The Counselor Project

Well, had my first therapist appointment in quite a while the other day. I didn't even want it, and I was totally paranoid about it. Why had I been given this appointment, anyway? How the Hell did that happen? 

I went back inside a doctor's the other day and a secretary said wearily, "What is it now, Robert?" like I'm some miserable idiot who can't stop worrying, which is true.

All this fueled the old paranoid thoughts, and I restarted the Get It Together Project again.

So I went in. Middle aged Hispanic female, and I hate female therapists. In fact, I typically refuse to ever be seen by one. I got sent to counselor due to being on meds and admitting to smoking weed a few times last fall. Real easy.

I'm convinced that I am insane.

"So, do you think that I act strange, weird, bizarre, odd?" I actually believe that all of this is true.

"No, not at all, you seem quite normal. Why do you ask?"

"Do I seem really nervous, anxious, wiry, like I can't settle down?" I actually believe that I am way too nervous and non-relaxed.

"Actually, no. You really do seem quite relaxed here." Points to my relaxed posture.

"Hmm, so do I seem hostile?" I actually believe that I am totally hostile, cruel, evil, mean, and low down, like a bipedal 6-foot rattlesnake with a permanent bad hair day and an immortal resting bitch face.

"No, not at all. Actually, you seem friendly, and if you were hostile, I would simply order you out of the room."

"So, do I seem unfriendly and not warm?" I am convinced that this is the main problem these days.

"No, not at all. You actually do seem like a friendly person."

Therapy goes on.

I tell her I am worried about checking out hot young chickies because I am afraid they will think I am a dirty old man and they will file a public complaint against me.

"Go ahead and look all you want! You are a single man, of course you want to look at all of the pretty women!"

You know, sometimes I just love Hispanics. They are so backwards on all this sex stuff, and they just assume that all males are total pigs when it comes to sex, but they figure that it is hopeless and we are incurable, so they just chalk it up to nature.

She then informs me that I may be lacking in social skills.

"So, do you think that I am lacking in social skills in here in right now?" I am convinced that I am one of the biggest social idiots on the globe.

"No, no, not at all, your social skills are excellent. Why do you ask? But perhaps elsewhere, there are problems in the social skills."

Ok, now my head is really spinning. 

I need to stop doing weed. 

I need to stop drinking. 

"Why do you have two glasses of wine a night?"

"Why do you go to the bar?"

Well, I quit? 

"Oh, the bar, the bar, why do you go to the bar?"

I don't anymore, but I am broke.

On and on it goes.

She points out that I'm hardly even trying to meet anyone. I think I'm busting butt night and day on the Woman Project. Really, where are you going, she asks? I tell her I am going to the Catholic Church Project to work on the Woman Project.

She almost starts laughing. "You expect to get laid in church?" I think she says.

"Sure." I say, lying as usual. "I just tell em I am God, and that they will worship at my cross because God wants them to. Works every time."

"Plus, most women who go to Catholic Church are in religious ecstasy, and that usually means they are also horny," I offer pitifully. 

"They want to have sex with God. Just tell them you are God to them, and you're in like Flynn," I suggest dubiously.

She's laughing. "You expect to get laid at a church? What are you, a fucking idiot? No ever meets anyone in church. Church is one thing, fucking is another. Two different planets," I hallucinate, hearing voices.

It's very nice to meet a woman who is aggressive about sex and has a man's best interest at heart, which is getting laid of course, as nothing else in a man's life matters at all. Most female therapists are totally insane about sex, which is why I never want to deal with them.

Doctor wrote I was depressed. Was I depressed? 

Course not, I scoff. 

She looks surprised.

Have I ever been arrested? Twice for pot, possession. 

Have I ever been in prison, as if this is the most normal thing to do? No, thank God. 

Have I ever been charged with child molesting? No, I have not, nor have I ever been investigated for it by the police. 

Have you ever attacked anyone? No, not really. I mean I did, but they all deserved it, you know?

Have you ever attempted suicide? No, we don't do that. 

Have I ever been suicidal? Not for 23 years! I say proudly. She looks dubious.

Have I ever been hospitalized? No, we don't get hospitalized, and I will never be hospitalized, unless I get about 20 times crazier than I am now and I just can't function at all.

The Hospital Project is never going to happen. Nor is the Kill Myself Project. The Kill Others Project has, sadly, been put on indefinite hold for the time being. The Molest Kids Project never even got going, thank the  Lord above. The Criminal Project is way back in the hippie dope-dealing past.

My whole life, nothing really grievous or monumental or devastating or audacious has occurred. Truth is, I have been a bit of a bore, the guy who lives in town 15 years and the cops yawn when someone asks them about him.

The Counselor Project is over. I'm fine, nothing is wrong. The Counselor Project will be continued into the future, with uncertain results.

And they don't believe in chemical good times, because they only see the bad end that I have almost never seen in my entire life.

The Counselor Project is just something to be played, like everything else in life. You play the Counselor Project or it plays you, one or the other. It's nothing, really. Anyone can do it.

POCD Versus Pedophilia - Differential Diagnosis

The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here. The famous Russian neo-Nazi video is on this blog here.

Updated September 4. This is one of a number of posts I have written on mental illness. It deals with it from a diagnostic point of view that is probably most interesting to sufferers or clinicians, but may be interesting to some laypeople. I've been studying abnormal psychology for 30 years now, and experiencing it for 25 or so.

POCD is a subtype of OCD that is usually thought of as pure-O, or pure obsessional. Pure-O's do not have the usual behavioral rituals that the hand-washers, etc. have; instead, they have cognitive rituals. It is necessary that there be more documentation on this subtype of OCD because unfortunately, quite a few people are suffering from it, and clinicians barely understand it.

Due to this lack of understanding, clinicians think sufferers are psychotic or suffer from pedophilia. Many clinicians have a poor understanding of OCD as it is, and this series is intended to enlighten them about different forms that the illness can take.

I've written some stuff on POCD on this blog, and therefore, I get sufferers coming to me with the condition. As I don't have much issues with POCD these days, I'm capable of doing therapy with them online.

After talking to quite a few of them, it's clear that it's like any other type of OCD, since OCD sufferers, especially pure obsessionals, have a certain "sameness" about them such that you can nearly diagnose them on pure Gestalt alone.

I can tell pretty quickly after talking to someone whether they are suffering from OCD.

One thing to get clear on is that POCD will apparently never be acted on. I'm not aware of anyone acting on any of these obsessions.

There is another type of OCD called Harm OCD, and I have talked to a few of those folks too. Two of them were both convinced that they were serial killers. I quickly figured out that they had OCD and were completely harmless. People with harm OCD never do anything violent, and people with POCD never molest kids.

Once you know this, you can talk to them about all their scary thoughts with worries.

I might have a hard time doing therapy with an actual pedophile or a psychopath who really wanted to kill people. As a general rule though, these types do not feel there is anything wrong with them as they enjoy being this way, and they never seek help.

The usual POCD sufferer is a young man around college age or so. Females are much less common. I talked to one guy who was in his 30's. Sexual obsessions in general seem to hit young people the hardest of all for some reason. Most people with harm obsessions are also young people, mostly males, though I did talk to one 17 year old female.

OCD is a fear-based illness. It will latch onto anything in society that is frightening.

Nowadays, with Child Molester Mass Hysteria on the rampage and everyone worried about "pedos" and "predators", it's only logical that people with OCD would find this the perfect fear. What could be more terrifying than the fact that one may be a pedophile? Not much. Hence, POCD.

We have also seen a marked increase in fears of AIDS among OCD sufferers. AIDS is in our society, it's terrifying since if you get it, you're about dead, so OCD will latch onto it.

The best way we can do differential diagnosis here between POCD and pure pedophilia is to link to some websites.

First of all, a fellow I have been talking to has posted his history online here. He's given me permission to link to it. It's five pages, but if you read it, you should start to get a feel after a while about what this illness is all about.

Note the chronic doubting, the omnipresence of fear, the uncertainty about feelings and whether they are real or not, the questioning of everything from one's thoughts, feelings and history all the way to the actions and thoughts of others.

What's going on here is a hyperanalysis of the individual's history, thoughts and behaviors along with continuous checking of "scientific sources", followed by more rounds of unproductive doubting and worries. As you can see, nothing ever gets resolved here. The worries and doubts just go round and round. Once one gets settled, a new one comes up. This is truly a case of one's mind actually chasing its tail.

In this case, he is trying to prove whether or not he is a pedophile. He finds evidence, questions the evidence, checks, cross-checks and tests the evidence, then starts all over again.

There is atmosphere of wondering, uncertainty and doubting to the point where the person can start doubting his own perceptions. Thoughts and feelings can seem like they are actually occurring and the person becomes uncertain about what is really happening and what is just in their mind.

I talked to one woman who had lesbian fears during conversations with other women. I asked, "You get lesbian thoughts and this bothers you?" She said, "No, I worry that I'm going to say lesbian stuff to her. Then after the conversation is over, I wonder if I made lesbian comments to her." As we see, the person doubts their actual perceptions and wonders if things occurred that are did not even occur.

This doubting of one's own perceptions is actually quite common in this disorder and is almost diagnostic.

Unfortunately, it looks very strange, and clinicians often misdiagnose it as psychosis.

In this post, he says he can hear what people are thinking. That's a schizophrenic symptom, but when I questioned him about it, he said he just watched people very closely and thought he could figure out what they might be thinking, but he didn't really hear it with his ears. He admitted it wasn't really possible for him to know exactly what was in someone's thoughts.

When I heard that, I knew he did not have schizophrenia or a psychosis. Once again, though, we see internal thoughts and external perceptions being confused, common in OCD.

I wasn't impressed with the others in this thread, one of whom was accusing him of being a pedophile. An administrator, a clinical psychologist, finally gets it on page 4 and says he has sexual obsessions.

In this post, he says he is losing his attraction to women, and the attraction to kids seems to be increasing.

There is another sexual obsession called HOCD (homosexual OCD) that works much the same way. The person goes into horrible worries, thinking in a similar manner as this guy, that they may be gay or bisexual. In severe cases, they think that they are losing their attraction to the opposite sex and getting a new attraction to same sex. HOCD is very common; much more common than POCD.

As it's not possible to turn gay, bi or pedo against one's will, this is the common denominator in all sexual obsessions and is pathognomic.

Gay, bisexual and pedophilic persons do not feel as if alien forces are turning them into something they do not wish to be. They are what they are. The attraction, wanted or not, feels normal, natural, right, correct, real. They may worry about the way society will treat them, but it isn't a question of being transformed into something you are not.

He is also masturbating to pedophilic fantasies, but I'm not worried about that. He's doing this as some sort of checking behavior to "see if he's really a pedophile" or to "get it out of his system".

People with HOCD often do the same thing. They search out gay porn on the Internet and masturbate to it to "test their reaction". Then they go find some straight porn and masturbate to that to "test their reaction" to that. Then they endlessly compare reactions to try to figure out if they are gay or not. Typically, the testing never reveals any significant answers, so it just goes on and on.

This is called checking and it's also pathognomic of OCD.

The truth is that in males, sexuality is fixed by age 15. That means straight, gay, bi or whatever, can't change after that. What turns you on, turns you on. Behavior can change afterward, but not attraction. In females, it's different, but no female turns gay or bi against her will.

In one post, he tries to argue with the OCD by saying "I'm not a pedophile" (thought compulsion). His mind argues back, of course, by saying the opposite and telling him he is one. This is also pathognomic of OCD. OCD acts like a gremlin in your mind. It contradicts you and tells 4you stuff you don't even believe in and makes you confused.

The truth is, that's not really an internal dialogue, it's just OCD talking back and being contradictory. The result can be endless wars in the mind whereby one uses thought compulsions to try to contradict obsessions. For some strange reason, these don't seem to work very well, and the OCD often just fights back even harder with more intense contradictory statements.

Although masturbating to pedo fantasies may seem disturbing, I'm not worried about it in this case. Humans, especially young males, are polymorphously perverse, and can get turned on by just about anything.

A pedophile in general has a true preference for kids and does not have much interest in adults. They have been this way since early adolescence. It doesn't probably doesn't come on after age 15 or so, and neither do most other paraphilias. The root of all paraphilias, like the root of all sexual orientation, seems to be in the birthing storms of the teenage years.

My take is that OCD is lying to this guy. As you can see, he also has HOCD. He's suddenly developed gay fantasies. How? By looking at some gay porn on the Net. In his case, both pedo and gay fantasies were fantasy-supercharged due to their forbidden and taboo nature, not due to any real attraction.

OCD is lying to him, telling him he's gay and pedo and he's losing his attraction to women. HOCD sufferers also feel that they are losing their attraction to the opposite sex and gaining a new one to the same sex, but this is just an illusion. How this strange illness does this I'm not sure, but I think it has to do with the way anxiety and fear work on the brain.

HOCD sufferers are also typically young people and most are males, but there are quite a few young females too. They usually are shy introverts, like most OCD sufferers, and often have little sexual experience. The extroverted obsessional exists, but is quite rare. People seem to grow out of this gay OCD thing with age, or at least move onto other obsessions.

Since homosexuality is in our society and a popular meme in our culture and yet is not quite accepted, it's a logical fear for OCD to latch onto. For many young people, homosexuality is just wrong enough and taboo enough the fact that the thought that one might be gay or bi is quite terrifying.

If at some point, homosexuality and bisexuality become more accepted, OCD sufferers may stop worrying about being gay and start worrying about something else.

The nature of the OCD fears is not important. Depending on the era and society, OCD will latch onto whatever fears seem most terrifying for the time and place. The illness is mobile and once one fear is conquered, a new one can be acquired.

HOCD is a particularly horrible type of OCD. I've been to boards on the Net full of sufferers and many are seriously miserable, deeply depressed and contemplating suicide. For some reason, obsessionals, while often complaining of being suicidal, rarely seem to commit suicide. I think the fact that they are so fearful and inhibited keeps them from taking this final step.

For a glimpse of how real pedophiles think, and to tell the difference between POCD and pedophilia, check out this Wikisposure page that gives bios of numerous actual pedophiles that they are tracking. After you read through a number of the bios, you will get a common feel for what these guys are all about.

This, like all paraphilias, is not an anxiety disorder. The dominant emotion is not fear and doubt as in OCD. These guys aren't going round and round about whether or not they are pedophiles. That they are is clear as air to them.

Pedophilia, like all paraphilias, is an illness of desire, of appetite. It's like an addiction. They love it. This is what gets them off. They don't want to change, they don't want to get better, and the truth is they probably can't anyway.

I assume that true pedophilia, once fixed in adolescence and cemented in adulthood, is incurable. What gets you off, gets you off. It's not going to change. They can't help it, but at the same time, society needs to be protected.

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Advice for OCD Sufferers

I don't really talk about this condition too much, as this is not an "I Have Mental Illness" blog. I just think of myself as a neurotic anyway, so I don't really think I am mentally ill. I hate discussing symptoms, as they seem humiliating to me, especially out here in public for all to see.

I will admit to one lately though: Am I really getting better? I will seem to be getting much better symptom-wise and start feeling really great. Then I will start wondering if I am really getting better or if it is all an illusion. Another one I sometimes have, "Can I ever get completely well?"

I used to be very much better with this condition to the point where I ran my life extremely well. That is not quite the case nowadays. So the question goes round and round about whether or not I can actually attain that previous state (which I recollect well, as it went on for years, and I can easily more or less sort of plug into it). It feels embarrassing just to write that stuff down.

Also sometimes I worry I might think something bad about a person.

For instance, I was standing in line with this couple to get into a presentation a while back. I started talking to them about all sorts of stuff, and the conversation actually went pretty well for 30 minutes. If one can carry on lengthy conversations like this, one should be congratulated. It is a highly developed skill and there are quite a few who can hardly even do this.

Well, the guy was ugly, it is true, and for 30 minutes I kept worrying that I was going to focus on the guy's ugliness. After 30 minutes, I did start to notice it or think about it or focus on it. Now, I like ugly people just fine, but I prefer not to focus on it.

And it seems that once I start focusing on his ugliness, it seems like the conversation doesn't go quite so well anymore. I'm convinced that that is not an adaptive way to have a conversation. Now, if I could re-frame it and say, "Yeah he's ugly, but so what, he's a great guy", maybe it would work ok, but I just seem to hang up on it.

Plus I get into this thing of trying to get the thought of the guy's ugliness out of head, or I get afraid I'm going to think, "This guy's ugly so I don't like him."

Well, I think you can see where all of this is heading? When I ask around, a lot of people just start laughing, but some act like it is really weird, bizarre and disturbing. A typical reaction I get is, "Why the Hell would anyone worry about something stupid like that?"

Well, anyway, at some point you may start getting a lot better as I have. Time seems to make most people better. I must recommend that most folks who are not getting better long-term go on SSRI's. I have been taking them for 14 years now and there has been no harm done to me whatsoever. In fact, when I go off of them, I'm practically a totally weird and messed-up basket case.

It also seems that the longer you stay on them, the better you get. You will also get much better over time if you confront your fears. If you have situational fears, you must confront them or they can linger for years, even 5, 10, or 20 years.

The way to confront the fear is to go into the situation that causes you the high anxiety. You will have been avoiding this situation and OCD can cause horrible avoidance that can look like social phobia or agoraphobia. You need to jump right into that situation.

Imagine your fear as a swimming pool with an endless bottom. You will dive into this pool over and over and not think about it. If you are afraid, you will just dive in again. The pool is deep and black and you cannot see the bottom.

Just go to that situation and stay there while the obsessive thoughts come, no matter how horrible they are. Even if you feel like killing someone or molesting some kid or whatever, just go into that situation and think about killing the person you are alone with in that house or think about molesting those kids who are all around you at your friends house. You're not gonna kill anyone and you're not going to molest any kids.

Just let the anxiety wash over you. The main thing is don't run away. Just stay there and let the thoughts pound away at your brain and flood all over you. Just let them go out of control and take over. After a while, if you don't run, you will get sick of feeling anxious, and the thoughts will just start to dissipate and actually become boring or stupid.

The principle here is that you cannot run from your fears.

You need to plunge right into your fears.

Sometimes the fears will stay for a while. I have done fear confrontations where the fear stayed for like 6 weeks or so. Main thing is you do not run from it - you just sort of go swimming in it. If closing your door protects you from the fear, you open the door. If one room protects you from the fear, you go to the other room where the fear is.

At some point, you will find your symptoms dramatically lessening. This will mean that you are getting very comfortable in a situation. Stay there and do not analyze it. Say to yourself: "Just go with the flow." Don't analyze your symptoms going away or start to wonder about them. Just accept it and shrug your shoulders. Don't even ask why. Otherwise you can start to go round and round with the "Am I really getting better?" BS.

For older people and for some younger people, cannabis seems to work very well for OCD and other anxiety disorders. For others, cannabis makes them much worse. I have used cannabis recently for OCD and experienced the most dramatic symptom lessening in 25 years. In my case, it needs to be combined with SSRI's, especially about 20mg Lexapro.

I got good results with cannabis using only small doses (1-3 hits off a blunt) even every 5-10 days. I have to admit that larger doses were better, but they are not really necessary. Use seems to be cumulative. As you use it more and more timewise, you need to use it less and less frequency-wise. Small doses of cannabis are not very harmful, and you have a terrible illness anyway. You need to weigh your choices.

Alcohol does not seem to work so well, but it's a lot of fun, and it does tend to reduce anxiety in the short term. I recommend up 3 glasses of red wine per day for males aged 40-60. New studies out of France show 30% reduction in death rate for all causes at this level, but it seems to apply only to red wine. Most other intoxicants are not recommended, although they can supply short-term relief.

You may be on too many drugs. OCD is often assaulted with all sorts of pills. Polypharmacy is the latest rage with psychiatrists. I see OCD patients all the time being treated with wholly inappropriate drugs like Klonipin, older antipsychotics like Haldol, newer atypical antipsychotics, older tricyclic antidepressants and Wellbutrin.

None of these drugs have been shown to work well except the atypicals, and the atypicals are highly dangerous.

The gold standard for OCD is SSRI's. This is the first-line treatment. Others should be tried only after SSRI failure. SSRI's can cause serious problems, but many are able to use them without problems. Truth is, they are much safer than most of the drugs above.

Being on a drug that doesn't make you much better is idiotic. If you are not getting better on a psych drug, for Chrissake, just go off of it! I see so many OCD patients who keep on taking drugs that are doing them no benefit whatsoever. That docs continue to keep patients on these drugs is simply criminal. Most of these drugs are potentially quite nasty, including the SSRI's, and there is no reason to use them if they don't help.

Avoid anxiety-producing syndromes and adopt a laissez-faire attitude about these things. For instance, I worried at one point that I had damaged my brain from using drugs. Well, I have used drugs off and on for 35 years now with few problems, but it's possible I suffered some damage.

I finally concluded that I have probably suffered some damage from using cocaine (though I never used that much) but it was either less than or the same as many others I knew who also used it and are all completely normal, so there was nothing to worry about. I just decided that the other stuff had not done anything to my brain.

It is important to just decide things: right, wrong or indifferent. Just say, "Pot doesn't damage the brain and I'm not damaged," if you worry about it. Just say, "All men are attracted to young girls, even children, a little bit, so it's nothing to worry about." Just decide you are straight and not gay and leave it at that. Just decide you are not going to kill anyone and go ahead and be alone with anyone you want to.

OCD will always want to ask you if you are sure or not, but just say, "I believe what I believe and that is that." So you need to become more closed-minded and just say the Hell with it.

Decide you are the sort of person who can handle anything. Deliberately put yourself into situations (legally and carefully) where you will be upheld to ridicule, shame and gross insults. Let the horrible, anxiety-inducing attacks come and just let them wash over you.

I am on a discussion group right now where some stupid feminists are pretty much calling me a child molester, rapist, misogynist, abuser of women, creep, weirdo, freak, loser, guy who can't get laid, social retard, dangerous, dirty old man, and possible sex criminal against females, especially teenage girls.

They are saying that they have young daughters and they would not let them get anywhere near me. Of course, I am none of the things that they are calling me, and actually the accusations are anxiety-inducing, but I am just seeing myself as a He-man who can be called anything by anyone and he doesn't even care.

In fact, I am deliberately baiting them and trolling them to provoke them into calling me horrible names and the sicker, more awful, more horrible, and more criminal and evil the names they call me, the better.

Now most men would be horrified to be called such things, but I am just enjoying it, as it isn't going away, and none of it is true anyway. Also, if I tell the diabolical feminist bitches from Hell how much it upsets me, they will just do it ten times more to make me feel even worse.

I am calling them diabolical, insane, deranged, maniacs, bigots, chauvinists, promoters of male hate propaganda, silly, idiotic, etc. I am calling Western feminism a cancer and a poison that destroys every civilization and female it infests.

This is being done in order to provoke them into calling me a sex criminal and other horrible things, plus it's also true that they are all of these things. I am trying to provoke them into calling me my worst nightmares in order to get over my anxieties about these things.

For OCD, I also recommend fasting, especially juice fasting. The OCD relief is only temporary, but it works dramatically well. The OCD will start to come back after you start eating again.

As for your thoughts, the less said about them the better. The worse obsessions will start to go away and rarely come back, but they are often replaced with less bad ones.

I recommend shifting attention away from your mind and your OCD. For instance, if you walk into a coffee shop, stop thinking about your thoughts. I also recommend that you stop thinking about the other people in the shop. Instead, just think about whatever you are doing: "Here I am, filling my coffee cup in a coffee shop." Stop the thought-watching.

I also recommend thinking about something else entirely. In a public venue full of people, just think about some abstract intellectual subject or what you are going to do that day, or some joke you overheard. Think about something that has absolutely nothing whatever to do with your own thoughts or with where you are or especially the people around you.

You're in a crowded store and you are thinking of Finno-Ugrian linguistics or some esoteric subject like that.

If there is a choice to think about something in an anxious way or in a non-anxious way, choose the non-anxious way. For instance, now I am on a forum for people suffering from HPPD, a disorder one gets from using hallucinogens.

There are some anxious guys on there going on and on about whether or not they are brain-damaged. It's an obsession.

I am telling them to knock it off. Even if they are, there is nothing to done. If they are not, all the better. In either case, they still have HPPD. So going round and round about whether or not you are damaged is an unproductive thought process that only generates anxiety.

Remember: Go with the flow. Let it happen and don't analyze it. And most important of all, you cannot run from your fears.

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