- Date posted
- 1y ago
What if it was never OCD
Is anyone else scared to recover because that could mean that it isn’t OCD? 🙃🙂🙃🙂
Is anyone else scared to recover because that could mean that it isn’t OCD? 🙃🙂🙃🙂
That doesn’t mean you don’t have OCD. You will ALWAYS have any mental illness. When you recover? That means it doesn’t affect your life.
Just because you recovered does not mean you never had OCD, you simply recovered from it or know how to deal with it.
@Iwanttobehappy No I absolutely want to recover, sometimes I just worry when I start to feel better, that maybe all of those thoughts were something other than OCD and maybe I’m just a terrible person and I’m just pretending to have OCD to reassure myself
Wouldn't you want to treat it?
I totally understand! My checking and other easy to notice compulsions are happening way less than a couple of years ago. So now my brain is questioning if it actually is OCD that I have..or maybe it's always been something else. Or I'll be thinking that whatever I'm experiencing maybe shouldn't require therapy anymore. Like..maybe I'm just lonely or something. So then I feel wrong for seeking therapy and like I'm wasting my therapist's time.
And if it's because I'm just lonely..I get scared to recover. If I'm recovered, then I for sure won't need therapy. And that means I won't have a therapist that I see weekly, and that would be even more lonely than I am now! Nonsense brain!
I think this is a very common fear with people with OCD. I think many people don’t do ERP because they are scared therapy will reveal the thoughts are true and that they don’t have OCD and have been in denial the whole time. This is a symptom of OCD. It likes to keep us trapped in a cycle of fear and make us miserable x
Sometimes i feel like im using ocd as an excuse. What if i dont really have it and im just freaking myself out? Does anyone feel this way
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?
These past few days I was fine. Minimal intrusive thoughts ,no anxiety etc(to add I'm on medication so maybe it's starting to work although it barely is 2 weeks) and today I got a sudden wave of anxiety and it started latching on some thoughts like" what if I'm in denial and I wanna break up with my bf? And what if erp doesn't work for me because I actually wanna break up with my bf?" But they didn't really stay long usually those thoughts would make me spiral for days or so, now they lasted for some hours. And now I'm trying to trigger myself into being anxious again because if I don't it means I don't have ocd and if I don't have ocd it means I don't love my bf and if I don't love my bf it means I have to break up. Idk if it makes sense but the lack of anxiety makes me wonder if I actually have ocd or not.
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