- User type
- OCD Conqueror
- Date posted
- 3y
I’m not sure what emotional blockage is, but when my rOCD was bad, trying to figure out my emotions only made things worse. I did ERP and it took months, but here I am 2 years later happier than I’ve ever been and still with my gf. You need to stop trying to figure things out and practice acceptance. It’s hard, it’s a very slow process, and it feels like you’re lying to yourself, but it works
Everyone is different but can I ask how long did it took for ERP to work for you? I’ve been at it since Nov & I’ve gotten better at stopping the checking but there are hard days like today.
@WhyMe? It’s hard to say. After a few weeks it lowered my anxiety a significant amount. But to get to where I am today took like a year and a half. Granted the last year I wasn’t constantly doing ERP, I was just resisting compulsions and whenever I got triggered I just rode it out until it dissipated. Eventually you want to kind of integrate it into your daily life. When you feel anxious just ride it out instead of ruminating or doing other compulsions. I still occasionally feel anxious but it’s way less. Last time I was triggered was Halloween and even then the anxiety was nowhere near what it used to be
@Drvmstick My main struggle is SOOCD and I feel this is the one theme that we do ERP daily 😅 wow a year and a half? I’m already so drained and it’s only been 4 months with this flare. I feel like my brain is triggering itself.
yes a few weeks ago i was very apathetic towards everything in my life now i cant stop crying...i dont know how i overcame it...my friend basically told me to force myself to cry even if i dont feel like it
Ah ok. Yeah all kinds of weird emotional things can happen when you continuously struggle with mental health. I’ve had similar experiences. Ultimately you have to treat the root cause, which I’m assuming is OCD if you’re on this app
I'm going through it right now... I'm struggling
Around 10 years ago when I started getting violent OCD intrusive thoughts, I also started fearing that I was a sociopath. I began overanalyzing everything — especially my emotions. It's like if I could prove I had emotions it proved I wasn't a sociopath. I care deeply about my family — I worry about them, I want them to be safe and happy, I want them to get theit deepest desires — but I don’t know what love "feels" like, if its supposed to feel like anything. People describe love as this warm, obvious, fuzzy emotion, but I don’t experience it the way I think I’m supposed to. Is it supposed to be intense? Constant? Loud? Because I’m not sure I’ve ever felt that. My family isn’t very emotionally expressive either. I cherish hugs from them when I get them, I initiate most hugs with my parents (but I don't like hugs from other people, like co workers) but overall my family doesnt show affection much, and that’s made me question if I’m even capable of love. I overanalyze my feelings constantly — especially after realizing I don’t feel connected to God in the way my old church said I should. I don’t love God. I don’t feel anything toward Him — we’ve never met obviously so I just never got a connection with Him. But growing up, that felt like a sin in itself. As a teen, I felt ashamed knowing I cared more for my parents than for God, especially when church messages said God had to come first. There’s a song by Mary Mary that says, “I love you more than my mother, my father…” and it used to make me feel broken. My feelings were in direct contradiction with what I was taught, and that shame never fully left me. OCD latched onto that hard. It’s only after a coworker passed away — and I found myself crying multiple times over it — that I realized I do care deeply for people. But even that realization felt pathetic. Why did I need such an extreme moment to feel something “real”? & why didn't I care for another creepy bigoted co worker when his son was sick? I felt nothing. I’m scared my OCD is convincing me that I’m heartless, even though I want connection. I crave love. I like hugs. It’s exhausting and terrifying to doubt my own humanity like this. I hate this fear. I hate that I don’t trust myself. I hate that OCD makes me question my morality, my emotions — everything that makes me me. Has anyone else experienced anything like this? How do I even explain this to a therapist
I have alot of problems with this and I question alot if I do avoid my emotions cause today everyone says to "feel your emotions, let them be" but it just makes me be stuck with suffering. Currently I have a problem at my job, it's really stressful and i feel like everyone thinks im stupid and a bad person and it's hard, I struggle with negative emotions and I rumminate alot about the things, what couldve happened,what will happen and sometimes it makes me feel helpless cause idk what to do. But when it happens I don't let myself feel helpless, I don't know why you should let yourself feel anything like hopelessness,helplesnees,or let yourself tell any story that will not help you. I acknowledge it that it came up, but I won't let it to continously be there. I never understood that when you have these feelings, sitting with them makes you just follow the story that is unhealthy. I feel things that are unhealthy for me and i tried to sit with it and made me feel worse being stuck with that emotion. I start to think that people who actually has avoidance problems they dont notice how they feel, when I do notice I just choose not to go on that path. I question grief too alot. Everyone grieves differently so that's why is difficult but I don't like when people say that grief will never end and if you feel better about your loss you are just lying to yourself... Ofcourse you will never feel happy about anything you lost in your life. When i dealt with grief I noticed it, back then i thought okay i have to sit with the pain but then it got worse and worse and I felt like im stuck in my pain. Then I decided I have to move and im not 100%over, i dont even know what that means cause as I said you will never feel happy about any loss you experienced,but thats a different thing, you can still live your life with that,but if its been years and you still think life sucks and nothing is good then youre stuck with grief. This is not judging anyone who is not over grief, But it's problematic for me when I say i wont let this emotion to rule my day, and then i feel like im supressing it... or when people say "just let it be there" then my focus is on that being there, so to change your focus to your life you have to ignore the feelings, and people say "no,you dont" but thats what you have to do... To choose that you will live your life and you will focus on something else no matter what means that you will ignore the feelings, you can still notice it but you give no power to them. That's called ignoring it... I have to learn what supressing feelings really means cause everytime I try to live my life I say i supress my emotions cause it feels like that. I hope someone will read this, either will help him or he will help me understand things more, so if you read this, thank you for your time! :)
Need some advice please. I'm trying to fix my social anxiety, self esteem and confidence but ocd infests itself and makes me I had all these issues because I my ocd was true all along. For example, Im extremely uptight/awkward around people and have a fear of being judged, laughed at or seen through, fear of not being liked etc. One cause of this I read is it's because i suppressed my real self/feelings and pretended to put on a fake mask to be liked by others/fit in and now that im older that mask is breaking and causing me disconnect from my real self. My hocd inserts itself and makes me feel because I was gay all along without knowing it is why it happened. It genuinely feels like that's the case but then I feel dreaded and depressed because it feels so real I'm ready to accept that scenario. But back then I didnt think I could have been gay or anything. Im not sure how to handle this difficulty. Please any advice?
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