I’ve got Pure O and my compulsions are tricky to identify sometimes. But how should I feel when I’ve successfully resisted them? Trying to sit with the anxiety and the dread!
I like a recent analogy I heard of not ‘clicking ‘ on the thought. Sort of like not opening up a folder with the ocd story inside and examining it. When you’re doing an exposure, you’re sort of opening up the folder deliberately, and agreeing with the ocd fears instead of trying to disprove or solve them. Ideally, you would feel some level of anxiety, and resist the urge to compulse/solve. Sometimes for me the anxiety and dread is so strong that doing an exposure is unnecessary. In those moments, you can (and this is really challenging) treat them like really big exposures. The amount of learning your fear system will undergo in these moments when you resist compulsing is massive. Generally when I resist compulsions I feel anxious, but fulfilled, knowing I’ve used courage and will power to do something good for my ocd that I will benefit from in the long term. In the short term though, it might feel worse. Hope this helps.
@Simon Also, plan A would be agreeing with the fear and ‘not clicking’ and focusing attention on something else. Since that’s sometimes (usually)too difficult for me, Plan B is deliberately facing the dreaded ocd story without compulsing.
@Simon Thanks Simon, appreciate this response. Okay totally makes sense. Also cool to see another filmmaker out there with OCD. I’m a DOP.
@Matt93 Awesome! I’m a big fan of cinematography
Heya! I was diagnosed with Pure O (although I recon I have more compulsive tendencies than first realised with my diagnosis) and I’m not sure if this will help but here are some of the compulsions that took me a long time to realise were compulsions, by identifying it may be easier to intentionally resist them. -confessing, having to tell somebody else what you’re thinking about -mentally replaying, after having an intrusive thought intentionally rethinking it over and over to try and figure out what ur means, if it’s true, if it was really an intrusive thought —reassurance-seeking, googling questions about your intrusive thoughts, asking others ‘do you actually like me? ‘Do you think I’m a bad person?’ I found it really helpful to do meditations where I mentally watch my thoughts fly by, not interacting with them or allowing them to mean anything, watching them pass like clouds
@obsessivequeer Thanks so much. I recently realised confessing is one of mine also. It’s so hard cos you want to be able to talk about it but I also don’t want to do compulsions.
I am struggling right now with intrusive harm urges. They feel real and it feels like I am going to act any second. It feels like I have to hold myself back, which is a scary thoughts. I am trying so hard not to compulse, but does anyone have tips on what they do in these situations?
Does anyone else experience a moment of clarity where you feel strong relief that the intrusive thought isn’t true, only to then immediately start questioning if you’ve only convinced yourself that because you don’t want the thought to be true? I’m pretty confident it would take some crazy mental gymnastics to actually successfully convince myself I didn’t do something that I deep down knew I did, but every time I resist the compulsions and try to sit with the uncertainty or tell myself to think about what is logical, I usually briefly know that this probably didn’t happen but am unable to move on out of fear I’m just in denial and have convinced myself of that.
Resisting compulsions feels so wrong and dangerous, I’m trying my best but the anxiety of doing so is immense. Especially because my brain is still not allowing myself to believe that my obsession is OCD, it wants me to believe it is a threat, so even calling my compulsions “compulsions” is making me anxious because that is me calling this whole thing OCD and not real if that makes sense?
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