- Date posted
- 6y
- Date posted
- 6y
My username comes from my experience with Hit and Run OCD. This is actually a very common Harm OCD thought. The sensation to hit pedestrians is actually an intrusive mental urge. Urges can feel real but is is the combination of feeling out of control and horror associated that lets you know it is OCD talking. I have done extensive ERP on this and the best things I did was watching YouTube videos where there is a person vs auto accident. Remember this urge is just another intrusive experience and is just like a mental fart ?; let it pass and do not analyze.
- Date posted
- 6y
Driving OCD falls under "false memory OCD". Most people with OCD have had false memory OCD at one point, and the only way to overcome it is to do ERP. You can't avoid driving so you have to confront the OCD thoughts. You have to just let the thoughts sit in your mind when they come to you but just don't consciously react to them or analyse them. No analysing the car journey either.
- Date posted
- 6y
But do I accept the OCD thoughts as true and convince myself I hit someone or do I label them as OCD and just feel anxious
- User type
- OCD Conqueror
- Date posted
- 6y
I totally get this!!! This happens to me ALL the time. You’re not alone.
- Date posted
- 6y
You don't accept the OCD thoughts as true, you don't accept them at all. You just allow them to sit in your mind without acknowledging them. Don't consciously respond to the thoughts with fear and don't analyse them or the car journey to try figure out if the thoughts are true. You have to rewire your brains response to these thoughts, and the best way to teach your brain is to show it that nothing is wrong by behaving as if there is nothing wrong. Having anxiety is fine as that comes on autopilot, but analysing and powering the thoughts up with conscious fear is a choice and you have to choose not to.
Related posts
- Date posted
- 25w
Please help. I have felt so off/wrong all day. I constantly worry that the “bad guy” is going to get me. I have awful thoughts and I constantly want God to know that I don’t mean these thoughts. I am at a point in my therapy where I need to choose to use my ERP but it feels too scary. I then do compulsions, which makes the OCD worse, which makes me want to use ERP less. And the cycle goes on. I am currently sitting in my car crying because I feel so lost and exhausted. I’m not supposed to figure out my thoughts, but today I just went into a spiral of sadness and depression, thinking that I will always feel like this. When my thoughts got really bad at the end of the day, I tried to use ERP even though I was shaking and not believing my responses and I ended up feeling like I missed something and that I gave into the “bad guy.” I have no one to talk when I’m not doing therapy twice a week. I am alone and have no one to talk to when I am like this… please help
- User type
- OCD Conqueror
- Date posted
- 24w
I’m trying to do ERP therapy, but I keep thinking my subtype of ocd is the worst there ever is. I tried going on a walk tonight and the adrenaline in my body along with the shakes and the burning in my chest got so overwhelming. I felt like I was just about to lay down in the gutter along the sidewalk. I’m not trying to be super negative. I just don’t know what to do anymore. If it’s not one thing it’s another and I just wanna cry so bad and I want it to go away but it won’t I almost feel like I have to call a crisis line or something even right now while I’m writing this I’m crying so bad. I can’t enjoy a single thing. I joined a support group tonight, but I just feel like I feel so bad for everyone because of how awful it is. I know what I’m writing right now doesn’t make a lot of sense but I just don’t know what to do anymore. Part of me wants to quit ERP therapy so bad cause I don’t think it’s gonna ever help. if anyone has any advice or suggestions, that would be greatly appreciated.
- Date posted
- 22w
(Long post warning) Hi, I’ve been struggling with severe OCD for six years now. it started in 2019 with my theme being getting sick/emetophobia. it devastated my life. I almost didn’t graduate high school from it. I remember washing my hands for three hours one day until they were nearly bloody while crying and asking why I could not stop doing it. I remember id have to write and rewrite sentences when I did my English homework and that’s why I nearly failed that class. I remember how I would spend up to thirty minutes to an hour pacing the halls of my apartment while my mom was asleep until I neutralized the thoughts about throwing up and I could finally go to bed. I don’t know when it happened, but my theme switched. Sometimes in late 2020 or early 2021, it switched to POCD. It started with a single thought, and I focused on it and it’s been my theme since then for four years. It has been absolutely destroying me. I feel so disgusted and lost and just tired. My compulsions are severe now. I thought they were bad before, but now they’re ten times worse. I can’t eat, drink, change my clothes, walk, or even do things on my phone normally. I’ve developed so many mental compulsions that it’s so intricate and complicated yet at the same time I’ve done them so much that they’ve become normal. An example I have is if im putting on a shirt and I have a “bad” thought, I have to take it off and put it back on two more times (that’ll make it 3 times I put the shirt back on - odd numbers are my safe number). I have to have a good thought on the third time otherwise I have to take it off and put it on two more times to make it five times I put on that shirt. If not that then I just put on a different shirt because the original is now tainted with my bad thought. I can’t open apps on my phone. It’s with the numbers again. If I open TikTok once while having a bad thought - I have to close it and open it two more times and so on. Sometimes I do it up to 30 times. So I just don’t do things usually. I don’t turn on the TV because I know I’ll redo it. I don’t open a book or grab it off my shelf because I’ll have to repeat the action. I can’t even lay in bed without getting up and redoing it even if im exhausted. I just feel so helpless. I don’t know what to do. I feel disgusting and even now my minds screaming at me that I am dirty and what I think is true. I just wish I was free of this, I wish I could just live my life. I’ve wasted hours and days because of my compulsions. I mask it so well around my friends. I don’t do them in front of anyone or I’ve learned to hide it well. But when im back home alone, it goes haywire. I just want to live again.
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