’s why I have ocd? Did I and forget? SO TRIGGERING. I think I will need to return to ERP just to reverse all the damage talk therapy did to my brain

Anonymous

Date posted: 20w

Late onset OCD

Anyone else develop it in their 30s? I’m 33 and just started showing symptoms in October 2024. So far have only been diagnosed with GAD , PD and depression.I started having intrusive thoughts after a series of panic attacks . My compulsions would be googling. I have made an effort to stop though because it only makes me feel worse. My intrusive thoughts have been around fear of going crazy

Wessers19

Date posted: 20w

Could being exposed to content as a kid affected me in this way?

Trying not to seek reassurance, but rather connect the dots on my OCD and possible reasons as to why I am the way I am. I have severe OCD (or at least I hope I do) mainly surrounding POCD. I've had symptoms of OCD the majority of my life but this theme has come up more recently. When I was a kid, and i'm talking 6-7, I was first exposed to some really gross adult content online. It was introduced to me by a friend of mine around the same age of me. I saw some really disgusting things that a 6-7 year old should definitely not see. This was not a one time occurrence, as I had been exposed to taboo topics online years to come after that, such as the same friend introducing me to Omegle... And i'm sure you can imagine how that went, theres a lot of genuinely disgusting human beings on there. Coming back to the reason for making this post; is it possible to early exposure to this content could be one of the reasons I struggle with POCD? It genuinely scares me to death because you hear that real p*dos dealt with simular situations when they were kids, so thats kind of making me feel that this could be more than OCD, and I could be a genuinely bad person. My POCD feels so real, that at times i'm fully convinced its not OCD. Sometimes I can't even distinguish the feelings of attraction between a younger person and an older person, except for the feeling of anxiety and fear. Its really hard to explain without going into detail, but it just feels so real. Some feedback on this would be great, thank you all.

Anonymous

Date posted: 19w

How do you stop OCD before it starts

So maybe the title wasn't the best to to put it but when you guys start having obsessive thoughts how do you stop them before it turns into compulsions and anxiety?

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Where did your OCD come from?

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