Help me stop my compulsions :(

I struggle with real event ocd, scrupulosity, and pocd my main compulsions are: - self-reassurance - self-punishment Like my main problem is: I get thoughts that are statements, like - you’ve done [insert terrible thing] and my nearly automatic response is to reassure myself, or at the very least to not let the thought fade out of my awareness. The fear is that if I’m not feeling sure at every moment that I’m okay, there’s something wrong, and stopping my reassurance and focusing will somehow “make the thought more real/true”. If I stop doing this compulsion, then my other default response becomes to “say the thought is true”. I end up saying this to myself very often and nearly automatically, so I end up getting depressed over time, even if my head feels “clearer”. This feels horrible and makes me less functional, so I avoid it and stick with the former compulsion. I do it so often that my head literally feels split in two. On the one hand, I go about my day and do surface level thinking on other things, and with my medicine I don’t feel that anxious. But a “layer” deeper, I am still doing the compulsions. I realized this because I’m a lot slower at a lot of things. In particular, I’m a college student, and my memory and mathematical skills are severely affected by this. And when I try to focus deeply and fully on something else, without reassurance (like when I try to study) I feel like I’m gonna start having a panic attack. It also takes so much effort, I can’t do it as I go about my day. The only time I can do it is laying in bed because I get so tense and hyperventilated. I also get a headache right after trying to let my mind wonder, and I don’t feel like I ever habituate to my anxiety because I get triggered and respond compulsively merely seconds after I stop my exercise and return to my everyday life. And again, if I force myself to stop my compulsions, I feel so much anxiety that I can’t function. So I inevitably do compulsions, no matter how much I want to stop. My thoughts are that I need a much stronger medication to curb my extreme anxiety so that I can actually do my exposures correctly. I don’t have any other ideas. Anyone else relate to the experience I described? If so, did you overcome it? Any tips? How do you manage to be mindful when you get extreme anxiety and your mind tells you that horrible things will happen if you “forget” your thought or let it out of your awareness?

McDucko

Date posted: 2y

Are you doing ERP? Sometimes basing your ERP on the worst case is a little too intense. Try to go for a believable case that is still disturbing to you.

charlie_rb

Date posted: 2y

@McDucko I’ve done it before, but not currently. I kind of can’t do formal ERP at the moment. I’m stuck in a loop in more ways than just my OCD. I rely on my college insurance to get treatment (I’m broke). But studying while my OCD is raging makes it worse and my grades drop, so I shouldn’t be in college at the moment. I’m trying to do exposures now that it’s summer, but I don’t have access to a therapist (I go to college out of state, on a scholarship). I’ve been going back and forth between taking time off without therapy/with subpar therapy or being in school with good therapy but having my grades suffer. I’m tired of this situation, but maybe I am pushing a bit too hard and need to start with smaller exposures.

McDucko

Date posted: 2y

@charlie_rb Definitely work your way up. Certain exposures might be too much right now. Mindfulness meditations are also good when you're on edge. There's some good ones for OCD on YouTube.

Nica

Date posted: 2y

Here are some helpful articles and one of them is about ERP scripting: -Read this article about ERP scripting: https://www.shalanicely.com/aha-moments/erp-scripting-for-ocd/ -Read The Hidden Power of Swearing at Your OCD: https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/beyond-the-doubt/201711/the-hidden-power-of-swearing-at-your-ocd -Read Taking The Power Away From OCD: https://www.treatmyocd.com/blog/taking-the-power-away-from-intrusive-thoughts

Wed_Wheel

Date posted: 24w

My SO OCD

I have just recently realized that I had SO OCD. This began whenever I was watching porn and had an intrusive thought about the guy in the porn. It was more minor at first, it was a majority of what I was thinking about throughout the day but it didn’t feel as distressing at first. If I had downtime to think about it, it would affect me but if I was just going about my day I wouldn’t notice it. I began going through the compulsions of checking myself. This lasted for a while until another obsession occurred. Then it seemed as if my SO OCD took a step back. I would have flare ups but they would seem to pass. Recently, I had a very bad night of constant compulsions and looking at pictures and imagining things to check myself. After that night it was very distressing, it affected me to the point where people around me began to notice and ask me if I was okay. One of the big reasons I was so upset was my girlfriend, we have been together for over 3 years and I want to spend the rest of my life with her. I was thinking “Oh my god, if I am gay I can never be with her.” I would sit and cry about it thinking I would lose her and that might life would change because I was gay. I finally had enough and talked to her and my parents. We did some research and I was so shocked to find out that I had a form of OCD, it was like a weight being lifted off my shoulders just knowing that other people have been where I am and that I’m not gay. However, I may have naively expected the compulsions and obsessive thoughts to go away now that I knew I had an actual problem. But I found that the compulsions and thoughts were still there and I was going to put some effort into getting better. I have researched and now know what to do when experiencing intrusive thoughts, yet I still have been performing the compulsions which is just feeding into the OCD. I find myself having intrusive thoughts and then start performing compulsions to see if they are true. What really bothers me is when I have an intrusive thought that tells me that I do like something. But when I think about it I have no desire to pursue those thoughts. However when I feed into the compulsions they just seem to feed into each other. It is like my OCD ignores all the things that I know I like and goes straight to panic mode. I am also trying to do ERP and am going to start doing my best to get better. Does anyone have any tips for not performing the compulsions no matter how anxious you are feeling and no matter how real the intrusive thoughts seem to feel?

Sexual Orientation OCD

Canes12345!

Date posted: 24w

My life with ocd

I’m a good man and I know that. My OCD revolves around relationships. While dating someone a truly enjoy, I find myself needing to compulse everything on my mind or else I feel like I’m being a liar or keeping secrets. I also am pretty confident I suffer from false memory ocd. I don’t like to put a label on things but I’m 99.9% sure I do. My compulsions a lot of times come from things I’m not even sure are real. The more thought I put into them, the more I start to believe they are real. One of the worst compulsions I had in my relationship was I had a thought “what if I find my ex more attractive” and “what if I thought the sex with them was better”. I ended up compulsing these things to my gf. After lots of time to think and get a ahold of myself I was able to remind myself that these things weren’t true and I was just in a downward spiral. There was a 2-3 month period where every time I was relieved of something then I would instantly think of something else. These compulsions have caused insecurity in my gf and I feel like a terrible person. Never meant to hurt her at all and was just trying to find a sense of relief. While I know it is not true, I can’t fix things with words and I feel terrible. I would love to hear from people with tricks and strategies that can help. I love my gf and want to fix things and understand this is not a relationship fixer app but I would like to know what are some ways you are able to deal with these kind of things.

12345678910

Date posted: 14w

Thinking about the past.

I would really appreciate it so much if someone took the time to read this and help me. I don’t know what to do anymore. I haven’t posted here in awhile. I had my OCD managed pretty decently for a year or so on medication, but I had to stop taking it, and after around 3-4 months, the OCD has become unbearable again. It used to be much more surrounding existential themes, eating, and others, not really real event/false memory stuff. But now it’s gotten really out of hand and I don’t know how to do it anymore. It’s surrounding a time of my life a long time ago. It was a dark time. I wasn’t myself and I was going through a lot of things, and I did a lot of things I regret. I self-destructed, embarrassed myself, and wasn’t good to the people around me. I was able to get my mind off of it for a long time, even though I would still think about it a good amount. I was able to be in the present, at least moreso than now. But now that I’m off medication, the guilt has become my obsession again. I can’t move on. I can’t do anything without thinking about all of these memories. I’m obsessed. I’ve started hating myself again, so much so that it’s hard to do anything anymore or believe I deserve anything good. The people around me tell me it wasn’t even that bad, but to me it was. To me, I failed myself, lost myself, and failed everyone around me. I can’t stop thinking about every person I said something wrong to or every time I screwed up. I’ve now started to convince myself I did terrible things I can’t remember, and that my mind just can’t deal with it. And that’s why I feel so guilty. There’s nothing to really support this though. But I’m starting to really convince myself that’s true. I’m trying not to listen to it, because I’ve convinced myself I have hit people with my car before and haven’t remembered when I absolutely didn’t and I know I never have. I drive back over and over to check there’s no one, even though I never heard any bang or felt myself anything. I can convince myself of some crazy false memories. So I know that I shouldn’t listen. But it’s hard not to when I have this guilt gnawing at me constantly. I come to conclusions that this guilt must be because I did something terrible that I don’t remember, even though I already think the things I remember were bad enough. But I would know by now right? If I did something bad I don’t remember? I don’t feel like this all the time. But it’s a lot of the time. But maybe that should be reassuring, that I only start obsessing like this when I think to. The past haunts me though. And I can never be in the present. I’ve started to resort to some unhealthy behaviors to distract myself or help me work towards something. I am starting to hate myself so much and feel like there’s no way I’ll ever be able to get out of this loop. I feel like I just can’t do this anymore. Maybe I need to go back on medication. But I don’t know. I don’t really want to. But will I ever fix this without it? Why do I feel SO guilty, all of the time? I do all these things for people because I feel indebted to them, because I feel undeserving of everything. I feel awful about myself. I don’t know what to do. Does anyone else deal with this?

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Help me stop my compulsions :(

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