Hello everyone!š¤ I would like to ask whether you have this OCD symptom - recapitulation of past actions/events with the aim of making sure youāve done everything right? E.g. I park a car and immediately recapitulate whether Iāve done everything correctly as I left the car, whether the windows are closed, whether itās locked etc. Just one example of what I recapitulate. Thanks for your answers.
Yes, but less frequently since getting on medication for ADHD. I see this compulsion as useful to me, because I also have ADHD and am always losing or forgetting things and was told to retrace my steps to figure out what Iām forgetting or canāt. The only time I check like this lately is when my meds are wearing off at the end of the day and Iām like ādoors locked? Oven off? Lights off? A/C adjusted? Kids safe?ā And I look at my side table to check that I have all my devices charging and that Iāve put everything away where I can find it later. Sometimes I have to double check drawers because I have terrible object permanence.
@Bronsautracks Thank you for sharing your experience. I am glad that this compulsion serves you in a positive way. For me, it is very debiliating - it takes me a lot of time and energy, I do it all the time and itās getting worse as there are still more and more things I recapitulate. Wish you everything good.š
@Natalia Z Ah, I see. That one is ruminating for me. So sorry youāre dealing with it and I hope I didnāt make you feel that your experience is invalid or that I was minimizing it. I get excited to relate since Iām new to diagnosis. š
This is the main OCD issue that I have - self doubt, struggling to trust myself and fear-based false memories. It's a struggle because my rational mind knows I did something and did it right and even has a detailed, vivid memory of doing the action. But I do replays (although not recommended) and look for reassurance that I actually did what I remember. With OCD, due to my fears, a doubtful voice causes me to question myself so replays + reassurance in the form of visual indicators are what I look for. I'm just starting treatment so I'm hoping that I reach a point where I trust myself to a level that I no longer feel compelled to do mental replays for reassurance or checking spaces for visual indicators that validate my memory.
@Anonymous Thank you for answering me. I do exactly the same - reassurence together with this event recapitulation which is also a form of reassurance seeking make me quite a hard time. Iām on 125mg Sertralin dose - doesnāt help, so iāll be starting with a therapy, hopefully it will help. I wish you a strong will to overcome your struggle with this.š
@Natalia Z. You're welcome and also thank you for your reply. I'm new to nOCD and until recently, I mostly felt alone with my OCD. Now I don't feel so alone. So thank you. I'm so sorry to hear that your medication isn't working. I used to take Fluvoxamine Maleate and although it helped, last year when I decided to undergo neurofeedback therapy (LENS) for trauma relief, I decided to stop my medication. LENS works better without SSRIs, which I understand are psychiatric medications, and since I wanted full benefit of the treatment, I stopped taking the medication. Also, I made this personal choice because I didn't want to take medication forever. My psychiatrists over the years just kept prescribing me higher doses every year or two and never created a plan for me to get off medication. I think medication is great but to me, it was like training wheels for a bike. The psychiatrists basically wanted to keep me with medication forever, which was like using the training wheels on a bike forever, but I decided I really wanted to teach my brain to re-organize itself to do things in a healthy way independently (like ride a bike without the support of training wheels). The problem with replaying the events in my mind to reassure myself that I did something or did it right is that sometimes, no matter how many times I replay the event, even with vivid details, the OCD still doesn't believe me. I feel like I'm arguing with the OCD part of my brain, defending myself against it's doubtful, fearful voice. And even though the OCD voice makes no sense, that voice is so strong that I often feel more inclined to believe it. It causes fear, anxiety and lots of worry. I don't know if this is a good thing to do but I'm thinking to start a written log to track specific activities daily with observational details. Like, I want to take notice, be present and extremely aware of details from the events that I usually replay in my mind and later write them down instead of replaying them mentally. I want to consider what did I see? What did I feel? What did I touch? I wonder if I write a daily log of these details, will I trust my actions and memories more? For example, I will use a car example since that's one you mentioned in the beginning. I might notice details after parking like, was I closer to the right or left parking lines? Was I parked diagonally or straight? To ensure windows are closed, what reflections did I see in the windows? Then I could write these details down in a log or type them and save them with the date. I don't know if this is a good strategy so I'm not suggesting to anyone to do this. But I think I want to start doing this for myself because I want to test and see if it helps me with my issue of false memory. I want to see if it helps me trust my actions, senses and memory. I have no idea if this will work or if it's a good idea but I too suffer and now, I feel desperate for relief. I suffer from taking a long time to do things to ensure I'm really doing certain actions, doing them right or well and then I spend a long period of time replaying the events in my mind to convince my irrational part of the brain that I did what I do not trust that I did. So I'm wondering if this will reduce the time spent with compulsions and replays as well as the anxiety, fear and worry.
Very brief mentions of pocd and nsfw jokes,id like this to be adults only . Repost bc i had to edit something Does anyone have experience with real event ocd attached to your online footprint etc? I keep checking old messages,trying to find old people i knew i used to talk to etc. To find out every problematic thing I did and if I've ever been unfollowed or blocked by anyone I used to be friends w online/atleast on good terms w. I am particularly concerned abt doing something bigoted,esp racist bc i have racism ocd,and doing something predatory bc of my pocd. I remember hanging around people who could use 'edgy' or offensive humour in my teens and i remember a lot of sex jokes and that i would join in on sex jokes sometimes . i dont remember details w the offensive humour as much,i feel like i didnt join in on it as much but i was definitely WAY passive abt things and prob let a lot of bad stuff slide i shouldnt have bc i didn't speak up it was wrong,I remember one friend in an online community would say slurs and horrible jokes when i was 16. I dont remember my response to it as much but i feel i didnt speak up abt it aside one time i found in the dms where he made a bad joke on a thing i shared for social justice. I cant stop going thru old messages and stuff or trying to find ppl from the past. I feel like if I don't check it now,that eventually it'll come to haunt me or that I'll stumble across it eventually. I worry what if someone messaged me on one of these apps I un-installed or on one of the accounts I don't have access to,confronting me abt all this stuff I did. I had an obsession w this back in 2020 and did check in depth on all my accounts,but now that it's been 4 years the obsession is back in full swing.
My ocd latches on to past mistakes. i fear that God is formulating a situation to āgive me what i deserve.ā I will string together completely unrelated events into the predictors/indicators that my ājudgement dayā is near and all my wrongdoings will be exposed for everyone to see and my life will be ruined by finally getting the punishment i deserve. I fear that God is going to use someone who is out to get me, wants revenge, hates me, etc, to carry this out. The associated compulsion is that i keep track of my mistakes and practice arguments for defending myself so that when the time comes im ready for anything. I also punish myself with guilt so that i can āget aheadā on any bad feelings that i would experience on my judgement day. Itās all so exhausting. Does anyone relate? Does anyone have a similar existence? Would love to hear about othersā experiences. Thank you for reading.
I think I have OCD since last year but I just realized that Iāve got OCD this year even I havenāt been to any mental clinics or hospitals to test if I have OCD or not. I realized i have OCD this year when i watched movies or videos but i feel like to watch them again and again to check some specific sentences in that movie. Like if that video has subtitles and there are always have some phrases or sentences that make me read, look at every single words of that thing. Even sometimes i check that thing just want to know at the end of that sentence has a dot or comma, kind of like that, i know itās hard to describe about these situations for me even i know checking these things doesnāt help me anything in my life but the more i watch, read and focus at any details in anything i look so when i remember about something that i watched or red, if i cannot remember exactly all the words of that sentence in the movies, videos, post i feel like to check just know what it is again. Most of my compulsions are related to anything i look, watch or read in my phone. Even sometimes i feel like to check if that is just an account name of anyone, comments on social medias. And before i had so many bad problems with doing things to just āfeel rightā after i watched those movies and videos. There were some rules that came in my mind so when i watched them again - i had to click this, touch this, replay this over and over again in the video or even look at video duration at the end. There are so many things that i did before that i couldnāt describe enough but i just want to say i used to want to complete many missions in my mind to just feel right or feel completed. If i donāt complete that stupid mission (i called it stupid because i kept me stuck with my life), Iām gonna do it again and again whenever i free until i finish it. At the moments, i donāt have any stupid missions to do about those things i watched but still have some thoughts about them and want to check to know what they are. Can anyone help me with my problem about OCD? My English can not be really good as Iām not a native English speaker. Thanks.
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