I'm getting over my health ocd once and for all but it's getting replaced by an extrem fear of developing new Obsessions. What are ways to deal with the fear of new Obsessions and compulsions?
Hey, in the book by J. Grayson which is called "freedom from obsessive-compulsove disorder" is a exercise which might help you. It's called downward arrow tool. You basically write down your feared event starting with the idea "one day I might have a new obsession". Then you go further step by step, like a time line. When I have obsessions I might geht anxious, when I get anxious I might feel tremendous amount of stress, when I feel tremendous amounts of stress I might harm myself...." It is important to go more extreme with every new point until you are at the worst possible outcome. Then you add the ritual you use against these intrusive thoughts (e.g. checking, rumination). You also write down the function (analysing to feel safe, preventative). Finally you write down your cognitive distortion (e.g. black and white thinking, inflated responsibility, intolerance of uncertainty....), Your feared consequences (being anxious forever maybe?), And what giving up you rituals would mean....the purpose of this exercise is NOT to show you that your fears are untrue or to make your anxiety smaller. The purpose is to see your fears on paper and develop a script for yourself. OCD recovery is all about exposure. We have to expose ourselves to the worst possible outcome and embrace the uncertainty. It might feel unnatural at first but writing things down has a really big impact on your mind and how to structure your thoughts. Hope this helps :)
Also those are just examples for answers for each bullet point. I don't know you or your fears so of course fill in whatever fits you.
@ROCDmensch Danke für diesen tipp, werde es zeitnah ausprobieren.
@ROCDmensch thank you so so much for posting this!! it’s very helpful & I’ll definitely be looking into this book to help🩵
Same exact way you managed health OCD obsessions. Do the exposure work. Play it out. “What if I develop new obsessions? I may or may not develop new obsessions.” Then live with the uncertainty.
This is a very helpful exercise, thanks for posting!
https://www.treatmyocd.com/blog/obsessing-about-obsessing-is-this-really-ocd?utm_source=braze&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=brand_meta_ocd_080123 Good read from our friends at NOCD. Also I suggest handling it the way you did your health ocd just modified wording. My themes changed a lot when I was in recovery. My therapist said to apply the same tools. "Maybe I will get a new obsession maybe I won't." You have all the tools already. :) Another of my favs is to mock it. "Yeah ocd I will get a new obsession it'll be over do aliens wear shoes so let's start with that. What kinda shoes, toes no tos "etc.
Ich freue mich auf Erfolgsgeschichten viel Glück!
@Will86 Danke.
I was doing fine with my schizophrenia ocd (fear of developing schizophrenia/psychosis), mostly because I was obsessing on something else for a bit, but something caused it to come back. I was at work yesterday and checked out a customer, he didn’t know English very well and was very quiet. However, when he was leaving, he said “thank you” loudly while walking out and I told him to have a good night, but since I couldn’t see his face nor his mouth move, I worried that I hallucinated the whole thing and he in reality didn’t say anything while he was leaving. The voice that said it sounded a bit different, however it could’ve just been since I had only heard him talk quietly before. I’m still wondering if I hallucinated this and it freaks me out, causing my ocd to make me believe I’m developing schizophrenia/psychosis or losing my mind again. I also always read that the difference between those with schizophrenia/psychosis is those with OCD have insight and know their thoughts are crazy, but then that leads me down a spiral if what if I DONT think those thoughts are crazy? What if I actually believe them and become delusional/lack insight? So a statement that would be helpful otherwise made it worse for me. One night I had a panic attack super bad because I couldn’t convince myself I didn’t believe I was in a dream and hallucinating. Any advice on beating these constant thoughts and how to cope with it? :/
My last and almost life long theme/sub-theme largely subsided recently and my ocd felt like it wasn’t even an issue. Then I went on winter break from uni and being alone made my mind come up with a whole new topic to obsess over. TLDR on my fears, my advisor wouldn’t email me back for a while about signing up for classes so my mind started to worry “what if he doesn’t in time and you can’t enroll this semester and you lose this whole life you just built and all these new friends” So when that issue was resolved my mind found other scarier ways I could be uprooted from my current life and friends that I’ve grown so attached to. Then my mind remembered back when I was struggling with false memories and scrupulosity and I essentially made a post on a forum 2 and a half years ago saying I did something or was convinced I did something that I never actually did. Now I’ve been spiraling about someone finding it reporting me and I either get seen as a horrible person or arrested or something over something I never actually did but “admitted” to out of fear of going to hell. My mind won’t let it go and keeps finding new reasons for it to be “valid” “logical” or even inevitable. I feel like it’s just hanging over my head and I can never rest easy. Especially when I try to focus on my daily tasks or plan for the future I get this horrible flair up of “why plan for the future when this could come back in that future and you get uprooted from all of it” my mind won’t rest without certainty being uprooted won’t happen but certainty doesn’t exist, at least not with ocd. This sucks and I miss being care free.
So maybe the title wasn't the best to to put it but when you guys start having obsessive thoughts how do you stop them before it turns into compulsions and anxiety?
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