Am I supposed to feel guilt and shame over my past experiences to this extent? Someone else posted abt real event ocd and how they feel guilt and shame and someone responded “it’s okay to feel guilt and shame, and some mistakes are really bad” and now I’m thinking that my guilt and shame is how I should be feeling over the past. Like how do I know if my OCD has blown up real events or if these real events are something to dismiss.
My ocd tends to catastrophize my past events and makes me spiral into what if’s or turn it into some kind of guilt trip that makes me feel so bad I wonder if I even deserve to have good things. If you’re feeling that kind of way that’s not normal, past experiences should be learning experiences not shameful horrible thoughts. :) hope that helps
@carlweagle Thank you!!
@carlweagle I’m sorry your goin through this ❤️
Guilt and shame are human emotions that non-OCD people experience, just like anxiety, that play an important role in life. However, with OCD these emotions can often be malignant and actually can hinder the growth we need to be a better person. How do you tell the difference? You don’t need to tell the difference between obsessive guilt and “real” guilt— the answer in both those cases is the same. You just sit with it. On the other hand, we can often, perhaps as a compulsion, say or do things to ourselves to inflict guilt and shame on purpose because we think it’s what we should feel, because it will absolve us. This, whether a compulsion because of OCD or some other reason, is not helpful. It will not change the past or make us better persons in the future if we remain miserable, our will and agency broken because we are forcing ourselves to only feel pain. But neither should we be afraid of guilt, whether OCD or real. The approach is the same. Let it be there, don’t suppress it, don’t try to make it worse, etc. It will pass and when you have the calmness and perspective to think about it more clearly, you may have clarity. Or it still may take some more time and perspective. At the end, you might say what you did was anywhere from awful to saintly, though most people’s experience with Real Event OCD results in “well it’s bad but not as much as my OCD said it was.” For me, it was “others might not agree with me, but I think this is bad and would like to improve as a person, though that may take some time.” And y’know, that acknowledgement, divorced of any need to punish myself or to rehearse the event in my head over and over and try to drum up the courage to act differently, doesn’t feel so horrible. Just to offer another perspective on that. You can at least feel comfort in knowing that, wherever guilt appears, there’s only one approach to take and that it will pass and that you can still enjoy the greener pastures when they come.
I’m dealing with these feelings too along with embarrassment, regret, and anxiety over my real event ocd. It’s so hard to fight with an obsession that isn’t hypothetical because it already happened. I’ve caught myself thinking how crazy it is that one day I just thought about the events in a different way and I’ve been tormented ever since. But then I start to think that I should have been tormented the whole time and the crazy thing is that I wasn’t struggling with these feelings since the events occurred. It seems to be a relatively common struggle with real event ocd. I wish they had a support group for this subtype. It’s awful! You aren’t alone.
@Have a sunflower🌻 I’m sorry you’re going through this 💕
@Have a sunflower🌻 I wonder why this is! I didn’t struggle with these things that happened either, most of them are from years ago😵💫 they didn’t bother me until recently when my ocd spiraled and got much worse
@Anonymous_1 I’m sorry you are too!
@carlweagle Yep and then I’m confused how to feel because I’m frustrated that one thought changed everything moving forward but also feeling like I should be struggling with what I did and I got away with not feeling bad for too long.
@Have a sunflower🌻 I wouldn’t beat yourself up too bad I know it’s hard but I have a quote that says “if it didn’t bother you then and it’s bothering you now. It’s not you it’s ocd” and it’s true! It’s normal to feel guilty and then move on but it’s not normal to continuously beat ourselves up and feel so much shame that it becomes hindering, that’s just our ocd talking!
@carlweagle That’s a great way to look at it. Unfortunately, my ocd just counters with the fact that because it didn’t bother me just means I was a bad and stupid person before that finally realized the error of my ways.
So, I know my capacity to get fixated on things. And it's normally something that's relatively remote but, my latest issue is really getting to me and I was wondering if people have any advice. I'm avoiding getting too into specifics, as I don't want this to get reassurance-y but, in essence.. I came to the realisation recently that people who I'd been "friends" (feels like the wrong term now) when I was younger were not very nice people, and normalized a lot of very unpleasant behaviour towards other members of the group. They really normalized it, sold themselves as figures of authority, as older and more responsible and grown-up than others, and looking back, they acted horribly. And coming to this realisation, that I'd been manipulated into just accepting their behaviour has just... broken me. My OCD has latched onto it and I can't stop feeling irreversibly tainted by it. I've talked to others about it, and they've reassured me, told me it's not a big deal and that I hold myself to too high a standard, but none of that sticks. I feel better for a bit, then think 'Maybe when you told them you were skewing it to make yourself look better' or 'Did you leave out a crucial detail'. I keep ruminating over and over, trying to remember exactly how everything played out, trying to figure out if I fed into the behaviour, if I did something bad myself (because y'know, I feel like I was accepting of it at the time, so what does it say about my own values?). I know I need to stop doing all this if I want to improve, but then some part of me keeps saying 'So, you're just going to let yourself off the hook then?' Normally, I can rationalize my own fears to some degree, assure myself something won't happen, but the realness of the situation, and the fact I only came to understand the reality of it because the thought had been bothering me means it feels so much more all-encompassing. I know confessing in itself is a compulsion, but I keep feeling that if I'm not I'm somehow concealing what I 'really am' from others around me, and any positive interactions are me deceiving them in some way. I feel like I can't enjoy anything in life right now, and a good part of me feels I should not enjoy it ever again. If anybody has any advice on it, I'm all ears. Or even hearing if you relate to these feelings, I might appreciate the solidarity at least.
I’m currently struggling with guilt from checking OCD. By this I mean, I feel guilty and shameful by my OCD checking because I feel as that was immoral and wrong and I really don’t know what to do. How can I fight this?
I can’t help but feel so anxious because of guilt. I feel guilty about not sharing everything about my OCD to my partner, but because I understand that confession itself is a compulsion and would not help anyone. I feel so anxious too that if all my fears come true and she finds out, then it would be so devastating for everyone especially her. Does anyone feel the same thing? How could I change my perspective on this?
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