@Givenup Classic OCD, I honesty get it.
As a straight female it really hard for me too, and OCD telling me I'm scared of others reaction, rather than the identity itself.
It's sad that I have to compulsively remind myself that I'm straight and that OCD will nit-pick everything.
This will help:
I think this will help you a lot!!
OCD is a con artist, and a very good one and much better than a standard sales
person repeating the same old pattern. OCD is far more dynamic, easily adapting
to new situations, using every trick and cheat in the book to make you doubt
reality. Just think about it for a moment. The OCD has not benefited you in any
way, you feel the consequences of having OCD all the time, and yet, you are still
buying its wares. OCD is a con man and a brilliant one at that.
To stand a chance against the OCD, you will have to begin start seeing through
the tricks and cheats of the OCD con artist, identifying them and seeing what’s
wrong with them and how they strengthen/reinforce your OCD. To do this, the
first thing to remember is where the tricks and cheats of the OCD are located.
They are part of your own OCD story and your inner dialogue in the form of
thoughts, beliefs, associations and anything else that makes you doubt. They are
those ideas and thoughts that somehow give credibility to your obsessional doubt.
The second thing to remember is that it is never about the content of these
beliefs, thoughts and facts. It is about how you apply these thoughts in a situation
that is not really relevant, and often in contradiction to reality.
Both these two points are something you have already learned in the previous
sessions. The new point, however, is to see how the OCD is often able to get
around these two facts by using all manner of tricks and cheats, which
nonetheless always come down to the same thing. And seeing how it always
comes down to the same thing will help you expose the OCD con artist in a way
that would be difficult to do if you were to debate with every little thought
association and idea the OCD comes up with. So first point: never argue with the
OCD. Better to simply see why what it tells you is wrong and then move on to
spend your time on better things.
The one thing that all of the tricks and cheats of the OCD have in common is
that they make you believe its arguments have something to do with reality while
they do not. Each time you get into the OCD Bubble, the OCD will have
accomplished just that. For example, one of the tricks of the OCD is make you
believe that you are actually going deeper into reality when listening to the OCD.
It may tell you for example that you are contaminated, because if you would just
look with a microscope, it would be obvious. Likewise, it may tell you that the
door may not be locked, because the hidden mechanism behind the lock might be
broken.
Alternatively, if you suffer from pure obsessions, the OCD may tell you that even
though there is no evidence that you have violent impulses, they might be there if
only you would go deeper into your mind, into some hypothetical unconscious.
In all these instances, the OCD makes it seem you are going deeper into reality,
while the opposite is actually the case. Can you see how OCD is one slippery
Mismatching
‘Mismatching’ is a very common trick of the OCD to confuse you. The OCD will
often propose all sorts of events that have happened elsewhere, and that
happened to someone else in order to make your doubt somehow more credible
in the here and now. For example, if you have obsessions about locking the door,
the OCD might say something like ‘My friend often drives off and forgets to lock
his garage door, so mine might also be unlocked’. Or if you were about being
poisoned, it might something like ‘I heard of poisoned medicine one time, so my
food could be poisoned’. The trick of the OCD is here that it uses all manner of
apparently comparable events and irrelevant associations to justify the doubt. It
makes it appear as if your doubt is relevant to reality.
Yet, none of these are relevant at all to the here and now. There is a mismatch
between your own actual circumstances and these events. It is like a car salesman
telling you to get rid of your old car, because he had a car of the same model
and it broke down. Such arguments make no sense when your car is functioning
fine. Another aspect of mismatching we have covered in the manual is blending
where OCD blends OCD thinking and behaviour with a sometime ‘noble’ or
‘desired’ but unrelated attribute such as ‘being perfect’, ‘ecological’, or ‘safe’.Mismatching
‘Mismatching’ is a very common trick of the OCD to confuse you. The OCD will
often propose all sorts of events that have happened elsewhere, and that
happened to someone else in order to make your doubt somehow more credible
in the here and now. For example, if you have obsessions about locking the door,
the OCD might say something like ‘My friend often drives off and forgets to lock
his garage door, so mine might also be unlocked’. Or if you were about being
poisoned, it might something like ‘I heard of poisoned medicine one time, so my
food could be poisoned’. The trick of the OCD is here that it uses all manner of
apparently comparable events and irrelevant associations to justify the doubt. It
makes it appear as if your doubt is relevant to reality.
Yet, none of these are relevant at all to the here and now. There is a mismatch
between your own actual circumstances and these events. It is like a car salesman
telling you to get rid of your old car, because he had a car of the same model
and it broke down. Such arguments make no sense when your car is functioning
fine. Another aspect of mismatching we have covered in the manual is blending
where OCD blends OCD thinking and behaviour with a sometime ‘noble’ or
‘desired’ but unrelated attribute such as ‘being perfect’, ‘ecological’, or ‘safe’.
