This mind set doesn’t work anymore

I'm sorry for such a long message! TLDR, in short, I understand what you're going through, but give yourself a moment to calm down and reconsider the situation later from a fresh perspective.

@Anonymous The thing is I know it might come from lalicious intent because it happened in the past few months, not because I wanted it mind you, it's more my body acting on its own, like for instance turning around and seeing my cat near me and my body would instatly lightly push him with my foot, like I wanted to harm him but I would be horrified afterwards and try to confort him the best I could, not that he was harmed in the process, I can't stress this enough, it,s just in my head I made tge motion to harm him and who's to say in the future if my body won't harm him before I can even react, same goes when picking them up and squeezing them a little too tight against my will. Point is, the other day I fucked up, even, more so knowing I've had plenty of time to debate with myself in class if I should leave or not. By punishing myself, I meant in a non physically hurtful way, my punishement would be to effectively destroy my hobbies, like deleting save files from my video games, not speaking to my friends anymore etc. This would probably hurt me more than just cutting or hitting myself.

@realeventwitsend I think I understand what you are saying. Acting before thinking, and then reconsidering how far you would have gone with those actions or the intent, or something like that; am I right about that? I'd do this where I would think to myself "don't be mean to the cat" and then I would do something like startle them (on purpose and with thinking) or pet them too hard or something along those lines. I would liken it to thinking about harming a person and then lifting your arm in a motion that could be the "first step" towards harming them.

@Anonymous It’s a bit like that, but I’m not really ”councious” while doi g the action, as I said it’s more my body acting on its own, I remember vividly petting one of my cats and then turning around to see a glimpse of my cat behind me and I pushed her with my foot almost instictively, before realising what had happened, mind you this all happened within like a second. I immediately felt super guilty and took her with me to pet her, not that she seem to mind my action in the first place, she looked like a bit confused at best but enjoyed the pets afterwards, or when I picked one of my cats that ran into my bedroom as I was going to bed so I needed to pick him up before he managed to sneak under the bed preventing me to go to sleep. And I picked him up while he was half under the bed and he bumped his head on the bed frame, I remember willingly picking him up despite knowing he could bump his head and felt super guilty afterwards cause it really felt like I wanted him to bump his head, whereas I could’ve just waited for him to get out as he usually does after a few minutes, but chose not to, once again I ended up keeping him with me and petting it for a while before going to sleep. Moreover, I just feel like a hypocrite, because I’m not doing this for my cats, well yes in a way I do cause I don’t want them to be harmed, but I’m definitely doing it more for me as the prospect of deleting savefiles and other realted hobbies stuff was always the condition for me to act good, think good and do good, well to some extent, it’s just that it devolved into this obsession about hurting my cats in those past few months and as I said at first I could manage it telling me that whatever happens happens and if I was a bad person then I was a bad person, but now after what happened the other day, that’s not a valid excuse anymore, I can do good but this time I chose not to, because I didn’t want to be shamed by my teacher or because I’m evil, this I will never know. But even if I do punish myself, what tells me I won’t do it again, even if I try to teach my brain not to do such things what’s to say it will be effective, and I’d lose it all just for that, ruining hundreds of hours of memories I’ve made with friends and tedious grind in games, or maybe this is all wishful thinking because I don’t want to do delete anything, or maybe this is wishful thinking from my evil side. I don’t know and that’s the real issue at hand.

@realeventwitsend Okay, I think I get what you mean. I've had situations where I've done something rude to a cat before, something I didn't want to do. But unfortunately I can't tell you why we do it unconsciously. And I'm glad that you don't physically harm yourself, but the things you do as punishment I would say are still a bit too much. Of course I think you have no need of self-punishment, but maybe you could lower the stakes. Again, just as an example, something like a time-out. I think that would be overall better for your situation. I get the kind of confusion you have about the truth of if it is wishful thinking or if it seriously won't work. Perhaps lowering the punishment stakes would help this too? Either way, I can tell you are probably ruminating about this a lot. I know it's really hard to have that type of question. Maybe you'll be able to try that "whatever happens happens" mindset again, or maybe you'll find another approach that works. Out of curiosity, have you tried ERP? Or therapy? And I'm sorry if I missed it, but I didn't catch how your teacher is involved in this?

@Anonymous Oh right sorry, I’m so caught up in all this, I forgot to mention that the original story is on a previous post I made telling in details what happened the other day, you can find it on my profile I believe, but long story short, I had to go to class but wanted to move an extinguisher out of a potential spot where it could have fallen on my cats, so I didn’t do it but called my parents to let them know not to open the closet where it was stored, then once in class I realised it wasn’t enough as they could open it anyway so I asked my teacher to leave the class for a few minutes to take my medication and took that time to call them again to tell them to just lock the cats out of the hallway while I was gone but they didn’t answer, so I wanted to take a bus home as soon as possible to fix the issue myself but the next bus was passing 20 minutes before the end of the class and I ended up not asking my teacher to let me go early even though he might have agreed, hell even just asking him even though he might have refused would have been enough for me, at least I would have done the best I could, but I still didn’t. As for lowering the stakes, they wee already pretty low as far as I was concerned, each time I would wrong my cats I would prevent myself from playing games for the day or the week or even watching videos I liked, or I would spend extra time with my cats. But I feel this isn’t enough anymore, if I am truly a bad person and uncounsiouly try to harm my pets then I have to give my brain a real lesson such as deleting everything, but like I said, who’s to say that’ll do anything except making me more miserable. I haven’t tried ERP yet, I’ve yet to find a therapist who gives such treatment, but I will see a psychiatrist soon, however, I’m reluctant in sharing the whole harming pets unwillingly/unconsiously to them, it’s in my opinion a one way ticket to the psych ward, and I have neither the money nor the time to spend time there. If I’m not allowed to finish this year of school, then it’s all over, I won’t go into details but if I stop now I won’t be able to ever finish college and my life will be as good as over, especially with the lack of money I have.

@Anonymous I realised you can’t see posts on someone’s profile so I’m linking it here https://nocd.page.link/DiSSap2TLVNzbstP7

@realeventwitsend Ok. Thanks for telling me. I hear what you're saying about the punishments. They weren't as bad as I thought they might be. Still, I don't think it's needed -- but you probably already knew I would say that. As far as myself, I used to punish myself about my fears with my cats and such in similar, but probably worse, ways. And I thought I needed to delete one of my save files, not for punishment but for religious reasons, a save file that has over 300 hours in it. I would suggest maybe giving ERP a try and looking for an OCD therapist. If for some reason you can't see one through NOCD, don't give up looking. I know the International OCD Foundation (IOCDF) has a therapist search tool on their website. We all have back-slides, but we still need to keep trying after they happen. If you change your mind about the mindset not working, that's okay. We all have times where we think that what we are doing isn't going to work. Either way, keep doing what you believe you should do And I don't think you'll go to a psych ward just because of sharing them that. Just start by saying that you have OCD (or you think you have it if you haven't been diagnosed yet), then explain it. If they are a good psychiatrist that knows about OCD, they'll understand. Even if they don't know about OCD, they'd have to be a really bad psychiatrists to actually try to send you to one. But, if you don't want to start by telling them the situation with your cats, then maybe you could just start with saying that you might have OCD; that should be good enough. And I know about college frustrations. College and OCD don't mix well.

@Anonymous So you didn’t end up deleting anything? Well it’s kinda complicated, I don’t want to delete my save because it’s a game I’m playing with my friends, and I already have a loooooooooot of trouble making friends to begin with and I lost a lot of friends pausing or stopping playing some games because of OCD in the past so it’s a bit traumatic for me to do such a thing again. I’ve also never had a whole lot of friends growing up and recently, this summer, what drove me to the ”what happens happens” mindset was my limited time on Earth and fear of death, I only have one life and I don’t want to waste it being bored, miserable and alone and not doing the things I don’t want do to, I cried for hours wishing being normal and able to enjoy life. And now I just can’t bring myself to continue that path for now. But this feels toi easy, this feels like I’m giving myself excuses to allow myself to keep on living life and not being accountable for what I’ve done. Also, I can’t even delete my savefile, it’s not really a game where one can do that, everything is server-side so unless asking for the company to do it, which I doubt will happen... But I could create another account which would require me to buy the game again, and having to redo everything from the start would set me bacl compared to my friends, not that putting a whole lot of hours unlocking stuff would give you that much of an edge over other people, but the real issue resides in the fact I would lose all memories I had made on this game with my friends. Also to ensure I truly have what I deserve from what I’ve done, since I can’t delete anything, I ould have instead to lose to password and email from my account the game is on, which means giving up on all the games linked to it, and tbh I’m not even sure I can lose my credentials. All in all, I’m not even sure this will all work, whons to say I won’t have do recreate an account, again and again each time something like happens, even despite promising myself I wouldn’t do it ever, it did happen, well at least I’m convinced it happened and I hurt my cat, maybe it didn’t happen at all after all but I have no way of knowing that.

@realeventwitsend As of right now, I didn't end up deleting anything. Self punishment in other ways, yes I have. I don't really have any friends. I have one that I talk to less than once a year. So are these friends of yours people you met in online gaming then? I understand feeling like time on earth is limited and OCD is taking away from that. And I understand wishing to be normal. And don't feel pressured to jump right back into that mindset -- I'm only suggesting for you to reconsider so that you don't completely abandon that mindset because I think it may be a good one to return to eventually. I know it's hard to just say "whatever happens happens", especially when you feel like it's actually intentional. And I understand what you mean by it feeling too easy. "How could the right path be the easy path?" That's what I would think to myself. And you wouldn't lose your memories with your friends, technically speaking. You'll still have the memories, and they will too. But I know what you're trying to say. You'll lose the relationships with people who share those memories with you, and/or perhaps the objects those memories are tied to, correct? I've lost many relationships too. Not all because of OCD, but regardless, I don't talk to them anymore. But technically those relationships aren't "gone", what's gone is the form of communication we have with those that we share the relationship with -- they might still consider me a friend, as I still do with them. And that is correct. In the end, you have no way of knowing; and even if your cat did get hurt, you wouldn't know if it was really out of evil intent or not -- the feelings OCD gives us can confuse things.

@Anonymous Yeah I wouldn’t lose the memories per se, even tho a physical medium helps a lot. That being said, I wish I could just have a trace of that, especailly since it doesn’t happen often for me, and I just wish to be like my friends, being able to collect stuff, acheivement, being proud of what I ca show of to them just as they are and it kills me I can’t have that and that I can’t spend time with them, at the end of the day, what I’m gonna end up leaving behind, people aren’t gonna wait for me to catch up. All in all, I stilldon’t know what I should do, I’ll see when I’ll get my consultation with my psychaitrist, whenever that will be...

@realeventwitsend I'm sorry you feel that way. I feel that way too sometimes. And don't worry about not knowing what to do yet. When I first started therapy I had no idea how to handle OCD, and I wasn't doing much of anything. Even now, while things aren't the same as they were then, in many ways I still don't know what I should do. Just do what you can, and remind yourself to breathe and do some relaxing things. You'll get to see the psychiatrist in time. And I'd just like to throw out there, there are quite a few different messages you could use besides the "whatever happens happens" message, and there are several methods to practicing ERP. Some might work better depending on the situation and personal preference. And there's technically no wrong choice, either. You could look into that if it interests to you.

@Anonymous Do you have any example of such messages or methods?

@realeventwitsend Just for example, "agreeing with the thoughts" is one method of ERP. You're not exactly agreeing in it, but making it sound like you are. That's all I can think of off the top of my head, but I'm sure there's more forms of ERP, and more messages such as the one you were using.

@Anonymous Heh, I see what you mean but since it’s more actions rather than thoughts, it doesn’t really apply here, though I used to use that method back when my OCDs were just intrusive thoughts

@realeventwitsend I'm sure you'll find something that works.