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’m having a big OCD relapse and would like to hear anyone’s tips on how to be present and healthily deal with these intrusive thoughts and the “need” to preform compulsions. Thank you!!
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.
Looking back, I realize I’ve had OCD since I was 7. though I wasn’t diagnosed until I was 30. As a kid, I was consumed by fears I couldn’t explain: "What if God isn’t real? What happens when we die? How do I know I’m real?" These existential thoughts terrified me, and while everyone has them from time to time, I felt like they were consuming my life. By 12, I was having daily panic attacks about death and war, feeling untethered from reality as depersonalization and derealization set in. At 15, I turned to drinking, spending the next 15 years drunk, trying to escape my mind. I hated myself, struggled with my body, and my intrusive thoughts. Sobriety forced me to face it all head-on. In May 2022, I finally learned I had OCD. I remember the exact date: May 10th. Reading about it, I thought, "Oh my God, this is it. This explains everything." My main themes were existential OCD and self-harm intrusive thoughts. The self-harm fears were the hardest: "What if I kill myself? What if I lose control?" These thoughts terrified me because I didn’t want to die. ERP changed everything. At first, I thought, "You want me to confront my worst fears? Are you kidding me?" But ERP is gradual and done at your pace. My therapist taught me to lean into uncertainty instead of fighting it. She’d say, "Maybe you’ll kill yourself—who knows?" At first, it felt scary, but for OCD, it was freeing. Slowly, I realized my thoughts were just thoughts. ERP gave me my life back. I’m working again, I’m sober, and for the first time, I can imagine a future. If you’re scared to try ERP, I get it. But if you’re already living in fear, why not try a set of tools that can give you hope?
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