Anyone else ??
Does anyone make little bets with themselves to ease their anxiety ? For example I’ll be driving and I’ll say “if I make this green light without it turning yellow I’m not my intrusive thoughts”
I usually do it when running up the stairs while something is in the background. Like if somebody is watching TV, and the into comes on, I tell myself “if I don’t make it up the stairs by the time the intro is over, something bad will happen”
I do that I usually do it for luck or something but trying not to
In the beginning yes. OCD at its finest the big jerk.
I've made deals with myself like ok u r only allowed to do this thing 3 more times or something bad will happen. It's like I'm trying to stop myself doing compulsions but then it back fires cuz then if I want to do it again I freak out cuz I can't cuz then I'm afraid something bad will happen so then I make new rules
Compulsions are never really satisfied. I had a really stupid nagging harm thought that I knew I should just let go of. I was tired and said ok just check one time to shut it up. Guess what, I checked more than once because it didn’t shut up. I felt bad because I caved in but also I felt reassured that checking in the first place was not going to work and I kinda knew that. Lesson learned. Always try to resist compulsions, they are unnecessary and don’t work for ocd.
Why is this a thing?
I find if I am legitimately in a rush and preoccupied and check if I locked a door since I truly don’t remember checking once is sufficient. With ocd normally those intrusive thoughts don’t represent real threats and they usually make us anxious. When you do a compulsion we tell our brain this will make the anxiety go away, but this is only a temporary relief. My guess is that compulsions are really a faulty fix and that realizing that intrusive thoughts are just thoughts that can come with anxiety teaches your brain there is no threat.
@ivrec It just feels like such a real threat and due to all the compulsions I do the fear has grown.
Does anyone else have irrational fears? Every time I arrive somewhere after driving, I have a lot of anxiety thinking I may have hit someone with my car. Even though I know I would surely notice if I did, I can’t shake the feeling ?
Anyone else experienced something like this? You’re doing something normal, and you start thinking, what if my ocd attaches to this? And then you make it. Or you’re thinking, what if I can’t do this normally? And that inhibts you from doing so.
Does anyone else suffering with false memory ocd give yourself ultimatums? For example if I have a horrific intrusive thought I’ll try so hard to debunk it by trying to think of random facts like what colour top the person was wearing , I’ll say blue. Then I’ll look back on old pictures and if the person was in a top was blue I’ll just label myself as guilty? Does that even make any logical sense?! I’m literally just randomly guessing , how do I stop this😭
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