- Date posted
- 3y
- User type
- NOCD Alumni
- Date posted
- 3y
Hi Isabella, I struggle a lot over the years with real event OCD as well as false memories stemming from revisiting those real events so many times that they get foggier and harder to tell what exactly happened anymore, like a copy of a copy of a copy…. In my experience, the more you dwell or revisit the real events bothering you, the more your OCD tends to make you look worse and worse, regardless of if you did anything wrong or not. Try to remember that no amount of dwelling, or guilt or shame or regret over past actions will magically change them, revisiting them or the feelings they caused will just make you focus on them more and feed your OCD more. We’ve all done things we’ve regretted over time, but we can’t change what happened. It’s how we learn and move on from our mistakes that matters. Your OCD wants you to live in the past because nobody’s memory is perfect so whatever questions it wants you to answer definitely about yourself, your behavior, your incident…you will never be able to provide a concrete answer and it will never be satisfied, so choose not to feed it as much as you can. The hardest thing to do is forgive yourself, especially your past self for whatever happened or whatever your OCD is trying to convince you may have happened. You are not that person anymore, no matter what your OCD is trying to convince you to the contrary. You can’t affect the past, you can only affect what happens now. Your OCD wants you to chose to live in the guilt and doubt it causes you and stay dwelling on the past while missing out on the present, but choose instead to not pay attention to it and choose not to play it’s what if and rumination games. I know that’s much easier said than done. Try to tell it “so what if I messed up in the past, or didn’t, so what if you think i should or should not feel guilty about it….I can’t change the past and I am not that person anymore anyway. There’s no point in feeding you by staying in the past, I’m moving fwd with the present the best I can and choosing to be the best I can now….where I can actually affect the outcome. So go kick rocks!” Or something to that effect…may seem silly but it usually helps me when I’m struggling with my real event guilt and shame. Anyway, stay strong against your OCD bully Isabella, and take care.
- Date posted
- 3y
I really appreciate this response ❤️ thank you a lot. I think every time I get intrusive thoughts and images of the event it drags me back in because it just feels so real like it could be proof and I instantly start to panic and question myself. And your right, the more I ruminate and reflect on it the worse it becomes! I just wish I could have my clarity and certainty back. A day after I made this post I started feeling great bc I was focusing really hard on recovery work but as soon as I started feeling better I stopped bc I wanted the feeling to last. I got a thought at work the other day and now I’m doing bad again. It’s so frustrating. :(
- Date posted
- 3y
I’m still trying to figure that out. My therapist says to do the things I used to do that made me happy, to do erp. Expose you to what sets off the ruminating, but avoid doing compulsions
- Date posted
- 3y
Radical self acceptance, learning from the behavior, accepting that you did the best you could at the time (In this case we were both very young when the incident happened and we just didn't understand as much as we wish we did now. It's really difficult but with practice it can work. I'm sorry we went through that
- Date posted
- 3y
I think what scares me is that my ocd tells me it means something about me. And I have a hard time accepting that uncertainty bc it feels so real.
- Date posted
- 3y
@Isabella I think the number one issue with OCD is that it's attaching how you feel about the thoughts or events and taking that as fact of something. Feelings and thoughts can be two different things that often times they intertwine.
- Date posted
- 3y
Read up on guilt and shame! It helped me a lot , lots of repetitive reading
- Date posted
- 3y
I can’t stop ruminating over a disturbing groinal response I had a long time ago which triggered my obsessions and fears and idk what to do or if it makes me bad or means something about me. It’s caused me unbelievable distress. I wish it didn’t happen but it wasn’t in my control even. I would never want to do anything bad.
- Date posted
- 3y
Sit with it. Everything you just typed is what's commonly written among other OCD sufferers. Ruminating really sucks but you can get through it by telling yourself that you'll deal with it later and by not feeding into the reactions OCD wants.
- Date posted
- 3y
@BigGip09 I just feel disgusted with myself for the response. Does it mean something about me?
- Date posted
- 3y
@Ocd not me Sorry, but I can't reassure you on that. :( What you can do right now is take note that you are seeking reassurance for your OCD and you don't have to do that. Instead you can shift your focus onto something that is more productive for you. It can help in the long run. Again, I know that's really hard to do when you have a voice bugging you in your head about something so insignificant, but it is for the better.
- Date posted
- 3y
@BigGip09 Are you saying that you can’t reassure me because you do think I’m bad and it meant something about me??
- Date posted
- 3y
@Ocd not me No, I can't reassure you because if I tell you something you want to hear that's the opposite of OCD, that's a compulsion. You are aware of what compulsions are, right? You're doing one right now, and that's BAD for OCD in the long run. Do not give into compulsions like these because even if you manage to find comfort in "certainty" now, it will just come back in the long run. That's why I said you should shift your focus onto something more helpful long term.
- Date posted
- 3y
@BigGip09 Okay thank you!
- Date posted
- 3y
I especially feel bad since it was before this ocd obsession, so I’m so scared it meant somethinf.
Related posts
- Date posted
- 18w
im going to be vague here, but basically i did something in the past that i regret and it became a huge point of my OCD but i have talked to my therapist and i have mostly moved past it. i watched a video by an OCD youtuber that really put it into perspective. anyway, i have been with minimal worry for a few days, but now im having worries related to i think false memory? basically it’s like “oh but what if i said/ did this and just forgot that means i harmed this person im a bad person”. to me it sounds like textbook OCD but im just wondering if anyone else has experienced false memory / real event at the same time. i have a really horrible memory which is making it even more stressful. any responses are appreciated!
- Date posted
- 16w
Hi all, I’m really grateful for all the support I’ve gotten from people in the last few days. My mental health is at an all time low and I really appreciate the relief people have brought. I had a question about whether an intrusive image of a potentially imagined event can feel just as real as a real memory. I’m doing my best to stop ruminating over an image I have in my head, and have gone so far as requested security footage of myself and have been told both through that and by my friends that nothing bad happened, but the image in my head feels just as real as other memories. I was also drinking the night in question, which makes it harder for me to dismiss the image and makes me feel like I shouldn’t. I was just wondering if imagined images can feel just as real? I’m trying to use tools to ignore the image, and have therapy scheduled for tomorrow, but I feel like I can’t responsibly dismiss the image even with the evidence I’ve gathered if there’s something about a real memory that looks different in the brain and that if so, that suggests my memory is real and I should confess it. I’m really working on stopping reassurance seeking as well, especially now that even after being told that nothing bad happened when the establishment I was at reviewed security footage, my brain is telling me “they’re probably just lying and never reviewed it.” I know I need to just stop ruminating, reassurance seeking, and mentally checking the memory, but I just don’t know if I can/should in case the image is what I should trust more, if that makes sense.
- Date posted
- 12w
17f I have a lot of events, but my main and my worst one which is absolutely fucking diabolical was done when I was 14 and repeated when I was 16. Everytime I post something about real event ocd here people are like you are probably didn't do anything that bad, and when they hear what I did they are like yeah that's bad. Someone even asked me if I'm autistic cause "it's crazy how you didn't realize that the thing ypu were doing was wrong at this age." And I kinda agree, like it's fucked up It's just that my event is bad. Doesn't mean I don't have real event ocd. You can have a reocd over the event that was bad, it doesn't mean the event wasn't that bad or you don't have recod. It's just people always expect it to be something innocent and it's not Even a healthy person would feel guilty over it, it's just that I had ocd my whole life and it's making the guilt absolutely destructive, like to the point when I sometimes have a hard time breathing when I think about it, I lost more than a year of life to it, almost checked myself out couple of times if I wasn't so scared of pain/failure, the event haunts me in my dreams, it's in my head 24/7 and I will never able to forgive myself. That ocd. But the event itself was bad. So maybe i deserve it.
Be a part of the largest OCD Community
Share your thoughts so the Community can respond