Hey everyone ..... I feel that OCD makes you doubtful and scared of so many things Maybe we can share some tips on this thread to help each other be less afraid.?
Love this!!! My tip is to try and remember who you’re being brave for. If you can’t be brave for yourself maybe you can be brave for someone else.
This is excellent Phillip91... Fantastic
I too push forward for others but I have to remember to fill my cup when I get drained. I'll begin with helping others like a soup kitchen or other things. I try to join nature and listen more for joy.
Hey! I can so relate. What has really helped me is thinking about the "why" behind doing exposures/treatment. For example, rather than thinking of a not checking exposure as something you are doing because you have to or even just because it's OCD, I think of what it will help me with long-term. Using that example, maybe not going back to check the door multiple times would save time that could be spend hanging out with friends. I tend to be more motivated to do hard things when I have that reason in addition to just wanting to get better. Hope that helps!
This is it but generally why is too vague, it's better to start with who is feeling this way, what triggered it, when did this occur, where can I go to gather my thoughts/ sit with it/ or talk to someone, and why. Focus on being the advocate for yourself and also being a friend to yourself. Would you turn away a friend or not understand a run away thought from a friend? Understand your a person who has not had a single day of rest from ideations. Your naturally exhausted.
I am wanting to go to therapy to hopefully lower my OCD symptoms but I am terrified to tell anyone else, like a therapist, about my intrusive thoughts. Has anyone else had this experience and if so how did you get over it?
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.
What ERP or other techniques do you use to combat fear of cancelation? Especially curious about those with taboo thoughts, false memory ocd and event ocd based off of real events where the fear of cancellation may actually hold some validity. I once did my own ERP not under a therapist but just on my own I decided to create an anonymous account on Twitter and defend a friend who was receiving online criticism. I knew that this would be semi-controversial so I was expecting backlash and when I recieved troll replies it actually seemed to be a really helpful low-stakes exposure activity. Is this something that others have done? Low stakes online posts etc. that you know will recieve negative responses? I have had severe OCD as a kid as pretty much every subtype under the sun, and as an adult I pretty much have all the types under control except for this real event and false memory and taboo thought OCD. It seems like a different beast since it's somewhat realistic in the camcellation culture today, and it's confusing to address. Ive shut down almost all social accounts and it's keeping me from progressing in a career where I need to have an online presence :/
Share your thoughts so the Community can respond
