Past regret

[tloom]

Hey guys.  I wanted to talk about my mind right now.  I let a dog that I used to walk for a family friend lick my penis a few times.  I also tried this with my own dog.  I didn’t think anything of it; I was a horny hormonal kid who didn’t think before he acted.  I didn’t even think of this event until about 6 months ago.  I have bad OCD, and this memory of the event has stuck with me since.  I feel sub-human, like a horrible person even though I have no interest in animals at all.  In the present, I have a girlfriend and am doing well at a very good university.  It just that this memory has been stuck on my mind and I can’t live a normal life because of it.  I am always analyzing everything and comparing my experiences to others.  I know there is a lot of people that practice this at an adult age, and even sometimes worse.  I just wish that I could have a free, at peace mind, like I did before this memory resurfaced.  I feel like my OCD is making this so much worse, and any normal person would just think “Wow I can’t believe I did that, that was so dumb, haha.”  But all I can think is that I’m a bad person and don’t deserve love.  I really like my girlfriend but now I feel like I don’t deserve to be happy with her.  All I ever wanted was a serious girlfriend and now I have it, but now my mind seems like it wants to ruin it.  It’s almost like I don’t want myself to be happy, but really, that’s all that I want.  I think that’s why my thoughts have so much effect on me.  I’m always trying to find closure to be happy but I can’t seem to live in the present.   I really am a good person, but this memory overpowers all the good ones.  I just really wish I could feel love, happiness, and just real emotion again.  I feel like things will never be better and I’m destined to be miserable and depressed.  Any help/appreciation would be great.

[Evie_eve]

Yes it sounds like classic OCD which is very often linked to feeling you are not worthy or deserving of love and happiness. The anxiety overrides everything. Try to think of it like this - humans are sexual beings, u r a sexual being, and u took the opportunity to be sexually aroused in that moment..u didn't hurt anyone, not even the dog. There is actually a movie (can't remember the name) where an actor states that she let her dog lick her 'down there'...and this was in a comedy. So please don't beat yourself up. OCD sufferers generally have issues around sex so this is 'normal' in OCD terms...but it's the OCD that is more your problem, not what apparently 'terrible' thing u did (which of course it wasn't).

[123tushar07]

thanks, i will look into it

[nursegirl6572]

Hello there!

I wanted to take a minute to address something I've noticed in a lot of your posts (hope you don't mind).

You post a lot about how OCD is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain.  That is actually not proven, and believe it or not, that "theory" was propagated mainly as a marketing ploy to help "sell" the newer SSRI/SNRI antidepressants.  It's actually crazy, because as the popularity of those medications increased, so did the belief in this theory....by almost everyone, including doctors!  I was one of them, and like you, I repeated the same info, verbatim, because it was logical, and made sense.  That "theory" has been repeated so much, that for most people, it's regarded as a cold hard fact.  Just in the last few years, the info started coming out that this indeed was not a scientific fact, and it's origin had more to do with pushing medications than anything else.

Now, that being said, I'll tell you that I'm a huge proponent of medications.  Personally, they have helped me tremendously (with panic disorder and depression).  Obviously, for whatever reason, for a LARGE portion of people, they do work.  I honestly don't really care WHY they work, I'm just happy they do (for me anyway).

So, anyway, I hope you don't mind me sharing that with you.  I just hate to see people continuing to parrot that information without knowing more about it...and sadly, many of us do that because that's what we've been told, often by our own doctors.  I was absolutely stunned and shocked to learn about the history of the theory, and how a lot of its "oomph" was created for marketing purposes!

So, also, to say that OCD is not curable unless the "imbalance" is fixed, or to say that a person NEEDS medication to address it just isn't factually true.  A lot of times, medications DO help a person a lot...but there ARE people who manage to treat it without Rx medications.

I was in the exact same boat, so don't feel bad.  I shudder at the thought of how many of my patients I told the same info to.  Yikes!  It really is amazing how something like that can just take off, and so easily be accepted as an undeniable scientific fact!

For more info...if you're interested, here are some links, from reputable sources, that explain a bit about this "theory", how it was born, and how it's grown into being accepted by probably MOST people as fact (the first link really goes into great detail):

http://chriskresser.com/the-chemical-imbalance-myth

http://www.anxietycentre.com/downloads/Chemical-Imbalance-Theory-is-False.pdf

https://bbrfoundation.org/discoveries/moving-beyond-%E2%80%98chemical-imbalance%E2%80%99-theory-of-depression

http://www.anxietyguru.net/the-truth-about-chemical-imbalance-theory-and-antidepressants/comment-page-1/

Anyways, I think your posts are very helpful...people get great comfort knowing they're not alone, and hearing from someone who has lived it that it IS possible to come out on the other side!  You're no doubt an asset to the forum...and I think you should have the most accurate info!

Thanks for reading...take care!

[123tushar07]

this is not about what you did, the excessive guilt and the focus on a particular thought is about ocd, you need treatment from a psychiatrist , ocd    is due to chemical imbalance in our brain, medication and cognitive behavior therapy are solution for it, hence u can tell the psychiatrist that some things which happened in past makes u feel guilty and u cant focus on any other thing .