Unreasonable Intrusive Thoughts?

Perhaps my experience will help calm your fears. I have had mild to moderate OCD for my whole adult life. I have noticed that when my anxiety spikes, so does my OCD. The first couple times I tried nofap I definitely felt a flare-up of anxiety, which then led to more OCD thoughts, which led to more anxiety ... fun, huh? In my case and I suspect for many others, we have used PMO for years as a kind of home-grown drug replacement to help us cope with underlying anxieties in our lives. Thus, when we stop fapping, after awhile we feel this anxiety show up and we're like "What the hell, where is this coming from?" My opinion is it was probably already there, just masked by chronic PMO sessions.

So perhaps there is a silver lining to what you're experiencing, in that maybe you've discovered an underlying issue you need to tackle, as part of your recovery. These types of symptoms are very common, and I can tell you from personal experience that they are also very treatable. If things don't calm down on their own, then you can always chat with a counselor about it, or just look into some self-help options. Just for reference, I can highly recommend the book "The Anxiety & Phobia Workbook" by Edmund Bourne, which demystifies how anxiety works as well as OCD which is a type of anxiety, and how to go about managing them.

As far as HIV, my understanding is if you've been using condoms, it's very unlikely you could have picked it up, especially from heterosexual sex.

 

I have problems with intrusive thoughts, maybe mild OCD, anxiety, and sadness or depression. These all go together. PMO is one of my favorite solutions to those challenges. Of course it also makes them worse, far worse. It isn’t a real solution but a temporary escape with a huge long term cost.

If you are making a change by not PMOing then you can experience things like more anxiety. The truth is you are more truly experiencing feelings you suppressed through PMO. So yeah, not PMOing is going to stir things up. Truly getting over PMO isn’t for many just stopping PMO. It is addressing the underlying issues for which PMO is a symptom.

I’ve experienced great anxiety when I’ve had streaks of no PMO. But I’ve also felt more relative calm. I think the anxious moments are more fully felt as I’m not under a fog. And I don’t have PMO as a quick escape.